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[JONCAT]

     Just wondering if now that Playing Now is a part of MC (IIRC), we can get some better integration. If FTP upload is bogged down with torrents or transfers MC will lag, but I often experience a big lag time for MC even when nothing is going upstream.

     MC is completely unusable while Playing Now "does its thing"; often times, even if it takes 2-4 seconds, the entire process subdues any functionality of MC. You can't right click or choose Next on an Image while waiting for the pop-up. Is there any way to disabuse ourselves of this behavior, it doesn't make sense; I hope the process can feasibly be de-integrated from MC because I like Playing Now a lot. Anyone else get a bit frustrated with this great plugin?

DC

[RhinoBanga]

The FTP transfers take place in a separate thread so it shouldn't have any affect on MC.   However I have noticed that in WindowsXP that long DNS requests will block any other DNS requests, irrespective of where they are called.   Try changing the ftp address to it's numeric form to see if that helps.

Also try switching on logging to see if you can spot what the plugin is doing when MC hangs.

[JONCAT]

Marko (?) describes the behavior I have observed for years with MC & Playing Now:

"Before we start, there's one thing you should be aware of....

when playingnow makes its ftp transfer, mediacenter will 'pause'. There will be no affect on music playback, but things like the playingnow popup and media center's progress counter won't update until the ftp transfer is done. It doesn't intefere with my media enjoyment here. Once in a while, the transfer will fail, and when that happens, it is intrusive as media center has to wait while playingnow reaches its 'timeout' level."

(his site: http://www.theganghut.co.uk/pn/tuts/ftp/ftp.php)

I just cranked up my ftp upload and while waiting for playing now to update the MC progress bar does not advance, the time of the song stays at zero. If I happen to be looking at an image, I can't do anything like right click, in fact, I can't do anything with MC; my mouse shows "waiting" the entire time of PN update.

thanks for the tip though, I did change the ip to numeric.

Just hoping to see Playing Now disengaged from MC, but maybe something else is wrong?

DC

[RhinoBanga]

When I get back from France at the end of the month I'll investigate this.

[JONCAT]

Tu est l'homme! (I know my French is terrible).

DC

[mlefebvre]

Tu est l'homme! (I know my French is terrible).

DC

Almost perfect! "Tu es l'homme!" (wink).

Michel.

[marko]

Dr. C.

Which version of playingnow are you running?

The current version (1.3.0.9) runs the auto-ftp stuff in its own thread and has eliminated all of these issues for me.

-marko.

[JONCAT]

1.2.1.0


YIKES.

I've been living with this for SO long.......fingers crossed.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DC

[JONCAT]

Version: 1.2.3.12 is the one on the JRiver site......is it on your site somewhere?

DC

[marko]

http://www.jdnet.co.uk/PlayingNow/pn.zip

[JONCAT]

I'm having a problem with 1.3 now. The main .ini is responding to chnages if I swicth the pop-up skin for example. But the FTP transfer is not occuring automatically; I can get it to work manually with the Send To feature in PN.


;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;  FTP SECTION
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ftp]
NumFtps=1


[Ftp 1]
Address=xxxxxxx.net
Port=21
UserName=xxxxxxxxxxx
Password=xxxxxxxxxxxx
PassiveMode=True
Filename=PlayingNow.jpg
Skin=slim-chrome
InitialDirectory=httpdocs/mc


I'm getting no errors messages that it can't write to the site which I find strange.


also tried initially with:
[Ftp]
;AlternativeINI=c:\MyFtps.ini
NumFtps=1   

(1 was zero so I chnaged that)
DC

[JONCAT]

I switched back to my old .ini and FTP uploads are working again. And I seem to have reaped the benefit of 1.3 with no lag in MC or usability.

I honestly couldn't see any difference, especially in the FTP sections...they were identical.

I am using 64-bit Windows XP Pro.

DC

[marko]

Tip:

.ini file location
The default location for playingnow's .ini file is in your windows directory. If you create a folder in your application data directory like so...
C:\Documents and Settings\<xp user name>\Application Data\PlayingNow
then copy the playingnow.ini from c:\windows to the above directory, renaming the file to settings.ini, playingnow will use that file instead. This way, any customisations you make won't be over-written if you reinstall playingnow.
Remember though, that if an upgrade includes additions to the ini file, you will need to add the additions to your settings.ini manually.

v1.3 has been rock solid for me.
The Last.fm features do have one or two bugs that can stop transfers with some track names (rainy day women #12 & 35 for example) which causes the Q file to just keep on growing. last.fm support is better with the stand-alone plugin available from the thread in the MC11.1 forum.
It has speech too which is quite novel, though you need to find better voices as the microsoft default sounds too much like Stephen Hawking!!
Not entirely sure what might have been wrong with the ftp transfers, but I take it that if it's working now, there's no longer an issue there?

-marko.

[JONCAT]

Everything is working with the old .ini but I still have no idea why the new one wouldn't work with the same FTP info.

I would like to be able to use the new .ini with the speech function. I may try to add some off the new lines to the old .ini to incorporate speech into ....will this work. I removed the Audible.com section from the new .ini with no luck.

I guess I should post the two here. The active Playing Now .ini sits in C:\WINDOWS

DC

[wickesy]

Silly question maybe but...you do have the AutoFTP set correctly in the new ini don't you?

[JONCAT]

I think so, you mean the FTP info? It's identical in both but for some reason the new .ini just will not upload the pn.jpg. Maybe I'll post the two .ini files here later.

DC

[wickesy]

I think so, you mean the FTP info? It's identical in both but for some reason the new .ini just will not upload the pn.jpg. Maybe I'll post the two .ini files here later.

DC

No, in the "Popup" section there should be a line that says AutoFTP=1

Popup
This section defines the characteristics of the popup part of PlayingNow.

 Setting:
 AutoFTP
 
Description:
 Nominate the FTP sections to use if you want to automatically upload popup graphics to your website when a track changes.   Each FTP is done in a background thread simultaneously and will not affect the playback performance.
 
Value Type:
 Numbers
 
Required:
 No ... default is 0 which means do not auto ftp the popup.
 
Example:
 AutoFTP=1,2
 

[JONCAT]

I have the FTP upload working, but still sometimes experiencing a lockdown of MC waiting for the J. Dickson PlayingNow pop-up. This  occurs mostly when it first attempts to connect to an FTP site.

Also, while the pop-up loads you can not access MC. Try editing a tag while switching tracks; albeit quick you are locked out of MC during a track switch or playback startup as the pop-up is loaded.

The problem is exacerbated when, every now and again, I experience a long lag on the pop-up loading.

If I disable the pop-up, MC has no issue letting me edit fields through shuffling playback or starting playback.

I am using PN 1.3

DC