Media player should be automatically started up when play button is pressed

Bug #714750 reported by Chow Loong Jin
18
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
The Sound Menu
Fix Released
Low
Conor Curran
Unity Foundations
Fix Released
Low
Conor Curran
indicator-sound (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: indicator-sound

Recently, ever since Banshee implemented the part of the Sound Menu specification that states "Banshee should be altered to comply with the standard behavior: it should keep playing if closed while playing, it should exit if closed while not playing, and it should restore location and other state on relaunching", I have been encountering this particular broken use case:-

1. While Banshee is playing a song, pause the playback.
2. Open Banshee's window for some reason or other (e.g. to look for a song in the collection), but don't resume playback
3. Close Banshee's window (Banshee quits at this point)
4. Press the Play/Pause button on the keyboard -- Nothing happens.

At #4, I'm expecting Banshee to continue playback, or if playback was stopped before, I would expect it to start playing something from whichever media source was active. But Banshee is no longer running, and no longer listening to media keys, so nothing happens, and I either get confused, or annoyed. So, I open the sound menu again, and click on Banshee, start playback, and close its window so that I can resume doing whatever it was that I was doing prior to attempting to start playback.

Tags: design

Related branches

Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
assignee: nobody → Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
status: New → Opinion
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Changed in indicator-sound (Ubuntu):
status: New → Opinion
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
tags: added: design
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

In the specification I also said: "However, the API should provide a way for a player to register a Play action, so that the Play button can work even when the player is not running."

I suggest that Banshee use that API, so that if it is not running, pressing the keyboard's Play button (or clicking the Play button in the sound menu) will launch Banshee and continue playback from where it left off.

Changed in indicator-sound:
status: Opinion → Confirmed
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
status: Confirmed → Triaged
importance: Wishlist → Low
assignee: Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) → Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Omer Akram (om26er)
Changed in indicator-sound (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
status: Opinion → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

If a player quits whenever it isn't playing and has no windows open, the challenge becomes how to resume playback quickly when you click the Play button or key. In <https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04792.html> I have suggested four possible solutions:

(1) just launch whenever you choose Play (may be fine for lightweight players like Totem);

(2) before quitting, wait for a minute or two, just in case you click Play in that time;

(3) spawn a separate process just for monitoring the sound menu and media keys and playing the current track, while the main process exits;

(4) postpone slow tasks (like scanning for music) when launching for the purpose of resuming playback.

Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

I don't really think this behaviour is recommended unless the startup and shutdown performance of each and every music player associated with the menu is greatly improved. Remarking new,

Changed in indicator-sound:
status: Triaged → New
Revision history for this message
Chow Loong Jin (hyperair) wrote : Re: [Bug 714750] Re: Media player should be automatically started up when play button is pressed

On Wednesday 09,February,2011 09:20 PM, Conor Curran wrote:
> I don't really think this behaviour is recommended unless the startup
> and shutdown performance of each and every music player associated with
> the menu is greatly improved. Remarking new,

I agree, actually. But I believe the proposed behaviour is a step up from having
the player quit on its own when you close its window. At the very least, it's
closer to the previous user experience of being able to start playback with a
single keypress than the current one.

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

Okay I'll talk to mpt Friday and decide what we will do here.

Changed in indicator-sound:
status: New → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

We have decided to go ahead and implement your recommendation. Will release the fix next Thurs.

Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: none → 0.6.0
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: 0.6.0 → 0.6.1
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: 0.6.1 → 0.6.2
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
status: In Progress → Triaged
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: 0.6.2 → 0.6.3
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: 0.6.3 → none
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
status: Triaged → In Progress
milestone: none → 0.6.4
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in unity-foundations:
milestone: none → unity-3.6.6
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in unity-foundations:
importance: Undecided → Low
assignee: nobody → Conor Curran (cjcurran)
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

Performance from Banshee is pretty good here but Rhythmbox has problems. Its basically unresponsive to play commands even though the mpris interface is up.

Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

Solution: Use a whitelist with just banshee in it and while the player is starting up pulsate the triangle in the middle of the playbutton, similar as to how applications icons fade in and out on the launcher when it starts up.

Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

When I launch the player from the menu (using the play button this time), I cache a play action and wait for the player to launch. All good so far but when the player launches and it erects its mpris interface I have tried to then send that cached play event but it ignores it/ doesn't respond to it. My only solution to this is to use a timeout of a second after the mpris interface is ready and then fire off the action. Seems to be work but of course it is a complete hack ...

Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: 0.6.4 → none
Changed in unity-foundations:
milestone: unity-3.6.6 → none
Revision history for this message
Conor Curran (cjcurran) wrote :

The unfortunate late desktop id change for Banshee means that this feature can only land when Banshee 1.9.6 lands in Natty which is supposed to be Thursday.

Changed in indicator-sound:
milestone: none → 0.6.5
Changed in unity-foundations:
milestone: none → unity-3.6.8
status: Triaged → In Progress
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in unity-foundations:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Changed in indicator-sound:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Conor Curran (cjcurran)
Changed in indicator-sound (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → In Progress
Changed in unity-foundations:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Changed in indicator-sound:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-sound - 0.6.5-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-sound (0.6.5-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - Media player should be automatically started up when play button is
      pressed (LP: #714750)
    - volume goes to zero when using some players like banshee or
      rhythmbox (LP: #730925)
    - handle banshee id change (LP: #737447)
    - filter out video playlists (LP: #739273)
 -- Ken VanDine <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:03:02 -0400

Changed in indicator-sound (Ubuntu):
status: In Progress → Fix Released
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