Slim Player (internet radio, mp3, wma, etc from SlimServer)

[mkanet]

Chris, I'm sure you already know this, but SqueezePlay full release is expected to be released any day now.

[scott2020]

Hi All. I have a strange issue that appears to be related to the Slim player. I was having trouble when watching some recorded TV shows I transferred from my old Tivo to a network drive. These are MPEG2 files. When I played them and hit the "slow" 10 second fast forward quickly, the SageTV process would totally freeze. I had to kill the Sagetv.exe process and restart. I took a look at the log files and noticed some Java errors related to the Slimplayer, so I rolled back to a SageMC STVi prior to me loading the Slimplayer. Without Slimplayer, I can FF/REW without any lockup problems. I also had no problems with the default STV (non-SageMC).

I am running the latest SageMC and 6.5.4 beta of SageTV. I am also using the Slimplayer plugin from March 2008 if I am not mistaken. Here is some of my log file:


Thanks!
Scott

[kha]

Originally Posted by kha

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for following up on this bug. Let's hope it gets fixed in the next version of SqueezeCenter.

Best Regards,
Michael.

Hi Chris,

I have to report that the problem with the non-english characters is indeed fixed in the new version of SqueezeCenter - everything is working now.

Once again, thank you very much for following up on this problem!

Best Regards,
Michael.

[planetc]

Did anybody try to get this working with multiple clients in synch? I noticed the subject came up but nobody returned a verdict on it.

[koelec]

Originally Posted by planetc

Did anybody try to get this working with multiple clients in synch? I noticed the subject came up but nobody returned a verdict on it.

Yes, this is working.
I tried it today with squeezecenter 7.3.1 (but it should work with previous versions too).
You can (un)sync the players from the squeezecenter web ui.

- chris

[planetc]

Originally Posted by koelec

Yes, this is working.
I tried it today with squeezecenter 7.3.1 (but it should work with previous versions too).
You can (un)sync the players from the squeezecenter web ui.

- chris

Whole house audio here we come! lol

[bjkiller]

What the complicity to add support Extenders?

[pleyraki]

Hi all.

Have you noticed the following strange behaviour?

After the new SqueezeCenter version is installed, the new Radio stations (eg. in "Internet Radio/Local") don't play. They have the .pls extension- They look like they have started playing, but there is no sound.

The other stations (eg. RadioIO) continue to play OK.

The new stations play in SqueezePlay, but not in SoftSqueeze.

Any ideas?

[planetc]

I've got the MC version of this running now. It's all playing friendly across the network although it takes quite a bit of tweaking synchronisation settings to make that work without excessive dropouts.
My question is 'Is there any way to set a shortcut/menu item to switch between synch'd and unsynch'd play. I think the wife will cope with using favorites and playlists but using the slim interface itself is going to be beyond her I think!

[Wirenut]

I've tried all the slimplayer.jars I could find on this board... and the ones I've had floating around... in an effort to get the Art and Artist info to show up again.

I've got Squeezecenter 7.3.1 and Softsqueeze 3.7 the zipped package marked Slimplayer 1.2.2 contains the STVI Slimplayer-1.1.stvi that I'm using with Sage 6.4.8 under the stock UI.

The audio works well.

It's the Artist Info, I seem to be missing.

Even opened up the firewall wide and still no luck...

This has been working for me for over a year without any problem, until recently when the artist info came up blank I was running the original version with SlimServer. So now I've been following this thread intensely and have upgraded everything... and well... here I am.

Is this just a scraper issue that needs a tweak? Or... Is it me?

Peace,

Wirenut

[Wirenut]

Originally Posted by Wirenut

I've tried all the slimplayer.jars I could find on this board... and the ones I've had floating around... in an effort to get the Art and Artist info to show up again.

I've got Squeezecenter 7.3.1 and Softsqueeze 3.7 the zipped package marked Slimplayer 1.2.2 contains the STVI Slimplayer-1.1.stvi that I'm using with Sage 6.4.8 under the stock UI.

The audio works well.

It's the Artist Info, I seem to be missing.

Even opened up the firewall wide and still no luck...

This has been working for me for over a year without any problem, until recently when the artist info came up blank I was running the original version with SlimServer. So now I've been following this thread intensely and have upgraded everything... and well... here I am.

Is this just a scraper issue that needs a tweak? Or... Is it me?

Peace,

Wirenut

So now I'm running 6.5.9 with this STVI and still have no artist bio or artwork? I can see it in Squeeze Center... Anybody?

[mkanet]

Yes, I have the same problem. I posted on the SageMC Slimplayer thread saying the same thing, but the problem seems to be caused by the Slimplayer.jar. Hopefully Chris can make this work.

Chris, are you focusing on the next generation player?

Thanks in advance!

[koelec]

Originally Posted by Wirenut

So now I'm running 6.5.9 with this STVI and still have no artist bio or artwork? I can see it in Squeeze Center... Anybody?

Ok, guys. Fact is it is working for me here in Europe. I think the problem is the pages Yahoo is serving in the US are in details different from the ones I get here in The Netherlands.
I see three ways to try to solve this:
1. someone helping me with localizing the slimplayer plugin - separate versions will exist and need to be maintained
2. externalizing the scraping code to a script - xml file needs to be localised and updated everytime the yahoo pages change
3. get artist info from squeezecenter - only artist picture available for local media files / no bio (bio plugin is not working either)

I'am betting on #2. Have a raw version working based on WebHarvest, which is a open source html scraping library.
Keep you informed on the progress...

- Chris

[mkanet]

Thanks for looking at this Chris! I agree, #2 Seems to be the best choice.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by koelec

Ok, guys. Fact is it is working for me here in Europe. I think the problem is the pages Yahoo is serving in the US are in details different from the ones I get here in The Netherlands.
I see three ways to try to solve this:
1. someone helping me with localizing the slimplayer plugin - separate versions will exist and need to be maintained
2. externalizing the scraping code to a script - xml file needs to be localised and updated everytime the yahoo pages change
3. get artist info from squeezecenter - only artist picture available for local media files / no bio (bio plugin is not working either)

I'am betting on #2. Have a raw version working based on WebHarvest, which is a open source html scraping library.
Keep you informed on the progress...

- Chris

[Wirenut]

That makes sense. Good idea.

Thanks,

Wirenut

[koelec]

Just uploaded version 1.3, which adds the ability to customize/localize the html scraping for artist info.
Please someone, try to customize the slimplayer-ai.xml file, which currently only works in Europe, because of differences in content urls in US. See instructions on how to do this in first post on this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=20296

[mkanet]

Thanks Chris, unfortunately I personally have no experience with WWW scraping. I'm not sure how many people here would even know the first thing about where to begin to use a tool like Web-Harvest. If you dont think you can do it for the people in the USA, maybe you could give us some brief instructions on how to use Web-Harvest to create a slimplayer-ai-yahoo-us.xml file.

Thanks for any further help you can provide..

-Michael

Originally Posted by koelec

Just uploaded version 1.3, which adds the ability to customize/localize the html scraping for artist info.
Please someone, try to customize the slimplayer-ai.xml file, which currently only works in Europe, because of differences in content urls in US. See instructions on how to do this in first post on this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=20296

[mkanet]

Bump. Are we completely on our own on this?

[koelec]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Thanks Chris, unfortunately I personally have no experience with WWW scraping. I'm not sure how many people here would even know the first thing about where to begin to use a tool like Web-Harvest. If you dont think you can do it for the people in the USA, maybe you could give us some brief instructions on how to use Web-Harvest to create a slimplayer-ai-yahoo-us.xml file.

Thanks for any further help you can provide..

-Michael

Ok , I'm going to help you. You start off with the slimplayer-ai-yahoo-eu.xml file.
Load that one up in the webharvest gui (you start it by double clicking the webharvest_all_1.jar in the JARS folder.)
Before you run the file, you have to define a run parameter from the execution menu:
Name Value
artist blondie
(please don't use a different artist at this point).

The screen is divided into three panes the bottom pane show the console output,i.e. logging of script execution.
The right panel shows the script file xml code. The Left pane shows the outline of the elements defined in the xml script file, and (after running the script) the values they got during execution.
Now run the script and watch until the finished confirmation dialog appears.

The script runs from top to bottom and each time defines a variable by executing a http request or other using already defined variable values from previous steps.

The following variables are being set in the the order specified:

1. rootUrl - hardcoded url to start page with artist name as parameter
2. rootPage - html content fetched from %rootUrl%
3. biographyUrl - xpath expression result extracts the biography url from %rootPage%
4. bioUrl - stripped biographyUrl replaces "biography" with "bio" in %biographyUrl% to get full bio instead of condensed one.
5. arUrl - xpath result to get artist url from %rootPage% used as alternative in picUrl evaluation
6. bioPage - html content fetched from %bioUrl%
7. bioRaw - xpath result to get bio element from %bioPage%
8. picUrl - url to artist picture from %bioPage% or if that fails from %arPage%
9. bio - html markup stripped from bioRaw

After execution one by one starting at the top click on the x = var-def[1] definition in the outline panel and verify the [Value] is non empty. All variables need to get proper values. The last two , i.e. picUrl and bio are set as output parameters from the script.

I can help you create the us configuration file if you execute the script for me and post the variable values, which you can obtain by clicking on the va-def[1] elements shown in the left panel and then each time click on the icon next to the [Value] property. Also note the variable name property value for each variable definition.

- Chris

[mkanet]

Hi Chris, thanks again! I followed your instructions. Please find the attached file which I have verified the variable names and their respective values.

Originally Posted by koelec

Ok , I'm going to help you. You start off with the slimplayer-ai-yahoo-eu.xml file. ...