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

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by briands

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"

That should not be a problem. That appears from the cleanup code for re-importation. I don't see anything related to the sub menu. What version of SageMC are you using? If need be you can send the xml file after the import and I can see what happened as well.

[briands]

I use
Sage Client 6.0.19.120
Java 1.6.0
SageMC 6.3.2 - no other imports

Where should I send the XML file

Thanks again for your great plugin and for the the help.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by parkimar

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 .

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,"

One other tip. I really like to use radiotime. Yuu 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.

I will be adding some of these tips to the first post.

Originally Posted by parkimar

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 ?

It is designed to work that way. What version of SageMC are you using? I assume you are not using an external movie player.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by 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.

It looks like you may need to get a particular version of SoftSqueeze and update your SoftSqueeze.jar file with the one included in that SoftSqueeze. I have a feeling that may fix your problem. See Koelec's post 178.

[parkimar]

t is designed to work that way. What version of SageMC are you using? I assume you are not using an external movie player.

I just realised there is a new version (6.3.2) Im running 6.3.1.
I'll update and try again.

Thanks for the info. about the radio stations and names + the radiotimes stuff, I'll go and sign up.

I'll feedback when I get a chance to upgrade to new version of SageMC. (Soon as the kids go to bed !).

Cheers

Mark

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by briands

Where should I send the XML file

No problem. You can send it to Morgan111b@gmail.com

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by parkimar

I just realised there is a new version (6.3.2) Im running 6.3.1.
I'll update and try again.

Mark, I expected it to work with 6.3.0 and higher. I will check that case with 6.3.1 loaded. But it doesn't hurt to use Dirk's latest and greatest!

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by 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.

FYI, My development set acted the same way as you describe. The vertical grid solution worked for that as well. I'm not sure why we are seeing slightly different behavior on different systems.

Aloha,
Mike

[parkimar]

Hi ,

I upgraded to the latest SageMC.
Unfortunately it still happens.
I don't think the issue is with your plugin though.
I've realised I can see reclock claiming to put the output through Spdif when Im playing video files.

This tells me that Squeezeplayer is locking the audio output after it has started. (I can recreate the problem in any other video playing program, just play a slimserver radio stream or mp3 and nothing else can access the audio system).

Anyone have any suggestions ?

Cheers

Mark

[Morgan111]

I did make an updated installation that takes care of the sub-menu hiding the SlimPlayer item due to font sizes. To fix that problem you can install the latest import file, located here, unzipping to /Program Files/SageTV/SageTV.

.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by briands

I use
Sage Client 6.0.19.120
Java 1.6.0
SageMC 6.3.2 - no other imports

Where should I send the XML file

Thanks again for your great plugin and for the the help.

When I load your XML file I see the SlimPlayer button under the Music sub-menu with the default fonts and sizes I use. If you reimport with the updated import file mentioned in the previous post, I think you will be ok.

[mdnttoker]

This plugin is great!

Now Andy, listen up, tell Sage to make the changes necessary to allow SlimPlayer to stream to the MVP! How sweet it would be!

-Dan

[Madcoder]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

It looks like you may need to get a particular version of SoftSqueeze and update your SoftSqueeze.jar file with the one included in that SoftSqueeze. I have a feeling that may fix your problem. See Koelec's post 178.

Hey, great. I tried that, and it really helped. However, the problem is not totally gone. Now, it crashes when stopping the stream, or switching to another stream, about one in ten times (dumps to the desktop, like before). This is a great improvement, but something is still not right. I would try to go back to the old java versions, but I have a very low end HTPC to save energy costs, and the old java versions crawl on the box in questoin.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by Madcoder

Hey, great. I tried that, and it really helped. However, the problem is not totally gone. Now, it crashes when stopping the stream, or switching to another stream, about one in ten times (dumps to the desktop, like before). This is a great improvement, but something is still not right. I would try to go back to the old java versions, but I have a very low end HTPC to save energy costs, and the old java versions crawl on the box in questoin.

You should see if SoftSqueeze has the same issues on your system. When you select a new favorite, the stop command is issued first. So if the stop button doesn't work I can see the same thing happening on a new selection. Does it crash when you select a new stream while in Navigate mode or only from favorites/playlist?

[Madcoder]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

You should see if SoftSqueeze has the same issues on your system. When you select a new favorite, the stop command is issued first. So if the stop button doesn't work I can see the same thing happening on a new selection. Does it crash when you select a new stream while in Navigate mode or only from favorites/playlist?

Well, I am not sure how to actually tell Softsqueeze to play a favorite while in the Navigate screen (while within Sage). I can select a different favorite that way, and then tell it to start playing it after exiting navigate mode, but that is still using Sage.

I thought it was a good time to reinstall everything anyway just to see if there were some other odd conflicts or old files hanging around. I installed Sage (made sure old things were completely uninstalled, plus no Sage folder left in the program files), installed the SageMC full package, and then the Slim Player for SageMC plugin, and that is all. It still kills Sage and dumps to the desktop about 10% of the time when changing stream or when using the stop command.

[Morgan111]

Actually I meant running the SoftSqueeze Slimplayer application that you downloaded to get the new softsqueeze.jar file for Java 6 as opposed to running SlimPlayer in SageTV. Favorites is one of the top level menu items in SoftSqueeze (or the Slim Player plugin, they operate the same). It takes a little practice to get used to navigating around the Slim menus.

An alternative is to try stopping and selecting different favorites using the web interface. In a browser go to http://slimserver:9000/ where slimserver is the machine name or IP address where the slimserver is installed. If you are on the same machine that runs the slimserver, you can just use http://localhost:9000/.

You may need to run your problem by Chris (Koelec) in his thread here. He had a great understanding of the the whole slimserver/slimplayer/softsqueeze interface and internals. But try the SoftSqeeze application or web interface first to see how that responds.

[JDizzy]

I have installed everything following Morgan's instructions and all seems to work.

After playing with this today I must say, it is totally AWESOME!

I noticed on the screen captures above that there is cover art displayed on the screen.

Is there anything special that needs to be done to acheive this?
(mine does not have the window with picture displayed)

-JD

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by JDizzy

I noticed on the screen captures above that there is cover art displayed on the screen.

Is there anything special that needs to be done to acheive this?
(mine does not have the window with picture displayed)

-JD

JD, The cover art will be displayed when music artist data is provided in association with the stream (generally the case for Shoutcast) and if the artist group name has a picture available from Yahoo Music. This will not be available with Windows Media streams. If you play something from your Sage music library it will also display art when the artist is found in the Yahoo Music library. If it never displays cover art for any popular artists then try to post a debug log.

Do you get the title to appear below where the picture should be? That will be Artist-Song info that appears on the Slim display when the Slim display is in "now playing" mode. That text should appear regardless of stream type.

[Morgan111]

I was curious if people are using the Dot Matrix TrueType font and like it, or if someone has run across another font that represents flourescent tube characters even better...

[JDizzy]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

JD, The cover art will be displayed when music artist data is provided in association with the stream (generally the case for Shoutcast) and if the artist group name has a picture available from Yahoo Music. This will not be available with Windows Media streams. If you play something from your Sage music library it will also display art when the artist is found in the Yahoo Music library. If it never displays cover art for any popular artists then try to post a debug log.

Do you get the title to appear below where the picture should be? That will be Artist-Song info that appears on the Slim display when the Slim display is in "now playing" mode. That text should appear regardless of stream type.

Yes,
I do have the title below where the picture should be.
I have not seen a picture yet, even with songs from my local music library.
Does it always get the picture from Yahoo or will it pull it from the local music library directory if available?
I did have 2 of the 'commons-httpclient' files in my directory and deleted the older one as mentioned on the doc file.
I'll play with it some more....
-JD