FailPlay

FailPlay is a media player with an extremely simplistic user interface combined with a set of unique features:

• Queue: Titles in the playlist can be enqueued to change the order in which tracks are played without changing the playlist.
• AutoStop: One track can be selected after which playing will stop. This can be any track you want, be it right in the middle of the playlist, after the last track of a queue, or in the middle of a queue. As soon as the selected title has been played, the player stops (read: exits).
• Repeat can be configured for one specific title, and will start as soon as that title is reached. When repeat is disabled for that title (or set for a different one), the playlist/queue will continue.
• If no track is configured to be the last one, playback will not end. Instead the whole playlist will repeat.
• The playlist and queue are saved between restarts, if you so choose. Format is a simple PLS file that should be compatible with other players (only tested with mplayer).
• Double-Clicking on a file adds it to the playlist, double-clicking in the playlist adds/removes the title from the queue.
• Crossfading between songs.
• Drag-and-Drop playlist reordering. (Yeah I know every player does this. FailPlay does too.)
• Aggressively simple user interface: One window, files on the left, playlist on the right, progress at the bottom, and a little playlist context menu to enable AutoStop/Repeat. That's it.

FailPlay doesn't (and probably never will) have:

• Play/Stop/Skip/Previous buttons. As long as it runs, it plays. Without interruption.
• Volume change thingy. Use your remote. Or pavucontrol.
• Support for streams, as you don't gain anything from the cool playlist features for streams.

Screenshots

FailAudio

FailPlay also comes with a command-line player named failaudio, which has the same features (crossfade, queue) but is intended for more ad-hoc use.

Note that unlike FailPlay, failaudio does not infinitely repeat its playlist, but plays it only once.

Requirements

• python-pyao
• python-qt4
• libavcodec-dev, libavformat-dev, python-dev (for building myffmpeg)

Config

FailPlay doesn't really need much configuration, but setting a bit of stuff in ~/.failplay/failplay.conf does make life more convenient. If failplay or failblaster start up with an empty playlist (e.g. on first run, before ~/.failplay/failplay.conf exists), a console wizard asks for your music directory and a track to seed the playlist with (defaulting to a random one from that directory), then writes ~/.failplay/failplay.conf accordingly so subsequent runs start with something to play. Here's my config file:

[options]
musicdir = /media/daten/Musik
playlist = /home/svedrin/.failplay/failplay.pls
writepls = /home/svedrin/.failplay/failplay.pls
enqueue  = True
out = pulse

[environment]
PULSE_SERVER = tcp:gatekeeper

Variables in the [environment] section will be exported before initializing audio output, so it can be used e.g. to connect to a remote PulseAudio server. The options section accepts the same variables that can also be given on the command line as long options.

FailAudio supports a config file as well, and evaluates ~/.failplay/failaudio.conf in the same manner.

Both FailPlay and failblaster can also expose a web interface by adding web (and optionally uploaddir) to the [options] section:

[options]
web       = 8080
uploaddir = /media/daten/Musik/uploads

web is the port to listen on; the web server stays disabled unless it's set. uploaddir enables uploading files through the web interface and is optional. Both can also be given on the command line as --web and --uploaddir.

Both failaudio and failblaster load ~/.failplay/failplay.conf and then load ~/.failplay/fail{audio,blaster}.conf respectively, so that you can override certain settings while reusing most of them.

failplay and failblaster can also be told to exit automatically if the PulseAudio sink they're playing through disappears (e.g. a Bluetooth speaker being unplugged), instead of continuing on whatever sink PulseAudio falls back to:

[options]
stop_on_sink_disconnect = True

This is also available as --stop-on-sink-disconnect on the command line. It watches whichever sink PULSE_SINK names (see the [environment] section above), or PulseAudio's default sink if PULSE_SINK isn't set, and needs a session DBus with PulseAudio's module-dbus-protocol loaded; without one, it quietly does nothing, same as the MPRIS integration. When it does trigger, the process exits with code 69 (EX_UNAVAILABLE) so a wrapper script can tell the difference.

Bluetooth speaker scripts

bt_failaudio.sh, bt_failblaster.sh and bt_failplay.sh watch for a bluetooth speaker to connect, route PulseAudio to it, and run failaudio/failblaster/failplay for as long as it stays connected. All three read their settings from ~/.failplay/bluetooth.conf, a plain shell snippet that's sourced by the scripts. Minimal config:

BT_MAC="AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"

BT_MAC is required; find your device's address with bluetoothctl devices. POLL_INTERVAL (seconds between connection checks, default 10) can also be set there, or overridden via the POLL_INTERVAL environment variable if the config file doesn't set it.