Send message params for Window Media Player.

[jryan1776]

I found and have tested a few send message codes for windows media player (List of params). I'm using it in basic fashion to allow us to quickly open WMP and to allow us to use the remote for indexing through songs.

I used execute to launch wmplayer.exe and goto a background screen with the following events linked.

Play/Pause: ("WMPayerApp",793,0,917504)
Stop: ("WMPayerApp",793,0,851968)
Back: ("WMPayerApp",793,0,786432)
Next: ("WMPayerApp",793,0,720896)

I used the kill process command to close WMP and go back to the main menu.

Now if I could find a way to launch wmplayer and play all songs and/or open directly into the now playing/visualizations screen, I'd be very happy...

[S Pittaway]

i am just curious, how come you dont just use foobar or winamp?

winamp works very well and it is easy to integrte the visulisations within xlobby...

i also have to say that milkdrop (the winamp vis) is of a far higher quality than the one in media player x...

[jryan1776]

i guess for me it's really just hard to change... i already maintain media player and music match (for the super tagging ability), and i (we) just weren't ready for another learning curve...

we've never really taken the time to make play lists and such. when we want to listen to music, we generally just open media player and play all songs. as songs come up that we don't care to listen to, we use the air mouse to forward through it. now we can use the remote and not hassle with the air mouse.

a few months ago when i first started with xlobby, i installed winamp. i didn't like the available skins and some other things (don't recall now) bothered me, so i just reverted back to media player. i'm sure that i didn't give it much of a chance.

as i've bounced around on the web, i found that there are a lot of people that feel the same way. there are many open ended threads (across seveal forums) with people looking to remote control WMP. there were only a small handful with solutions, so i figured i post what i found to help...

i'm glad that you replied with the question though, it's inspired me to give winamp another go around. is there a particular skin that you recommend?

[dalanik]

it's inspired me to give winamp another go around. is there a particular skin that you recommend?

Why would you need any skins for winamp if you use it through XLobby? It is never visible (except if you want to use visualizations)???

D.

[jryan1776]

from the limited amount of skins that i've used for xlobby, i found that the music interfaces were pretty rough... i don't have playlists setup and usually play all or play all of a genre and skip past songs i don't want to hear. even with the new sagetv music screen which allows several levels of grouping, my system won't let me use "play now" for my full library (~2000 songs)...

in the next few days, i'll try digging into the music inferface for xlobbymc. maybe with a little tweaking, i can format the music page to better suit what i want.

[S Pittaway]

not sure why you would have had any problems...

i do the same (and i guess a lot of others do as well?) i when xlobby starts up i file off an event which adds all of the tracks in my music database (then ramomises the generated playlst).

Then i simply skip tracks i dont like....

The generated playlist has arround 12000 tracks in it and it works without any problems... i class 2/3000 has quite small


controls in xlobby?

you only need next,prev, play, pause, stop, skip? and maybe the progress bar? all are easy to add if not already on the skin you use.

Personally, i use a remote to control it, so it does not feel any differant that a (very flash) cd changer.



edit: the command to build a playlist containing all of your tracks is simple-

Code: Select all

  <event>
    <name>play all random</name>
    <commands>
      <command>
        <type>music</type>
        <execute>clear playlist</execute>
      </command>
      <command>
        <type>category</type>
        <execute>add all</execute>
        <parameter>music</parameter>
      </command>
    </commands>
  </event>


[Naylia]

You know, that never occurred to me to use "add all"...I feel like an idiot. Definitely have to add that to my skin this weekend.

[jryan1776]

thanks for the replies. i'm trying to doctor up the music screen to make it more in tune with how i surf... i think that i'll start a new topic on sorting the music database by artist/genre/song/etc...

[Naylia]

if you look around a little, i think at one point someone had done an iTunes/multi-column type of sorting if that's what you're looking for...no clue where it is though

[S Pittaway]

Its easy, heres another snip from my playlist group

Code: Select all

 <event>
    <name>sort by ??????</name>
    <multithreaded>False</multithreaded>
    <commands>
      <command>
        <type>xlobby</type>
        <execute>close overlay</execute>
      </command>
      <command>
        <type>category</type>
        <execute>set sort order</execute>
        <parameter>playlist</parameter>
        <parameter>??????</parameter>
      </command>
    </commands>
  </event>


you just replace ?????? by whatever you are interested in -

artist = artistname:tracknumber:trackname
genre = genre:= albumname:tracknumber:trackname
albums = albumname:tracknumber:trackname

So you can map buttons onto these events to swap them arround...



I knocked a plugin up over xmas to add some extras to the music database - it adds albumname.sort, artistname.sort ('the name' is stored as 'name, the') and adds the album.artist/album.artist.sort to each track.

Whenever a track is played it automatically updates a lastplayed tag (time string, sortable number and the no times played) you can also set a rating (* to *****) for the playing track.

The last thing that it does is "shuffle" the playlist by writing a "shuffle.pos" field into each track, this factors in the tracks lastplayed time/ratings to try and ensure that all of the songs are played eventually (for some reason the shuffle in xlobby always used to play ac-dc for some reason!!)

You can then sort the playlist on shuffle.pos and its ramomised but you can see whats being played next ect...


Using these the sorts i have on the playlist are
random = shuffle.pos
artist = artist.sort:albumname.sort:tracknumber:trackname:trackfilename
album = album.artist.sort:albumname.sort:tracknumber:artist.sort:trackname:trackfilename
rating = stars:shuffle.pos
last played = last.played:shuffle.pos


I will probably get someone to host the plugin at some point (i guess it would suit the way you listen to music as well?), but the info on playlist sorting should help you out.

[Naylia]

If you write up the draft of your opening thread post for the plugin and email me that description, a photo and the plugin, I can create one of the threads that links to the plugin page.