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[mino]

Hey all,

Just a quick question. I'm developing an Interface plugin, kind of like the Web Remote, but in Visual Basic. It accepts TCP/IP connections, and dumps "playing now" and "playing soon" stuff over them. A few questions:

• Is there any way for an interface plugin to be notified when the track changes? At the moment, I have a VB timer control and I just check every second if the now playing track filename has changed.
• The plugin only has its init() called when you click on it under "plugins". Correspondingly, when you click away (to "now playing", for instance) it gets shut down. Any way I can have it start up automatically, and not shut down until media jukebox does?
• Given the answers to the above questions, is an interface plugin the right type to use? None of the others seemed to fit...

Thanks in advance.

[RhinoBanga]

As far as I'm aware the timer method is the only way as MJ does not have any other callback mechanism.

When you register your OCX set the PluginMode to 1 ... that will make it resident within MJ.

The interface plugin method is your best bet for what you are trying to do.

[mino]

Ahh, Rhino... thanks. You're a legend.

Next question. Is there any way, in the automation interfaces for MJ, to access the "Album Artist" field for a the currently playing song, as opposed to the "Track Artist"?

If not, it would probably be nice to have it added...

FWIW, I'm working on a little pop-up sliding "Now playing" window which can sit on all our office machines here, while we listen to MediaJukebox on our central server. I had one for RealJukebox, when we used to use that (ack! phht!), now I'm just modifying it for a DECENT music jukebox program.  

Thanks.

[RhinoBanga]

AlbumArtist is not in the documentation nor in the .tlb file but I would expect it to be very simple for Matt/Nikolay to add it ... ask them ... they're very helpfull.

That little popup sounds like a neat little app.

[Polonio]

Next question. Is there any way, in the automation interfaces for MJ, to access the "Album Artist" field for a the currently playing song, as opposed to the "Track Artist"?

I am interested in same thing. How can we access "Album Alrtist field? Or we can't?

A related question. I am not sure if this is the correct forum, but anyway: Will future version of MJ9 read the "Album Artist" field? Now, I just see the "Album Artist (Auto)...

[mino]

Thanks again Rhino.

I've got my software largely working, but one more question for the VB Plugin Development gurus out there...

When I compile my VB control into an OCX on my machine, and run Media Jukebox, the plugin starts fine. When I copy the .ocx to our main server, regsvr32 it, and run the registry file, it all goes OK, but when I start MediaJukebox, it says that the component "must implement IUnknown", and refuses to start it.

Is there something else I need to do other than regsvr32 the .ocx? I thought that was it... and VB Classes compiled as OCXs implemented IUnknown by default.

I'm probably missing something really obvious, aren't I?

[RhinoBanga]

You have to make sure that you copy over any components your plugin uses, for example are the VB runtime files installed on that machine?

[mino]

Thanks Rhino,

I think that might have been it.

I used the VB setup-file wizard thing to create an installation .exe, and that seemed to work. Must have been a runtime file.

It's currently working a treat, I'll tidy up the code, make it a bit more non-my-workplace-centric, and release it in the next week or two.