couple of sexy plugins

[shaneh]

@siebe: The playcount is under 'Send To' in the media library context menu. Kind of a strange place I know, but it makes sense from the API's point of view.

As for the explorer context menu, its quite likely there is some kind of conflict. It only supports 100 items for the explorer menu, including all send to items etc. Do you have more than that? It also just uses an arbritray range of menu ids, which could very well be used by another plugin.

Its a bit of a fickle beast, and having lots of plugins and shell extensions gives it a fairly high chance of failure I suppose. Strange that its causing gen_ff to crash though, perhaps try using a classic skin and see if it still happens.

(Although from your other post, it sounds like your having some issues with your setup)

[shaneh]

@electricmime: Try this new version and see if it fixes the problem.
Updates:
1. Re-gets filename when selecting a rating, rather than using cached version. May fix rating problems.
2. Unsubclasses playlist to avoid crashes with docked mdoern skins
3. Fixes off by 2 pixel problem

[shaneh]

My guess is you have some other plugin (possibly audioscrobbler) which is querying the filename of the currently playing file every so often. If this happens in between popping up the menu and selecting a rating, it will overwrite the cached filename with the current song instead of the selected song. In fact, Im pretty sure of it.

The audioscrobbler plugin could really use a re-design, its fairly inefficient in the way it queries the current song every split second - there are better ways to do it.

[siebe83]

Originally posted by shaneh

As for the explorer context menu, its quite likely there is some kind of conflict. It only supports 100 items for the explorer menu, including all send to items etc. Do you have more than that? It also just uses an arbritray range of menu ids, which could very well be used by another plugin.

Its a bit of a fickle beast, and having lots of plugins and shell extensions gives it a fairly high chance of failure I suppose. Strange that its causing gen_ff to crash though, perhaps try using a classic skin and see if it still happens.

(Although from your other post, it sounds like your having some issues with your setup)

have now reinstalled winamp
but the context plugin still doesn't work very well
i can now open the context menu, and click on properties
this will open the properties box for the file
but then again, winamp crashes...
and it's the same error message (allthough it's weird winamp crashes later now...)

btw: it's only the properties box that makes winamp crash -> other options in the context menu are working fine
so it's not that bad
actually, most of it is good!

i think it might have something to do with popping up a window in winamp
allthough 'open with...' doesn't make winamp crash, it's only the properties box...

here's the error message again:
AppName: winamp.exe AppVer: 5.0.0.3 ModName: gen_ff.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 000d53ac
if you want more error details, i can send them (can't post it here, would be too much)

[edit]
forgot to try in classic skin
in classic skin it works perfectly
no problems at all
(but i don't want to use classic skin: i want docking )

[shaneh]

There is a known issue with that old version of the context plugin when used with docking the playlist in modern skins. It should only occur when closing winamp, but I suppose it could occur elsewhere as well. It should only occur if the playlist is docked.

You can try this version, but if its crashing at times other than closing, it may not fix the problem.

[siebe83]

unfortunately, the new version doesn't fix the problem
by the way, the crash does also occur when playlist is not docked
but it's just the properties box that makes winamp crash, so i can still use the submenu of Mp3/Tag Studio (i like that very much)

[ilyag]

I am now using Toaster all the time - thanks a lot, shaneh. However, I use it mainly for the rating Global Hotkeys and do not like it popping out on every song change. Is there any way to configure Toaster so that it only appears on rating change, or when I use toaster's global hotkey? If that's impossible, is there any way to disable toaster while a visualisation plugin is running (you probalbly cannot discern whether it is running full screen or not, can you)?

[shaneh]

@ilyag: I did actually have some code which prevented it popping up during fullscreen visualisations, butI removed it for some reason in later versions. v0.5 should have support to only popup on demand, and when rating, if not, then a release soon after will.

You can disable the toasts and still rate using the hot keys, but the popup will not display. You can assign 5 different hot keys for each rating so you know what you are actually rating the track. But obviously an option to force a toast when rating would be better.

Im aiming to get .5 released fairly soon (hopefully late next week sometime, but no promises), although some lower priority features will not be fully functional until I get more time.

PS. This thread is mostly for the rating and explorer etc plugins, there is a separate thread which deals with Toaster.

[razormw]

I have a question....... How can I make it possible to Ctr+select multiple files and rank them all a certain ranking? I.E, I love everything by a certain artist and want to make the whole CD 5 stars without right clicking each one. Or, I want to make sure every Nickleback song gets a low ranking without Nickleback wasting too much of my time. Otherwsie, great plug-in.

[shaneh]

Unfortuantly theres no wasy way to get the list of selected items in the playlist (that I would implement). The easiest way is probably use the 'find in media library' plugin, and select, 'find artist' on the particular song, then rank from within the media library.

[razormw]

well, even if I ctr+click more than one song it will only apply the tag to one......

[shaneh]

Unfortuantly theres no wasy way to get the list of selected items in the playlist

Meaning, the plugin is not able to query the playlist to determine which tracks have been selected, so therefore can only act on the one track.

[erostratus]

I have the same problem as an earlier poster with the plugin not showing up at all. Seems Windows 98 hates the playlist rating plug-in =(

[CarlosTheTackle]

Hey Shane,

have you got a website where you host the latest versions of all your plugins? Would be a good idea.

Fantastic plugins, BTW. Thanks for sharing them.

CJ

[shaneh]

@CarlosTheTackle: Nah.. no website yet. I will try do one up when I have finished Toaster v0.5, I am putting the finishing touches on it now so it wont be too long.

I have some webspace, but its through my ISP. I'm looking for a good redirection service so I can host it somewhere else, but use the same url, when I eventually leave this isp.

Something like come.to or whatever, but without the spyware and crap.

[electricmime]

i dont really care for the explorer menu, but would it be possible to have a media library menu that works similar to the explorer menu (or at least has its own section like mlmenu->and then the contents of the media library menu) in the playlist..

[shaneh]

You can sort of do it, Ive put the media library menu in the playlist before.. however..

I don't think theres a way to tell the media library what files to operate on when a menu item is selected, unless you 'emulate' everything. It needs to be supported natively by winamp IMHO.

[visomo]

Real great plugins. rate_playlist stopped me from thinking to switch to itunes. A tray_icon rating would be even cooler.

But I've a concern with the "find in media library" plugin which maybe adressed somewhere in this thread.

Selecting 'Find Song' sends the complete playlist title to the library. I've a big one: '<artist> - <title> (<tracknr> - <album) (<year>)'
Obvious that nothing is found in the ML. Why not only send the song title? Like only the artist is send on "Find Artist". this would find same titles from different artist too which maybe informative.

[shaneh]

hmm, yeah I will probably fix that up to only send 'artist title'. Its already a problem with the '-' for songs whose filename doesn't include that.

The reason I don't use just the title is I wanted it to be a bit more specific, so that the song 'smash' by offspring doesn't match all the songs by smashing pumpkins for example. And it allows you to see that song, and all its locations, ie all the albums its on, dupes etc. I could make it do a proper db query, so artist=offspring or whatever, but then you cant just modify the search easily to find other stuff so I didnt like that idea.

The idea of a traylist rating seems pretty cool. I may do something like that up. Would you prefer it on the winamp menu, or its own icon? BTW, you can use Toaster to rate songs using hot-keys and clicking on the notifier etc. A new version is in this forum.

[visomo]

Originally posted by shaneh
The idea of a traylist rating seems pretty cool. I may do something like that up. Would you prefer it on the winamp menu, or its own icon?

Good question. Never thought about an own tray icon. I only use the winamp tray to get WA back from minimized.

But what if the winamp tray icon is disabled?
OTOH, a tray icon only for rating seems a bit overkill. I don't like many trays.

Isn't the 'right-click on winamp'-menu the same as the tray icon? If the rating would be there it's more convenient I guess. It would be possible to rate the track from the main winamp window too.

The playlist vote is still a good addition since you can rate items not playing now.

BTW, you can use Toaster to rate songs using hot-keys and clicking on the notifier etc. A new version is in this forum.

Nice. I don't use the other feature, but the global keys are a winner.

[shaneh]

I think the winamp icon would be best. If the icon is disabled, then rating wouldnt be available from the tray - but the only reason to disable it is to not have another icon in your systray anyway, so it wouldnt make sense for it to have its own.

And yes they are the same menus.

You can of course set Toaster to only show on a rating change, and to display just a single line showing the new rating (or anything else you want) if you dont want the track change notifications, but want feedback on what you just rated a song.

[d3x7r0]

shaneh if the tray icon would be disabled there would still be a way to rate: through the Taskbar.

The right click menu of the winamp taskbar is the same as the tray icon.

NOTE: btw yes I am the same dextro that posted here I just lost my old account here because When I 1st registered I misread the coppa agreement and chose wrong (I said I was under 13 when I'm actually 17 today) and so, because I needed to change my e-mail, I lost all my permissions and through the e-mail they told me to contact I get no reply.

NOTE: btw the window of the posting screen were I type my message is showing incorrectly in my mozilla firefox 0.8, maybe you should look into that.

[electricmime]

unless you had it so it was neither in the system tray or taskbar! (i wonder if anyone actually has it like that..)

[d3x7r0]

That would be wierd, if you didn't disable the multiple instances option how would you get the window back after minimize???

[skinme!]

That'd be a good kiosk mode using global hotkeys and jump to file/enqueue!

[visomo]

Originally posted by shaneh
You can of course set Toaster to only show on a rating change, and to display just a single line showing the new rating (or anything else you want) if you dont want the track change notifications, but want feedback on what you just rated a song.

Sweet. Didn't look that close.

(maybe discussed before)

- Would it be possible to show absolute number between the scroll bars? For width, height, fade-in/-out, hold, etc...
I find it a bit annoying to tweak it until it's the value I want.

- Is it possible to disable the mouse actions completely? There's a Mouse action tab in the preferences, but nothing is selecteable. An option for the Winamp menu would be useful.

More and more I'm beginning to like this plugin.

[ampewin]

Does the "find in media library plugin" work in winamp5.04. It doesn't appear to work.

Please reply.

Thanks

[shaneh]

Theres a bug where if the 'Display 'show info' in album etc views' is disabled the wrong edit box is used to fill in the details.

It works fine with the stock setup for the media library for 5.04. I really should update it to be a bit more robust, as it is quite a useful plugin, I use it all the time.

[AnodA]

Find out about 'explorerer context menu' plugin through another thread >.
Sum the relating post:

Found out how to configer context menu - but is there any abitity for a keyboard shortcut.
Such as:
I select a playlist entry, i press a key, this causes the intended context action?

Reply by Siebe83
No, I don't think there's a shortcut for that. You could ask shaneh in the relevant thread to implement it, but I'm not sure wether that's an easy thing to do (i.e. implement a shortcut for a submenu).

Im not sure as well. But maybe there could be a shortcut that opens the right-click-menu->explorer-context-menu and selects default (first) context.

Really happy if you could implement something like this

[shaneh]

Try gen_action in this forum. Edit actions.ini to have:

Program1=%filename%
Command1=
Title1=Explorer Action

If it does what you want it to do, then the next update to gen_action should solve your problem. As it will let you define hotkeys for each action. If not, then I can update gen_action to actually specify the verb to take (ie, 'open', 'explore', 'find', 'view' etc)

Though I intend to make it act on the current playing item rather than selected item. What is it you want it to do?

[AnodA]

Yes, thats exactly what i want to do.
See the pros of a current playing shortcut. But i want it to act with a selected item. Maybe there could be an option to set a flag to commit the shortcut work with currently playing (as default) or with the selected item.

[shaneh]

In order to select an item you have to click it anyway, so the menu obviously works on the currently selected item.

However it doesnt work on multiple items, in order to do that I would need to chuck it on the 'send to' menu, which I suppose I could/should do. It means it would also work in the ml as a bonus.

The only way I can see someone using this combined with the selected item is if they wish to hit 'down' on their keyboard to select the next item, hit the shortcut, then hit down again till they come to the next item they wish to operate on. Is this the way you want to use it?

You could almost do this by just hitting 'next' and operating on the currently playing item - the only difference being you couldnt play anything at the same time, and would be affected by shuffle.

[AnodA]

See three sceneries the plugin could support you:

Scenery 1:

• Winamp is playing
• I listen to something interesting
• There is a action i want to do with the current file. In example google, open with favorite tagger, find file on disk, open folder, make a note...

That's what the plugin meant to do, is it?


Scenery 2:

• Winamp is playing, there are many files enqueued in Winamp playlist
• During Winamp is playing I serch the playlist using keyboard
• Discover something interesting
• Default action: move after current or enqueue file using extended jump to file dialog hitting m/q-key
  Or: Not sure about that, so i have to get more information. There are some actions helping to do this (there's only one file selected).
  In example this may be: play the file in another player to listen using headphones, google, make a note, get a note... - just by hitting a key like i hit m/q or DrO's 'find file on disk' does by hitting f.

That's what i want to do.

Scenerey 3:

• Select several files in playlist
• There is an action to do with all the selected files

Don't see why this has to be through Winamp playlist. Perhaps if you want to do somenthing with all playlist entries.

[AnodA]

Oh, there is a 'gen_action' thread. Better to post there!? Sorry!

[Wolfgang]

I'm just wondering, what is the point of rating music that is in your own collection?

[shaneh]

I personally use it for 'tagging' songs in albums which I like. I like to have the full album and occasionally listen to the whole album, but if I only have time to listen to one or two songs from an artist, Id prefer to hear my favourite few.

Everyone has favourite songs which they listen to more than others, take a look at your playcounts in your ML. If they are not distributed evenly, chances are there are songs you favour over others.

I also have quite a lot of music I havent had time to listen to properly. I look at the playcount and rating combined to determine whether I have 'evaluated' the song properly and whether I liked it or not. I dont have a good enough memory to just remember by name.

If this doesnt apply to you, then rating is not for you I guess. No-one is making you do it.

[Wolfgang]

No, of course no one is making me do it. I just wondered about the potential applications. Now that I've read what you've written, I do actually think I could find it useful.

[shaneh]

Ok, theres a lot of people that seem to be against rating, their reasoning being that if you dont rate the song then why even have it. And they tend to be the people that ask "why?".

My reasoning is basically to create my own "top 40/1000" across a range of artists, or within a single artist, without actually having to create another album on disk.

[Wolfgang]

It's a good idea. I tried it out and I like it. Well done and thanks.

[genoism]

this might have been mentioned but i haven't really seen it from skimming through the posts.

But does rating your song give it a higher chance of being played in the playlist? (By higher chance i mean that if you have the random option on and instead of it being totally random it is somewhat influenced by thie rating system.)