Re: [mpg123-users] How to use a play list in remote mode?

[Seamus de M. <sea...@gm...>]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 3:56 PM Thomas Orgis <tho...@or...> wrote:

> Am Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:05:14 -0500
> schrieb Seamus de Mora <sea...@gm...>:
>
> > Yes - I can see that would complicate things. However, in my case I do
> not
> > need "both sides" controlling the playing;
> > i.e. *"if <remote mode>; then <disable local mode>; fi"*
> > This is how I *imagined* it would work. I am not a fan of complexity!
>
> Well, the implementation is different. The remote control mode is
> kindof a separate main program, its own control loop, where the normal
> mpg123 control flow, optionally with terminal control keys, is a
> different one.
>
> > So - First: what is '$n' in your loadlist command? - does it refer to a
> > single line/track from 'playlist.m3u' ?  (sorry, but the remote help is
> > unclear to me in this respect)
>
> $n is any number between 1 and the number of tracks in the list,
> causing mpg123 to start playing that track from the list. The value 0
> would start the last track, -1 causes the listing only.
>
> > Another question is wrt the meaning of '<url>'. Is this for playing a
> > "streaming radio station"??
>
> This means any file path or HTTP(S) URL for remote playlists. Playlist
> support is strongly linked to web radio streams, as they usually come
> in form of a playlist URL.
>
> > I don't follow this command...  I tried it on my system; I got no errors,
> > and no response. ?
> > […]
> > pi@rpi3a:~/soundfiles $ playlist=$(echo loadlist -1
> > /home/pi/soundfiles/plist.m3u | mpg123 -R - | grep '^@I LISTENTRY' | cut
> -f
> > 4- -d ' ')
>
> It just stores the playlist in the variable named 'playlist'.
>
> $ echo "$playlist"
>
> should print something. But working with this relies on your track file
> names not having spaces in them, so is fragile.
>
> > Here's the result in terminal 1:
> >
> > @I {
> > @I LISTENTRY 1: /home/pi/soundfiles/Sinatra-Morning.mp3
> > @I LISTENTRY 2: /home/pi/soundfiles/Sinatra-String.mp3
> > @I LISTENTRY 3: /home/pi/soundfiles/Sinatra-TakeAway.mp3
> > @I LISTENTRY 4: /home/pi/soundfiles/Sinatra-Watch.mp3
> > @I }
>
> This is your playlist, parsed by mpg123 code. Of course not that useful
> for simple m3u files without comments, etc.
>
> > And then again from terminal 2, the ONLY thing that seemed to yield a
> > result was this:
> >
> > 'echo "load /home/pi/soundfiles/Sinatra-Morning.mp3" > /tmp/mpg123_fifo'
>
> Though
>
>         loadlist 1 plist.m3u
>
> should do the same. If not, I got a serious bug at my hands.
>
> > IOW - I can find no way to initiate playing a list via the (-R) remote
> > mode; this is what I need to be able to do. ???
>
> Currently, you can issue the playing of a single track from the list
> only. Your frontend script would need to wait until mpg123 signals end
> of playback and then issue loading of the next track.
>
> > And just one other Q re remote mode (-R)...  when I did manage to play a
> > song, <MANY> of these strings appeared in terminal 1:
> >
> > ...
> > @F 6484 448 169.38 11.70
> > @F 6485 447 169.40 11.68
> > @F 6486 446 169.43 11.65
> > ...
> >
> > How do I stop this?
>
> silence
>
> (see `help silence').
>
> > No - I'm not interested in "fine-grained control of playback"; as I said
> > I'd like to have a command (remote or otherwise) that simply "loop
> plays" a
> > playlist from beginning to end, and recognizes a "pause" command to
> toggle
> > the playback process.
>
> Ah … you want the playlist in a loop? Or shuffled? There's a number of
> options there. Right now the only way to have mpg123 play a list of
> files by itself is running it normal/terminal control mode (which you
> could also automate, btw.). If we add playlist playing to the remote
> control mode, looping and shuffling should also be included, probably
> via extra commands. This is not too bad, as the concerned code has been
> factored out of the main program in the meantime, just the clear demand
> should be there. I'm not totally opposed to doing that, it's not really
> hard and a detour from that Windows portability mess.
>
> > WRT "--continue mode", I see nothing about continue mode in the remote
> > help... are you suggesting that from 'terminal 1' I enter this?:
>
> This is something independent of remote control mode. See --continue in
> the man page. It results in something like
>
> [CONTINUE] track 3 frame 3083
>
> being printed when mpg123 is interrupted (`pkill -INT mpg123` works,
> too). You can use this data to re-start mpg123 on the correct track and
> offset again.


Is is accurate to summarize what you've said as follows?:

   - As of today, loop-playing a playlist using the remote mode is not
   possible; only the terminal mode can accommodate this.
   - Loop-playing via remote mode might be added at some point in the
   future.

If this is an accurate synopsis, can you give me a clue or two on what a
'terminal-mode' command to loop-play a list would look like? And can you
tell me if the aforementioned "loop-play-via-terminal-mode" could be paused
via the 'remote-mode` command for 'PAUSE/P'??
i.e. 'echo "pause" > /tmp/mpg123_fifo'

And of course, any comments you care to add re how to "automate" this
'terminal-mode' approach would be much appreciated!

Thanks again for your time :)