Can I change the currently playing track from the command line?

[Maheriano]

I found a way to change the volume without installing any third party applications but now I'm trying to change to next track. For example in Banshee or Rhythmbox. How can I change the track inside the terminal?

[diesch]

Have a look at rhythmbox-client (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/rhythmbox-client.1.html)

[codemaniac]

I really like mplayer for its native bash scripting support .

You can do wonders with mplayer with some bash scripting knowledge .

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html

[andrew.46]

Mplayer can do this when using a playlist:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MPlayerTips#Tip_8:_Using_playlists

[roelforg]

Or vlc using either the web (in combination with links(2)), telnet, etc interface.

[Maheriano]

Thanks guys, I'm writing an Android application which will incorporate the ability to change the track/volume of a song already playing on your machine. So I'm looking for something which sends the command to the already playing application and I'm fairly certain most people don't use Mplayer and VLC for their music playback. Do they? I figured Banshee and Rhythmbox would be at the top so I'll incorporate those plus it looks like Rhythmbox at least has the ability to query the current track and display it on the handset.

If you come up with any other ideas with the new criteria please post it here, I'll add it and let you know where you can download it!

[doorknob60]

In Banshee:



austin@austin-desktop ~ % banshee --help-playback
Usage: banshee [options...] [files|URIs...]

Playback Control Options

--next Play the next track, optionally restarting if the
'restart' value is set

--previous Play the previous track, optionally restarting if
the 'restart' value is set

--restart-or-previous If the current song has been played longer than 4
seconds then restart it, otherwise the same as
--previous

--play-enqueued Automatically start playing any tracks enqueued on
the command line

--play Start playback
--pause Pause playback
--toggle-playing Toggle playback
--stop Completely stop playback
--stop-when-finished Enable or disable playback stopping after the
currently playing track (value should be either
'true' or 'false')

--set-volume=LEVEL Set the playback volume (0-100), prefix with +/-
for relative values

--set-position=POS Seek to a specific point (seconds, float)
--set-rating=RATING Set the currently played track's rating (0 to 5)

[roelforg]

Thanks guys, I'm writing an Android application which will incorporate the ability to change the track/volume of a song already playing on your machine. So I'm looking for something which sends the command to the already playing application and I'm fairly certain most people don't use Mplayer and VLC for their music playback. Do they? I figured Banshee and Rhythmbox would be at the top so I'll incorporate those plus it looks like Rhythmbox at least has the ability to query the current track and display it on the handset.

If you come up with any other ideas with the new criteria please post it here, I'll add it and let you know where you can download it!

Mplayer, dunno
VLC, Used very much. It's in the top 5 of players people use as an alternative to windows' crappy wmp, that counts for a lot of people. Same goes for linux. And VLC is very powerful: playlists, streaming (playing AND sourcing AND streaming (i remember how some versions even came with a build in streamingserver when compiled with the right switches and you used the right settings)), eq, huge array of configurations to tune your a and v in-/outputs, it uses the de-/encoding library ffmpeg uses (giving it a huge array of supported formats, no gstreamer that constantly needs plugins; vlc is even a framework on its own), fully embeddable, web/telnet/cli/dbus interface, the list goes on and on.

[hakermania]

An idea that will work with most applications, is to simulate the > (Next) key that most PCs have with a program that simulates keyboard input, but I haven't searched it a lot...

[diesch]

If you are into DBus programming you could try to use the Sound-Indicator interface to controll any app that uses the Sound Indicator.

[Maheriano]

How do I show a slider bar for how much of the song has elapsed? I'm trying to run
deemar@Olsen:~$ DISPLAY=:0 rhythmbox-client --print-playing-format=%td
but it doesn't return anything. Always blank. I was going to subtract the elapsed time from the track duration and do it that way. Is that wrong?

[Maheriano]

Does anyone know how to seek the current track in rhythmbox-client? I try the help which says there is a command:


deemar@Chugger:~$ rhythmbox-client --help
Usage:
rhythmbox-client [OPTION...]

Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options

Application Options:
--debug
--no-start Don't start a new instance of Rhythmbox
--quit Quit Rhythmbox
--check-running Check if Rhythmbox is already running
--no-present Don't present an existing Rhythmbox window
--next Jump to next song
--previous Jump to previous song
--seek Seek in current track
--play Resume playback if currently paused
--pause Pause playback if currently playing
--play-pause Toggle play/pause mode
--play-uri=URI to play Play a specified URI, importing it if necessary
--enqueue Add specified tracks to the play queue
--clear-queue Empty the play queue before adding new tracks
--print-playing Print the title and artist of the playing song
--print-playing-format Print formatted details of the song
--select-source=Source to select Select the source matching the specified URI
--activate-source=Source to activate Activate the source matching the specified URI
--play-source=Source to play from Play from the source matching the specified URI
--set-volume Set the playback volume
--volume-up Increase the playback volume
--volume-down Decrease the playback volume
--print-volume Print the current playback volume
--set-rating Set the rating of the current song



So I try to use it by typing:


deemar@Chugger:~$ DISPLAY=:0 rhythmbox-client --seek=34

and the track simply restarts.

So I try:


deemar@Chugger:~$ DISPLAY=:0 rhythmbox-client --seek=+34

using a plus sign and again it just restarts the track. I can't get it to seek at all, everything I try just causes the track to restart.

[__j__]

I can't get it to seek at all, everything I try just causes the track to restart.

I'm seeing the same thing. 'rhythmbox-client --seek (secs)' always sets the position of the current track to 0. This happens whether the track is playing or paused.

I took a (very) quick look at the Rhythmbox source. The --seek flag seems to use the "SetPosition" method implemented in rb-mpris-plugin.c. Looks like something may be awry with the relative position calculation. This is a bummer...it would be a really handy feature! May dig further to see what's up...

[__j__]

A little digging into the seek issue led to a more complete answer for the original poster's question:

All the major media players (Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, etc) implement a dbus interface that supports external control of expected functions: play/pause, previous/next, seek, etc. For Rhythmbox, 'rhythmbox-client' is a small, separate program that simply takes command line arguments (e.g. --next) and sends the corresponding commands to a running rhythmbox instance using this dbus interface. Very handy.

Of course, we can do the same thing rhythmbox-client does...which is good because 'rhythmbox-client --seek' has a bug: it sends a message to the wrong dbus method ("SetPosition" instead of "Seek"). And these take their arguments in microseconds, not seconds, so 'rhythmbox-client --seek 10' is moving (when it should be seeking) to 10 microseconds into the track, which sounds rather like the beginning. :)

Where rhythmbox-client works for you, just use that. Where it doesn't (e.g. --seek), just make the right dbus call in your favorite scripting language, and call that script. Here are some shell examples:


# seek forward 10 sec
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.rhythmbox /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Seek int64:10000000

# skip to next track
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.rhythmbox /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Next

# toggle play/pause state
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.rhythmbox /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause

A bit too verbose for routine command line use, so just pop them into conveniently named scripts, and away you go! The list of commands can be found here:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/mpris-spec/2.0/Player_Node.html.