
AMPlay 2.03
~~~~~~~~~~~

What is AMPlay?:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's is a desktop player for MP3 music files, using the AMPlayer module.

It contains a number of features specifically aimed at dealing with
very large collections of MP3s ('Large' in this context is many
thousands or even tens of thousands).

In particular, it understands that there is more to an MP3 collection
than a simple list of tracks. A track generally comes from a collection
of tracks that we call an album, and is generally by a particular
artist. AMPlay recognises this, and builds a database of tracks where
each track has an associated album and artist. Many features of AMPlay
are only possible because of this - most actions can be applied to
albums or artists as well as tracks, and many settings can also
be set at the album or artist level. Albums and artists also provide a
useful grouping of tracks, allowing attributes of multiple tracks
to be editted together.


Installation:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

!AMPlay can be copied to wherever you wish to put it on your hard disk.

Although AMPlay will run without it, in order to configure AMPlay,
you will need to install/upgrade AMPlayCfg. Refer to the ReadMe file
in the AMPlayCfg directory for details on doing this.

Note that AMPlay 2.03 requires AMPlayCfg 2.03 to be installed. Older
versions of AMPlayCfg will report errors if you try to use them with
AMPlay 2.03.

See also the requirements section.


Getting Started:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Run !AMPlay. You should see the player window appear in the bottom
left of your desktop. You can drag MP3 files onto this window (or the
icon bar icon) to add them to the database - by default it will also
start playing automatically.

Once AMPlay is loaded, double clicking on an MP3 file will start the
file playing, and add its details to the database if they aren't
there already.

You can also drag directories containing MP3 files, or text files
containing the full paths to the MP3 files. (Before starting a large
import of 1000's of files, see section 6.3 in the FAQ - it will work,
but there are some things you can do to make it faster).

If you receive a message that a module can't be located or is too old,
refer to the requirements section.

AMPlay supports interactive help by default, for both windows and menu
entries.

If it does not start playing, refer to section 8.8 - Troubleshooting.
There are a couple of simple reasons why this might happen.

Before you can configure AMPlay, you'll need to have installed
AMPlayCfg. Refer to the Installation section above.


Requirements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AMPlay requires;

- RISC OS version 3.7 or later.
- ABCLibrary 4.15 or later.
- AMPlayer 1.39 or later.
- CallASWI 0.03 or later (Only on RISC OS versions lower than 5).
- AcornURI 0.12 or later (not essential).

It also needs to be running on a system with enough processing power
for the AMPlayer module to be able to decode MP3s in realtime at
sufficient quality. In practice, this makes a StrongARM RiscPC the
minimum spec, although the faster ARM7500FE based machines might just
about suffice with some tweaking of the AMPlayer options. 

If your system does not already have ABCLibrary 4.15 or later, a copy
is supplied with AMPlay in the OnlyIfNeeded.ABCLib directory. Refer
to the ReadMe in that directory for installation instructions.

AMPlayer is used by AMPlay for the decoding of the MP3 file to sound.
It is available from http://www.amplayer.org. Unless there's a newer
official version than 1.39, Iyonix users should download the
unofficial 32-bit version.

If your system requires CallASWI, and does not already have 0.03 or
later, it can be downloaded from http://www.iyonix.com/32bit in the
!System updates section.

AcornURI is used by AMPlay for the email and web buttons on the
program information window. As this is not critical, if it can't load
it on startup, it does not give an error - the buttons in question
just won't work. An updated AcornURI can be downloaded from
http://sudden.recoil.org/others

If any of the required modules are no longer available from their
authoritative sources, a copy of the current version is supplied
in the 'OnlyIfNeeded' directory. This means that AMPlay should
always be useable even if modules that it requires are no longer
obtainable.

Unlike the 1.x versions, AMPlay 2.x does not require WBModules.

AMPlay has been tested on RISC OS Select (4.37), and RISC OS 5
(5.11). It is 26/32-bit neutral.

AMPlay will make use of a Choices directory if the boot sequence you
are using provides one (any recent boot structure should do so). If no
Choices directory is available, AMPlay will use its application
directory for storing settings and the tracks database, in which case
it won't run from a read-only archive or CD. If choices are
available, it stores its settings in choices.audio.mp3.amplay2

Interaction between AMPlay and AMPlayCfg requires access to !Scrap.
AMPlay will create its own subdirectory inside scrap. It tidies this
up itself on startup.

The memory requirements for AMPlay will vary depending on the size of
the database you create, but with the default settings it uses about
1MB. AMPlayer will also claim some memory for its playback buffer -
this can be configured. Refer to the documentation for the AMPlayer
module itself for more details on this.


--
30.05.2008
Mike Sandells
mailto:mike@mikejs.com
http://www.mikejs.com/
