EMMS --- The Emacs Multi-Media System -*-outline-*- ===================================== * Introduction, Overview ======================== EMMS is the Emacs Multi-Media System. It tries to be a clean and small application to play multimedia files from Emacs using external players. Many of its ideas are derived from MpthreePlayer (http://www.nongnu.org/mp3player), but it tries to be more general and more clean. The basic functionality of Emms consists of three parts: The core, the sources, and the players. The core resides in `emms.el', and provides a simple playlist and the basic functionality to use all the other features of Emms. It provides the common user commands and interfaces for other parts. It thinks in tracks, where a track is the combination of a type and a name--e.g., the track type 'file has a name that is the file name. Other track types are possible. To get to tracks, the core needs sources. The file `emms-source-file.el' provides simple sources to interact with the file system. When Emms finally has the sources in the playlist, it needs a player to play them. `emms-player-simple.el' defines a few useful players, and allows you to define your own in a very simple way. The way Emms works is easy to customize with your own code or by using `M-x customize RET'. * Installation ============== You need to put all the .el files of EMMS in a directory in your load-path. For example, if you put all those files into ~/elisp/emms/, then in your ~/.emacs you should do: (add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp/emms/") For information about compiling Emms into byte-code see the ``Compiling Emms'' section in the Emms manual. ** Setup -------- After adding the location of the Emms code to the load-path variable, we invoke the following using the `emms-setup' feature which allows for quick and simple Emms setup. (require 'emms-setup) (emms-standard) (emms-default-players) After which Emms is set up and ready to go! For more information about different setup levels and features see the ``Simple Setup'' section of the Emms manual. ** Usage -------- The basic functionality of EMMS is just to play music without being noticed. It provides a few commands to skip the current track and such, but otherwise, it doesn't show up. EMMS provides the following basic user commands (that you might want to bind to keys): emms-start ...... Start playing the current playlist emms-stop ....... Stop playing emms-next ....... Go to the next track in the playlist emms-previous ... Go to the previous track in the playlist emms-shuffle .... Shuffle the playlist emms-show ....... What is playing? But before you can use these, you need a playlist to start with. The following commands allow you to create a playlist from different sources: emms-play-file ............. Play a single file emms-play-directory ........ Play a whole directory emms-play-directory-tree ... Play a directory tree * The Interactive Playlist buffer ================================= Emms provides a visual, interactive playlist mode as well as the ability to use playlists without ever looking at them. This visual, interactive mode is called the `emms-playlist-mode' and is defined in `emms-playlist-mode.el'. To use the interactive playlist invoke: `M-x emms-playlist-mode-go RET' When in the interactive playlist mode we can perform different actions on the current playlist. Here are some basic commands: `n'....Start playing the next track in the playlist. `p'....Start playing the previous track in the playlist. `s'....Stop playing. `f'....Describe the currently playing track in the minibuffer. `c'....Display the current track in the center of the screen. `RET'..Start playing the track under point. Note that this is also available with `Mouse-2'. `q'....Put the interactive playlist buffer at the end of the list of all buffers (i.e., bury it). As always, for more commands see the mode documentation and the ``Interactive Playlists'' section of the Emms manual. * Bare Bones Setup ================== The following code fragment provides a minimal EMMS setup without using the layer of `emms-default'. It can maybe be used to better understand the internals of EMMS. You can see how EMMS needs to know about players (these are defined in `emms-player-simple') and about sources for tracks (trivial file system based sources, such as this `emms-directory-tree', are defined in `emms-source-file'). (require 'emms-player-simple) (require 'emms-source-file) (require 'emms-source-playlist) (setq emms-player-list '(emms-player-mpg321 emms-player-ogg123 emms-player-mplayer)) * Advanced configuration ======================== ** Seeking ---------- In most multimedia players, you can seek forward or backward in a track. EMMS supports this too. If you're using mplayer, check that `emms-player-mplayer-parameters' contains ``slave''. If you're using mpg321, there is a module called emms-player-mpg321-remote.el. To use it, simply add the following lines to your configuration: (require 'emms-player-mpg321-remote) (push 'emms-player-mpg321-remote emms-player-list) Finally, if you are using mpd, no special config is needed. Seeking works through the following functions: `emms-seek' which takes a negative or positive amount of seconds. `emms-seek-forward' which seeks ten seconds forward. `emms-seek-backward' which seeks ten seconds backward. * Using libtag for reading tags =============================== There is a way to read tags using Libtag as your backend for emms-info. However, since it requires a binary file (source code provided with EMMS), it isn't enabled by default. To compile it, type ``make emms-print-metadata''. To install it, either put emms-print-metadata in your $PATH, or add EMMS' directory to Emacs' exec-path. Since libtag overwrites most of the usual methods for providing info, it's best to keep it as the only function in `emms-info-functions'. Here's a way to do so: (require 'emms-info-libtag) (setq emms-info-functions '(emms-info-libtag)) * EMMS, Emms, emms, or what? ============================ In various contexts, this program is called EMMS, Emms or emms. Those are all correct, and which one you use is a matter of personal preference. EMMS highlights the acronym character of the name. Emms is akin to Emacs and Gnus, ignoring that Emms is pronounced ee-em-em-es, and not a single name. emms is highlighting that emms is a case-sensitive file name and Emacs Lisp command. * Getting help ============== Emms has a mailing list at emms-help@gnu.org. To subscribe to it, visit http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emms-help. If you are familiar with the Gmane service, there is a Gmane newsgroup which mirrors this mailing address at gmane.emacs.emms.user. Emms also has a website at . * License ========= EMMS is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please see the file COPYING for details.