Case Study - Apple Music vs. VLC in ATV4K - Study 1 - FLAC files and playlists.

[kraftyman]

Hi. I'm proposing a case study for the sake of helping the developers on how us users perceive some subtleties with VLC, and what I think it could help improve the experience and bug hunting.
I'm also bringing Apple Music default app from ATV4K (Computer Share) and an app called FE (File Explorer Pro) from Skyjos.com.

VLC
So, having the SMB share all set, you get to see the folders for the drive:

FLAC PLAYBACK


Image 1 - Browsing through the share.


Image 2 - The files in this folder are the ones I want to play, so let's enter it. The folder stands a bit out, to highlight the right folder.


Image 3 - We don't get much love in the looks, we all know that. We'll see how this could be better. Here are the actual FLAC files.


Image 4 - File starts to play. As you can see, the track number and the actual file name appears -- not the tags.


Image 5 - Another view of the progress bar. Down in the bar, only the filename as it is, it's displayed.


Image 6 - If you STOP the song, by going back to the folder view, and RESUME to the same song, then something curious happens. On the second time, VLC reads the tags for Artist, Title track and Album it belongs to.


Image 7 - Another curious thing - if you move your finger in control, the progress bar is not displaying the "filename" per si, but now, it is displaying the song title as tagged.

PLAYLISTS BEHAVIOUR WITH FLAC

I created three kind of playlists. M3U8, M3U and FPL (foobar2000).
FPL is not recognizable.


Image 8 - When loading the M3U8 (UTF-8) Playlist, it will be stuck like in the image, forever loading. Nothing will play. Notice the cone icon now appearing. When a FLAC file has album art embedded (will still test the folder.jpg next time), the cone does not show up. When the FLAC file has no art, the cone shows up. But in this case here, M3U8 is a show stopper.

(continues in the next message, because there is a link limitation).

[kraftyman]

(continuing...)


Image 9 - Now, loading the other playlist file, M3U, it loads. Notice that it loads only what the playlist has got. Artist and Title track. It doesn't fetch any tag from the file as it would do without playlists. But the major problem here is: It only plays the FIRST song of the list and then it EXITS to the folder view. Total show stopper.


Image 10 - Immediately after the first song is played in the playlist, it drops and exists to the folder view.

APPLE TV (Music App).

Now this is a share with ALAC files, because FLAC is not supported in iTunes. But MP3 does work in the same fashion, nonetheless. Notice: VLC tvOS is not reading the IDv3t tags, but I will make another case study on this.


Image 11 - Here is the image of the album grid. You get album art out of the box and easy navigation. Could be folders as well, but we'll get there soon when we look at FE Pro.


Image 12 - If I press the album I want to play, it returns me a list, needn't to be this way in VLC and I'll show in FE Pro example. Nevertheless, isn't this neat? All tags are pre-written out of the box, plus album art is dead fast to load.


Image 13 - When playing the song, like we were playing in VLC, now we've got album art and proper tags read. (I believe the album art needs to REALLY be embedded in Apple Music - will test it).


Image 14 - If I move to the RETURN key in remote control, it will give me an option to jump the tracks and they are all presented as small arts I can browse through. Songs keeps playing because I actually haven't made a decision to stop it, so Apple Music will keep playing the song - as it happens with FE Pro as well.


Image 15 - Apple Music recognizes both M3U8 and M3U files added in iTunes. Plays perfectly.


(Continues next message... and final for this series).

[kraftyman]

(Continuing from part 2...)


Image 16 - Here are the files that I selected in this playlist. As stated, it is only showing the files in the playist. In this case, I used the M3U8 that halted in VLC.


Image 17 - Like just playing regularly an album, the playlists, when are being played, only show the songs in the playlist - same way it would do for the entire folder.

FE Pro (bought from Apple Store)

Once I found out there was this neat app that would play APE, FLAC and MP3 files, I decided to give it a go. However, the app do have its shortcomings. It's a little different than Apple's app but definitely the looks are better.


Image 18 - The SMB share looks.


Image 19 - The folder navigation - blue icons and smooth navigation. Also, when you are playing a song, you can go back the PLAYING VIEW and without stopping current track, you can choose another thing to play next from your library.


Image 20 - The files view. Album art takes a long time to load and it needs to be loaded RIGHT HERE in this view. It won't load if you start playing the files right after. You have to wait until all art is loaded. It takes 2 to 4 seconds to load in this view, each artwork for each file. Sometimes, some artwork won't load (maybe limitations concerning color profiles inserted in the JPEG file...) - However, this looks are much better than the VLC icons.


Image 21 - The playback of FLAC files. Art goes OK, and the list as well. Notice that there is a tagging read issue, just like VLC. It does work with MP3 tags, but FLAC, is refusing. I also tried WavPack files in there but it can't play WavPack files, something that VLC can.

So, this experiment was done move by love in open-source projects - the urge to make them better. It's not a demand feature list. I could go and just go entirely ALAC and not even care. I spent a lot of time writing this, so... I don't know... perhaps someone will read this and say - "holy crap, this wouldn't be so hard to implement!!!!". I believed we have some bugs along this writing (specially the playlist exiting out of nowhere). I like visuals, so that is why I posted a lot of images.

Well... I plan to write more testing cases with other files. APE, WV, MP3, and so on.

Thanks for your attention.

-- krafty