Time Restore & Autoplay plugin (v2.5.4 06/10/2013)

[DrO]

oops, that'll teach me, forgot i'm using the internal versions of the language packs. thanks for the correction koopa

-daz

[zackbuffo]

Thanks for help DrO & Koopa. Works fine now!

[DrO]

Time Restore & Autoplay v2.5.2

• Fixed media library queries not working (wasn't getting the media library correctly with at least the 2.5x releases)

get v2.5.2

-daz

[google_crawler]

Where can I download this plugin?

[DrO]

via the Essentials Plug-in pack.

[Marcos]

Originally Posted by DrO

via the Essentials Plug-in pack.

where can I find this (link please)?

-thnx

[DrO]

there isn't an active link available for either at the moment due to reasons i cannot go into. hopefully it'll be restored by the end of the month (don't hold me to that as some aspects are out of my control).

[DrO]

the plug-in is now (re-)available on it's own from http://winampplugins.co.uk/timerestore.html (requires Winamp v5.64 or newer to run).

[ElectricalStorm]

THANK YOU for your hard work and plugin.

[MrSinatra]

hey DrO,

having an issue with this plugin, which is prob not a bug but undesired nonetheless. of course, I am probably missing something obvious...

but the issue is this:

I manually open winamp, clear the current playlist, and select the first track to play from the Audio smartview, which of course fills the playlist with every single audio track. I then set to shuffle/random and all is well. winamp will play and shuffle as it should.

I then manually stop winamp, and as it happens, it was on a Nirvana track, "Breed" I think. I then restart winamp, and Breed resumes from where it was stopped and winamp continues to shuffle, and that is excellent, exactly as desired / intended.

the rub comes in when the following happens: when windows shutsdown, either as a result of an external event / command, OR when it might restart due to windows updates, or whatever the case may be, the plugin "forgets" the currently playing item. so after the restart, it goes back to "Breed" at the same place in the song, everytime. it then shuffles anew, meaning the songs after it are not the same, but this always happens for that first song after windows/winamp restarts.

so my question is, is there not a way for the plugin/winamp to be aware that windows is shutting it down, and note the currently playing song, so as to resume that song, instead of going back to the one when it was more gracefully/manually shutdown? perhaps it could log only the last played item to account for this instance?

thanks!

[DrO]

if it's not being remembered in those cases then something is preventing the plug-in from saving it's settings correctly on exit as it was for that reason the plug-in was created and has been confirmed to do that fine over the years (as long as it is able to save things correctly on exit).

you'll need to look at the 'extra options' prefs page the plug-in provides and the 'save playback state' option (which is not enabled by default as it can slow down Winamp and keep hard-driives running when not desired) as the way to poll and save to cope with save on exit issues.

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by DrO

if it's not being remembered in those cases then something is preventing the plug-in from saving it's settings correctly on exit as it was for that reason the plug-in was created and has been confirmed to do that fine over the years (as long as it is able to save things correctly on exit).

yes, I agree. the plugin def has worked well for me and others for years. its just this instance where I am having the issue.

Originally Posted by DrO

you'll need to look at the 'extra options' prefs page the plug-in provides and the 'save playback state' option (which is not enabled by default as it can slow down Winamp and keep hard-driives running when not desired) as the way to poll and save to cope with save on exit issues.

ah! ok, I have homework to do. sounds likely that those prefs will overcome this issue. the hard drives part shouldn't be a problem, since they will shutdown with windows, and need to be accessed when on regardless, but the "slowing down winamp" part I am vague on... will I need to clear logs every so often? & is this like something that gets worse over time, or is it just a matter of consistent extra workload?

if I find the secret sauce that solves it for me, i'll post it. all I really want is for winamp to resume the last song playing from "close" to the same point, whenever windows forcibly shuts down without the user doing it.

thx!

[DrO]

if you set the interval too low and Winamp needs to re-write a lot of settings (depending on what setting you select), it can either be unnoticeable or it can cause a noticeable lag in Winamp's ui (especially if you do as some have and set the interval to a few seconds).

as the polling mode is telling Winamp to save at least part of it's settings out along with the plug-ins own.

but it's there to cover the cases you're mentioning, so just don't set the update interval too low and it should be fine. and there's no logs to clear out.

[MrSinatra]

hi DrO,

so I've been trying different things and can't get it right. I think there is a bug (or something) as well. right now I have it set to 22 seconds and to save everything, playlist and settings. I also have tried enabling / disabling the playback resume in the history prefs.

is it taboo to mix using both?

sometimes winamp will restart without me prompting it, but lately it doesn't. also, the bug I seem to have found is that my playlist is around 75k items, but when winamp comes back, it only has about 17k items in the playlist, (about A - D). for some reason, the whole playlist does not seem to be getting saved.

also, I can't seem to get the option to always play the first song in the playlist (over-riding winamps normal behavior) to work.

I am still experimenting...

[DrO]

you've really messed up things somehow as data loss is a different issue to this plug-in and its workings. it won't restore the position if the item doesn't exist in the playlist on loading but it should resort to the first item in that case. and mixing things with the history option will probably conflict (I've never used the two enabled at the same time).

[xaviersaverio]

Hi,

I have Winamp 5.3 installed (if memory serves well, no Bento UI support) and would like to stick to this version. I'm therefore unable to use Time Restore & Autoplay plugin current version.

I found v2.5.3 but it also required a more recent version of Winamp.

Would you please kindly tell me where I could find a compatible version of the plugin, i.e. v2.5.2 or earlier.

[DrO]

I will not provide older versions of the plug-in as I do not support them or old Winamp versions as both would be buggy.

and you can keep using the current skin you prefer even when updating to a current Winamp release.

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by DrO

you've really messed up things somehow as data loss is a different issue to this plug-in and its workings. it won't restore the position if the item doesn't exist in the playlist on loading but it should resort to the first item in that case. and mixing things with the history option will probably conflict (I've never used the two enabled at the same time).

hi DrO,

just an update... I don't think I messed anything up, but I don't have the install to work on atm. to be clear, the problems are on a new win7/patched winamp install with this as the only plugin, and exhibited themselves before I messed around with the "History" native plugin. I am pretty sure i'll be able to give steps on how to reproduce, just not yet.

what I suspect is happening is that the shutdown/sleep or whatever command is too fast for winamp, and it can only save ~17k of the 75k playlist before its overtaken by the OS. (this install uses a fast SSD type of drive). but I don't want to further speculate until I can experiment further.

[DrO]

if its a timing issue then I'm not going to be able to replicate it as it's too specific to your machine and OS setup. as with all programs if closing the machine you should shut down programs beforehand to ensure you don't have data loss. as you typically get a few seconds before being force closed and if Winamp in that case is too slow then yes data loss of the main playlist could happen and then this plug-in will do as seen.

so the plug-in is fine afaict and its other factors (some which may not be avoidable) that are causing you issues. if anything it'd probably make more sense for Winamp to save out the main playlist prior to closing i.e. after a few minutes of no change (and is just down to avoiding ui lag that is the issue). though that's what the options the plug-in allows to be done but I cannot remember if the last Winamp build filters out re-saving its copy of the playlist or not in such cases.

[MrSinatra]

damn... i can't remember how i did this...

basically, all i want is for winamp to automatically open and start playing the same track each time, and then shuffle the rest of the songs in the smartview.

so say i have a smartview named "AA" and i have a 2 second track in there called "Austin Powers"

how do i get it to play that track each time winamp starts and shuffle all the rest of the songs?

[MrSinatra]

found a bit of a kludge, which might be the way i did it b4, not sure...

but go to the smartview u want, and make sure the file u want to play first each time is at the start of the scratch playlist, (prob best to make sure it just is that way natively by making it first in the track results pane)

in autoplay prefs, on the first tab, pick the first and 5th box, and the 2nd box in the second grouping. nothing else. on the second tab, pick the first and third box.

not the most elegant solution, but appears to be working for now.