Mosaic Control Scrolling Option

Looks like your theory is correct. By disabling various MC DLNA services I can maintain a consistent connection using Minimserver. Unfortunately it means that I have to disable the server function that is necessary to stream films to my OPPO 103 player. Still, a solution of sorts and hopefully once Mosaic has more functionality (scroll bar, track & album times, grid layout etc) one I can live with in return for gapless playback.

We have around 4000 albums on our NAS.

I would like to add support for the request that Mosaic allow alphabetical search on album and album artist. Before moving to our Rossini we had an Aurender streamer. The Aurender App was a dream in comparison to the search facility offered by Mosaic. Given the Aurender was a fraction of the price it is both disappointing and frustrating to scroll through our entire album or artist list to find what you are searching for - a premium product in all respects should afford owners the simple option to search alphabetically.

I have retained the older dCS app which at least allows for a limited alphabetical search.

Andrew of dCS suggested a method earlier in the thread to force Minimserver to group albums or artists by letter. This works a treat but still means manually scrolling through albums or artists within a letter. This can be tedious when you have hundreds of entries under each letter.

Indeed. As is the case with our music collection.

I just passed adding my 1,200th album to my NAS library. Yes I too am now understanding the advantage that a scroll bar would bring to browsing.

1 Like

I have now had my Bartok for 6 months and have not seen a single update to Mosaic or firmware though this was promised by Andrew back in July. BubbleuPnP and other music apps update every few days and would be nice to see some progress on resolving the bugs inherent in Mosaic.

2 Likes

Great to see that Mosaic Control 1.0.2 has arrived. This adds track times but would be nice to see total album time displayed in header. Track artist is now displayed correctly for various artist compilations. Screen now reverts automatically to landscape when started in this orientation but only after flipping to portrait and back (possibly an Android issue).
Still no scroll bar and would love to see albums displayed in grid as well as list format.
Thanks to all at dCS for ongoing support - more progress in 6 months than I had from previous manufacturer in 6 years!

This, sadly, is an Android quirk that has to do with how the app determines what mode to run in vs the way in which Android reports screen size. It’s possible to correct, but the correction is a hack that can cause other issues.

Working on it.

Excellent news!

A post was split to a new topic: Device discovery issues

Thanks for the updated Mosaic app. Rectifying the Album/Artist bug has made the app usable in my, and potentially many others, situation (a large library of classical music with multiple performances of several works) as I can now distinguish between these tracks! I’m also very pleased that the implementation of scrolling is in the works for release in the future.

I have now switched from using the BubbleUPnP control app to using Mosaic 1.02, both in combination with MinimServer running on my NAS. There are two additional benefits from doing this (1) gapless playback that was not possible with the BubbleUPnP / dCS network bridge combination, and surprisingly (?!) (2) improved sound quality e.g. sweeter violin sound, richer piano tonality. I may be imagining this; I’d be interested to hear the experience of others.

Sorry I’ve just started another thread about this subject… I should have searched a bit harder and posted here instead. I’ll post the same message here as this seams more suitable.

So I admit I’m posting as someone that hasn’t actually tried Mosaic yet… sorry still waing for my ordered Bartok :wink:
So when it comes to long lists of srtists or albums can’t you simply tell the dnla server to present the library in alphabetised headings? I mean, with my current ‘other brand’ product, I tell my dnla server to show ‘Album Artist’ and when I select that on my player, I then see each alphabet letter as a node. I can then select a letter and then I see all the artist under that letter. I can then select the artist and see their albums.

So I don’t have to scroll all the way down a list of hundreds and hundreds of artists. I just select the letter, e.g. ‘D’, and then I see all the artists that start with ‘D’. Is this not possible with Mosaic?

" So when it comes to long lists of srtists or albums can’t you simply tell the dnla server to present the library in alphabetised headings?"

The answer is basically yes. However it is going to depend upon the server software. dCS only officially supports MinimServer for Mosaic and if you scroll through this entire thread you will see that Andrew sets out how to do this with MinimServer. It is in the third posting down from the top.

Okay… I got in a panic then thinking I was going to have an issue when the Bartok turns up :slight_smile:

Very pleased to see a scrolling facility has been implemented in Mosaic 1.1.0. While this is a good step forward beyond using the alphabetised headings with MinimServer that I used previously, I have found that when scrolling through long lists (e.g. 3500 works/albums in a genre) I get a blank screen for 1 or 2 seconds before the listing reappears. Comparing this behaviour to that of the BubbleUPnP control app which I used for several years before buying the dCS Network Bridge, scrolling through the same list is completely smooth with no blank-screen interruptions.

Can you make the scrolling smooth for long lists in the next Mosaic release? Is it a question of buffer size for storing the list? If so could this be increased or be adjustable by the user?

Scrolling through large libraries would be a great help. Now there is a big problem with that, especially under VO control. It would be very nice to have information about the total duration of the album next to the number of tracks on the album.
Regards Robert

Robert this thread dates from 2019 and Mosaic has actually had a scroll bar since, I believe, v.1.1.1 ( around 2020). It is placed to the right hand side of the screen in a list view.

The current version is v.1.1.3. I remember that you had a lot of past rouble with Mosaic freezing and hope that this has now been resolved. One thing that you also requested was improved accessibility for the blind. In the release notes for v.1.1.3 dCS say that they have improved this aspect particularly referring to use with VoiceOver and TalkBack. I hope that you have found such an improvement and I would appreciate any comments that you may have on this aspect.

In terms of metadata Mosaic largely reflects in its display what is made available within the UPnP server software and accordingly many aspects can be altered to fit with your needs. That is certainly the case with MinimServer where I have been able to add showing album title , artist or composer by letter groups ( e.g show all “B” composers) rather than by a long, long list starting at “A” and finishing at “Z”. I have also added track numbers . This is pretty basic stuff and I am sure that more complex handling of metadata may be available to those more competent than I am.

In regard to your specific request, the total album duration is already displayed in Mosaic. Go to Play Queue view and it is shown at the top left above the track listing together with the total number of tracks e.g. 14 tracks . 55:32. However this will only work for you if a single album is queued at a time. If you have a play queue of , say, 3 albums then Mosaic will show a grand total of tracks and duration for all three.

Mosaic availability for the blind is now almost 100% I find it very comfortable to use it. But the more I use it, new needs and expectations for improvement emerge.
Reading the forum, I was able to reach many interesting features of Minimserver and configure it my way. I have alphabetical grouping set up, as well as displaying the album release date and sorting artist albums by release date in ascending order. MS also shows file formats and their parameters. What I didn’t find was just displaying the complete album time. I do not know if this functionality is provided by MS - I will ask in the MS forum.
I am using Mosaic 1.1.3. that is, the latest version available. Unfortunately, scrolling is still problematic for me. VoiceOver doesn’t find a place to scroll to the next screen. This difficulty is probably related to the VO. Even when I use the VO shortcut to scroll to another screen, it is not comfortable. I manage to jump over 3 sometimes 4 screens and the focus is on the corner of the screen. I will ask my wife where the scrolling is and maybe with her help she will be able to use it.

Just to clarify the scrolling in Mosaic does not scroll to a sequential screen. It enables continuous scrolling through the list of albums or, within this , through the track listing of a selected album.

I don’t know if this will help but the scroll bar starts in line with the text identifying the first track. It is positioned to the far right of the screen and is the last item displayed to the right. On an ipad it is a vertical grey line around 7mm high. If you engage it then it increases its width and can be dragged up or down moving the text and album artwork . I am guessing that the big difficulty for blind use is that you need to find the 7mm vertical line and then drag. I cannot imagine how that translates into an audible description using VoiceOver as even a small movement will scroll past several tracks.

This is the way to go. Most programs that display objects as a list have an item for scrolling through the list. Usually it is 10%. Of course, the number of scrolled objects varies, depending on the number of all elements. A difficulty in finding a scroll element in Mosaic may be due to the fact that VO does not recognize the scrolling element as a scroll element. This functionality is perfectly applied when scrolling a song. Perhaps the next version of Mosaic will improve something in this area.
Unfortunately, MinimServer does not have an option to display album duration. I found a thread on the MinimServer forum describing this.
Thanks a lot for your help and describing the location of the scroll bar to me. It’s really very nice of you.
Regards Robert Tota