MLPanel Beta

[ACTCMS]

MLPanel Beta is now available for download.

It's an alternative to the Standard Screensaver which displays album art and stuff when you are using pvrx2 for music playback.

To install, simply download and unzip into your GBPVR folder. Have a look at the readme.txt file in the Plugins/MLPanel folder for more details.

It has been developed and tested with pvrx2 1.2.9 Music Library and Music Library2 7.2, but it may work with previous versions.

A bit of background... I found GBPVR about a year ago and loved ML2Panel (I listen to music a lot), so I pestered Psycik to release the source code to me and eventually I wore him down - I also use Jaggy's Blue_Retro_SHV skin, so I asked him to be an early tester (with a view to getting a B-R-SHV skin ) - he offered to do all the skinnning, so...

Thanks to Psycik for the basic source and the use of his Interfaces.dll - Jaggy for the skins and his testing and suggestions - all the other Alpha testers for their input.

Please post any comments, suggestions or details of any "Undocumented Features" on the MLPanel Beta Support Thread.

[Jaggy]

We (ACTCMS & I) are just going through a bit of rationalising of MLPanel & have a few questions, so if those of you that use/have tried the alpha/beta out could please give us some of your time to answer a few questions we would appreciate it.

We currently have a new pre-release that the 'wives' (yeah both of them) decided to get involved in & so it should have HEAPS of WAF with it <grin> ACTCMS said in one of his emails Quote "on a scale of 1 to 10 I’m getting a WAF of 250+" so it should be something to look out for in the future It also has quite few new features mainly "concerning photo slide shows" that are not in the current beta version so don't give up on us yet.

If you have tried it out & are no longer using it could you please tell us why you dropped it?

I am just about to clean up some of the views in the skin(s) so could you let me know Which view(s) are you using both PlayingNow & NotPlaying & which you will never use.

Please post your replies in this thread http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=35406

Please let us know if you (or the wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend) have any requests/features you/they would like to see.

[mvallevand]

I stopped using it mainly because of complications trying to test ML2 and now ML3. If you use the new 8.0 interfaces.dll things might be a lot better.

Because of changes coming with the NMT I think i can make better use of MLPanel too since mvpmcx2 will notify GBPVR as it moves between songs and I can overlay images.

Finally the possibility of doing a photo slide show with music is very interesting. This is the one function that GBPVR can't do on the NMT that other streamers can. The logic is different but it can be done if you are interested.

Martin

[ACTCMS]

I stopped using it mainly because of complications trying to test ML2 and now ML3. If you use the new 8.0 interfaces.dll things might be a lot better.

Because of changes coming with the NMT I think i can make better use of MLPanel too since mvpmcx2 will notify GBPVR as it moves between songs and I can overlay images.

Finally the possibility of doing a photo slide show with music is very interesting. This is the one function that GBPVR can't do on the NMT that other streamers can. The logic is different but it can be done if you are interested.

Martin

Yep, the shared use of Interfaces.dll between ML2/ML3/MLpanel is a problem which I'm discussing with Psycik...

We have the photo stuff working just about how we want it thru the MVP (that's what we use), but it would be great if it worked on the NMT too... so any input would be welcome.

Alex

[mvallevand]

If you output the entire screen to a jpeg or png as discussed in this thread http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=36945 mvpmcx2 will be able to output this image while audio is playing and when songs change or on a timed interval.

Sub is still going to need to help since right now it just seems to loop on the first song (mvpmcx2 might need to send some more things too) and the gbpvr web server can't serve jpg's or png's.

Martin

[ACTCMS]

Martin

I'll have a play about with this...

I assume that I will need to create a jpg or png in addition to doing the normal screen render when I detect an MVP client - since pvrx2 doesn't differentiate between MVP and NMT.

Alex

[mvallevand]

This is how I get the type, there probably is a better way

Code:

private string clientType;

            String checkPCH = "/settings/MVPSpecificSettings/MAC-" + PluginHelperFactory.getPluginHelper().GetClientIdentifier().Substring(4) + "/MVPClientType";
            XmlDocument settingsDocument = PluginHelperFactory.getPluginHelper().GetConfiguration();
            XmlNode node = settingsDocument.SelectSingleNode(checkPCH);
            
            if (node != null)
            {
               // Can be PCH or something else
                clientType = node.InnerText;
            }
            else
            {
                clientType = "NotSet";
            }
            return clientType;

Martin

[ACTCMS]

If you output the entire screen to a jpeg or png as discussed in this thread http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=36945 mvpmcx2 will be able to output this image while audio is playing and when songs change or on a timed interval.

Martin, in that thread, sub's code sample suggests saving the images in the local user's temp folder

compositeRendering.Save(Path.GetTempPath() + "\\pch.jpg");

Is there a more convenient location and/or name to save them under?

Alex

[psycik]

I remember, mvallevand asking if they could go to the tv cache directory..

[ACTCMS]

I remember, mvallevand asking if they could go to the tv cache directory..

Would that be the Live TV Buffer Directory as specified in the Directories tab in config?