DigiCasa EZ Player Help File

DigiCasa EZ Player 1.1  2003 Copyright Lester Jacobs, DigiCasa 
All Rights Reserved 

Overview

The DigiCasa EZ Player is a full featured, digital music playback software application which is optimised for use on a TV, projector or other large screen display device.  It has a full screen interface and can be fully controlled by a typical home remote control using only the directional arrow buttons and the OK/Enter button.  EZ Player provides the ease of use of a regular off-the-shelf CD player combined with the advanced functionality and features of a computer based digital music playback system.


Key Features

1) All functionality is accessible from a remote control using only the directional arrow buttons (up, down, left, right) and Enter/OK button.  However, other remote buttons can be mapped directly to EZ Player functions (play, pause, stop, fast forward, exit program, etc) if desired.
2) Works on all screen resolutions (both 4:3 and 16:9) supported by the Microsoft Windows operating system.
3) Plays all digital music filetypes supported by Windows Media Player 9 (including mp3, wav and wma filetypes).
4) Works independently of the directory structure of music files stored on the hard disk(s).
5) Supports music file collections that span multiple hard disks.
6) User can access music by album, artist and/or genre.
7) EZ DJ functionality allows automatic generation of playlists based on user choices of album, artist, genre and tempo criteria.
8) Built-in screen saver prevents display burn-in.  Configurable to display black screen, DigiCasa logo or various (full-screen) visualizations
9) Full screen GUI hides OS complexity from end users and presents a clean, easy-to-use interface.
10) Supports both network and local drives.


Requirements

1) Microsoft Windows 98SE or higher (has only been tested with Windows XP)
2) Full Windows Media Player 9 Series install available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp
3) Basic (free) or Plus version of MusicMatch music management program (7.5 or later) available at http://www.musicmatch.com
4) Microsoft MDAC 2.71 SP1 and Jet 4.0 SP3 installs available at 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/dataaccess.asp (for users of Windows 2000 and below only)
5) Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime (probably already installed on your system) available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/vb60pro/Redist/sp5/WIN98Me/EN-US/vbrun60sp5.exe


Setup

1) Download and install all of the required software detailed in the Requirements section above.
2) Import all of your existing digital music files into MusicMatch.  MusicMatch will automatically detect and use any tags that are already in existence.  If you haven't ripped your CDs to a digital file format yet then you can use MusicMatch to do this as well.
3) EZ Player works best if you take the time to set up your Genre and Tempo tags properly as well as Album/Artist tags.  However Genre and Tempo tags are not required for proper operation of EZ Player.
4) EZ Player does not read the MusicMatch database directly.  Instead you need to export the MusicMatch library to a text file in order for EZ Player to be able to handle it.  Use Options>Library>Export Music Library to export the MusicMatch library to a file called ezdb.txt.  Save this file in the same directory as the EZ Player application (usually C:\Program Files\DigiCasa EZ Player)
5) You're now set!  Launch the EZ Player application and you should be able to access your entire digital audio collection!


Usage

Each EZ Player screen contains hints near the bottom of the screen indicating the functionality available in the screen and the buttons/keys required to access the functionality.

The initial EZ player screen gives you two options for choosing the list of songs you want to hear, manual and automatic or "EZ DJ" mode.  The manual mode is for those users who want to search through a list of albums and choose songs from one or more of these albums for addition to the playback song list.  Selecting manual mode gives you a choice of four ways to search your music collection, all albums, albums by genre, albums by artist and albums by artist and genre.  These are the most typical ways that users tend to search their music.  Choosing any of these options will allow you to "drill down" into your music collection until you find the song you're looking for.  You can choose as many songs for playback as you like.

Automatic or EZ DJ mode is for those users who do not want to select specific tracks for playback but would rather specify criteria for songs to be included in the playback list and then let the EZ DJ randomly choose songs matching the criteria for addition to the list.  For instance, you can specify something like "Slow Jazz songs" for a quiet evening at home or "Fast Dance, Pop and RnB songs" for a weekend party.  Choosing the automatic option will present you with four criteria options, albums, artists, genres and tempo.  Note that you may not see one or more of these choices in your setup if your songs are missing the appropriate tags. For instance if none of your songs have the genre tag filled then the genre option will not appear.  Selecting any of the criteria will present you with a list of options.  You may select as many of the options as you wish for inclusion.  For instance, under Genre you might select Dance, Hip Hop and RnB.  This would imply that the songs  that EZ DJ chooses would have to be from one of those of those categories.  Once you have specified the criteria options that you desire, choose "Generate Song List" to have EZ DJ select the songs for you.  In the "Generate Songs" dialog use the right/left arrows to select one of 100,10 or 1 then use the up/down arrows to increment/decrement the number of songs required.

Navigation

The four arrow keys combined with the enter key can access all functionality contained in the EZ Player:

Up/Down - moves the highlighted bar to choose an item on the screen

Left - goes back up one view.  Repeatedly pressing the left arrow will take you back up the views until you get to the start view (the view you see when you start the EZ Player)

Right - executes special functionality depending on the current view.  Examine the hints at the bottom of the screen for details

Enter - Executes the appropriate action on the currently selected item.  For instance if you are looking at the tracks for a particular album, pressing enter on a highlighted track will add it to the playlist if it is not currently in the playlist or remove from the playlist if it is already present.

The following keys are available for those who wish direct access to functionality without navigating with the arrow keys:

P - Starts playing from the current playlist position or pauses play if EZ Player is currently playing

S - Stops playback

F - Fast Forwards playback

R - Skips backward 10 seconds 

N - skip forward to the next song

B - skip backward to the previous song

Page Up - Previous screen in current view

Page Down - Next screen in current view

A - Starts the (built in) screensaver 

ESC - ends the EZ Player application (warning dialog is shown before exit)

Sounds

You can assign sounds to EZ Player actions via the standard Windows Control Panel.  In the Control Panel (Start>Control Panel) choose sounds for the DigiCasa Beep, Error and Select events.  EZ Player will automatically use those sounds at its next startup.

Remote Control

You may use your favourite remote control software to map the EZ Player keys to remote control button presses.  However, EZ Player has special built in support for one of the most popular of such software offerings, Girder (http://www.girder.nl).  Included with the DigiCasa EZ Player is a Girder GML file (DigiCasa EZ Player.gml) which you can import into your existing Girder configuration (or start a new one).  The included GML file exposes all of the EZ Player functionality.  You need only map the Girder events to your remote and you're set!

Tip

If you need to restore the mouse pointer (EZ Player hides the mouse pointer by default), use the mouse to move the (invisible) pointer all the way to the left of the screen then click the mouse.  The pointer should be now be visible.  To hide the mouse pointer again repeat the procedure.

FAQ

1) Why is MusicMatch required?
EZ Player is not a music management program but simply a music playback application.  Thus it needs an external application to manage and categorize the digital music files for it.  MusicMatch was selected because it is available free in its basic version and offers a simple way to export its music library details in a format compatible with EZ Player.  It also offers music library management capabilities which are quite extensive.

2) How can I play all tracks on an album in sequence?
Using the manual mode, navigate to the view displaying the desired album.  Select the album name then hit Enter.  All the tracks from that album are added in sequence to the playlist

3) So how do I play the tracks on an album in random order?
Using EZ DJ mode, choose Albums from the Select Criteria screen.  Choose and select the desired album then choose "Generate Songs" OR add the album tracks as outlined in (2) and then choose "Shuffle" from the Playback Control view.

4) How do I change the visualisations displayed by EZ Player?
The visualisation type cannot be changed directly from within EZ Player.  Instead EZ Player uses the current visualisation setting of Microsoft's Windows Media Player.  Change the visualisation setting in Windows Media Player and EZ Player will automatically use the new setting (after a program restart).

5) Hey, I don't have the ability to select Tempo when using EZ DJ.  It doesn't even appear on my screen! What gives?
Most mp3 and other digital music files contain tag information identifying the respective album, artist and genre.  The Tempo tag is a Musicmatch specific tag which allows you to further categorize your music collection.  Chances are you haven't specified the Tempo tag for any of your digital music files in Musicmatch.  Once you do so, and re-export your music library to EZ Player, the ability to select songs based on tempo will be activated.

6) Why isn't this program free?  What's this shareware nonsense?  I don't like paying for software!!
In a perfect world, we'd all like software to be free for everyone.  Unfortunately, great software requires lots of resources for its creation, not the least of which is time.  In order to justify the amount of time being spent on development of this software we are charging a small fee to those who decide to use it.

7) Ok, I see your reasoning, how do I order the software?
Please see the Licence and Ordering section on the DigiCasa EZ Player main screen.