New/Better/Easier method: Fiddler2 Proxy Plugin

[ZigZagJoe]

haven't encountered them yet, so i don't know. where do you see(hear) these ads? probably ignores them though.

[fallout]

Hello,

Thank you for the amazing tool !

Some thoughts:

Is it possible to use VBR encoding instead of CBR ?

And also FAAD and LAME seem to use only 1 core (25% cpu, I have a quad core). Is there some command line option or some tweaks to take advantage of multicores?

How about grabbing higher cover art straight from Pandora ?

If you follow the album url you usually get a higher cover art, 300x300 or 500x500 instead of the usual 120x120

Even more, the urls are almost the same!

http://images-sjl-3.pandora.com/images/pub...0_130W_130H.jpg grabbed

vs

http://images-sjl-1.pandora.com/images/pub...0_300W_299H.jpg from album page

I wish you a nice day!

[Edge333]

Hey ZZJ,

Could you post an install guide please. I had a it working awhile back with the first version but now I can't get it to work so I'm trying to re-install it.

[ZigZagJoe]

added code to allow for custom lame settings under advanced tab in settings is make sure this line is right, as any changes that don't work would break all conversions! do not put anything relating to input or output files on here, that is appended automatically.

edit the field to do whatever you like to make it encode as you wish. the normal value for that field is "-h -b %bitrate%" , %bitrate% being replaced with the selected bitrate on the common page. i don't know the options you would use, try googling lame command line switches.

as for larger album art, it can't be done (easily). the problem is that the large album arts are not the same size for each song, and there is no way to know what the proper size is outside of visiting the album info page and getting the image url from that. it could be done, but i'm not going to do that at the moment.

link is http://zzj.itf-inc.com/PandoraSaver1005-ZZJ.zip

simple guide is:

install fiddler2

copy contents of /bin in zip file to fiddler's /Scripts directory

use IE or set up firefox to use fiddler2 as its proxy (typ 127.0.0.1:8888)

visit pandora, and listen to music.

will replace this with a better guide later

i may end up rolling my own mini install for this. as it does require some work to install.

also, if you need to ask a question it is best to post in this thread as i will see that immediately (as opposed to editing your post afterwards)

[fallout]

Hey ZZJ,

I've currently noticed that when I thumbs-down some song it does not actually delete it from disk (the file is there already). Log mentions that it catches the song feedback.

Does this feature work differently than I expected or is it something I am missing?

Thanks

[ZigZagJoe]

does it say xx by xx has been negatively rated in the log? if not, it was unable to look up that song. at the moment, it keeps song info for 10 minutes, after that it (the songinfo) gets deleted to avoid leaking memory. without the song info, it has no idea of what the songID is and so it would silently fail

i just tested the file deletion again, it seems to be working as intended. also, check in your log for the line "Exception occured while deleting file." if you find it, let me know what the exception says (it also turns off file deletion when an error occurs while doing so)

[fallout]

Hey ZZJ,

I does not say "xx by xx has been negatively" anywhere in the log. What can I try to get more info and hopefully get this working ?

Thanks again

[ZigZagJoe]

try thumbing up a song and see if it says xx by xx has been positively rated (where xx is artist or title) in the log

check to make sure you have the most recent version and it is enabled in the settings as well

[Hawaii Guy]

I'm pretty new to all this stuff. I think it is just great, though. Thank you for the wonderful little presents I've found here! I go through a few steps (sometimes anal, but then again) ... I'm prepared to receive some "wtf are you doing it that way for" or "why". Guess I do have my rhymes and reasons altho I do question myself at times. This is my process with questions along the way:

• Files gets saved to a general folder
• I copy the MP4 files to a temp folder, REName them to .M4A, add them into iTunes, then move them back to the general folder (so I can tell which are new files by the MP4 extention, and the software will still find the filename to prevent dupes which is great.
• The music 'time' is just over twice the actual length of the song - is this a Pandora issue? When I rip CDs to the AAC format directly in iTunes, the recorded time is displayed correctly.
• I'm OK with the 64bit rip. I have always thought that I have a pretty keen ear for music. I can live with how they turn out quality-wise (when compared with MP3 rips from CDs of the same song at 256 or VBR).
• (don't stomp on me too hard for this lol) ... I spend hours trying to find the album that the song was originally released on. So even those 'Greatest Hits' are reorg'd and I try to find the original album cover and use that in iTunes. Afterall, You Should Be Dancing by the Bee Gees was from the record Saturday Night Fever. Now I can see that album artwork instead.
• Question with that is (sorry, iTunes question coming) - does the M4A (and MP3) files contain the lyrics and artwork, or are they stored within iTunes? And being that I have sooo many folders in my iTunes music directory because of the artist and albums, does this really slow things down? Or should I turn off the iTunes music organization feature off and put everything in one big iTunes folder?

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

[ZigZagJoe]

album arts are usually stored in the aac file (which, if pandora has an album art, it will add to mp4s and mp3s)

i don't know anything about itunes displaying the wrong song length though. displays right for me when i tested it (in itunes and winamp as well)

don't know about itunes lyrics. they may have some proprietary extension to allow for that, or it could be in itunes db.

it's possible a large db would slow down itunes, but i wouldn't worry about it

though, a note, you should be able to just add the newMusik.m3u playlist to itunes and have it catch the new songs - just rename it to something that isn't newMusik.m3u and it will start creating a new newMusik.m3u, thus allowing incremental updates.

by the way - if you use another player besides itunes the songs may sound MUCH better (i don't know if the latest version supports SBR, as mine is an older one, but without SBR support songs will sound very low quality. play one in winamp or something and compare the sound.

maybe i should add an option for using m4a instead of mp4 (extension)...

[Hawaii Guy]

i don't know anything about itunes displaying the wrong song length though. displays right for me when i tested it (in itunes and winamp as well)

Based on your feedback, I played the same track back in QT and it displayed the correct time. I also downloaded Winamp and it also displayed the correct play time. I'm guessing that the hubbub about iTunes handling this (newer) type of encryption cannot display the correct time.

though, a note, you should be able to just add the newMusik.m3u playlist to itunes and have it catch the new songs - just rename it to something that isn't newMusik.m3u and it will start creating a new newMusik.m3u, thus allowing incremental updates.

will try this

by the way - if you use another player besides itunes the songs may sound MUCH better (i don't know if the latest version supports SBR, as mine is an older one, but without SBR support songs will sound very low quality. play one in winamp or something and compare the sound.

I did notice an improvement with a few tracks using winamp. Gonna keep it and try it out. Being that it also will support iPods, I will check that out as well. My wife uses a Sansa player which is a great little player - but only supports MP3s so I will convert to MP3 128k for her as she is not as critical as I am. Can only fit so much in 8gb.

maybe i should add an option for using m4a instead of mp4 (extension)...

Again - thanks for your help and feedback!

[fallout]

try thumbing up a song and see if it says xx by xx has been positively rated (where xx is artist or title) in the log

check to make sure you have the most recent version and it is enabled in the settings as well

I was using 1005 version but I think you updated it a bit, so I just downloaded it again, and it seems that deleting now works perfect! Amazing tool!

Cheers!

[ZigZagJoe]

I was using 1005 version but I think you updated it a bit, so I just downloaded it again, and it seems that deleting now works perfect! Amazing tool!

Cheers!

yeah, first version of 1005 had a problem which broke file deletion (it immediately removed the song info when done ripping, which means it could never look up a song, and it was possible for an exception to occur when deleting empty dirs if the deleted song was the only file in said dir)

glad you are happy with it :)

@Hawaii

it's actually not encryption - it's additional info which contains the higher frequencies, which aacplus uses in addition to a regular AAC stream to produce good sound at low bitrates. if you rip that out, it sounds like a 64kbs mp3 or worse, with no high freqs at all. i think itunes only uses the LC profile so i guess they had no reason to implement it :S

let me know if you find any more bugs! (or feature requests, within reason)

[Hawaii Guy]

So ZZJ - since iTunes limits AAC, what would be the better way for me to rip my existing CD music? Winamp? I can live with the little less sound quality I guess; limitation is based on portability of my 8gb Touch. That's why I'm moving my MP3 files to M4A. I'm sure the Touch (or iPods) only play back standard AAC (not Plus), so I guess I'm limited no matter what. Whadayouthink?

[SomethingToChatWith]

As long as iTunes can use the files you can have it convert to w/e format you need later for the device you want to put it on.

[ZigZagJoe]

AAC (not plus) in itself is not a bad format, and 192kbs LC aac is superior to 192kbs mp3 (though i would call any higher birate in either format past the point that i can pick out nuances of compression). So you are fine to rip CDs as AAC, i think. You are correct in that ipods (evidently) do not support aacplus however (not that i can find, but i don't have one to test with) so they would probably sound the same as itunes has it.

to sum it up, either aac or mp3 is fine as a ripping format.

[SomethingToChatWith]

yeah doesn't matter really. I usually import using WMP to mp3 format so I can use it there and in iTunes without having two copies of every song on my hard drive, but WMP 12 will support AAC playback.

[ZigZagJoe]

WMP supports (good) aac playback regardless of version with ffdshow installed.

[boem]

I got this error every time I tried to launch pandora.com with pandorasaver 1005 on.

I'm on windows xp and connect through hotspotshield.

Any suggestion is appreciated.

-boem

[COKEMAN]

boem, hotspotshield may be blocking Fiddler. I don't know much about HSS, but I would look around in the settings and see if you need to make an exception for Fiddler.

ZZJ, just put the latest 1005 on my machine. The "Dup Name Tolerance" setting is not persisting. It keeps setting back to 100%.

Other than that, it is working fine. Turbo mode is cool. :)

[ZigZagJoe]

hmm, yeah, i can only guess that hotspotshield is preventing proper functioning of fiddler2 (or maybe fiddler2 is trying to go around it? dunno). Evidently the XML files which pandora uses to communicate get mangled when fiddler2 reads them, hence that error (something that should never occur normally)

@COKEMAN

ah, yeah, i forgot the bit that saves that setting. Wops. Fixed now. By the way, it will catch most matches on the default setting of 100, because even though the whitespace and punctuation between the two names may differ by a lot, it still contains the same base words. I wouldn't mess with it unless you have put other songs into the directory structure. (that matches the one pandorasaver is using)

link is the same, http://zzj.itf-inc.com/PandoraSaver1005-ZZJ.zip

[Hawaii Guy]

SomethingToChatWith - you referenced WMP 12. The downloaded (free) version I have is 5.541 - are you guys suggesting I get the Pro version?

In the Fiddler2 Settings, I don't quite understand...I have it set to Reload Hour but I notice that Pandora will [still] stall and ask if I am still there. I thought that was a workaround. (I am going to review previous posts to look for any help references to ZZJ's 1005 version.)

Even though I uncheck Log duplicate songs on disk and checked OK, it still is checked when I open settings back up.

And, becuase I was using a different method of saving the streamed song files prior to finding HAK5, I had clicked many songs in Pandora with the Don't Play till next month option (I had hundreds of dupe song files that got named (2), (3), (4), etc. LOL because there was no dupe file check - and this is a program I actually paid money for...sigh...so is there any way of undoing the Don't Play in Pandora or just with for a few more days? I'm afraid it is a 30 day calendar instead of just changing to February.

Also, I have been trying to log off so that I can log back on to Pandora so I can create a new user name (in hopes of undoing the paragraph above). I deleted cookies and stuff but I cannot get to Pandora's home page or get to a point where I can create a user account.

As always, thanks!

[ZigZagJoe]

SomethingToChatWith - you referenced WMP 12. The downloaded (free) version I have is 5.541 - are you guys suggesting I get the Pro version?

In the Fiddler2 Settings, I don't quite understand...I have it set to Reload Hour but I notice that Pandora will [still] stall and ask if I am still there. I thought that was a workaround. (I am going to review previous posts to look for any help references to ZZJ's 1005 version.)

Even though I uncheck Log duplicate songs on disk and checked OK, it still is checked when I open settings back up.

And, becuase I was using a different method of saving the streamed song files prior to finding HAK5, I had clicked many songs in Pandora with the Don't Play till next month option (I had hundreds of dupe song files that got named (2), (3), (4), etc. LOL because there was no dupe file check - and this is a program I actually paid money for...sigh...so is there any way of undoing the Don't Play in Pandora or just with for a few more days? I'm afraid it is a 30 day calendar instead of just changing to February.

Also, I have been trying to log off so that I can log back on to Pandora so I can create a new user name (in hopes of undoing the paragraph above). I deleted cookies and stuff but I cannot get to Pandora's home page or get to a point where I can create a user account.

As always, thanks!

WMP 5.541? that would put you before windows 98's WMP ... do you mean Winamp? as "WMP" typically refers to Windows Media Player. IF you meant winamp, no, the one you have is fine. The pro edition just adds faster mp3 ripping and some other trivial stuff, iirc. It will play AAC (plus) regardless of free or paid (so just use the free one you have)

Just checked, reload time is functioning as intended. Try lowering the refresh duration. Though a note, it will *not* refresh the pandora mini player (launched via the link on pandora's applet or http://zzj.itf-inc.com/gopan.html) as I figured that is likely to be in use for actually listening to music. Just use the regular player (pandora.com) to do ripping w/ refresh. The only difference is that the miniplayer is slightly smaller. (and pandorasaver can kill the ads in it)

It might be possible to have pandorasaver forge the heartbeat that i noticed pandora sends out when you click "I'm still here", but I would have to check that first the pandora servers initiated the check (and overwrite it if true) and then forge the response, for a much cleaner way to handle it. If the applet initiates it, there is not much i could do except possibly forge a click in the general area of the pandora applet on browsers, but that would be a mega hack that i am not even sure if it would work properly. EDIT: It's sourced from the flash applet. not much that can be done, then.

I think there may be a way to undo never-play-this-song settings on the radio's page, you might check that (blacklisted i think it called them). Other than that, I don't know.

You might try checking http://blog.pandora.com/faq/ as it may have more info.

Also, yeah, i had forgot the bit to save the dup log setting again. Oopsie. updated at the usual location. All it does is log duplicate files encountered like so:

Song 'Andy Hunter - Come On' has some duplicates:

\Andy Hunter\Life\Andy Hunter - Come On.mp3

\Andy Hunter\Life\Andy Hunter - Come On.mp4

\Andy Hunter\Life\Andy Hunter - Come On.wav

--END--

to a file called "DupLog.txt" in the root of the save dir, as music is played on pandora. of course, only if there is more than one duplicate does it log it - single copies are not logged (because that's okay). Might make an app to parse this log some time and present the user with choices to do regarding duplicates (delete move etc).

Added it because prior to the versions I made, invalid chars were only replaced with a space, and no other processing was done. this led to names having multiple consecutive spaces and or spaces on the end of the name, as well as having trouble with multiple periods in the name (technically legal, but you shouldn't do it as behavior is undefined, such as the image saving failure). With my changes, it treated periods as invalid chars and changes them to spaces also, and then removes all but one space in cases of consecutive spaces. Also deals with trailing spaces and a few other nuances. but as i had been using an unmodified version before, i ended up with some duplicate files on disk and so have had to deal with deleting them.

[SomethingToChatWith]

WMP is free with Windows. 12 is the next version set to lanuch with Windows 7. You can beta test it if you're testing Windows 7. There is no pro versions. There never have been, and probably, never will be.

If you're using version 5 what OS you running? Windows 95? Don't imagine being able to run softare that old in modern day 2000, XP, Vista.

[Hawaii Guy]

ummm yeah WMP=Windows Media Player ... think I'm a numbnut??? ( did i look stupid or what?)

Found the never-play edit in their blog just where you said it would be. [again I knew that! ]

Did find out that it is a 30-day period for the skip-a-month and not calendar so I got to wait a few more weeks.

Also noticed that if I turned on TURBO BOOST (watched Knight Rider last night), it started downloading files faster than I could comprehend, BUT left them in temp.DAT mode so I turned it off and had to listen and manually update file names. I tell you these programmers! ( )

Other than that, what can I say. Is there a PayPal site I can send u a donation to or an address I can mail a Starbucks card, ZZJ? Someone deserves a cup of coffee for just listening to me hahaha! And afterall, I paid $ to others for less than 10% of the quality I've gotten here, free.

Hey, I'm in Hawaii. We still live in grass shacks. Internet? Do you know what wi-fi looks like here? Remember those big aluminum antennas you used to use to catch TV stations with? Can you imagine me walking down the street dragging one of those along just so I can attach my Touch?

(in case someone had a fleeting thot that it is really like that here, I'm j/k!) Serious about the donation tho...