Overview

legend-upplay-main.png

Player section

Play, Pause, Stop, Next, Previous, Seek, and Adjust volume. I would guess that these don’t need explanations.

Most elements displaying information about the current track have tooltips which can display a bigger and more readable version.

Playlist section

Playlist entries:

  • Double-click entry to play

  • Click entry, then click the play button to play

  • Select and drag-drop to reorder

  • Right click and select Remove to delete current selection

  • Right click and select Sort by track number to reorder tracks (useful when tracks from an album directory were sent in wrong order by the Media Server).

Playlist buttons:

  • Playlist modes select how the tracks are sequenced: normal, repeat, shuffle.

  • Playlist add modes determine how "Send to playlist" from the directory browser will affect the playlist. By default, this inserts after the current track. You can also choose to Append or Replace, and opt to immediately start play for the first of the new tracks.

  • The sequential number toggle will show numbers in front of the entries. Not too sure what this is good for…

You can clear the current playlist by clicking the broom icon above it on the right.

Directory browser section

The list at the top is a hybrid path/search history section:

  • When you browse a directory tree by clicking on containers, it shows your location in the tree.

  • If you perform searches, your search history will be stacked at the end of the path. Searches are not nested, and always relative to the closest directory earlier in the path. If you click a directory inside the search results, it will get stacked, and any further searches will be relative to this directory, not the earlier one.

Left-Clicking a track title will send it to the playlist, according to the current playlist add mode.

Left-Clicking a directory title will get you there.

Right-clicking a track title will propose the following actions:

  • Back

  • Send to playlist: same as left-clicking.

  • Send all to playlist: send all tracks from this directory.

  • Send all from here to playlist: this track and the following ones go to the playlist.

Right-clicking a directory (in the list or in the path) will propose the following actions:

  • Back

  • Send to playlist: this is a recursive walk, it will send all tracks from the subtree to the playlist. Don’t do this at the root of a big tree…

  • `Open in new tab.

  • Random play by tracks: this is analogous to Send to playlist, but the list is shuffled, and sent to the Renderer by slices, so you can use a very big list without swamping it.

  • Random play by groups: this will play groups of tracks, corresponding to the lowest level of directories in the subtree, typically albums, but these may also be MinimServer Groups for example.

  • Stop random play: if currently playing.

While in "Random play by group" mode, the playlist broom tooltip displays the next group. Clicking the button will skip to it.

Right-clicking empty space will propose to go back (or up).

Mid-Clicking a directory from the entries list, or a search or directory in the path at the top will open the element in a new tab. This can be particularly useful if you want to go back to a previous search without losing the current display.

^f or / will open the search panel, Esc will close it (or the x-cross button at the right).

Searching

Upplay supports two search modes:

  • Inside the current directory page: this is handy to quickly skip inside a long list.

  • Server search.

The search panel is located at the bottom of the library window (the one on the right), and normally hidden. You can open it by the following actions:

  • Typing / inside the library window.

  • Typing Ctrl+f inside the library window.

  • Using the View menu

Not all servers support search (e.g, MediaTomb does not, Minidlna does, etc.).

You can close the panel by the following actions:

  • Typing Esc (the Escape key).

  • Clicking the x-cross icon on the right of the panel

  • Using the View menu.

When the search panel opens for the first time, the panel is in local search mode. Typing inside the search entry area will try to find matches in the page. You can use the two arrow buttons or type F3 or Shift+F3 to find the next or previous match.

In server mode, the search panel will let you enter a search string and the kind of field inside which you want to search (the combobox on the right, Artist/Album/Title). Type Enter or click the search button to start the search.

The results are displayed just like a directory listing and can be used in the same way (including opening tabs for directory listings, etc.).

Server searches are always relative to the first directory earlier in the path, never to another search. If your search yields nothing, one of the things to check is that you are high enough in the tree (not searching a single directory).

Also space characters are significant in the search entry. This has a capacity for trouble but it can also be a great help when trying to match words (there are no standard UPnP ways to specify word matches, or anchor a search at the beginning or end of a field).

Tab bar section

Clicking the big plus sign will open a new tab. Clicking a tab’s cross sign will close it…

File:

  • Change Media Renderer will let you do just this. You will see a dialog with the list of renderers currently seen on the network. After choosing one, you may decide that the current upplay playlist will replace the one or the new renderer, or be appended to it by checking the appropriate places. Double-clicking a renderer will get you there too.

  • Select Source is only activated if the current Renderer supports OpenHome, and will let you select the Source among the available ones (Playlist, Radio etc.).

  • Save / Load playlist will let you save the current playlist to a local file, or load one which you previously saved.

  • Open Songcast Tool will open a dialog for managing the connections between Linn Songcast Senders or Receivers. more details here.

  • View lets you elect to hide the right panel (directory listing), change the color scheme for a dark one and other interesting experiences. Also a number of Preferences can be adjusted from the appropriately named submenu.

And Help, there is no help…

Keyboard shortcuts

  • Space/MediaTogglePlayPause/MediaPlay/MediaPause : toggle play/pause.

  • Ctl+Right / MediaNext : next track.

  • Ctl+Left / MediaPrevious : previous track.

  • Ctl+Space : stop.

  • Ctl+Up / Plus : volume increase.

  • Ctl+Down/ Minus : volume decrease.

  • Right : seek forward a few secs.

  • Left : seek backward a few secs.

Adjusting the font sizes on high resolution displays

Most people will find that the font sizes (and buttons/icons) are too small on high DPI displays.

As of version 1.2.5, the GUI can be partially adjusted by editing two style sheet files. To adjust the font sizes:

  • Edit /usr/share/upplay/cdbrowser/cdbrowser.css, and uncomment the "font-size" directive at the top. Adjust the size to taste, meaning that the line should look like the following (with your preferred value in place of 30): 

    font-size: 30pt;

  • Edit /usr/share/upplay/common.css and adjust the 6 font-size directives. An adequate approach will usually be to multiply the sizes by some constant factor (e.g.: 2 …).

On Windows, use notepad or an equivalent pure text editor to edit the files, which are located in the share and share\cdbrowser subdirectories of the top installation directory (e.g: C:\Program Files (x86)\Upplay\). You need to specify "all files" when opening the files, because notepad does not list .css files by default (only .txt).

The adjustment is not perfect for now: the player section does not update its size, which means that some titles will be truncated (in the top left area), and the icon sizes are unchanged. Arbitrary text truncation may happen in places. This will hopefully be improved in a future release.

There are other, system-based, approaches described on the following Qt page: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html