Have been working on a music plugin for my own use and thought why not post it so anyone can use it if they wish too
I made it so it would play music in a way I like to listen to it. But I'm very interested in adding features if thats what people want. Also if you find a bug or have a problem please post and I will do my best to help.
Current features
Play all by a particular artist
Play whole album
Shuffle play of artist or album
Global party shuffle (like iTunes)
Copy to external drive (I use this to copy music to a SE K750 but should work for any MP3 player that acts as an external drive
Album art (folder.jpg)
Skin.xml for the default blue skin
...
Note
As I'm an iTunes user my MP3s are stored by Artist\Album\Title and this is how AMP works. AMP DOES NOT READ ID3 TAGS, it only works with this directory structure (sorry).
AMP has 2 config options; MusicPath (root of your music files eg "c:\My Music") and PlayerPath (optional-path to an external MP3 player eg "D:\audio").
I have noticed tat mpeg 4 is becoming a very well known format. Mpeg4 playback support and an auto-convert to mpeg 4 would be very useful as it is a much smaller file size while still retaining great quality.
I've been working on a music player plugin for my own use. But I thought why not post it on here so other people can use it if they wish to.
My question is, what is the best way to post it. Is it ok just to post a zip with the dll and skin files. It uses the common dialogs from the example plugin, shall I include those also?
Can't remember exactly what happens in this scenario when watching on a PC. On the MVP however, when you're watching live TV and it gets to the point that the tuner is required for a scheduled recording on another channel, the whole process is rather messy. I get about half a second of video and audio repeated over and over, causing me to wonder what on earth is going on. Only when I press Back/Exit and return to the main menu do I realise that the tuner is now required for recording.
Could this be made more graceful? E.g., just switching back to the main menu (possibly with a message explaining what's happened, also possibly with an option to cancel the scheduled recording and continue watching live TV)?
Also, it would be nice to have an option to flash up a warning message, say 60 seconds before this was due to happen, again possibly giving you the option to cancel the recording and continue watching live TV?
As an aside to this, last night when this happened (I have two tuners), I immediately cancelled one of the recordings, and then tried to go back to what I was watching before. When I selected the programme, I got the error message inviting me to either cancel the other recording, or not watch live TV - the fact that I had already cancelled one recording (and could therefore use one of the tuners) had obviously not registered with this component. Only when I put the MVP into standby and out again could I resume the programme I was watching.
I currently use ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AIW (128 MB)'s MultiMedia Center (MMC) v9.03.1 in Windows XP
Pro. SP2 (all updates; NTFS). I like the features in this software, but its software is buggy
(crashes once in a while). I am looking for alternative softwares. I have questions about Media
Portal:
1. Can I still install and use the other program without uninstalling MMC for testing?
2. Can the program record closed captions (CC) with the video recordings and into a text file
(log)? I find this feature useful.
3. When I use the program's scheduler to record automatically, does it record with the timeshift
Live TV? Basically, can I record a TV show for an hour, watch the beginning of the recording
when 30 minutes of recording has been made and still recording, etc.? MMC doesn't let me do
this. I have to use its TV-on-Demand manually (no scheduler) and I have to be at the computer to
start it.
4. Does the program use analog input for audio? Basically, analog is useful for console games
and watching TV with my computer speakers hooked up to my computer for audio. The latest ATI
Catalyst drivers started using digital audio which others and I were upset. I stuck with
Catalyst v5.2 driver. Sometimes, I watch TV without recording on both my TV (not via video out)
and computer. I leave the TV audio muted, but use my computer speakers (nice Klipsch Promedia
speakers) for audio. I do not want the audio to be desnched with the TV's video. Hence, why I
need analog audio and not digital. See http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33818453 for
details.
5. When using timeshift Live TV feature, can this be outputted to a TV (secondary screen) via
AIW's video out? I use this a lot in MMC. I tend to watch my recordings on TV instead of CRT, but its audio from my sound card via good speakers.
6. Does the program lower the line input volume when recording? MMC does. Others and I could not
figure out why this happens. It happend with SB Live! (former card) and Audigy2 ZS sound card
with the newest drivers. The recordings always had low audio volume.
7. Can I still record (scheduled) when a screen saver is running and monitor is asleep (power
saving)?
hey i want a few people to check this out, it attempts to fix the little issues in 3.0.0.0
i added
- PIN numbers (for folders/drives etc, not images or webimages, and not on delete yet)
- MasterPlaylist, which will start playing when ever you enter slideshow/random (if set)
- can reconfigure the popup menu (so can remove "delete" if you dont want it)
fixed
- a few bugs, forgotten which.
- includes the OnscreenKeyboard and Keypad skin folders for the blue skin (the ones used in the latest my vids plugin, i hope they work.....)
i cant remember if i changed any other parts of the skin, i hope i didnt (memory starts to go in your old age).
and no nothing new on the MVP front (so dont ask).
