VITUNES(1) BSD General Commands Manual VITUNES(1) NAME vitunes -- A curses media indexer and player for vi-users SYNOPSIS vitunes [-c command] [-d database-file] [-e command [argument ...]] [-f config-file] [-m media-backend] [-p playlist-dir] DESCRIPTION vitunes is a curses-based music player and playlist manager for *nix whose goals are a minimalistic appearance, strong vi-like bindings, and quick playlist creation/management. It is not intended to be a feature-rich media player, but rather a quick, vi-like media indexer and playlist manager that also happens to be able to play the media it indexes (via mplayer(1) ). vitunes accepts the following command line options: -c command Execute the specified commands in the currently running vitunes instance, and exit. This is useful for controlling vitunes from other windows or scripts. The commands that may be specified are both those named in the RUN-TIME COMMANDS section below and keybindings specified by their keybinding action name, listed in the KEYBINDING ACTIONS section below. Note that for this to work, when vitunes starts up it attempts to create a socket at /tmp/.vitunes that are used by this option to communicate with the original instance. If this socket cannot be created for any reason, this option will not work. -d database-file Specifies the database-file containing all known media files and their meta-information that vitunes should use. If this option is used in conjunction with an e-command, the option must be specified before the e-command. The default location is ~/.vitunes/vitunes.db. -e command options Execute one of the available e-commands to manipulate the database that vitunes uses. See the section below titled E-COMMANDS for more information. -f config-file Specifies an alternative config-file vitunes should load. See the section below titled CONFIGURATION FILE for informa- tion on what the configuration may contain. The default location is ~/.vitunes/vitunes.conf. -m media-backend Specify the media-backend to use for playback. The current list of supported media backends are: mplayer Uses a fork(2) / execvp(3) 'd instance of mplayer(1) for all playback. Note that the mplayer binary must be in the PATH environment variable. gst Uses the gstreamer multimedia library for media playback. Note that the media formats supported by this backend depend on what gstreamer plugins are installed. The default backend is mplayer. -p playlist-dir Specifies an alternative playlist-dir containing all of the playlists vitunes will load and use. Any new playlists cre- ated while running vitunes will be created here. The default location is ~/.vitunes/playlists/. GETTING STARTED vitunes works by maintaining a database of tagged media files. The data- base must be created and populated before vitunes can be run normally. After that, files can be added, modified, or removed from the database, and on the next invocation, vitunes will see the changes (additionally, the database can be re-loaded at runtime). • All database management is done using "e-commands", which are always of the form: $ vitunes -e command-name [parameters ...] • Once the database has been created, vitunes can be run normally with the following: $ vitunes • All playlist management is done while vitunes is running normally. See the E-COMMANDS section below for more information on database manage- ment. To get started quickly, simply do the following: 1. Create initial empty database with $ vitunes -e init 2. Add files to the database with $ vitunes -e add ~/music/ /path/to/more/music/ 3. Then just start normally with $ vitunes The Display When run normally, the default display will show the following 4 windows: player This window occupies the top row of the display and contains information about the currently playing song (if any) and the current play-mode. command/status This window occupies the bottom row of the display. It behaves very similar to the command/status window in vi(1). library This window occupies the left-side of the screen and shows each playlist, in addition to the library and filter-buffer. The filter buffer is where the results of every :filter ... command are temporarily stored. Playlists with unsaved changes appear bold and have their name preceded with a '+'. playlist This window is to the right of the library window and occu- pies most of the display. It shows the contents of whichever playlist has currently been selected in the library window. Useful Keybindings The following is only a partial listing keybindings, but are the most frequently used. Enter Load the selected playlist for viewing or begin playback of the selected file. Tab Toggle focus between the library and playlist windows. z Pause playback. s Stop playback. f/b Seek forwards/backwards 10 seconds. F/B Seek forwards/backwards 1 minute. m In the playlist window, show/hide information for the current file. See the KEYBINDING ACTIONS section for a complete listing. E-COMMANDS More detailed usage information and examples for each e-command can be obtained by issuing: $ vitunes -e help command-name RUN-TIME COMMANDS Below is a listing of all run-time commands supported by vitunes. All commands are entered by typing ':' followed by the command name and any parameters (just like in vi(1) ). Note that abbreviations are also supported. That is, entering any non- ambiguous abbreviation of a command name will also execute the command. :bind action keycode This will bind the action specified by action to the keycode specified by keycode. After this command is issued, entering the inputting the specified keycode will result in firing the speci- fied action. See the section SPECIFYING KEYCODES for details on how to specify keycode, and section KEYBINDING ACTIONS for a listing of all actions vitunes supports. :color item=fg,bg Change the color of the given item to fg colored text on a bg colored background. Available values for item are: Item Name Description bars The bars dividing the various windows. player The player window. status The status window. library The library window. playlist The playlist window. errors Error messages in the status window. messages Informational messages in the status win- dow. tildas-library The tildas in empty rows of the library window. tildas-playlist The tildas in empty rows of the playlist window. playing-library Currently playing playlist in the library window. playing-playlist Currently playing file in the playlist window. current-active Current row in the active window. current-inactive Current row in the inactive window. artist The artist column in the playlist window. album The album column in the playlist window. title The title column in the playlist window. track The track column in the playlist window. year The year column in the playlist window. genre The genre column in the playlist window. comment The comment column in the playlist win- dow. length The play-length column in the playlist window. Available colors for fg and bg are: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, default and color[n]. The color default is whatever the terminal uses as the default foreground or background color. N is integer in range -1...255. :display (reset | show | display-description) The display command is used to change which columns are displayed in the playlist window, their order, their width, and their alignment. The format of display-description is a comma separated list of: "[-]field.size". Valid values for field are: album, artist, comment, genre, length, title, track, and year. The size field indicates the number of columns. If field is preceded with a - the field will be right-aligned. As an example, the command: :display title.10,artist.20,-track.4 would only show the title, artist, and track fields, in that order, where the title field is 10 columns wide, the artist field is 20 columns wide, and the track field is 4 columns wide and right-aligned. The default display can be restored with: :display reset The current display description can be seen with: :display show :filter[!] token [token2 ...] The filter command is used to filter out all songs from the cur- rently viewed playlist that do not match (or do match) the pro- vided list of tokens. A song matches the list of tokens if each token appears somewhere in the song's meta-information or file- name. If ":filter" is used, all records not matching the list of tokens are removed from the current playlist. If ":filter!" is used, all records that do match the list of tokens are removed from the current playlist. The list of tokens is simply any list of strings, each possibly preceded with an exclamation point. If a token is preceded with an exclamation point, it will only match a song if it does not appear anywhere in the song's meta-information or filename. For example, the following: :filter nine nails would match all songs that contained both "nine" and "nails", and remove all other songs from the current playlist. However, :filter! nine nails would remove all songs that DO contain both "nine" and "nails." The query: :filter nine !nails would match all songs that contain "nine" and NOT "nails". All other songs would be removed from the current playlist. :mode (linear | loop | random) Set the current playmode to one of the three available options. The options are: linear Songs in a playlist are played in the order they appear until the end is reached. loop Like linear, but when the end of the playlist is reached, playback continues at the beginning of the playlist. random Songs are chosen at random from the playlist. :new [name] Create a new, empty playlist. If name is provided, the new playlist will be named accordingly unless a playlist with that name already exists. If no name is provided, the default is "untitled". :playlist name Load the playlist named by name in the playlist window. :q[!] Quit vitunes. If there are playlists with unsaved changes, then vitunes raises a notification and denies any attempts of quit- ting. To forcefully quit, use :q!, and any unsaved changes to any playlists will be lost. Note that playlists with unsaved changes appear bold in the library window. :reload (db | conf) The reload command is used to reload either the database or con- figuration file while vitunes is running. Handy if the database is updated using an e-command while also running vitunes. :set property=value The set command is used to set various properties within vitunes. For properties that accept a value of bool, valid values are 'true' and 'false'. The following properties are available: lhide=bool If set to true, the library window will be hidden (disappear) when it does not have focus. lwidth=number Set the width of the library window to number columns wide. Note that the number provided must be greater than 0 and less than the width of the terminal. match-fname=bool When searching or filtering a playlist, normally the filenames are also included in the matching algo- rithm. This can sometimes be undesirable, particu- larly if, for example, all of the music/media reside in a directory named "media" and trying to search for a file with the word "media" in the title. To disable this behavior, set match-fnames to false. save-sorts=bool Most operations that change a playlist (such as paste/cut) set the 'needs-saving' flag on the playlist, such that a prompt is shown on exiting vitunes that there is a playlist with unsaved changes. By default, sorting a playlist does not do this. To change this behavior, and be prompted to save sorts on exit, set this option to true. :sort sort-description Sort the currently viewing playlist using the provided sort-description, which is a comma separated list of: "[-]field", specifying which fields to sort by and if they should be sorted ascending or descending. Valid values for field are: album, artist, comment, genre, length, title, track, and year. Each field is sorted ascending by default, unless the field is preceeded with the dash -, in which case that field is sorted descending. As an example, the following command: :sort artist,-album,title would sort all records in the current playlist by artist (ascend- ing) first, then album-name (descending), then title (ascending). Note that while most operations on playlists set the "needs-sav- ing" flag (so a prompt is shown when quiting vitunes that the playlist has unsaved changes), sorting a playlist does not do this. This is intentional. To invert this behaviour, see the save-sorts option for the set command. :toggle register command-list This command will associate a list of commands specified by command-list to register register. Once set, the list of com- mands can be quickly toggled through using the toggle_forward and toggle_backward keybindings (which default to t and T, respec- tively). Toggle-lists can be useful to quickly alternate through, for example, various sorting or display schemes that the user may prefer. register is any single lower-case letter (a - z) or uppercase letter (A - Z). command-list is any list of valid commands listed here, each separated by a backslash character '/'. As an example, the following would allow one to quickly toggle through various sorting schemes: toggle s sort artist,-year,track / sort artist,album,track / sort -year Once issued, the three individual sorts specified above can be toggled using the s register. With the default keybindings this would be done using either ts (to toggle forward through the list) or Ts (to toggle backward through the list). :unbind (* | action action | key keycode) This command is used to remove existing keybindings. It has three forms. The first is simply: unbind * which will remove all existing keybindings. This is handy in a configuration file where defining all custom keybindings is desired. Issuing this at runtime will leave an instance of vitunes that will not respond to any keybdings! The second form is used to unbind actions: unbind action action This will remove any keybindings for the action specified by action. The third form is used to unbind keys: unbind key keycode This will remove any action currently bound to the key specified by keycode. See the section SPECIFYING KEYCODES for details on how to specify keycode, and section KEYBINDING ACTIONS for a listing of all actions vitunes supports. :w[!] [name] Save the currently viewing playlist. If a name is provided, then the playlist will be saved with this new name. If, however, a playlist already exists with that name, then saving is denied unless '!' is provided, in which case the existing playlist with that name will be deleted. SPECIFYING KEYCODES This section describes how to specify keycodes used in both the :bind and :unbind commands. Keycodes are specified in the following fashion: [Control] (key | SpecialKey) Here, key is used to specify the actual, printable character entered which is case-sensitive (e.g. 'j', 'p', 'P'), and SpecialKey is used to specify various non-printable characters (such as the Page-Up key). If the string "Control" is also specified, then the keycode only applies when the control key is pressed in conjunction with the key or SpecialKey. Although key is case-sensitive ('p' and 'P' are treated differently), both SpecialKey and "Control" are case-insensitive. The currently supported list of non-printable characters available for SpecialKey are: Value Description PageUp The page-up key. PageDown The page-down key. Up The up-arrow key. Down The down-arrow key. Left The left-arrow key. Right The right-arrow key. Backspace The backspace key. Enter The enter key. Space The space key. Tab The tab key. Some examples of using keycodes and the :bind run-time command are: bind paste_after p bind paste_before P bind scroll_up_halfpage Control u bind scroll_down_halfpage Control d KEYBINDING ACTIONS The current list of available actions that keys may be bound to is the following. For each action, the default keys bound to them are also listed. Action Name Description scroll_up Scroll the current row in the current window up by one line. DEFAULT BINDINGS: k, -, Up scroll_down Scroll the current row in the current window down by one line. DEFAULT BINDINGS: j, Down scroll_up_page Scroll the current window up by one line. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control y scroll_down_page Scroll the current window down by one line. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control e scroll_up_halfpage Scroll the current window up one half-page. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control u scroll_down_halfpage Scroll the current window down one half-page. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control d scroll_up_wholepage Scroll the current window up one whole page. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control b, PageUp scroll_down_wholepage Scroll the current window down one whole page. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control f, PageDown scroll_left Scroll the current window to the left one column. DEFAULT BINDINGS: h, Left, Backspace scroll_right Scroll the current window to the right one column. DEFAULT BINDINGS: l, Right, Space scroll_leftmost Scroll the current window to the left as far as possible. DEFAULT BINDINGS: ^, 0, | scroll_rightmost Scroll the current window to the right as far as possible. DEFAULT BINDINGS: $ jumpto_screen_top Move the current line to the first line in the current window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: H jumpto_screen_middle Move the current line to the middle line in the current window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: M jumpto_screen_bottom Move the current line to the bottom line in the current window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: L jumpto_line Jump to either a specified line (if a global input number is present) or to the last line in the cur- rent window's buffer. DEFAULT BINDINGS: G jumpto_percent Using the global input number N, jump to the line N% the way through the current window's buffer. DEFAULT BINDINGS: % go Go to a specific location within the current win- dow. This is planned to be similar to vim(1) 's use of the 'g' keybinding, with multiple suffixes. For now, only 'gg' is supported, and this moves the cursor to the first line in the current win- dow's buffer. DEFAULT BINDINGS: g search_forward Begin a search for the entered string searching forward in the current window. The current row will be updated to the next matching row. DEFAULT BINDINGS: / search_backward Begin a search for the entered string searching backwards in the current The current row will be updated to the next matching row. window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: ? find_next_forward Using the previous search-string, search in the same direction as the search was input for the next matching row. DEFAULT BINDINGS: n find_next_backward Using the previous search-string, search in the opposite direction as the search was input for the next matching row. DEFAULT BINDINGS: N cut Remove the following N lines from the current win- dow, placing them in the copy buffer, where N is the global input number. Note that if the library window is active, only one row (playlist) can be cut/deleted at a time, and that this action cannot be undone. DEFAULT BINDINGS: d visual Begin visual mode. This is only available in the playlist window, and once begun, only keybindings that move the cursor within the current window are allowed. Visual mode is exited when either a yank or delete operation has been performed, or when the Escape key is pressed. DEFAULT BINDINGS: v, V yank Copy the following N lines from the current window into the copy buffer, where N is the global input number. This action cannot be used in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: y paste_after Paste the contents of the copy buffer after the current row in the playlist window. This action cannot be used in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: p paste_before Paste the contents of the copy buffer before the current row in the playlist window. This action cannot be used in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: P undo Undo the previous action on the currently viewed playlist. This action cannot be used in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: u redo Redo the previously undone action on the currently viewed playlist. This action cannot be used in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control r quit Exit vitunes. If there are unsaved changes in any playlists, vitunes prevents any attempts of exit- ing until those changes are saved or ":q!" is issued. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control c, Control / redraw Clear and re-draw the entire display. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Control l command_mode Enter command-mode, where the commands listed in the RUN-TIME COMMANDS section may be issued. DEFAULT BINDINGS: : shell Enter a command to be executed outsite of vitunes and in the current shell environment. The output of the execution is shown before control and the display returns to vitunes. DEFAULT BINDINGS: ! switch_windows Toggle focus between the library and playlist win- dows. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Tab show_file_info Show the file information (including meta-informa- tion) for the current row/file in the playlist window. This action does not work in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: m load_playlist Load the playlist specified by the current row in the library window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Enter media_play Begin playing the file specified by the current row in the playlist window. DEFAULT BINDINGS: Enter media_pause Pause playback of any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: z media_stop Stop all playback of any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: s seek_forward_seconds Seek forwards 10 seconds in any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: f, ] seek_backward_seconds Seek backwards 10 seconds in any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: b, [ seek_forward_minutes Seek forwards 1 minute in any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: F, } seek_backward_minutes Seek backwards 1 minute in any playing media. DEFAULT BINDINGS: B, { media_next Play the next song in the playlist. DEFAULT BINDINGS: ) media_prev Play the previous song in the playlist. DEFAULT BINDINGS: ( volume_decrease Decrease the volume. DEFAULT BINDINGS: < volume_increase Increase the volume. DEFAULT BINDINGS: > toggle_forward Execute the next command from the toggle list specified by the provided register. DEFAULT BINDINGS: t toggle_backward Execute the previous command from the toggle list specified by the provided register. DEFAULT BINDINGS: T Some examples of using the above actions and keycodes to define the default keybdings are: bind paste_after p bind paste_before P bind scroll_up_halfpage Control u bind scroll_down_halfpage Control d CONFIGURATION FILE The configuration file loaded by vitunes is relatively straight-forward. Each line may be one of the following: • A comment, which starts with a '#'. • An empty line. • One of the commands from the RUN-TIME COMMANDS section above. That's it. As such, review the list of commands above. An example configuration file that would setup some hideous DOS-like col- ors is: # setup colors color bars=white,blue color player=yellow,blue color library=green,blue color playlist=white,blue color status=red,blue # format for playlist window display artist.20,album.20,title.20,track.4,year.4 # show most recent work of an artist first in library window sort artist,-year # make library window 20 columns wide and hide when not active set lwidth=20 set lhide=true FILES ~/.vitunes/vitunes.conf Default configuration file. This can be overridden with the [-f config-file] flag. ~/.vitunes/vitunes.db Default database file. This can be overridden with the [-d database-file] flag. ~/.vitunes/playlists/ Default playlist directory This can be overridden with the [-p playlist-dir] flag. /tmp/.vitunes Default location for the socket created on start-up that can be used to control vitunes. /usr/local/bin/mplayer Default path to the mplayer(1) binary. EXAMPLES To have the currently running vitunes load and play a playlist: $ vitunes -c `playlist SomePlaylist' -c media_play SEE ALSO mplayer(1), strftime(3), vi(1), vitunes-add(1), vitunes-addurl(1), vitunes-check(1), vitunes-flush(1), vitunes-init(1), vitunes-rm(1), vitunes-tag(1), vitunes-update(1) The vitunes website has additional information, such as a list of fre- quently asked questions, a mailing list, and up-to-date bug information. http://www.vitunes.org AUTHORS vitunes was written by Ryan Flannery <ryan.flannery@gmail.com>. BUGS None known. Send a detailed description to ryan.flannery@gmail.com if any bug is found. BSD January 17, 2015 BSD