Blue Orchid

The first release in a long time.... Mostly minor changes to cleanup a few display elements.

Files changed from 0.1.1611:
BlueOrchid.exe
RemapTags.ini (goes in the main program folder)

• When a 'Folder=' configuration setting is an attached drive, XP.NET reports it as a hidden system folder so it wasn't being scanned. Blue Orchid checks to see if each folder= is a simple drive letter now (i.e. "G:\"), and will scan it if so regardless of the system/hidden settings.
• Greatly improved [Compilation Albums] browsing speed. This should be particularly noticeable with large libraries (15,000+ music files).
• Improved the status messages displayed during startup to indicate when Blue Orchid is counting files, processing [Compilation Albums] data, etc.
• Improved F7 and F8 functions so they more accurately move between slides (in particular, the backup function with F7). They also forcibly start the slideshow without waiting for the main form to timeout.
• Added time stamps to certain log file entries for timing purposes
• The slideshow now checks the aspect ratio of each bitmap against the actual screen dimensions, and if they are different then it reduces the bitmap randomly by up to 25% and randomly places it on the screen. Any remaining background area is filled with an "average" color determined by sampling the image palette to help manage the overall color balance on screen, and to further reduce any chance of "blackbar" areas on widescreen monitors. This should be a big help with Blue Orchid's slideshow feature on widescreen displays. The effect may need further improvement as I consider this version an early attempt.
• Added [Soundtracks] and [Various Artists] to the artist list, sorted on top. They are identical to the 'Soundtracks' and 'Various Artists' items, which are still listed in alphabetical order. Perhaps I should filter the old items out of the list in a future version?
• Added a new INI file to the mix: RemapTags.ini. This file is used to correct the display of certain ID3 tags within Blue Orchid without having to edit the files directly. The main issue I have seen is that freedb has differing versions of particular artist and album names such that they don't always show up correctly. For example, one album gets ripped as 'AC/DC' and another gets ripped as 'AC-DC', so it looks like there's two different artists. To fix it, you normally have to edit all the individual track files, which I find cumbersome, and which is easily undone if Media Player gets hold of your music folders and 'fixes' all of your tags. So, this file lets you specify the appropriate mappings to get all of a group of files properly displayed together. Hopefully it's self-explanatory enough with the existing examples in it. Mappings can be done for genre, artist or album. All MP3 file information matching the right-hand values gets replaced with the left-hand values when displayed and sorted in Blue Orchid, and of course the actual music files are never touched.