Common Music/Video Inset?

[reven]

i was wondering if there is a common inset used between plugins to display the current playing music track etc?

if not anyone interested in creating one (ill do it if theres enough interest).

basically i want it to do/be
- open source
- for music, show album art, artist, album, song, composer, duration, playback position, playstate (pause, play, fastforward (if possibe)).
- for video (not sure if video insets still work in PVRX2, if not this would be future development when/if sub adds it), video inset, title, subtitle, duration, playback position, playstate, is currently recording
- if nothing is playing, just show helpful popup information like things currently recording, how much room left for recordings (in hours/minutes or diskspace), weather? (this would make it dependent on the weather plugin, so dont really want to do it that way... maybe a plugin architecture to do this)
- common skin, the skin would be under Skins2\CommonInset(or whatever its called)\skin.xml, then the inset will appear in the exact same position no matter what plugin you're using (i don't want it bouncing all over the screen)

for plugins to use it, just reference the dll, and add it in the render method.

thoughts/comments/already done?

[psycik]

Where is this to be displayed??

There's the MLPanel taken over by actcms and jaggy that displays album art etc. But these display as a screen saver.

Panels haven't yet made a return (I don't think) if that's what you are after.

[reven]

i was thinking along the lines of this


so bottom left of the screen by default, but skinner could obviously place it anywhere they want.

i basically had this in my plugins back in day, but was hoping to have it more community based and available in every plugin that supported it (and make it extremely easy to support it)

[JavaWiz]

So is the idea that the getRenderList() method would call a function in this DLL to return the objects associated with the currently playing item?

The plugin developer would only have to include this call, and the appropriate skin definitions to take advantage of the feature. Right?

[reven]

So is the idea that the getRenderList() method would call a function in this DLL to return the objects associated with the currently playing item?

The plugin developer would only have to include this call, and the appropriate skin definitions to take advantage of the feature. Right?

i was thinking along the lines of this

Code:

ArrayList RenderList = new ArrayList();
// plugins own rendering code
// at the very end
InformationInset.Render(RenderList);

so just pass a reference to the arraylist you're already using.

and that should probably be the only call needed, the skin will be handled automatically in the InformationInset class. and making a static call will then only require the reference, and the call to render in each plugins getRenderList() method.

so extremely easy for a plugin to use it.

[JavaWiz]

I think this is a great idea for a piece of common functionality. I have kind of stalled on setting up an open source project for much of my code due to work and personal commitments.

I hope to get it started soon though and I think this functionality would be a welcome addition to the tools.

[reven]

ok sounds like it doesnt already exist. ill start working on it parallel to my videos, i welcome any suggestions etc. ill shove the code up and make it available through svn, probably on SF or CodePlex (havent used either so any suggestions?)

[Fatman_do]

Where is this to be displayed??

There's the MLPanel taken over by actcms and jaggy that displays album art etc. But these display as a screen saver.

Panels haven't yet made a return (I don't think) if that's what you are after.

I may not be thinking the same thing as what you are talking about, but you will find a \Panels folder under Blue and the CommunitySkin, possibly in others as well. They then are defined in the main menu's skin.xml file.

[psycik]

I may not be thinking the same thing as what you are talking about, but you will find a \Panels folder under Blue and the CommunitySkin, possibly in others as well. They then are defined in the main menu's skin.xml file.

Very likely, I never looked in to panels and I didn't really need them..

And it sounds like that was different to what reven was discussing anyway..

[JavaWiz]

ok sounds like it doesnt already exist. ill start working on it parallel to my videos, i welcome any suggestions etc. ill shove the code up and make it available through svn, probably on SF or CodePlex (havent used either so any suggestions?)

I have been looking at both of those hosting sites as well as google code. Seems like SourceForge is the most versatile. My stumbling block so far has been determining which open source license makes the most sense. There has been a discussion going on in this thread about which path to take...