Plugin: Tag parser & media player for DRM Windows Media

[GKusnick]

As I recall, I went to 1.5 for development because there were some functions I needed that weren't in 1.4. At the time 1.5 was the recommended platform so that's what I went with.

Now it might be possible for me to back off my dev platform to 1.4, figure out what's missing, find workarounds for it, etc., but I was rather hoping that wouldn't be necessary if a reliable 1.6 came along fairly soon.

Source code is included with the plugin, so if someone else wants to explore the 1.4 option, they're welcome to do so. For me, 1.5 continues to work reliably enough on my systems, so I'm somewhat reluctant at this point to put much effort into workaround code that won't be needed under 1.6.

[cmaffia]

I am glad I found this little gem!!!
I had no idea there was a simple and easy way to implement Audio CD playing within SageTV, something that was so obviously omitted for no apparent reason from the Sage's core! Excellent implementation! I showed my wife this tonight and she was impressed. I also was surprised that the "Play DVD" selection kicked off this plugin so I just renamed the option using the Dynamic Customization Menu system to "Play DVD/CD". No need to waste another line item on the menu. Great work!!!

[cmaffia]

Maybe I missed something in the setup, is there a way like in the Windows Media Player, that the album art is displayed automatically? I see the box in Sage but it says "No Art Available" when I know there is and it shows in WMP.
Is this something this plugin can do?

[cmaffia]

Hmmm Found this weird issue.

Directions say the following

When the selected track finishes, playback will continue with the next track on the disc as long as the Music CD menu or OSD screen is displayed. (If you navigate away from the Music CD or OSD screens, playback will stop at the end of the currently playing track.)

However after any track off the CD that is chosen, instead of playing the next track on the CD.. it seems to play the next MP3 in my MP3 library .....alphabetically. any ideas??

EDIT: Also noticed that I no longer have OSD as on option on the left side of the Music CD menu

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by cmaffia

I also was surprised that the "Play DVD" selection kicked off this plugin so I just renamed the option using the Dynamic Customization Menu system to "Play DVD/CD". No need to waste another line item on the menu.

If you used the standard STV, it would have renamed that menu item automatically on import. With Nielm's dynamic menus or any other custom STV or STVI that rearranges menus, all bets are off.

Originally Posted by cmaffia

Maybe I missed something in the setup, is there a way like in the Windows Media Player, that the album art is displayed automatically? I see the box in Sage but it says "No Art Available" when I know there is and it shows in WMP.
Is this something this plugin can do?

WMP stores album art as a separate file in the same folder as the track files. I'm not sure whether Sage is prepared to look there for it, but as far as I can tell there's no hook in the tag parser plugin interface for specifying album art. So I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for you there.

Originally Posted by cmaffia

However after any track off the CD that is chosen, instead of playing the next track on the CD.. it seems to play the next MP3 in my MP3 library .....alphabetically. any ideas??

EDIT: Also noticed that I no longer have OSD as on option on the left side of the Music CD menu

You're saying there's no OSD option while the CD track is playing? Or while the MP3 is playing after the CD track is fnished?

Check to make sure .cda is listed in your seeker/music_library_import_filename_extensions property (in both client and server properties, if you have a separate SageClient.properties). Also try setting videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file=false in your SageClient.properties file (or Sage.properties if you don't have a SageClient.properties).

[cmaffia]

OK let me explain the problem better:

When I keep .CDA in the seeker, Sage plays the first CD track but instead of advancing to the second CD track, it plays the next MP3 that is is my library, starting alphabetically from the name of the first CD track. I also have the OSD option in the Music CD Menu at this time.

When I change the property videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file to FALSE, it plays the CD correctly however, when I play MP3's/Albums, it does not advance to the next MP3 (I expected this behavior based upon the name of the property you had me change). I still have the OSD option in the Music CD menu at this time.

When I remove .CDA from the seeker, it allows me to autoplay my MP3's and also play the CD's correctly, however the side affects are that I loose the OSD choice on the Music CD Menu and I also loose the ability to FF/RW from within the Music CD Menu. I can manually back out to the OSD and I am able to FF/RW from there. Right now I am keeping it at this setting because it is the best of the 3 choices.

Also does this plugin work with MediaMVP? I haven't tried and I don't expect it to. I expect it to give the same error message when you try to play a DVD from MediaMVP (There is no DVD/CD loaded into the drive).

Thanks for your assistance! :-)

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Check to make sure .cda is listed in your seeker/music_library_import_filename_extensions property (in both client and server properties, if you have a separate SageClient.properties). Also try setting videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file=false in your SageClient.properties file (or Sage.properties if you don't have a SageClient.properties).

[cmaffia]

nudge

Originally Posted by cmaffia

OK let me explain the problem better:

When I keep .CDA in the seeker, Sage plays the first CD track but instead of advancing to the second CD track, it plays the next MP3 that is is my library, starting alphabetically from the name of the first CD track. I also have the OSD option in the Music CD Menu at this time.

When I change the property videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file to FALSE, it plays the CD correctly however, when I play MP3's/Albums, it does not advance to the next MP3 (I expected this behavior based upon the name of the property you had me change). I still have the OSD option in the Music CD menu at this time.

When I remove .CDA from the seeker, it allows me to autoplay my MP3's and also play the CD's correctly, however the side affects are that I loose the OSD choice on the Music CD Menu and I also loose the ability to FF/RW from within the Music CD Menu. I can manually back out to the OSD and I am able to FF/RW from there. Right now I am keeping it at this setting because it is the best of the 3 choices.

Also does this plugin work with MediaMVP? I haven't tried and I don't expect it to. I expect it to give the same error message when you try to play a DVD from MediaMVP (There is no DVD/CD loaded into the drive).

Thanks for your assistance! :-)

[GKusnick]

Sorry, I thought you said you'd found a settings combo you were happy with.

Try this:

Put .cda back into seeker/music_library_import_filename_extensions. (It's really not meant to work without that.)
Set videoframe/always_call_fileplaybackfinished=true
Set videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file=true

That should retain the MP3 trackthrough behavior while still nudging the CD player plugin when a track finishes.

Originally Posted by cmaffia

Also does this plugin work with MediaMVP? I haven't tried and I don't expect it to.

I have not tried it either, and I would not be at all surprised if it didn't work.

[cmaffia]

Negative my friend.
No change in behavior, CD plays first track then goes to the next alphabetical mp3 after first track by same artist.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Sorry, I thought you said you'd found a settings combo you were happy with.

Try this:

Put .cda back into seeker/music_library_import_filename_extensions. (It's really not meant to work without that.)
Set videoframe/always_call_fileplaybackfinished=true
Set videoframe/autoplay_next_music_file=true

That should retain the MP3 trackthrough behavior while still nudging the CD player plugin when a track finishes.


I have not tried it either, and I would not be at all surprised if it didn't work.

[Morgan111]

Greg,

Since Sage v6 STILL does not support music CDs, I was working to integrate your CD music page into the SageMC STV. I was running into strange actions like always going back to track 1 after playing any track, and a large number of exceptions starting after the FilePlaybackFinished hook fires and then it sometimes hangs. I was starting to troubleshoot these but noticed that I see the same type of action and exceptions when importing the CD player stvi into the default Sage v6 STV. If I load up v5 then it works great with the default STV.

I'm not sure if you still had any interest in this functionality, so if you had any time to look at it I could send you some debug logs that show the difference between running in v5 and v6. I'm more of a C/C++ man but do want to get more familiar with Java.

On another note, I have seen that Windows Media Player 11 has added the interface to control ripping CD tracks as well as burning music CDs. I would like to see about including that after the basic stuff is out of the way.

I didn't look into the CD plaer before since I was afraid of leaving JRE 1.4, but the 1.6rc seems to be working quite well.

Morgan

[GKusnick]

I've been working on other stuff and haven't tried this with V6 yet. I'll take a look at it when I get a chance. It's probably something obvious like the STVI failing to insert itself properly into the V6 STV.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I've been working on other stuff and haven't tried this with V6 yet. I'll take a look at it when I get a chance. It's probably something obvious like the STVI failing to insert itself properly into the V6 STV.

Thanks, that would be great. I tried to account for the import errors which seemed mostly cosmetic, but there could be things I missed.

[GKusnick]

Just a quick update on the V6 issue. It looks like my method for adding CD track info to the SageTV media database doesn't work anymore in V6. So all the tracks come up with blank titles and zero duration. I don't have a quick fix for this, but I'll continue to experiment with it as I have time.

[shepmoe]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Nice job Greg!

This is the FIRST plugin that uses the MediaFileMetadataImporter plugin to support extraction of metadata from a MediaFile without having the SageTV core support it. We didn't give out any info on it previously. But now it's available.

This is a great example of how to extend support in SageTV to support a new format; and of course a nice plugin in and of itself.

Nice Work !!!

[wickster]

So does this plugin work with V6?

I'm a new Sage user and was hoping to have CD player functionality?

Thanks

[Morgan111]

Greg,

I have started looking closer at this for the SageMC port since it has been mentioned again and did find what was driving me crazy. There seems to be an issue now in v6 with the call to GetNextTrack(). It always returns the filename for Track01 regardless of the current track. I put a Some debug logs in the FilePlaybackFinished hook:

"REM CD track finished playing normally; start next track."
     DebugLog("Track before GetNextTrack->" + MediaFile)
     szTrack = SageWMP_CD_GetNextTrack(MediaFile)
     DebugLog("Track after GetNextTrack->" + szTrack)

and see this in the log (In this case after playing Track2:

Tue 2/13 14:20:46.111 Track before GetNextTrack->MediaFile[id=0 A[100000033,100000002,"Track02",0@1231.19:03,0] host=mpd64 encodedBy= format=null E:\Track02.cda, Seg0[Sat 12/31 19:03:00.999-Sat 12/31 19:03:01.000]]
Tue 2/13 14:20:46.113 Track after GetNextTrack->E:\Track01.cda

When you do have time to look at it maybe that info will help. Thanks.

[MeInMaui]

I really hope the issues can be worked out and this can be implemented for SageMC. My wife asks for this on a fairly regular basis. Morgan, if you need any graphics please let me know.

Aloha,
Mike

[elaw]

Guys,

I was discussing this in a different thread but GKusnick asked me to post my experiences here so...

Just installed the plugin on a box w/Sage V6 and Java 6 if it matters.

Good news is it plays audio CD's (which is why I installed it).

Bad news: the integration into the music menu mentioned in the docs doesn't seem to have happened, I assume this is because the music screen was rewritten for V6? I can still play an audio CD using the "Play CD or DVD" option that appears in the media center screen.

And here's the other very strange problem I'm having: after installing the plugin, whenever I press "stop" when any type of media is playing (videos, MP3's...), the screen goes blank and stays that way indefinitely. To get the Sage UI back, I need to press "back" or a remote button that explicitly takes me to a screen. The problem goes away if I revert to a version of the STV without the plugin.

[Morgan111]

One other issue I have seen is that Sage does not correctly get the file duration and current play time. If you try to skip forward or backward in the file it jumps to the beginning of the file.

[GKusnick]

I'll try to make time this weekend to look into some of these issues.