Customizing Foobar

[fustercluck]

I thought I'd give Foobar a try. I've seen some cool looking screenshots of it of the way people customized it. I've been trying to customize it for like 40 mins now though, but i don't know what i'm doing so i can't get anything done. The Foobar interface is super confusing sadly. I googled around a lot, found pretty much nothing. I probably won't keep Foobar, but want to give it a fair chance.

One cool thing i see in most Foobar screenshots is they show the album cover art of the song currently being played. I can't figure out how to set it up like that, i've installed about 3 different plugins trying to get it working, but no go. I guess you I need an addition program to download all the cover art for me first. I was hoping that foobar would just kinda seek it out quickly and download album cover art on it's own, but that's not how it works. Any good skins for foobar? It seems like they don't want you to customize it - I can change a few of the colors but i'd like to do more than that.

I'm almost guaranteed to just keep using Winamp, heh.

 

[fustercluck]

Anyone here use Foobar?

So many people have customized their Foobar to look awesome, but no one will tell you how to do configure it, and Foobar makes it extremely complicated. Any help would be appreciated, even though i likely won't use it, i'd like to see what it can do.

Some good looking customizations in this thread

 

[lxskllr]

You have my sympathy. I use Foobar and love it, but I still have the basic interface that it came with. I haven't put too much effort into figuring it out, but it seems as though people learn how to do it then keep quiet about it. It must be a secret club or something :laugh: . Give it a chance. Even with the default setup it's a pretty good player. I kind of like the stripped down appearance. It leaves more room for song titles

 

[Sid59]

i love foobar but i gave up trying to customize it. The only real mod / UI i use is the columns_ui with album art. I must say that i still use the older version of foobar cause im too lazy to download and fiddle with it again.

Foobar + Columns UI + Album Art

 

[John]

A guide to making foobar pretty (usable)

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've used it for years but never bothered to customize it, since I run it on a music server and can't see the UI once I switch my KVM back to my desktop.

 

[fustercluck]

I don't know why this is so confusing, people (not the people who've replied here) are just not good at explaining anything related to Foobar for some reason. It seems Foobar isn't user friendly, at least for customizing. I like to customize everything

For one thing everyone just assumes you happen to have all the album art for every MP3 on your computer somewhere. I certainly don't. I've tried a couple of programs that are supposed to automatically download album cover art for all the mp3s on your computer, neither of the programs worked right though. So i might have to do without having album cover art in the window, which is one of the main reasons i wanted to try foobar.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Seriously, learning foobar is ridiculous. It's like the linux of music software. I tried, but now just use it as a tool to fix broken headers or calculate replaygain info.

from the guide linked above, things like this:

$if($strcmp($left(%artist%,4),The ),$right(%artist%,$sub($len(%artist%),4))', 'The,%artist%)|%album%|$num(%tracknumber%,2). %title%

I think are just overly complicated for a software that simply plays music. I just shouldn't have to research and try to find an API to customize the program.

 

[fustercluck]

Well, I'm glad other people see it my way too. It really IS the linux of music software. Thanks for the replies/pm. I'll stick with Winamp. Winamp FTW, Foobar FTL. At least i can say i gave it a good chance.

Main thing i don't like about Winamp though is the shuffle play, it doesn't seem to be very random at all. It only picks certain tracks, hard to explain, but basically it just doesn't work well. Not sure if Foobar is any better in that regard though.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Adaman
Well, I'm glad other people see it my way too. It really IS the linux of music software.

I've told people this for a while now, it's a very apt way to put it. 40 minutes really doesn't do it justice; put in the time and reap the benefits of the multitude of advantages it has over winamp. Essentially you want to get a premade "skin" for it; the skin is basically a sort of code. You could learn the code and spend countless hours making one yourself, but they're available if you look around - why not use one? The album art is a plugin, but it's been a while and I forget exactly which one. You also need to have the album art itself, obviously (a quick trip to amazon.com will do the trick). Be a little more patient with it and you'll be glad you were. Use version 0.8.3 btw. Oh, and you'll need to enable the columns UI in preferences before you do anything.

Edit: After reading the thread on head-fi another poster linked, it seems the newer version might be the ticket for you. I'd read some bad things about it, and was/am happy with my foobar setup so I haven't tried it.

 

[CKent]

I'm really liking the new version, its a lot more user-friendly. So far I've come up with this: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/kent/foobar.png

Looking into further customization, ideally I'd like to get a better visualizer (this one's the default) and move the track info from the status bar at the bottom to a panel I can move around, then get rid of the status bar.

:Q Look at this guy's setup, http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8669/fooniner7ku.jpg

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: CKent
Look at this guy's setup, http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8669/fooniner7ku.jpg

Foobar is what you make of it. And that setup is friggen awesome.

 

[Cerb]

*shrug* I change colors and font for the default interface (so it changes color from artist to album to track number and so on, for faster skimming), do special character replacements (&->and being the most important), and stick 'properties' at the bottom of the context menu. You may see many folks showing off neat looking FB2K configs, but there are a good many of us who really like the default look and feel. IMO, it's got the best UI out of the box of any music player out there, right now.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Cerb
*shrug* I change colors and font for the default interface (so it changes color from artist to album to track number and so on, for faster skimming), do special character replacements (&->and being the most important), and stick 'properties' at the bottom of the context menu. You may see many folks showing off neat looking FB2K configs, but there are a good many of us who really like the default look and feel. IMO, it's got the best UI out of the box of any music player out there, right now.

That's what's so great about it, it looks however you want it to. There are some really fancy setups out there, but being a minimalist I actually prefer mine. I have limited screenspace (12x10 LCD) anyway.

 

[daniel1113]

Eh, it takes some time to get used to, but it's not that difficult to learn. It took me a few days to create my setup, and another year or so of adjusting the little things. However, in the end, it is so much better than any other music player, especially if you have a large music collection.