outMod member of the In_Module struct - question.

[viulian]

Hi guys!

I want to make an input plug in for WinAMP that starts to play a file (raw encoding, assumed existing on the hard disk) as soon as WinAMP starts.

Basically I have set up my input plug in, and decided to use the init() method to start up the raw decode thread [which sends the chunks to the output module].

However, it seems that the In_Module::outMod member (in the call mod.outMod->Write(...) ) fails as outMod is still NULL. My guess is that WinAMP probably populates this member when the user presses Play..

Is there a way for an input plugin to actually write data to the selected output plugin without the user intervention ?

Thanks for your answers..

[DrO]

outMod is only ever guaranteed to be valid when in the playing state (since that can be changed when stopped/after a restart). the system as i understand it is only designed for use when the user has instructed playback and not the other way.

-daz

[viulian]

Thanks for the reply.

What I wanted in the end is to make a streaming plugin.. I double click on an MP3 on my laptop, and another WinAMP that sits on the desktop [connected to the sound system] will start play without any other intervention.

I find it hard to always have to upload the file on desktop, connect remotely and play it there. Or other combinations with streaming servers + controlling WinAMP remotely and make it play.

Later edit:

What about writing a file on a temporary directory and make the desktop WinAMP play the .mp3 that gets uploaded while it is uploaded.
Can I issue a fake PLAY command (via SendMessage) and give it the name of the temporary file ?

[viulian]

My algorithm is this one:

Laptop WinAMP:
a) connect to the Desktop WinAMP via TCP/IP.
b) send metadata informations related to the .mp3 (name, time to play, etc)
c) start sending the file.

Desktop WinAMP:
a) accept connection via TCP/IP.
b) receives metadata informations (to be able to answer WinAMP's GetFileInfo questions.
c) starts a thread that saves the remote file locally.
d) issues a fake PLAY command to WinAMP with the temp file as parameter. Only the input plugin will recognise the temporary extension and will run normally.

Does this seem doable :) ?

It seems a lot of work to do it in C (as compared to doing it in Java for example) so I am asking to save myself a lot of frustration if something is not possible :D

Thanks!

[viulian]

I made it :)

Right now I'm streaming from Netbeans (Java's TCP/IP is far more easier to make it run and simulate the future output plugin) to an WinAMP on a different machine, running an input plugin written in Mingw.

I start WinAMP on Desktop, and on a single button press on the laptop music starts to hear.

The issues were these ones:
a) Windows's scheduling played tricks on me; the decode thread sometime got a heluva lot more CPU time than the IO thread that was receiving the file from laptop.
b) I could not make WinAMP to populate the outMod member on my plugin. So I had to come up with a workaround: have two threads on the input plugin, one receiving a file from laptop and one decoding the file as it is downloaded.
As WinAMP is very controlling asking a lot of questions about the file - there's a need to send some metadata informations to the plugin - so it knows what to answer (as the file hasn't arrived yet locally).
Also, as soon as some data arrives, plugin has to enqueue the temporary file in the playlist, and issue a PLAY message:

SendMessage(mod.hMainWindow,WM_WA_IPC,&file,IPC_ENQUEUEFILE);
...
SendMessage(mod.hMainWindow, WM_COMMAND, WINAMP_BUTTON2, 0);

c) As the plugins are init-ed, network support isn't yet available. I need to do WSAStartup in the input plugin.