iTunes plugin for GBPVR

[acheyne]

After some initial tests, I was able to get a very simple iTunes controller plugin working with GBPVR. It's very rudimentary, but it's given me all the information I need to start building a full-fledged plugin. I'm posting here for a couple of reasons:

1. There already seem to be several Music-related plugins. None of them really suit my needs - the main reason being that I chose iTunes as my "music management app" a while ago. iTunes is always running on my wife's PC with the Sharing option turned on, so I can access our music collection from any of the other PC's in the house. I know I could do similar things with network shares, but this is such a nice, slick, simple way to do it. All the management of the music takes place at one PC and I can access it pretty much anywhere. Having said all of that, am I missing something in the existing music plugins that would allow me to access my iTunes library easily?

2. I'm wondering about the best way to go about developing the plugin. A couple of questions pop to mind:
- Should it be a standalone plugin or should I attempt to build this so it can be integrated with one of the existing music plugins so it's not "YAMP" (Yet Another Music Plugin).
- Are there others interested in helping me build this? I'm considering hosting this on SourceForge to get some help. Specifically, in the GUI area. I had been hoping to use the widget library to get up and limping, but I'm not sure its in a usable state yet? I'm more interested in getting the integration with iTunes down than GUI development anyway, so help in that area had been great.

3. iTunes has a lot of features. What ones are people most interested in? Release 1 will provide the ability to play music from the various sources, including shared music libraries, but there are other features there that it would be really interesting to try and expose, like:
- Video (or is it worth it?)
- The Music Store! This one has a lot of interest to me. It'd be nice to be able to sit on my couch and order music through my TV. I'm into lazy, instant gratification.
- Podcast subscriptions.

Cheers,
Andrew

PS: I'm hoping to have a preview release ready at some point over the Christmas holidays. Expect it to be fugly but functional.

[jfox95]

sounds good

[Schwin97]

Haven't done much C# programming, but would love to help out with an ITunes interface. I personally believe is should be totally separated because I think it could be more than just music. ITunes and ipods now can handle pictures and video as well as music, so the plugin should at some point have the ability to load pictures and songs into itunes.

If you would like help, let me know and I can see what I can do...

Thanks in advance - this sounds like a great idea and I would love to help out.

Schwin97

[saintalan]

I have been using My Music for a year now, so it depends on what you mean by an iTunes Plug in. For me, My Music works fine.

Try just making your iTunes & MyMusic directories the same and you have an MVP interface, with Album art etc.

nothing is perfect but through these forums reven has gone a long way to ensure compatability.

myMusic 3 is now available for Beta testing and should be out released soon.

I am all for new plug ins etc and have thought about it myself but consider MyMusic so close to fulfilling my needs. Of course it depends on what you are trying to achieve. I assume to complement your PC access you would like to access your iTunes songs thru your MVP/TV?

If you have tried it and are unsure about certain aspects maybe I can help.

Cheers

Alan

[Crispy]

This is something I'd love to see implemented. I use iTunes to manage my music, and using a folder based music browser is just painful in comparison.

iTunes stores all the information about my music in "iTunes Music Library.xml" which should be very easy to parse. A typical entry reads:

Code:

<key>1433</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Track ID</key><integer>1433</integer>
            <key>Name</key><string>Bad</string>
            <key>Artist</key><string>Michael Jackson</string>
            <key>Composer</key><string>Michael Jackson</string>
            <key>Album</key><string>History CD1</string>
            <key>Genre</key><string>Pop</string>
            <key>Kind</key><string>MPEG audio file</string>
            <key>Size</key><integer>5924866</integer>
            <key>Total Time</key><integer>246778</integer>
            <key>Track Number</key><integer>6</integer>
            <key>Year</key><integer>1995</integer>
            <key>Date Modified</key><date>2004-11-17T22:37:04Z</date>
            <key>Date Added</key><date>2004-12-22T13:10:40Z</date>
            <key>Bit Rate</key><integer>192</integer>
            <key>Sample Rate</key><integer>44100</integer>
            <key>Play Count</key><integer>4</integer>
            <key>Play Date</key><integer>-1080634158</integer>
            <key>Play Date UTC</key><date>2005-11-08T22:18:58Z</date>
            <key>Rating</key><integer>80</integer>
            <key>Season</key><integer>0</integer>
            <key>Persistent ID</key><string>BFCDA7FDE33EF7C3</string>
            <key>Track Type</key><string>File</string>
            <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/E:/mp3%20music/Michael%20Jackson/History%20CD1/06%20Bad.mp3</string>
            <key>File Folder Count</key><integer>4</integer>
            <key>Library Folder Count</key><integer>1</integer>
        </dict>

Of course, not all that data has to be handled - no need to display Kind or Size. The interface would have to very carefully designed, I think. I love the flexibility that iTunes gives you when selecting music to play - some easy way of selecting genre, artist and album would be essential. I think the existing iTunes layout could be used. Left + Right to select list, Up + Down to navigate. Hitting select should take you to the track list below, where you can pick a track to start from.

[acheyne]

My appologies for seeming to disappear on this one. The holidays and work got me really busy and away from the PVR. And then I had to reinstall it because I'd messed some stuff up with a new hard drive. In any case, I'm back and will be starting to look at the iTunes plugin again. The biggest area I'll need help with initially is GUI design. I'm open to ideas.

To the person who posted about the XML file. I plan on skipping that and using iTunes exported COM interface which is really nice. I put together a demo plugin that can do some minor things (without much of a GUI) really quickly.

I know there was a project that was supposed to be creating a standard set of GUI widgets.. where is that at?

Cheers,
Andrew

[jmontana]

Is this plugin dead? I just found out about it, and it sounds like a great idea. I'm a C# developer, so I'd be happy to help out. I would love to see video playback.

Did another plugin take its place?

[idkpmiller]

Is this plugin dead? I just found out about it, and it sounds like a great idea. I'm a C# developer, so I'd be happy to help out. I would love to see video playback.

Did another plugin take its place?

I think the plugin never materilised, but I willing to proven wrong.

I have been pondering on RSS feeds that support Video enclosures for a couple of weeks. This would in theory could also support iTunes (although I personally am not interested in that side of it) we could explore the potential for working together on this together and combine our efforts.
Beware I am not a developer although I am the author of GameZone (GBPVR plugin) I wrote it in Vb.net and not c#, I can read most c# and get the gist of what has been done but not program natively in it. That may not be a big stumbling block as sharp develop can translate pretty reliably between the VB and c#

Any thoughts on this?

[jmontana]

I think the plugin never materilised, but I willing to proven wrong.

I have been pondering on RSS feeds that support Video enclosures for a couple of weeks.

This is just a guess, but isn't that what the YouTube plugin does? If so, I wonder if there would be a way to extend that plugin so it can handle any RSS feed.

This would in theory could also support iTunes (although I personally am not interested in that side of it) we could explore the potential for working together on this together and combine our efforts.
Beware I am not a developer although I am the author of GameZone (GBPVR plugin) I wrote it in Vb.net and not c#, I can read most c# and get the gist of what has been done but not program natively in it. That may not be a big stumbling block as sharp develop can translate pretty reliably between the VB and c#

Any thoughts on this?

I'm really more interested in something that would work as a front-end to iTunes. The text in iTunes is so tiny, it's totally illegible on my TV. The iTunes COM interface is actually very easy to use, and I've already put together a stand-alone app as proof-of-concept that lets me navigate the iTunes library in similar fashion to an iPod menu.

How would an RSS feed with video enclosures work with iTunes?

I'm comfortable in VB.NET as well as C#.

[acheyne]

Hey guys - sorry, I haven't been on the site for a while. As the original plugin author, I would classify the plugin as dead; I just don't have the time to get it working properly. I was using the COM interface and had a basic GBPVR plugin working that used the iTunes COM interface to play music. It was very basic.

I had been thinking about the video playback as well. The COM interface to iTunes hasn't been updated in quite a while so it doesn't have any interfaces in it to playback video stored in iTunes. I had been thinking of an approach that would use a combination of the iTunes API and the QuickTime API. ie: use the iTunes API to try and identify assets in the library as movies, and then use the QuickTime API to actually play them back.

As for the reason why it died - I write software all day at work and just don't have the energy to even think about writing code in the evenings. I'd be interested in seeing if I could hack together something that does the video playback and contributing that to someone for inclusion, but I'm not interested in being the primary author anymore.

Cheers,
Andrew