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[sixtiesstereo]

  I did a search on this, but can't seem to come up with anything (although I may have missed it).

  I just (finally!) upgraded to 11 from 10 today.  While there are many terrific improvements to the
interface, and many more options available, for the life of me I can't figure out to have the album art
slideshow start up..I haven't even been able to determine if it's still in the program (the help file says
a few things about it, but contrary to what it says, it doesn't auto start).
  With 10, I mainly played my collection from the My Computer view, went to the album directory in the tree
view, clicked on the album I wanted to hear, the songs appeared in the right pane, I clicked on a track and
it started to play and at the same time started up the slideshow.  I have extensive cover art scans for each
album (liner notes, internal artwork, etc) and I really want to view these as the track is playing.  This was one of the
original reasons I bought MC, starting with vers 9.
  Any info on this is appreciated.  Thanks!

[Alex B]

MC starts a simultaneous slideshow if the image files are included in the selection when playback is started. You can also select the image files and play them when an audio playlist is already playing. In both cases the images will start a slideshow.

You can do that in Drives & Devices for unimported image files, but you can also import the image files to media library, tag them with the artist and album tags and make a view scheme that can show the image files besides the audio files. Here are some instructions for making the view scheme: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=31061.0.

After making a new view scheme and tagging the images MC can show the album files like this:

[Alex B]

I forgot to add this:

... With 10, I mainly played my collection from the My Computer view, went to the album directory in the tree view, clicked on the album I wanted to hear, the songs appeared in the right pane, I clicked on a track and it started to play and at the same time started up the slideshow...

The behavior has not changed (unless you used previously some third party display plug-in that I am not aware of). I guess you have selected the folder instead of a track. Then MC plays the images too.

[sixtiesstereo]

I forgot to add this:

The behavior has not changed (unless you used previously some third party display plug-in that I am not aware of). I guess you have selected the folder instead of a track. Then MC plays the images too.

  That's my point.  The version I just upgraded to in fact does NOT do what vers. 10 did.  I am selecting a track, double clicking it, it starts to
play, but only the cover art is being displayed, not the other images in the same folder.  No slideshow.  The right click option for slideshow is
appearing, but when I click "start slideshow", nothing happens.  If I click "next image" nothing happens and it stays on the album cover art
(folder.jpg) and that's it.  I have not used any other plug-in, this is a clean install of vers. 11.

[Alex B]

MC10 does not start an image slideshow when an audio track is played.

That works exactly like before in MC11.1. You need to start the image playback too (at the same time or afterwards).

Just "right-click > play" an album folder in "Drives & Devices" and the included images will play in a slideshow.

The biggest change in MC11.1 was the removal of the default "Media Library" root tree branch that could show all file types at the same time. You need to recreate it as I instructed if your cover art files are imported to the library.

[sixtiesstereo]

  All right, I actually got it to start a slideshow by clicking on the album folder name, and clicking play.  Then the first
track starts and it also then starts the slideshow of the image files in that folder.  However, if I click on the album folder,
the tracks appear in the right pane, but if I then double click on, say, track 4, it starts to play, but again only the cover
art (folder.jpg) appears, no slideshow.  And no option for "image" in the bar at the bottom of the window (that let's you
choose cover art, visualisation, track info or 3d visualization).  That bar also used to have "image", but no longer does.
  I'm sorry to drag this out, but I must be missing something after having used vers. 10 for so long.  Hope it's something
obvious.........

[Alex B]

Actually, that's not true. I was just using my copy of version 10 this morning, and it in fact did start the slideshow, as it has for the entire time I used it, automatically when I clicked on a track in the top pane. And no, I never installed any other slideshow plug-in into my version 10, it always had the function of when a track was clicked in the upper pane, it would add it to playing now, change the pane layout to tracks on lower pane, images in upper pane and start the slideshow automatically.

Hmm... I guess were are speaking about a slightly different thing. What do you mean by "in the top pane"?

I too have used the slideshow function for my album images a long time and for me, it has always worked as I wrote.

I posted this reply almost two years ago when I used MC10:

Topic: Cover Art Question:  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=22841.0

Well, I'll try to explain better:

MC has native support for single image file, which is linked to a music file or placed inside the file's tag area. Actually that is not an album image but a track image. MC can find it automatically if certain conditions exist. Instead you can manually link one image file to a single track or to several tracks (e.g. to all tracks in one album).

MC has also native support for importing image files to the media library, e.g. your digital camera images. You can tag them as you like. With MC you can show image files in slideshows when playing music files. I use that capacity for playing and showing my albums.

I want to have my albums complete in MC, including music, cover art and printed information. Usually I scan several images: front, back, booklet, inlay, CD 1, CD 2, etc. I make them at least 800 pixels wide. If there is small printed text I make them bigger. So all text can be read if/when enlarged (you can pause the slideshow and enlarge an image). I also make a smaller version of the front cover, which is used as a usual track image. I store all images in the album folder.

I import those image files to MC and tag them. Because they have the same album tag as the music files the images become part of the album in the MC library. I can see them together in the All Media view. I can search for the album name and I get a list of the music files and the image files. If I send them all to Playing Now, MC displays a slide show during the album playback. I can also make playlists of them (incl. music & images).

I have not found tagging them too awkward. Importing and tagging the image files takes only some seconds. For example, you could do that just before listening to each album. Listening to an album takes usually at least 40 minutes.

Here is an example of the files included in one of my albums:



Here is an example of the album images:



The file named "Bonnie Tyler - Silhuette In Red.jpg" (labelled as "Front") is the standard cover art image, which is associated with the music files. It is used when I play single tracks in various artists playlists.

When I play the whole album with images I don't usually include that small image in the playlist because the cover is included in the "Booklet 1" image. In this case the booklet spreads are 1600 pixels wide.

At this point, I wish I had saved my install of version 10 and had vers 11 installed seperately rather than letting the version 11 install delete version 10.  Until I can get this working as before, I may have to reinstall vers 10 and use a restore to get it operational again just so I can determine what's different between the two. But it definately was different than vers. 11.

You don't have to use a restore on the same PC. MC's installer preserves all previous licenses. However, the v. 11.1 (and 11.0) database is not backwards compatible, so you need to use a backup of your MC10 database. (BTW, I suppose you installed the latest MC11.1, not MC11.0, which is more or less obsolete by now.)

If you like to test the differences you can install MC10 in a separate folder, but I think you should install MC11.1 once again after that. MC10 was designed before MC11.x and it may improperly change some registry settings that MC11.x uses.

[Alex B]

I just remembered what third party plugin I was thinking about.

You may want to check this out:

NaTeDoGG's "auto image slideshow track info plugin" thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=23381.msg162799#msg162799

The latest plugin links are in this post: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=23381.msg203094#msg203094

[sixtiesstereo]

Hmm... I guess were are speaking about a slightly different thing. What do you mean by "in the top pane"?

I too have used the slideshow function for my album images a long time and for me, it has always worked as I wrote.

   Thanks for the reply.  What I meant by the top pane is simply the basic layout of Media Center.

         javascript:displayWindow('/mediacenter/mc_data/plugins/images/898.jpg',800+40,600+40)

  I actually just checked out my installation of version 10 on my old computer, and it's operation of slideshow
is exactly as I stated.  When you click on an album folder from the tree view, the tracks appear on the right side, upper
pane.  If you then click on a single track, all of the tracks are redislplayed in the lower pane, and the slideshow begins
in the upper pane, automatically.  Any .jpgs in the album directory automatically are added as part of the slideshow.  They
don't need to be added to a playlist, or even the library.  If they're on my hard drive, they start showing in slideshow.
  It's obvious the slideshow function is still in 11.  What is missing is a way to configure it to start up automatically when
playing a file, no matter which method of selecting the file is used.  I rarely play an entire folder at one sitting, but pick a track
here and there from different albums depending on what I feel like hearing.  And it was always nice to see the slideshow
while that one track was playing.
  Again, we may be missing something obvious, and I agree version 11 is a vast improvement in nearly all respects over
version 10, but I really do need that slideshow ability, especially since I now use my PC as an HTPC on my 60" HD TV.
I'll keep looking, otherwise I'll have to keep version 10 also for when I need it.

[marko]

the image linked above via javascript:
http://accessories.jrmediacenter.com/mediacenter/mc_data/plugins/images/898.jpg


are you sure you never installed the jriver slideshow plugin for MC10?

Description: Displays images while you play music. Create slide show presentations to amaze your family and friends.

· Auto find and display images of artists from the Internet or any Web site.
· Play your own still photos and images that you have saved to your PC.
· Supports GIF, JPEG and BMP images.
· Image sequencing in alphabetical order or random order.
· Pictures automatically resized to fit your screen size.
· Show off your creativity and sync images with your favorite music. Great for parties.
· Easy-to-use. Fully configurable. Great transition effects and more.

Demoware: 30-day trial
Full version only US $ 9.98

[sixtiesstereo]

  No, I never installed that particular plug-in. 
 
  However, I did just reinstall version 10, and comparing the two, they HAVE eliminated a setting. 
 In the image playback configurationin vers. 10, there is a tick setting for "start slideshow automatically".  In version 11, it's been
removed.  The big question now is, Why?  My reinstall of version 10 works exactly as I stated.
In version 11 it doesn't.  I suggest they put it back in.  It, for me at least, was a necessary funtion.

[sixtiesstereo]

  Thought I'd reply to my own thread to bump it back up.

  Is there anyway to have the "start slideshow automatically"
put back in the image playback settings in vers 11
the way it was in vers. 10?  I'm still not clear as to why
it's missing, but it IS still refered to in the vers. 11
Help file.  It's just not available in the dialog anymore.
  Otherwise, is there a configuration file that I can edit
myself to activate the "auto slideshow" option.  Thanks.