© 2004, 2005, 2006 Yoni Rabkin, Jorgen Schaefer, Mario Domgoergen

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Emms Manual
***********

This is the Manual for the Emacs Multimedia System

Introduction
************

Emms is the Emacs Multi-Media System. It tries to be a clean and small application to play multimedia files from Emacs using external players. Many of its ideas are derived from MpthreePlayer (http://www.nongnu.org/mp3player), but it tries to be more general and more clean.

The basic functionality of Emms consists of three parts: The core, the sources, and the players.

The core resides in emms.el, and provides a simple playlist and the basic functionality to use all the other features of Emms. It provides the common user commands and interfaces for other parts. It thinks in tracks, where a track is the combination of a type and a name - e.g. the track type 'file has a name that is the file name. Other track types are possible.

To get to tracks, the core needs sources. The file emms-source-file.el provides simple sources to interact with the file system.

When Emms finally has the sources in the playlist, it needs a player to play them. emms-player-simple.el defines a few useful players, and allows you to define your own in a very simple way.

The way Emms works is easy to customize with your own code or by using `M-x customize'.

Installation
************

You need to put all the .el files of emms in a directory in your load-path. For example, if you put all those files into ~/elisp/emms/, then in your ~/.emacs, you should do:

     (add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp/emms/")

Compiling Emms
==============

If you are using XEmacs, you will need to edit Makefile as follows before continuing.

     EMACS=xemacs
     SITEFLAG=-no-site-file

You can byte-compile Emms by first entering the directory containing the Emms source code, followed by invoking:

make

Which will byte compile Emms. You can then invoke:

make install

Which will install Emms into your Emacs directories (provided you have the appropriate permissions to do so on your system).

Note that Emms is a light-weight and agile program, you can therefore run Emms just fine without byte compiling it.

Simple Setup
************

After adding the location of the Emms code to the LOAD-PATH variable, see Installation. We invoke the following using the `emms-setup' feature which allows for quick and simple Emms setup.

     (require 'emms-setup)
     (emms-standard)
     (emms-default-players)

After which Emms is set-up and ready to go!

The above will setup Emms with standard features (interactive playlists, audio track tag reading etc.) and a default list of players (ogg, mp3, mplayer etc.).

The `emms-setup' feature is provided by the file emms-setup.el. It is essentially a collection of shortcuts for setting up Emms quickly and simply. Everything you can do with `emms-setup' can also be done manually.

We use `emms-setup' by calling one of the setup functions. Each of the functions sets up Emms to include a number of features.

 -- Function: emms-minimalistic
     An Emms setup script. Invisible playlists and all the basics for playing media.

 -- Function: emms-standard
     An Emms setup script. Everything included in the emms-minimalistic setup, the Emms interactive playlist mode and reading information from tagged audio files.

 -- Function: emms-all
     An Emms setup script. Everything included in the emms-standard setup and adds all the stable features which come with the Emms distribution.

 -- Function: emms-devel
     An Emms setup script. Everything included in the emms-all setup and adds all of the features which come with the Emms distribution regardless of if they are considered stable or not.  Use this if you like living on the edge.

`emms-setup' also comes with a convenience function to set a default list of media players.

 -- Function: emms-default-players
     Set EMMS-PLAYER-LIST to EMMS-SETUP-DEFAULT-PLAYER-LIST.

It is also worth noting that you can write your own Emms setup functions like the above by looking at the existing function definitions in emms-setup.el.

Configuration
*************

This chapter discusses the configuration of Emms in more detail.

The following code fragment provides a minimal Emms setup without using the layer of `emms-setup'. It can maybe be used to better understand the internals of Emms. You can see how Emms needs to know about players (these are defined in `emms-player-simple') and about sources for tracks (trivial file system based sources, such as this `emms-directory-tree', are defined in `emms-source-file').

     (require 'emms-player-simple)
     (require 'emms-source-file)
     (require 'emms-source-playlist)
     (setq emms-player-list '(emms-player-mpg321
                              emms-player-ogg123
                              emms-player-mplayer))

For a discussion on how to define additional players, see Simple Players.

Much of the behaviour of Emms can be changed by setting variables. For example:

     (setq emms-info-asynchronously nil)
     (setq emms-playlist-buffer-name "*Music*")

The first setq turns off the asynchronous updating of info tags. The second sets the default name of the Emms playlist buffer.

Another way to change Emms variables is to use the M-x customize mechanism provided by Emacs.

Finding files and speed
=======================

Emms needs to traverse directories in order to find playable media. The default method Emms uses to achive this is emms-source-file-directory-tree-internal as defined in emms-source-file.el.  The above method is written portably and will always work, but might be too slow if we want to load several hundred tracks (or more).

emms-source-file.el defines another method for finding files, emms-source-file-directory-tree-find which uses GNU/find. emms-source-file-directory-tree-find is usually an order of magnitude faster, but of course will not work if you do not have GNU/find installed.

The method Emms will use is defined in the customisable variable EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DIRECTORY-TREE-FUNCTION.

Basic Commands
**************

Before you can use the interface commands, you need a playlist to start with. The following commands allow you to add to the current playlist from different sources:

Note that the commands with the ``emms-add-'' prefix add the source to the playlist but do not start playing it immediately. Conversely, the commands with the ``emms-play-'' prefix begin playing the track immediately.

 -- Function: emms-play-file file
     A source for a single file - either FILE, or queried from the user. If called with a prefix the file will be added like emms-add-file.

 -- Function: emms-add-file file
     A source for a single file - either FILE, or queried from the user. If called with a prefix the file will be played like emms-play-file.

 -- Function: emms-play-directory dir
     A source for a whole directory tree - either DIR, or queried from the user.

 -- Function: emms-add-directory dir
     A source for a whole directory tree - either DIR, or queried from the user.

 -- Function: emms-play-directory-tree dir
     A source for multiple directory trees - either DIR, or the value of EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY.

 -- Function: emms-add-directory-tree dir
     A source for multiple directory trees - either DIR, or the value of EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY.

 -- Function: emms-play-url url
     A source for an URL - for example, for streaming.

 -- Function: emms-add-url url
     A source for an URL - for example, for streaming.

 -- Function: emms-play-playlist playlist
     A source for the M3u or PLS playlist format from the file PLAYLIST.

 -- Function: emms-add-playlist playlist
     A source for the M3u or PLS playlist format from the file PLAYLIST.

 -- Function: emms-play-find dir regexp
     A source that will find files in DIR or EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY which match REGEXP.

 -- Function: emms-add-find dir regexp
     A source that will find files in DIR or EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY which match REGEXP.

The basic functionality of Emms is just to play music without being noticed. It provides a few commands to skip the current track and such, but other than that it doesn't show up. Emms provides the following basic user commands (which you might want to bind to keystrokes):

 -- Function: emms-start
     Start playing the current playlist

 -- Function: emms-stop
     Stop playing

 -- Function: emms-next
     Start playing the next track in the playlist

 -- Function: emms-previous
     Start playing previous track in the playlist

 -- Function: emms-shuffle
     Shuffle the current playlist. This uses EMMS-PLAYLIST-SHUFFLE-FUNCTION.

 -- Function: emms-sort
     Sort the current playlist. This uses EMMS-PLAYLIST-SORT-FUNCTION.

 -- Function: emms-show &optional insertp
     Describe the current Emms track in the minibuffer. If INSERTP is non-nil, insert the description into the current buffer instead. This function uses EMMS-SHOW-FORMAT to format the current track.

The Core File
*************

The core file emms.el provides the all basic functions for playing music, generating playlists and defining players.

User Variables
==============

The core file defines a number of user variables.

 -- User Option: emms-player-list
     A list of players Emms can use. You need to set this in order to use Emms to play media.

 -- User Option: emms-show-format
     The format to use for emms-show. Any "%s" is replaced by what EMMS-TRACK-DESCRIPTION-FUNCTION returns for the currently playing track.

 -- User Option: emms-repeat-playlist
     Non-nil if the Emms playlist should automatically repeat the playlist. If nil, playback will stop when the last track finishes playing.

 -- User Option: emms-track-description-function
     Function for describing an Emms track in a user-friendly way.

 -- User Option: emms-sort-lessp-function
     A function that compares two tracks, and returns non-nil if the first track should be sorted before the second (see also sort).

Hooks
=====

The core file provides hook variables for the basic functionality of Emms.

 -- User Option: emms-player-started-hook
     A hook run when an Emms player started playing.

 -- User Option: emms-player-stopped-hook
     A hook run when an Emms player stopped playing. See also EMMS-PLAYER-FINISHED-HOOK.

 -- User Option: emms-playlist-source-inserted-hook
     Hook run when a source got inserted into the playlist. The buffer is narrowed to the new tracks.

 -- User Option: emms-playlist-selection-changed-hook
     Hook run after another track is selected in the Emms playlist.

 -- User Option: emms-playlist-cleared-hook
     Hook run after the current Emms playlist is cleared. This happens both when the playlist is cleared and when a new buffer is created for it.

 -- User Option: emms-player-finished-hook
     Hook run when an Emms player finishes playing a track. Please pay attention to the differences between EMMS-PLAYER-FINISHED-HOOK and EMMS-PLAYER-STOPPED-HOOK. The former is called only when the player is stopped interactively; the latter, only when the player actually finishes playing a track.

 -- User Option: emms-player-paused-hook
     Hook run when a player is paused or resumed. Use EMMS-PLAYER-PAUSED-P to find the current state.

Core Functions
==============

The core file also defines all the functions important to the basic use of Emms.

There are functions which deal with movement in the playlist.

 -- Function: emms-next-noerror
     Start playing the next track in the Emms playlist. Unlike emms-next, this function doesn't signal an error when called at the end of the playlist. This function should only be called when no player is playing. This is a good function to put in emms-player-finished-hook.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-next
     Move to the previous track in the current buffer.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-previous
     Move to the previous track in the current buffer.

 -- Function: emms-random
     Jump to a random track.

 -- Function: emms-toggle-repeat-playlist
     Toggle whether emms repeats the playlist after it is done. See EMMS-REPEAT-PLAYLIST.

 -- Function: emms-toggle-repeat-track
     Toggle whether emms repeats the current track. See EMMS-REPEAT-TRACK.

Some functions deal with the getting and setting track information.

 -- Function: emms-track type name
     Create a track with type TYPE and name NAME.

 -- Function: emms-track-type track
     Return the type of TRACK.

 -- Function: emms-track-name track
     Return the name of TRACK.

 -- Function: emms-track-get name track &optional inexistent
     Return the value of NAME for TRACK. If there is no value, return DEFAULT (or nil, if not given).

 -- Function: emms-track-set track name value
     Set the value of NAME for TRACK to VALUE.

 -- Function: emms-track-description track
     Return a description of TRACK. This function uses EMMS-TRACK-DESCRIPTION-FUNCTION.

 -- Function: emms-player-for track
     Return an Emms player capable of playing TRACK. This will be the first player whose PLAYABLEP function returns non-nil, or nil if no such player exists.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-current-selected-track
     Return the currently selected track in the current playlist.

There are also functions which deal with the playing itself.

 -- Function: emms-player-start track
     Start playing TRACK.

 -- Function: emms-player-stop
     Stop the currently playing player.

 -- Function: emms-player-stopped
     Declare that the current Emms player is finished. This should only be done by the current player itself.

 -- Function: emms-seek seconds
     Seek the current player SECONDS seconds. This can be a floating point number for sub-second fractions. It can also be negative to seek backwards.

 -- Function: emms-seek-forward
     Seek ten seconds forward.

 -- Function: emms-seek-backward
     Seek ten seconds backward.

For more basic commands defined in the core file see Basic Commands.

Sources
*******

Sources allow Emms to add and play tracks. Emms comes with a number of sources of its own. Sources are designed so that creating new ones will be easy.

For examples of Emms sources for files and directories see emms-source-file.el.

 -- User Option: emms-source-file-default-directory
     The default directory to look for media files.

 -- Function: emms-play-find
     Play all files in EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY that match a specific regular expression.

 -- Function: emms-source-file &optional file
     An Emms source for a single file - either FILE, or queried from the user.

 -- Function: emms-source-files files
     An Emms source for a list of FILES.

 -- Function: emms-source-directory &optional dir
     An Emms source for a whole directory tree - either DIR, or queried from the user

 -- Function: emms-source-directory-tree & optional dir
     An Emms source for multiple directory trees - either DIR, or the value of EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY.

 -- Function: emms-source-playlist file
     An EMMS source for playlists.  See `emms-source-playlist-formats' for a list of supported formats.

 -- Function: emms-source-playlist-native file
     An EMMS source for a native EMMS playlist file.

 -- Function: emms-source-playlist-m3u file
     An EMMS source for an m3u playlist file.

 -- Function: emms-source-playlist-pls file
     An EMMS source for a pls playlist file.

 -- Function: emms-source-find &optional dir regex
     An Emms source that will find files in DIR or EMMS-SOURCE-FILE-DEFAULT-DIRECTORY that match REGEXP.

 -- Function: emms-source-file-directory-tree &optional dir
     Return a list of all files under DIR which match REGEX.

 -- Function: emms-source-dired
     Play all marked files of a dired buffer

 -- Function: emms-source-file-regex
     Return a regexp that matches everything any player (that supports files) can play.

 -- Function: emms-locate regexp
     Search for REGEXP and display the results in a locate buffer

Simple Players
**************

 -- Macro: define-emms-simple-player name types regex command &rest args
     Define a simple player with the use of `emms-define-player'. NAME is used to construct the name of the function like emms-player-NAME. TYPES is a list of track types understood by this player. REGEX must be a regexp that matches the filenames the player can play. COMMAND specifies the command line argument to call the player and ARGS are the command line arguments.

For a discussion on how to define new players see New Player.

 -- Function: emms-player-simple-stop
     Stop the currently playing process, if indeed there is one.

 -- Function: emms-player-simple-start filename cmdname params
     Starts a process playing FILENAME using the specified CMDNAME with the specified PARAMS.

 -- Function: emms-player-simple-sentinel proc str
     Sentinel for determining the end of process for the process PROC and the sentinel string STR.

Playlists
*********

Emms uses Emacs buffers to store the media tracks for playing. We call one such buffer a ``playlist buffer'' or an ``Emms playlist buffer''. Emms then proceeds to play the media tracks in the buffer from top to bottom until the end of the playlist.

The name of the playlist buffer is defined in the variable EMMS-PLAYLIST-BUFFER-NAME and is set to be an invisible Emacs buffer by default. You can change to any name you want. For an example configuration see Configuration.

You can create any number of playlist buffers you wish. At any time Emms has a single ``current'' buffer through which it proceeds track by track.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-new &optional name
     Create a new playlist buffer. The buffer is named NAME, but made unique. NAME defaults to `emms-playlist-buffer-name'. If called interactively, the new buffer is also selected.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-save &optional format file
     Store the current playlist to FILE as the type FORMAT.  The default format is specified by `emms-source-playlist-default-format'.

The current Emms playlist buffer is stored in the variable EMMS-PLAYLIST-BUFFER.

Track Information
*****************

Emms is distributed with two predefined methods for retrieving info, provided by emms-info-mp3info.el and emms-info-ogginfo.el. Both packages are front-ends for command-line tools. Ogg track information is retrieved using the ogginfo (http://directory.fsf.org/audio/ogg/vorbistools.html) software. Likewise, mp3 track information is available using mp3info (http://www.ibiblio.org/mp3info/).

Automatic track information retrieval is enabled by default in the `emms-standard', `emms-all' and `emms-devel' setup levels provided by emms-setup.el. For more information about emms-setup.el see Simple Setup.

If you would like to know how Emms track retreival works and how we can define new methods for track retrieval see Defining Info Methods.

There are a number of user variables which control the behaviour of `emms-info'.

 -- User Option: emms-info-auto-update
     Non-nil when Emms should update track information if the file changes. This will cause hard drive activity on track loading. If this is too annoying for you, set this variable to nil.

 -- User Option: emms-info-asynchronously
     Non-nil when track information should be loaded asynchronously. This requires the feature `later-do' which is provided by the file later-do.el, which should come with Emms.

 -- User Option: emms-info-functions
     Functions which add information to tracks.  Each is called with a track as argument.

Defining Info Methods
=====================

An info method essentially consists of a function which given an Emms track returns the appropriate info for that track.

We can for example look at the predefined method for retrieving information about audio tracks in the Ogg format.

The function emms-info-ogginfo provided by emms-info-ogginfo.el accepts an Emms track as a single argument and returns the appropriate information string.

We then register our info function with Emms by adding it to the EMMS-INFO-FUNCTIONS list. The function will then be called at the right time to provide track info.

     (add-to-list 'emms-info-functions 'emms-info-ogginfo)

Interactive Playlists
*********************

Emms provides a visual, interactive playlist mode as well as the ability to use playlists without ever looking at then. This visual, interactive mode is called the `emms-playlist-mode' and is defined in emms-playlist-mode.el.

The interactive playlist mode is enabled by default in the `emms-standard', `emms-all' and `emms-devel' setup levels. For more information about Emms setup levels see Simple Setup.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-mode-go
     Switch to the current emms-playlist buffer and use emms-playlist-mode.

The interactive playlist buffer shows the tracks in the current Emms playlist in the order in which they will be played. The current track will be highlighted.

When in the interactive playlist mode we can perform different actions on the current playlist.

n
     Start playing the next track in the playlist.

p
     Start playing the previous track in the playlist.

s
     Stop playing.

f
     Describe the currently playing track in the minibuffer.

c
     Display the current track in the center of the screen.

RET
     Start playing the track under point. Note that this is also available with <mouse-2>.

M-<
     Go to the first track in the playlist. M-> completes this command by going to the last track in the playlist using emms-playlist-mode-last.

r
     Go to a randomly selected track in the playlist.

q
     Put the interactive playlist buffer at the end of the list of all buffers.

C-x C-s
     Save the current playlist buffer to a file.

?
     Describe the mode.

We can also edit the playlist using familiar GNU/Emacs commands:

C-k
     Remove the track under point from the playlist buffer. Also available using the d key.

C-y
     See the command yank

C-w
     See the command kill-region

M-y
     See the command yank-pop.

C-j
     Insert a newline at point.

We can use the regular GNU/Emacs killing and yanking commands to move and copy tracks in between playlist buffers. We can use the same commands to insert arbitrary text into the playlist buffers together with the playlist tracks. Text which is not a track is ignored by the program and can therefore be used to include titles and annotations within the playlist.

Extending Emms
**************

Emms introduces a high abstraction layer for playing music so you can customise it to your needs.

New Player
==========

The file emms-player-simple.el defines some easy players to start with, but it shouldn't be hard to provide a function for your favourite player. We will start with an easy example that shows how we can use the play command under Unix to play our WAV files.

Simple Player for `play'
========================

Play is a very easy command line player for various format. If you want your emms to play WAV files just put the following lines in you .emacs:

     (require 'emms-player-simple)
     (define-emms-simple-player play '(file) "\\.wav$" "play")

Huh! Wasn't that easy?

The macro function define-emms-simple-player takes a minimum of three arguments. The first argument (play in our example) defines the name of the player. It's used to name the player functions. The second is a regexp, that defines which files to play with our player. \\.wav$ matches any filename ending with a dot and the string wav. The last argument is the actual command line command we use to play our files. You can also add the path but we just assume that the command is in your path. All arguments you add to these three are optional. They define the command line arguments you want to add to your argument. If you want to hear the wav file of your favourite artist in the most possible volume use the following line:

     (require 'emms-player-simple)

     (define-emms-simple-player play
                                '(file)
                                "\\artist-*.wav$"
                                "play"
                                "--volume=100")

Please notice that you have to add the arguments as strings!

The command line tool you use for define-emms-simple-player has to take one song as argument and stop after playing that particular song. For any other concept you will need to customise emms a bit more...

More Complex Player
===================

The most players you use will be simple players so you don't need to read this chapter. But if you are curious how you can use (almost) every player in emms read further...

In this chapter we will use mpg321 to construct a player that actually can pause a track, restart it and show rest time. We won't implement all of that, but after that chapter you will know how to define it.

The command define-emms-simple-player is just a abstraction layer for define-emms-player, which is a little bit more complicated but much more powerful!

     (define-emms-player "emms-mpg321-remote"
       :start 'emms-mpg321-remote-start
       :stop 'emms-mpg321-remote-stop
       :playablep 'emms-mpg321-remote-playable-p)

So, that is almost all! define-emms-player takes a minimum of three arguments. The first is the name of the player. The rest are methods with functions to call. Three methods are required: start, stop and playable. Start says Emms how to start a track (sic!), stop how to stop a player and playablep should return non-nil if the player can play the track.

So we just need these three functions to get our mpg321-remote:

First we code the start function. We will check if there's a open process and start one otherwise. Then we send a string to the process with the filename and set a filter.

     (defun emms-mpg321-remote-start ()
       (unless (get-process ``mpg321-remote'')
         (setq emms-mpg321-remote-process
     	  (start-process "mpg321-remote-process"
     			 "*mpg321*" "mpg321" "-R" "abc"))
       (process-send-string "mpg321-remote-process"
     		       (concat "l " (emms-track-name track)))
       (set-process-filter emms-mpg321-remote-process 'emms-mpg321-remote-filter)))

We need the filter, as mpg321-remote won't quit after playing the track as the simple player do. We wait until the process sends the output ``(at-sign)P 0'' (the signal of mpg321 that the song ended) to the filter and call emms-mpg321-remote-stop.

     (defun emms-mpg321-remote-filter (process output)
       (when (string-match "(at-sign)P 0" output)
         (emms-mpg321-remote-stop)))

emms-mpg321-remote-stop won't do anything interesting. It just test if there are other files to play and close the process otherwise.

     (defun emms-mpg321-remote-stop ()
       (unless emms-playlist
         (process-send-string "mpg321-remote-process" "Q\n"))

And to make that a playable example i also added emms-mpg321-remote-playablep, which i just really steal from emms-player-simple.el

     (defun emms-mpg321-remote-playablep (track)
            "Return non-nil when we can play this track."
            (and (eq 'file (emms-track-type track))

Now we have a ready player and we could add commands like emms-mpg321-remote-pause for example.

The Browser
***********

The Browser allows you to browse the metadata cache and add tracks to your playlist. It includes a powerful interactive mode.

The Browser is defined in emms-browser.el and is included in the emms-all setup level. For more information about Emms setup levels see Simple Setup.

You can also manually add the Browser to your Emms setup by loading it explicitly with:

     (require 'emms-browser)

To be properly useful, you should do M-x emms-add-directory-tree to all the files you own at least once so that the cache is fully populated.

Browser Interface
=================

The browser interface allows you to display and interact with your tracks in many different ways. There are a number of ways to start the browser.

 -- Function: emms-smart-browse
     Display browser and playlist. Toggle between selecting browser, playlist or hiding both. Tries to behave sanely if the user has manually changed the window configuration.

 -- Function: emms-browse-by-artist
     Display the browser and order the tracks by artist.

 -- Function: emms-browse-by-album
     Display the browser and order the tracks by album.

 -- Function: emms-browse-by-genre
     Display the browser and order the tracks by genre.

 -- Function: emms-browse-by-year
     Display the browser and order the tracks by year.

Once the Browser is displayed you can use it to managed your track collection and playlists. The Browser is interactive and has its own keybindings.

C-j
     Add all tracks at point, and play the first added track.

RET
     Add all tracks at point.

SPC
     Show or hide (kill) subitems under the current line.

1
     Collapse everything.

2
     Expand all top level items one level.

3
     Expand all top level items two levels.

4
     Expand all top level items three levels.

C
     Clear the playlist.

E
     Expand everything.

d
     View the current directory in dired.

q
     Bury the browser buffer.

r
     Jump to a random track.

/
     Isearch through the buffer.

<
     Redisplay with the previous filter.

>
     Redisplay with the next filter.

?
     See the Emacs documentation for the function.

C-/
     Undo the previous playlist action.

<C-return>
     Add all tracks at point, and play the first added track.

<backtab>
     Jump to the previous non-track element.

<tab>
     Jump to the next non-track element.

s A
     Search the collection by album.

s a
     Search the collection by artist.

s s
     Search the collection by names.

s t
     Search the collection by title.

b 1
     Browse the collection by artist.

b 2
     Browse the collection by album.

b 3
     Browse the collection by genre.

b 4
     Browse the collection by year.

W a p
     Lookup the album using Pitchfork.

W a w
     Lookup the album using Wikipedia.

Filtering Tracks
================

If you want to display a subset of your collection (such as a directory of 80s music, only avi files, etc.) then you can extend the Browser by defining ``filters''.

Show everything:

     (emms-browser-make-filter "all" 'ignore)

Set "all" as the default filter:

     (emms-browser-set-filter (assoc "all" emms-browser-filters))

Show all files (no streamlists, etc):

     (emms-browser-make-filter
      "all-files" (emms-browser-filter-only-type 'file))

Show only tracks in one folder:

     (emms-browser-make-filter
      "80s" (emms-browser-filter-only-dir "~/Mp3s/80s"))

Show all tracks played in the last month:

     (emms-browser-make-filter
      "last-month" (emms-browser-filter-only-recent 30))

After executing the above commands, you can use M-x emms-browser-show-all, emms-browser-show-80s, etc to toggle between different collections. Alternatively you can use '<' and '>' to cycle through the available filters.

The second argument to make-filter is a function which returns t if a single track should be filtered. You can write your own filter functions to check the type of a file, etc.

Show only tracks not played in the last year:

     (emms-browser-make-filter "not-played"
      (lambda (track)
       (not (funcall (emms-browser-filter-only-recent 365) track))))

Show all files that are not in the pending directory:

     (emms-browser-make-filter
      "all"
      (lambda (track)
        (or
         (funcall (emms-browser-filter-only-type 'file) track)
         (not (funcall
               (emms-browser-filter-only-dir "~/Media/pending") track)))))

Displaying Covers
=================

The browser will attempt to display cover images if they're available. By default it looks for images cover_small.jpg, cover_med.jpg, etc. Customize EMMS-BROWSER-COVERS to use your own covers. Note that you'll probably want to resize your existing covers to particular sizes. Suggested sizes are 100x100 for small, and 200x200 for medium.

Also, Emacs by default will jump around a lot when scrolling a buffer with images. In order to prevent that, you can set SCROLL-UP-AGGRESSIVELY and SCROLL-DOWN-AGGRESSIVELY to the number ``0.0''.

To show a 'no cover' image for albums which don't have a cover, add the following code to your .emacs:

     (setq emms-browser-default-covers
       (list "/path/to/cover_small.jpg" nil nil)

The medium and large images can be set as well.

You can download an example `no cover' image (http://repose.cx/cover_small.jpg).

Changing Looks
==============

The Browser's look can be customised. You can change the way the tree structure looks, the display format and display faces.

Changing Tree Structure
-----------------------

You can change the way the tree is displayed by modifying the function emms-browser-next-mapping-type.

The following code displays artist->track instead of artist->album->track when you switch to the 'singles' filter:

     (defadvice emms-browser-next-mapping-type
                                     (after no-album (current-mapping))
       (when (eq ad-return-value 'info-album)
         (setq ad-return-value 'info-title)))

     (defun toggle-album-display ()
       (if (string= emms-browser-current-filter-name "singles")
           (ad-activate 'emms-browser-next-mapping-type)
         (ad-deactivate 'emms-browser-next-mapping-type)))

     (add-hook 'emms-browser-filter-changed-hook 'toggle-album-display)

Changing Display Format
-----------------------

Format strings govern the way items are displayed in the browser and playlist. You can customize these if you wish.

EMMS-BROWSER-DEFAULT-FORMAT controls the format to use when no other format has been explicitly defined. By default, only track and albums deviate from the default.

To customise the format of a particular type, find the name of the field you want to use (eg `info-artist', `info-title', etc), and insert that into emms-browser-<type>-format or emms-browser-playlist-<type>-format. For example, if you wanted to remove track numbers from tracks in both the browser and playlist, you could do:

     (defvar emms-browser-info-title-format "%i%n")
     (defvar emms-browser-playlist-info-title-format
       emms-browser-info-title-format)

The format specifiers available include:

  %i    indent relative to the current level

  %n    the value of the item - eg -info-artist might be ``pink floyd''

  %y    the album year

  %A    the album name

  %a    the artist name of the track

  %t    the title of the track

  %T    the track number

  %cS   a small album cover

  %cM   a medium album cover

  %cL   a big album cover

Note that if you use track-related items like %t, it will take the data from the first track.

Changing Display Faces
----------------------

The faces used to display the various fields are also customizable. They are in the format emms-browser-<type>-face, where type is one of "year/genre", "artist", "album" or "track". Note that faces lack the initial "info-" part. For example, to change the artist face, type M-x customize-face emms-browser-artist-face.

Sorting Playlists
*****************

The `emms-playlist-sort' module, defined in the emms-playlist-sort.el package provides functions for sorting Emms playlists. `emms-playlist-sort' can be loaded by invoking:

     (require 'emms-playlist-sort)

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-name
     Sort playlist by name in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-info-artist
     Sort playlist by artist in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-info-title
     Sort playlist by title in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-info-album
     Sort playlist by album in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-info-year
     Sort playlist by year in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-info-note
     Sort playlist by notes in ascending order.

 -- Function: emms-playlist-sort-by-score
     Sort emms playlist by score in descending order.

Emms Mode Line
**************

We can display information about the currenty playing track on the Emacs mode line using the package `emms-mode-line' which is provided by the file emms-mode-line.el.

To activate this feature invoke:

     (require 'emms-mode-line)
     (emms-mode-line 1)

It is also possible to display the amount of time a track has been playing. This feature is defined in the `emms-playing-time' package which is provided by the file emms-playing-time.el.

To use this feature invoke:

     (require 'emms-playing-time)
     (emms-playing-time 1)

 -- Function: emms-playing-time-enable
     Enable displaying emms playing time on the mode line.

 -- Function: emms-playing-time-disable
     Enable displaying emms playing time on the mode line.

 -- Function: emms-playing-time-toggle
     Toggle displaying emms playing time on the mode line.

Music Player Daemon
*******************

Emms provides an interface to the Music Player Daemon (http://www.musicpd.org/)(MusicPD) software. The package is called `emms-player-mpd' and is provided by the file emms-player-mpd.el.

The advantages of using MusicPD as an EMMS backend include the following.

  * minimal CPU usage

  * fast access of track information

  * optional crossfade

Setup
-----

To load `emms-player-mpd' invoke:

     (require 'emms-player-mpd)

Set the variables EMMS-PLAYER-MPD-SERVER-NAME and EMMS-PLAYER-MPD-SERVER-PORT to the location and port (respectively) of your MusicPD server. For example:

     (setq emms-player-mpd-server-name "localhost")
     (setq emms-player-mpd-server-port "6600")

If your MusicPD setup requires a password, you will to set EMMS-PLAYER-MPD-SERVER-PASSWORD as follows.

     (setq emms-player-mpd-server-password "mypassword")

To get track information from MusicPD, invoke the following:

     (add-to-list 'emms-info-functions 'emms-info-mpd)

Adding `emms-player-mpd' to your Emms player list is accomplished by invoking:

     (add-to-list 'emms-player-list 'emms-player-mpd)

If you use absolute file names in your m3u playlists (which is most likely), make sure you set EMMS-PLAYER-MPD-MUSIC-DIRECTORY to the value of "music_directory" from your MusicPD config.  There are additional options available as well, but the defaults should be sufficient for most uses.

You can set EMMS-PLAYER-MPD-SYNC-PLAYLIST to nil if your master EMMS playlist contains only stored playlists.

Commands provided
-----------------

 -- Function: emms-player-mpd-connect
     Connect to MusicPD and retrieve its current playlist. Afterward, the status of MusicPD will be tracked.

 -- Function: emms-player-mpd-disconnect
     Terminate the MusicPD client process and disconnect from MusicPD.

 -- Function: emms-player-mpd-show &optional insertp
     Describe the current EMMS track in the minibuffer. If INSERTP is non-nil, insert the description into the current buffer instead. This function uses EMMS-SHOW-FORMAT to format the current track. It differs from emms-show in that it asks MusicPD for the current track, rather than Emms.

Updating the MusicPD database
.............................

 -- Function: emms-player-mpd-update-directory dir
     Cause the tracks in DIR to be updated in the MusicPD database.

 -- Function: emms-player-mpd-update-all
     Cause all tracks in the MusicPD music directory to be updated in the MusicPD database.

emms-cache.el integration
.........................

 -- Function: emms-cache-set-from-mpd-directory dir
     Dump all MusicPD data from DIR into the EMMS cache. This is useful to do when you have recently acquired new music.

 -- Function: emms-cache-set-from-mpd-all
     Dump all MusicPD data into the EMMS cache. This is useful to do once, just before using emms-browser.el, in order to prime the cache.

emms-volume.el integration
..........................

 -- Function: emms-volume-mpd-change amount
     Change volume up or down by AMOUNT, depending on whether it is positive or negative.

 -- Function: emms-volume-mpd-raise
     Increase the volume.

 -- Function: emms-volume-mpd-lower
     Decrease the volume.

Lyrics
******

We can display the lyrics of a song in time with the music using the `emms-lyrics' package provided by the file emms-lyrics.el.

The lyrics files should have the extention ``.lrc''.

To add this feature we invoke:

     (require 'emms-lyrics)
     (emms-lyrics 1)

There are a number of variables we can set to define the way that `emms-lyrics' behaves, we can set these directly or by using the Customize feature in Emacs.

 -- User Option: emms-lyrics-display-on-minibuffer
     If non-nil, display lyrics on minibuffer.

 -- User Option: emms-lyrics-display-on-modeline
     If non-nil, display lyrics on modeline.

 -- User Option: emms-lyrics-dir
     Local lyrics repository. emms-lyrics-find-lyric will look for lyrics in current directory and this directory.

 -- User Option: emms-lyrics-display-format
     Format for displaying lyrics. "%s" will be replaced by the lyrics string.

 -- User Option: emms-lyrics-coding-system
     Coding system used in the output of lyrics.

We can control `emms-lyrics' with the help of the following functions:

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-start
     Start displaying lyrics.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-stop
     Stop displaying lyrics.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-toggle-display-on-minibuffer
     Toggle display lyrics on minibufer.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-toggle-display-on-modeline
     Toggle display lyrics on mode line.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-enable
     Enable displaying Emms lyrics.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-disable
     Disable displaying Emms lyrics.

 -- Function: emms-lyrics-toggle
     Toggle displaying Emms lyrics.

Streaming Audio
***************

Emms provides a friendly interface for managing and playing streaming audio in addition to the Emms playlist interface. The interface is defined in the emms-streams.el package and can be loaded by invoking:

     (require 'emms-streams)

The Emms interface for streaming audio is enabled by default in the `emms-all' and `emms-devel' setup levels. For more information about Emms setup levels see Simple Setup.

Enter the emms-streams interface by invoking M-x emms-streams. The emms-streams interface comes with a built-in, eclectic list of streaming audio channels from throughout the Web. Emms can of-course play other streams than the ones listed by default, you are free to remove any or all of them and add your own. (If you enjoy a particular streaming audio station on the Web and think that it belongs in the default list, please send us a link and we will gladly add it!)

The following is a list of the key-bindings for the emms-streams interface:

RET
     Perform the default action when you press RET in the Emms Stream interface. Can be either ``add'' or ``play''. The default is ``add'', which adds the station under point to the Emms playlist. When EMMS-STREAM-DEFAULT-ACTION is ``play'' then Emms will play the streaming audio channel under point.

q
     Quit the emms-streams interface.

a
     Add a bookmark to a streaming audio URL to the list.

d
     Remove a bookmark to a streaming audio URL from the list.

e
     Edit the details of the bookmark under point.

h
     Describe the emms-streams mode.

n
     Move to the next line in the emms-streams buffer (same as C-n).

p
     Move to the previous line in the emms-streams buffer (same as C-p).

s
     Save the bookmarks in the emms-streams interface to disk. The bookmarks will be to the location designated in the variable EMMS-STREAM-BOOKMARKS-FILE.

i
     Return information about the streaming audio at the URL of the bookmark under point. Note that this will only work if the `emms-stream-info' has already been loaded.

     [file gpl.texi not included]
     [file fdl.texi not included]