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[krmasson]

[MC 24.0.68 Windows 10]

Hello there,
I have been experienting strange behaviour regarding hotkeys,  for some time now.
I think I have just understood what is going on:
when the option "general/advanced/consume hotkeys when running as server" is unchecked, MC server no longer catches the play/pause keys of multimedia keyboards. This is just perfect.

The drawback comes when the GUI is also active on the same machine (MC running as GUI AND DLNA server): in this case, the hotkeys are also not active, which is very inconvenient.

The correct/expected behaviour would be, IMHO: "do not consume hotkeys when running as server w/o GUI".

Would it be possible to improve the actual behaviour toward that direction?
Many thanks in advance.

CM

[RoderickGI]

What do you have "Options > General > Advanced > Media key mode" set to?

That controls what MC will do when the GUI is running I believe. If possible, you should have it set to "Automatic". If that doesn't work as you wish, try the other modes.

[RoderickGI]

Also, it would help if you didn't create a new thread each time you ask the question. You have three threads on the same topic now. Just bump the thread if you aren't getting responses, but not too often. Or just change the name of the thread to make it more interesting.

Things are not perfect, though: if I launch MC in GUI mode and exit (server still running), the hotkeys are "stolen" by the server again. All goes well again if I kill and restart the server, but I also kill the connection for other people listening to this server.

When you "exit" MC, are you really closing the MC GUI, or are you just minimising it?
If you have "Options > General > Interface > Minimise to System Tray" set, it can look like you have closed MC, but it is just mininmised.

Once you have exited, has the MC GUI function (Media Center 24) disappeared from the Windows Task Manager?
Sometimes it can take a minute or so to complete closing that GUI in the background. You need to wait when testing to see if it disappears.

The better you explain the issue, what you are doing, and what you are observing, the more likely the issue can be reproduced, and hence the more likely it is that it will be resolved. This means checking all the relevant settings and documenting what they are in your installation.

[krmasson]

Also, it would help if you didn't create a new thread each time you ask the question. /.../ Or just change the name of the thread to make it more interesting.

This was not my aim, but the two first times I had not gotten any status. Now I have, I think, a more exact description of the behaviour: I wanted to add this response to my previous threads, but they had disappeared (yes, I have really searched).

Now, to be more precise : after installation, I put the check box "Option/General/Adavanced/Translate hot keys when running as media server" to uncheck. Then I exit. Then when MC runs as server (either from the boot, either because i started it from the GUI and then exited the GUI), the media hot keys are not consumed by MC, and are available for other programs, this is perfect.

But, as already stated twice :-), if I then open MC as GUI (other players being closed), with the MC DLNA server still active, MC GUI does not execute the hotkeys (unless it has the focus).
The "correct"/expected behaviour, imho, would be to not consume the hotkeys when running as server only, but to consume them if the GUI is running.

And, yes, I have already tried the two other options about managing hotkeys, indeed before my first post.

Regards
CM

[RoderickGI]

Your other threads are still there:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,118129.0.html In this one you said: "if I launch MC in GUI mode and exit (server still running), the hotkeys are "stolen" by the server again."
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,118393.0.html In this one you said: "However, as soon a I launch MC as desktop app (after having stopped Qobuz), MC is no longer able to catch the hotkeys."
The easiest way to find your posts is to open your Profile from the above forum menu, and then select "Show Posts". The same can be done by opening any forum member's Profile.

Now you are saying:

But, as already stated twice :-), if I then open MC as GUI (other players being closed), with the MC DLNA server still active, MC GUI does not execute the hotkeys (unless it has the focus).
The "correct"/expected behaviour, imho, would be to not consume the hotkeys when running as server only, but to consume them if the GUI is running.

The bold text above is the first time you have mentioned that your media keys work when MC is in focus. I thought you were saying that the Media Keys didn't work at all.

There was a lot of discussion about when Media Keys should work with MC some time back. I think in the end consensus was that they should only work with the GUI when the GUI was in focus, unless the Media Server was running and it was set to translate hot keys, in which case it was the Media Server that was doing that task. In other words, MC is doing what it is supposed to do, by design.

By all means search the forum for the discussion. Perhaps search for "Focus" or "in focus" to find it, or "Translate Hot Keys when running as Media Server", as I could be wrong about the consensus.

What you're looking for is what Windows Media Player does, which is capture and use all Media Keys whether it is the application in focus or not. Well, that has issues. For example, if Windows Media Player is running at all, even if MC is in focus, WMP captures media hot keys and uses them, blocking them from MC. I just confirmed that. I had to close WMP to get media keys to work with MC even when it was in focus, and regardless of the Media Key Mode set in MC.

So if MC was supposed to capture all Media Keys even when it was in focus, and WMP does the same thing, if both were running, which application should start playing media?

If you had Qobuz player running in the foreground, and forgot to close MC, perhaps having minimised it, which application should process the Media Keys?

MC is being a good computer citizen and not capturing Media Keys when it isn't in focus. It is a compromise, so that MC works best with other applications.


Mind you, I'm not sure what the Media key mode setting of "Hot Keys" is exactly supposed to do. I haven't looked that up. Perhaps there is something in the Wiki or Forum. I'll leave that to you.

Regardless, I don't believe this is a bug. MC is working as per design, achieved by consensus after discussion.

[krmasson]

Say that I have not well enough searched for my previous posts, sorry for that.

About the behaviour with the hotkeys, there is probably a misunderstanding about what it is supposed to do.

The *actual* behaviour I have experienced *for years* on several computers (MC20  or MC24, under Windows 7, 8.1, or 10), when no server was running (only the GUI) is that MC catches the hotkeys, even when it has not the focus. This is perfect for me: when I am working on my computer, with MC minimized somewhere, and get interrupted, I just have to press on "pause", and the music stops.

The Qobuz player behaves the same way, also perfect for me.

Of course, I am not supposed to (or I think  so) run several players at the same time: I always stop MC before launching the Qobuz player, and conversely. If there are two players running at the same time, this is IMHO a case of "undefined behaviour": you (MC) do what you can, but this is the user's (me) problem if this does not work, not yours.

To make the story short, all worked fine for years for me, and things began to go wrong when I started to run the DLNA server on the same computer. I have rebooted several times yesterday, trying several workflows and combinations and I admit that I am currently totally unable to characterize which cases are running well or not.

IMHO, the fact that the DLNA server is active should not modify the behaviour.

Sorry for all the trouble, but there is definitively something not clear when the DLNA server is running, not just the GUI.
Regards
CM

[RoderickGI]

Just to clarify I'm just another user like you. I don't work for JRiver.

If it used to work for you previously, did it stop working correctly late last year, or when you upgraded to MC24?

23.0.87 (12/4/2017)
1. Changed: Made the option to not translate hotkeys when running as Media Server actually unregister the program for hotkeys so hopefully it won't catch them anymore (before it would catch them but not translate them).
23.0.86 (12/1/2017)
6. NEW: Added the option to not translate hotkeys when running as Media Server (Options > General > Advanced).

Maybe the behaviour did change with the MC23.0.87 update. Maybe not just the Media Server (for clarification, it isn't just a DLNA server) was unregistered for hotkeys, but all of MC was unregistered for hotkeys if the "Translate Hot Keys when running as Media Server" and the Media Server was running. That would explain what you are seeing now, and why it changed.

But that wouldn't explain why the hotkeys work when MC is in focus.

Perhaps someone from JRiver could comment. Maybe there is a real issue, since there has been one other unexplained Media Keys issues recently: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=118591.0

[krmasson]

I cannot say when the behaviour changed, I used the same version of MC20 for years, it is my own usage which changed in April, when I began to use MC Server, and to have [ MC Server and (MC GUI  *OR* Qobuz GUI) ] running on the same computer: MC went well regarding hotkeys, focused or not, and Qobuz did no longer work.

I did not realized soon that MC server was the root cause, I thought is was because of an update of the Qobuz player.

I precisely bought MC24 in November when I saw in release notes that an option had been added regarding hotkeys translation.
When I uncheck "translate hotkeys when running as server"), I can have MC server running, MC GUI running and catching hotkeys, or Qobuz Gui running and catching hotkeys... as long as I do not mix them.

(With MC server running) Once I have started Qobuz after stopped MC GUI, or conversely, one of both programs stops catching hotkeys, sometime both, until I reboot.
I cannot be more precise about the workflow, it seems to be not totally predictable, and at my office I am supposed to work, and cannot afford to reboot ten times a day, just to make experiments.

Just to be clear, I am speaking of situations where the player (Qb or MC) has not the focus, which is usually the case at work. When the GUIs have the focus, they react to hotkeys.

You seems to make a difference, when writing, between "catch" and "translate": I think that if MC server do not translate the hotkeys, it should not event catch them at all.

CM