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NAME

mp3 - an mpg123 front-end for UNIX::Philosophers

SYNOPSIS

General syntax

    mp3 [COMMAND] [PARAMETER]...

Building the playlist

    mp3 add Blue_Six-Conga_Lounge_Mix.mp3
    mp3 add /c/mp3/*.mp3
    mp3 add http://132.216.57.19:15005/3/motw141.mp3
    mp3 del 0 2 4 -1

Playing from the list

    mp3 play 5
    mp3 next
    mp3 prev

Other controls

    mp3 rw 2.00
    mp3 ff 32.32
    mp3 jump 420
    mp3 pause
    mp3 stop
    mp3 rand
    mp3 loop single

Getting information

    mp3 time
    mp3 info
    mp3 ls
    mp3 help

Unloading the daemon

    mp3 quit
    mp3 kill

DESCRIPTION

I have combined my favourite features of dcd, cdcd, and mpg123 to create Yet Another Front-End For Mpg123. Mine is special, though. ;-)

From dcd, I derived the ability to fork itself into the background.

From cdcd, I derived its intuitive interface.

With mpg123, I do the CPU-intensive work of actually playing the mp3s.

The end result is an MP3 player that is compliant with the UNIX::Philosophy. Note that mp3 does not have a Captive User Interface. Requests are made by mp3 to an MP3::Daemon::Simple and mp3 returns immediately after getting a reply. The commands that generate output do so on STDOUT. This makes mp3 easy to combine with other Unix utilities via pipes and filters.

COMMANDS

Most of these commands are self-explanatory. One thing that may confuse some people is that the playlist has a zero-based index. Otherwise, if you're familiar with the cdcd interface, this should feel vaguely familiar.

add

This adds mp3s to the playlist. Multiple files may be specified.

del

This deletes items from the playlist by index. More than one index may be specified. If no index is specified, the current mp3 in the playlist is removed. Indices may also be negative in which case they count from the end of the playlist.

play

This plays the current mp3 if no other parameters are given. This command also takes an optional parameter where the index of an mp3 in the playlist may be given.

next

This loads the next mp3 in the playlist.

prev

This loads the previous mp3 in the playlist.

pause

This pauses the currently playing mp3. If the mp3 was already paused, this will unpause it. Note that using the play command on a paused mp3 makes it start over from the beginning.

rw

This rewinds an mp3 by the specified amount of seconds.

ff

This fastforwards an mp3 by the specified amount of seconds.

jump

This will go directly to a part of an mp3 specified by seconds from the beginning of the track. If the number of seconds is prefixed with either a "-" or a "+", a relative jump will be made. This is another way to rewind or fastforward.

stop

This stops the player.

time

This sends back the index of the current track, the amount of time that has elapsed, the amount of time that is left, and the total amount of time. All times are reported in seconds.

info

This sends back information about the current track.

ls [-fl] [REGEX]

First, a warning -- I'm beginning to realize how GNU/ls became so bloated. The ls interface should not be considered stable. I'm still playing with it.

This sends back a list of the titles of all mp3s currently in the playlist. The current track is denoted by a line matching the regexp /^>/.

-f

This makes ls return a listing with index and filename.

-l

This makes ls return a long listing that includes index, title, and filename.

[REGEX]

This allows one to filter the playlist for only titles matching this regex. Of course, one may use grep, instead.

rand

Calling this with no parameters toggles the random play feature. Randomness can be set to be specifically "on" or "off" by passing the scalar "on" or "off" to this method.

loop

This option controls the playlist's looping behaviour. When called with a parameter, loop can be set to "all", "single", or "off". Calling this with no parameters displays the current looping status.

quit

This unloads the MP3::Daemon::Simple that was automagically spawned when you first invoked mp3.

kill

If for some reason the daemon hangs on you, you can use this as a last resort.

The UNIX::Philosophy In Action

Saving playlists

    mp3 ls -f | perl -pe 's/.*\d+ //' > playlist

Loading a playlist

    xargs mp3 add < playlist

Deleting songs 6..12

    mp3 del `seq 6 12`

Sorting your playlist from shortest to longest mp3

    mp3 ls -l | sed 's/^>/ /' | sed 's/:/./' | sort -g -k 2

Playing part of an mp3 over and over again

    while true ; do mp3 j 1300 ; sleep 386 ; done

Monitoring the progress of the daemon

    watch mp3 time
    watch mp3 info

FILES

$HOME/.mp3/mp3_socket

This is the socket used to communicate with the daemon. In the event that the daemon is not cleanly shut down, this file may need to be deleted before another MP3::Daemon::Simple can be started up.

$HOME/.mp3/mp3.pid

This is the pid of the daemonized process.

COPYLEFT

Copyleft (!c) 2001 John BEPPU. All rights reversed. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

John BEPPU <beppu@ax9.org>

SEE ALSO

My inspirations

dcd(1), cdcd(1), mpg123(1)

Other perl modules

Audio::Play::MPG123(3pm), MP3::Daemon::Simple(3pm), MP3::Daemon(3pm)

The UNIX Philosophy

If you want to know what UNIX is all about, check this book out. It's only 151 pages, and it's really easy and fun to read. Some parts are a little biased and/or dated, but there is still a lot of wisdom in it. I highly recommend it.

    {
        title  => 'The UNIX Philosophy',
        author => 'Mike Gancarz',
        isbn   => '1-55558-123-4',
    }
cvsweb
    http://lbox.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/pm/MP3-Daemon/
the web site
    http://beppu.lbox.org/proj/mp3-daemon.html