Qt-Music-Player/README.md

# 📻 How to Use Music Player

<img src="resources/screenshots/Overview.png" width="60%">

## 🕹️ Controls

**Listen to Album** - Just click a cover and a player should open to track 1 <br>
**Play/Pause** - To play or pause the music just click on the record in the Now Playing window <br>
**Volume** - To raise or lower the volume jest drag the slider under the song duration. Left is lower, right is higher <br>
**Switch Songs** - To jump/ahead or go back to another track use the song list in the Now Playing screen <br>

# ⚙️ Startup & Adding Music

## 🚀 1. Starting the Program & First Screen

When a user first starts the program they'll see a blank screen with nothing in it like the following:

<img src="resources/screenshots/Startup.png" width="40%">

This is because the user has no uploaded music inside of the player.

## 📦 2. Setting Up a Music Directory

### 🗃️ 2a. Create a Directory to Hold Album Files

In order to add music to the player the user must first create a folder that will act as an album/playlist with a specific naming convention. This is done to correctly categorize/sort playlists by artist and to keep audio files isolated to their correct place.

`[ARTIST_NAME]/[ALBUM_NAME]/`

> [!TIP]
> For example, if you wanted to upload "Dark Side of the Moon" by "Pink Floyd" you would create a folder called `/Pink Floyd` and inside it create another folder called `Dark Side of the Moon`. It will be inside `/Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon` that all of the audio and image (for album cover) files will reside for the album.

### 💿 2b. Setting Up the Album Folder

For each album folder their two specific file types it needs:

The first is `Artwork.jpg` (`.jpeg` & `.png` also work), which is an image file that the player will set to be the albums cover. If this file is missing no cover artwork will be set.

The second type it needs and you may add as many as needed are `.mp3` and `.flac`, which are both audio file types. These files represent the songs in the playlist and should be named with the following convention to ensure the correct ordering:

`01. [SONG_NAME]` --> `02. [NEXT_SONG]` --> ...

> [!NOTE]
> The player will automatically remove the numbering from the front of the audio files using regex.

> [!TIP]
> For example, Dark Side of the Moon has the following song list:
>
> ```


### 🔈 3. Adding the Album to the Music Player