Scorpion Jukebox 3.4

Scorpion Jukebox 3.4 is a must-see product for everyone. The Scorpion Jukebox, or simply called the Scorpion, is an application that allows the user to select music from a locally stored music collection, put it in a playlist and start playing it. When looking at the feature list, it can be seen that the Scorpion differs from other applications in many respects.

The Scorpions music selection is based on showing album covers in an extremely flexible way, instead of just displaying an enormously large list of directories and files. Missing album covers are downloaded automatically fast and easy. Scorpion uses DirectX to be able to achieve a user interface with a natural look and feel that does not suffer from jerky moving images and slow screen updates. It has very fast response and it is very easy to work with. The Scorpion can be completely controlled by the keyboard using ONE finger only, to be able to perform the required tasks as fast as possible. It is also possible to operate the player using a Touchscreen, wtih minimal screen touches so that we can do what we are supposed to be doing: "LISTENING TO OUR MUSIC !"

Major Features:

1. Extremely Smooth Scrolling: All images that are shown to the user, come and go as you have never seen before. Your album-covers and album info like artist, song names and song ratings are printed on panels. Each panel appears on the screen in such a pleasant way, that it is a delight to browse through all your music albums twice a day. Optimum scrolling is achieved when your monitor is set to 100 Hz, so that ALL moving panels are updated 100 times a second. To give the moving panels a natural look while they move, each panel is following a trajectory that uses 2nd order speed profiles.
2. Tear Free Scrolling: To get an even better look and feel of the scrolling panels, each screen update is synchronized to your monitor's refresh rate so that moving images look razor sharp and clear, even during fast moves. Maybe this doesn't sound that important, but once you have experienced the difference between an application with 'normal' scrolling compared to 'tear-free'-scrolling you will be easily convinced. The Scorpion allows Tear Free Scrolling in fullscreen and EVEN in non-full screen modes. (which is very rare !)
3. Touchscreen Design: One of the key features of the Scorpion is that it can be entirely operated using a Touchscreen. It is NOT however, an application that uses a mouse, and thus can be operated using a touchscreen. The Scorpion has been designed in such a way, that minimum screen touches are required to perform the required tasks.
4. One Finger Keyboard operation: Another key features of the Scorpion is that is can be completely controlled using the keyboard and using ONE finger only !. The reason for this design choice is very easy. Using the One Finger Keyboard Control (OFKC), the user can operate the jukebox as easy and as fast as possible. Let me give you a few examples:

1. Automatic Album Cover lookup: All directories in your music folder are scanned for music and album covers. As soon as no cover was found, it is retrieved via internet and placed inside the corresponding directory. The name of the new cover is labelled 'SkCover', so that the covers can easily be removed again. If the user owns a wideband internet connection, looking up 500 covers takes no more than 2 minutes.
2. Super Volume Control: Indeed, the coolest volume control available. Typing V + 2 brings the volume level to 20%. Typing V + 8 again, causes the volume to quickly fade from the current volume level of 20% to an increased level of 80%.
3. Super Rating Control: What we can do with the Volume, we can also do with rating the song that is currently playing. If you like the song, give it a rating of '80%' by typing the expected R + 8. To be able to rate songs of any type (mp3, ape etc) and to allow the user to have the ability to easily change it, the ratings are written in a text file that is placed inside the music directory.
4. Parallax Album Browser: The Cover Browser makes finding a music album as fun as listening to its songs. How does it work?
5. When the user presses the B key. The 'Browse' mode is entered and a panel smoothly appears. The panel shows 6 of your music covers that start with the letter A. According to your song ratings, the best cd you have that starts with the letter A is displayed first. Using the left and right arrow keys, more albums starting with the letter A and presented on panels that move in a horizontal direction. The last album on the far right is probably not your best album.
6. When the up and down arrow keys are pressed, the panels are moving in a vertical direction. Each time an arrow key is pressed, the next letter in the alphabet is shown. Since the response of the Scorpion is extremely fast, the user can scroll through a very large cd-archive in a split second. Selecting your music album has never been easier.
7. Dynamic Album Search: To allow the user to quickly find an album, the keys a-z can be used to find the correct album. For example typing 'ge' will quickly show a panel with the album covers: {Genesis-Cd1, Genesis-Cd2, Gents, George Michael, Gene Pitney-Cd1 & Gene Pitney-Cd2}. The panels are sorted and updated on the fly, so that the user only has to type as minimum as possible.

Enhancements:

1. Added: Buttons to move up and down in playlist to select music.
2. Fixed: Load and Saving now works with multiple dirs and is based on the database.
3. Fixed: Playlist now moves better and is more user friendly.
4. Fixed: Search was slow on systems with slow video cards. Now it is same as the rest of the panels.
5. Fixed: Volume selection is fast again.
6. Added: Directories can be added after each other, and then database can be updated.
7. Fixed: After Reset to defaults, Directory structure can be selected again.
8. Fixed: lots of small internal fixes.
   

Requirements:

1. Hardware Requirements:

• Videocard 64 MB running 32bit mode , DirectX 8/9 compatible
• HDD 20MB + 10MB per 100 cd's

• Windows XP or VISTA (logged in as adminintrator)
• DirectX 8.1 or higher installed
• Music collection organized with one directory per music album.

WareSeeker Editor