STV Import: Slim Player for SageMC (for SageTV 6.3+)

[Morgan111]

This is the SlimPlayer plugin for SageMC. This plugin is the original Slim Player plugin by Koelec with a modified STV customized for SageMC. Much of the description below is a customized version of the description in Koelec’s thread. That thread may answer many questions for those that run into problems with this import. Thanks for a great plugin to customize Chris! Another special thanks to Mike (MeInMaui) who drafted up the Slim Player display head graphics!

More tips and advice will be added to this post over time.

The download is available here, but please read through the instructions below first. To update and existing installation of slimplayer plugin with the latest import xml file, install the attached zip file to the /Program Files/sagetv/sagetv directory.

The Slim Player plugin is an integrated player for playback of internet audio streams and local audio files served by the SlimServer software. If you don't know slimserver read all about it here: http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html.
Being based on the Softsqueeze player that comes with the SlimServer software it features full support for MP3, Flac, Ogg, AAC and Wma(through transcoding in slimserver) files and streams.
This plugin gives you all that my simple web radio plugin provided and much more... Because this plugin provides nearly transparant access to the slimserver you get a lot of additional features.

• Support for additional radio stream formats (not just limited to shoutcast streams, but also through plugin's: SiriusRadio, LastFM, Live365, AlienBBC, etc).
• Browse for new internet radio stations and add them to your favorites list or playlists.
• Shows artist information like Biography and picture (like in simple web radio plugin) for both local and internet content.
• Shows tag info for local content.
• Like with simple webradio the playback is stopped whenever the Sage Media Player player starts and vice versa.
• Slim server has a facility to use plugins. If a plugin doesn't rely on graphic being send to the player there's a good chance it will work with Simple Slim Player.
• Of course you can have multiple SageTV instances connect to the slimserver and have the same content available to all of them.

Unfortunately, again I have to let users of MVP and Placeshifter down, because this plugin will work with neither one. This is because MVP and Placeshifter only playback content streamed by the Sage Media Player. Since the Media Player does not accept input streams it will not work together with the slim server. Hopefully this plugin will be popular and triggers something at Sage to support internet streams natively, so that MVP and placeshifter users can enjoy it too.

Screenshots:
The SlimPlayer is automatically added as a My Music sub-menu located on the Main Menu screen


One screen shows favorites, playlists or track/artist info in the bottom and now playing info in the top pane. Highlight favorite/playlist item and press enter key to start playback or press option key to show option dialog where you can delete the playlist or simple press delete which shows a confimation dialog to delete the playlist.
Other playlist control functions are available through navigation mode (accessible via navigate button) or through the slimserver's web interface.


Main menu screen showing the navigation mode dialog in which you can navigate the slimserver's menu (shown at top of window) by using the arrow keys.


In navigation mode you can press the info button to access special keys like now playing, search, play&hold, etc. The numbers shown between brackets are shortcuts to execute the key by pressing the listed number key. For an explanation of how to operate these refer to the squeezebox manual here http://www.slimdevices.com/documenta...ners-Guide.pdf


Main menu screen slimplayer option dialog.



The Info panel shows artist/track info of the currently playing track. You can toggle between favorites, playlists, artist info and track info by pressing the Favorites/Playlists/Biography/Track Info button. Any track info shown depends on the present tag info of the content. You can even have lyrics showing up here.


Now Playing screen showing track info of currently playing track.


Installation:
Be aware that slim player and the former simple web radio plugin cannot live together in one STV, that's why the web radio STV code is removed upon importing the slimplayer import.
1. download slim server software version 6.5 or higher from here http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html and install it; on one of the installation screens leave checkbox to start slimserver automatically checked and read through the getting started info to get acquainted with it.
2. If the SlimServer is not running on the same machine as SageTV and you have a firewall setup on the SlimServer machine, you will need to open up port 9090 tcp for access to the Command Line Interface used by SlimPlayer.
3. Right click on slim tray icon and select open SlimServer to open up its web interface (alternative open http://localhost:9000/ in browser)
4. configure basic server settings like music folder, playlists folder etc and click rescan to have slimserver add new music files to its internal library
5. Also under server settings select File Types from the drop down list at the top. Softsqueeze supports playback of MP3, FLAC and OGG. For other types slimserver has to transcode this into one of the supported formats by softsqueeze. For the WIndows Media file format only leave first one checked, i.e. Windows Media FLAC wmadec/flac). Leave all other file types as is. Make sure you click on the Change button to commit the changes you made.
6. Go back to home screen by clicking on Home in the navigation path shown near the top of the page.
7. Start softsqueeze player (listed in left pane under Help)
8. Verify that the player works. If you don't here any sound from the speakers, please check the slimserver's volume control accessible via slimserver's web interface (in the right hand upper corner of the main page).
9. Exit softsqueeze player before continuing.
10. Copy softsqueeze.jar file from location "C:\Program Files\SlimServer\server\HTML\EN\html\softsqueeze" to the JARS folder in your SageTV folder. If you're using SageClient, put in the SageClient install folder instead.
11. download slimplayer plugin code from here http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...do=file&id=163
12. Unzip slimplayer zip file into SageTV root folder (default C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV)
13. Start SageTV and import slimplayer_sagemc_import.xml into your current STV. This will add Slim Player menu item as a submenu to the My Music menu selection on the Main Menu..
14. The Slim Player menu could also be added as a custom SageMC menu for the internal screen called "SlimPlayer by koelec".
15. If you like you can map a remote key to the "custom2" commmand to launch the SlimPlayer Main Menu with a single remote key click.
16. [optional, if you want better sound quality] download java MP3 plugin and install it. http://softsqueeze.sourceforge.net/javamp3plugin.html

If you need access to the advanced configuration of softsqueeze you can select the config icon on its interface to popup the configuration dialog. Here you can configure things like MP3 decoder, Sound device and others. Things you change here are also valid for slim player.

If you want to run SageTV on a different machine from the slimserver, then you have to change the slimserver hostname (defaults to localhost). You can do this either through the configuration dialog of sofsqueeze or directly in the registry.
Open up the registry by running regedit and changing the slimserver key value data in the folowing location:
HKEY_USERS/Software/JavaSoft/Prefs/org/titmuss/softsqueeze/slimserver.


Slim Player Screen Saver

A SlimPlayer screensaver is available to display the SlimPlayer display head and artist picture when the screensaver kicks in when something is being played through the SlimPlayer. This can be enabled by the options menu on the Slim Player screen.

Known issues

• This import is only compatible with SageTV 6.0 or greater.
• Accessing the squeeze network will switch the network connection from slimserver to squeeze network and because currently slimplayer cannot display the graphical UI from squeeze network this will possibly hang Slim Player. You will need to restart SageTV to recover from this.
• When X icon clicked or ALT-F4 and SageTV is configured to go to sleep, will not stop slim player playback. Currently SageTV doesn't forward this event to stv code.
• This plugin does not work with either placeshifter or MVP.
• Multiple version of the apache commons httpclient jar file in the JARS folder of the Sage TV install dir can prevent the artist retrieval function from proper working. In that case make sure that only the commons-httpclient-3.0.1.jar remains.
• If you don't hear anything and the volume is way up, check the column shown on the right pane in the web interface of slimserver. Slimserver has it's own volume control, independent of the system volume.
• The Slim Player display text will only appear properly when the SageTV display is set to full screen. An option will be added later that will provide correctly aligned text in a reduced size window mode (but will also change the shape of the the Slim Player display head).

Notes and Tips


Custom Names for Favorites/Playlists
I have a way to get around the unfriendly names given to some internet radio stations when added to the favorites. This also works if you just want to customize the name of any of the favorites.

* Open the following file where slimserver was installed, with Wordpad (not notepad):
\Program Files\SlimServer\server\slimserver.pref
* Search for the section labeled favorite_titles:.
* Change the text for any titles you wish
* Save the file
* Restart the SlimServer

If you add a new favorite or resave the same favorite you will have to repeat this change for that addition.

For the playlists you want to
* Go to the directory that you specified for playlists for slimserver
* With Wordpad open playlist.m3u
* Find the station you want to change and put the desired title after
"#EXTINF:-1,"

RadioTime Account
I really like to use RadioTime. You can sign up at radiotime.com and create a free account. You can specify a location for local radio stations and they also have all the popular talk radio shows you can add to your radiotime favorites. They also have classifications of music genres with stations you can add to your favorites. Unfortunately you will not get song titles or artist pics/bio's for the music stations, but it will automatically display a talk show name for most of those stations when they start to play. You need to configure the radiotime plugin by specifying your login name. Then you can navigate to RadioTime under Internet Radio and add the stations to your SlimPlayer favorites/playlists as well.

Dot Matrix Font
The true type font and font size used for the Slim Server display head are customizable. One font that makes the Slim Server look like a real device is a freeware font I found called Dot Matrix. It can be downloaded at http://dionaea.com/information/fonts.php. You must install both “Dot Matrix” and “Dot Matrix Bold”.
Then set the following line in your sage.properties or sageclient.properties file.
slimplayer/font_face=Dot Matrix



History
v1.1 2/1/2007

• Initial release based on Koelec’s v1.1 for the default STV.

v1.1a 2/3/2007

• Change display of sub-menu to prevent selection from being hidden.

v1.2 1/4/2008

• Update by MeInMaui that adds compatability with new SageMC 6.3.6+.
• Updated SlimPlayer graphics by MeInMaui.

v1.3 3/26/2008

• Update references to correctly add SlimPlayer menu item to MyMusic popup menu in SageMC 6.3.7+.
• Correct sizing that limited biography display to 1/2 the available space.
• Make adjustments to fix and improve sizing and alignment of text and control elements. Thanks to mkanet for his suggestions and feedback.
• Correct missing selection icon on button that selects data to be displayed.
• Incorporate new Slimplayer.jar that provides compatability for SqueezeCenter (SlimServer 7) Thank you koelec!

[mkanet]

Oh my...... Morgan, this looks AWESOME! I cant wait to switch to SageMC.

[evilpenguin]

Wooo! I can't wait to get my Sirius internet radio working.

Thanks Morgon and Koelec!

[dflachbart]

Argggh, and I am stuck at work !


Looks GREAT !!


Dirk

[MeInMaui]

YAY!!!

Something else to eat into my ~4hrs sleep. I needed another project.

Thanks!

Mike

[Morgan111]

Just made a quick update to the download file for a correction that was not in there that causes part of the screensaver to not move everything around the screen. If you have already downloaded it before now you should get it again (unless you don't use the screensaver option).

[CanadianEh]

Hahaha.. this always happens to me:

- SageTV 6.0 Released while I was on a business trip to Indiana

- SlimPlayer for SageMC released while I'm on a business trip to Iowa


hehehe.. this is torture!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Hahaha.. this always happens to me:

- SageTV 6.0 Released while I was on a business trip to Indiana

- SlimPlayer for SageMC released while I'm on a business trip to Iowa


hehehe.. this is torture!

You need to go on better business trips

[CanadianEh]

Now, isn't that the truth. Phoenix is coming up soon

Anyway, back on topic - Thank you Morgan for this awesome STVi!

[Ted@TNT]

This is almost funny...

I tried for two weeks to shoehorn the previous SlimPlayer into SageMC - I actually had it playing, but couldn't get menus to work or display correctly - couldn't add or change stations. After having pulled all my hair out and kicked the dog, I finally discovered it wasn't supported. Two days ago I completed the full uninstallation.

Like I said, this is ALMOST funny.

(Thanks nonetheless - I'll work up the courage to start on it soon)

[briands]

First... I am excited to try this out...

However, I am having one problem. After extracting your import and then importing it into the SageMC 6.3.2, I do not get the Slimserver submenu item.

I did add it as a top level menu item and it is working that way, but I'd rather not add an additional top level item. I've tried it multiple times with no luck. Any suggestions?

[Morgan111]

briands, you could run the import with debug enabled and post your debug log file. What other imports do you have loaded with 6.3.2?

[MeInMaui]

Hi Morgan,

I ran into the same problem as briands. The Slimplayer item doesn't appear under the My Music popup submenu. I looked a little closer and it turns out the Slimplayer item is actually there, but it is off the bottom of the popup menu. I can scroll down to it so that the selection bar disappears, hit select, and it then takes me to the slimplayer screen. Everything else seems to be working as advertised so far. Movietimes is the only other import I have loaded. Very nice job on this! HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[Morgan111]

Thanks for your contributions to this too Mike.

If you guys could provide me what you have for the following in your properties file:
ui/controls_font_size
ui/controls_font_style
ui/controls_font_face

I will see if I can tweek or modify something something so that it shows up correctly.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Thanks for your contributions to this too Mike.

If you guys could provide me what you have for the following in your properties file:
ui/controls_font_size
ui/controls_font_style
ui/controls_font_face

I will see if I can tweek or modify something something so that it shows up correctly.

Any time, Morgan.

Here are those properties:

ui/controls_font_face=Arial
ui/controls_font_size=19
ui/controls_font_style=Bold

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

Hi Morgan,

I found a solution to the missing Slimplayer menu item.

Go to the MyMusicPopup options menu in Studio and drill down to the Untitled panel widget that contains the buttons. Open the panel properties and change the Autoarrange property from Vertical to Vertical Grid. This will allow the buttons to scale so that they are all visible on the popup menu. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[Morgan111]

Hmmm, I was looking at modifying the import to bump up the Fixed Height property of the panel "Menu" that contains the panel widget you are referring to, but I can look at doing that instead if it doesn't make it look too squished.

[briands]

Well, my problem is different than Mike's. The submenu item is not there at all. If I move down from search, it wraps back to the top Albums.
Here are those props you asked for

ui/controls_font_face=Arial
ui/controls_font_size=19
ui/controls_font_style=Bold

Here's the log from the import... I've bolded the error. Not sure what I've done wrong since it works from the Custom Menu using "SlimPlayer by koelec"

Sat 2/3 1:27:44.561 ========== Importing SlimPlayer ==========
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.678 STV contains 31234 widgets
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.678 Import contains 890 widgets
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.697 Setting UI context for import to SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.697 Using import library version 1.9
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.698 *$*$*$*$*$ 1
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.729 *$*$*$*$*$ 2
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.730 *$*$*$*$*$ 3
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.732 root Global in path Global not found
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.734 *$*$*$*$*$ 4
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.736 *$*$*$*$*$ 4a
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.736 *$*$*$*$*$ 4b
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.737 *$*$*$*$*$ 4c
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.737 *$*$*$*$*$ 4d
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.738 *$*$*$*$*$ 4e
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.738 *$*$*$*$*$ 4f
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.739 *$*$*$*$*$ 4g
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.740 *$*$*$*$*$ 5
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.741 *$*$*$*$*$ 6
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.749 *$*$*$*$*$ 7
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.750 root SlimPlayer by koelec in path SlimPlayer by koelec not found
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.750 ERROR: deleteWidgetTree(): root is null
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.752 ghost Main Menu removed
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.753 ghost LinkToMenuTheme removed
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.753 *** removing previous import hook ***
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.754 old import hook not found
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.755 *** renaming STVImported Hook ***
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.759 hook renamed
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.759 *** removing import hook code ***
Sat 2/3 1:27:44.787 import hook code removed
Sat 2/3 1:27:45.200 waited 1 sec with ticker disabled
Sat 2/3 1:27:45.859 UIMgr loading UI from: C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3\SageMC_169-3.xml

[Madcoder]

Hi. This is great, but I seem to have an odd bug.

When I select play or stop from within the Slimplayer Sage screen using my remote control (uses play and stop events for Sage), everything is fine. However, if I move the focus to the "stop playback" button in the GUI, then hit the enter key (or ok button on the remote), then Sage itself exits, and dumps me to the desktop. DOH. Any ideas? In the meantime, I can remote the button in the GUI using studio so that I don't accidently stop playback with that, but I'd like to see if anyone else has this behavior or try to get it fixed.

Here are some specs:
SageTV v6.0.19.120
Java 1.6.0 (released version)
SageMC 6.3.2

No other plugins loaded to the STV other than this one (although I have some other plugins not active, which means that their Jars are in the Jars folder). I checked and made sure no older versions of some of the Jars remained from the old Webradio plugin already.

Awesome plugin!


*edit*
OK, sometimes it seems to crash Sage also with the remote, or when changing from one favorite to another (dumps to the desktop, killing Sage). If no one else can confirm this behavior, then I might be close to time for a full reinstall from scratch of everything.

[parkimar]

Morgan,thanks for a great plug in.

Ihave 2 questions, the first is slimplayer related.
I can add to the playlist etc, but the station names are gibberish (to my wife), is there any way to get e.g.Leicester Sound instead of 1239.xxx.asx .

My second question is around playback.
I like to have the radio playing as general background noise, for which your stvi is great. However when I navigate to play a film , the radio carries on playing.
Is It possible to get the playback to stop when a movie is started ?

Cheers

Mark