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[BonkLord]

Hi, just upgraded to MC15... Everything looks great, just one thing though, aren't you guys ever gonna add the James Dickson playing now plugin to MC?   ?

It's one awesome and extremely useful plugin and would really be a fantastic addition to MC... I'm sure most users would agree? 

Come on, give us something to cheer about!

[221bBS]

OMG I would love it if they finally did this. 

[JustinChase]

I also would love to see this, especially combined with the webremote project

[marko]

Replies from this thread add weight to this request. Mine is quoted below...

Me too!!

I can't imagine using MC without this plugin. It still works, kind of.

There's a bug in there somewhere that causes MC to crash when the plugin generates tooltips.
Just before Christmas, I began working with Rhinobanga on fixing this. I have a new .dll file that doesn't cause crashes, but also, doesn't obey the custom colours specified in the skin ini.
All has gone quiet on that front now. I've not chased it on because I'm not crashing anymore, though control over tooltip appearance would be nice to have back.

I use a 'winshades' type skin, like so:

Which gives me complete control over MC, allows rating tracks, and lots of useful info available via tooltips.
MC 15 should include this by default.

Just before JRiver stepped in, the playingnow plugin stepped up a version to 1.3, and the price went up to £5 GBP. If you still have your license file, it should still work today.
I can help you if you need a 1.3 setup file. The 1.2 version on the plugin pages has a few bugs with it, and I'm unsure if it will even work with the latest releases of MC.

JRiver aquired the plugin almost four years ago, and as they haven't incorporated it into MC thus far, nor given it any development time, I guess it's fair to say that it's not high on their list of priorities.

I'm all for pushing it up the list though, consider me signed up already

-marko.

[221bBS]

I stopped using it because it kept crashing.

[JustinChase]

I still have my license file I bought how many years ago; anyone know where I can get a working version to install?  and maybe that .dll file that you said fixed the crashing?

thanks in advance

[marko]

PM sent.

[Al ex]

Hi, just upgraded to MC15... Everything looks great, just one thing though, aren't you guys ever gonna add the James Dickson playing now plugin to MC?   ?

It's one awesome and extremely useful plugin and would really be a fantastic addition to MC... I'm sure most users would agree? 

Come on, give us something to cheer about!

What is this "Playing Now Plugin" doing?

[JustinChase]

PM sent.

Thanks marko, I finally go a chance to try this, and sadly, am not having luck.  I last installed Playing Now a couple of years ago, on another machine, most likely with v14, and all was well.

I scoured a backup drive and found the version I had saved, also 1.3.0.10, but I did not have the dll file.

I did as you suggested, closed MC, installed the plug-in, and opened MC again.  it opened with MC and warned me that it could not register Win-Ctl-p, as it might be registered with something else.  I have no idea, but I hit okay, it warned me again, and I hit okay again, and then I went to plugin manager and "showed" the plugin, clicked on it in the tree, hit about, hit the register tab and it showed evaluation expired for the info.

I hit the enter registration button, navigated to the JDA file I saved from the email registration I got from Rhino, and it said thank for registring and to restart MC to validate, but when I close and re-open MC (I verified it shut down with Task Manager) it warns me again about the Win-Ctl-p and opens up immediately, but still shows evaluation expired everywhere and does not show as registered.

I tried this several times, as I was originally using a shared library, then I tried a library shared library, then a local library, all the steps above with each library, I tried installing your dll over the installed one a couple of times, and I can see it changes the plugin, because it shoes 9.0 instead of a greyed out button after replacing the dll.

I wonder why it won't install.  do you have any ideas?  Does Jim or Matt know why it won't register.  It seems it's not supported any more, but I would love to get it working again if possible, it's a great little addition to MC.

Thanks again for all your help

[marko]

I've just set up a new i7 based system and am just about ready to start setting up MC after shuffling many gigabytes of files around (very boring) and getting everything else in order. I have a slightly worrying Wininnit error in the sys logs that proclaims that custom dll files are being loaded for everything that I want to try and work out first. Preliminary googling is not producing anything helpful thus far...

I'll get to the pn install asap and report my experience for comparison.

-marko

[JustinChase]

Thanks, I'll keep my fingers crossed

[marko]

I did as you suggested, closed MC, installed the plug-in, and opened MC again.  it opened with MC and warned me that it could not register Win-Ctl-p, as it might be registered with something else.  I have no idea, but I hit okay, it warned me again, and I hit okay again, and then I went to plugin manager and "showed" the plugin, clicked on it in the tree, hit about, hit the register tab and it showed evaluation expired for the info.

I hit the enter registration button, navigated to the JDA file I saved from the email registration I got from Rhino, and it said thank for registring and to restart MC to validate, but when I close and re-open MC (I verified it shut down with Task Manager) it warns me again about the Win-Ctl-p and opens up immediately, but still shows evaluation expired everywhere and does not show as registered.

Are you perhaps running Windows Vista or Windows Seven?
By default, the plugin saves its config file in the Windows folder, which these OSs don't like.
If you go to your "Users\[your account]\AppData\Roaming\" directory and make a new folder there called "PlayingNow".
Then go to your Windows folder, find the file called "PlayingNow.ini" and copy it to the PlayingNow folder you just created. Now rename this new file to Settings.ini.
From now on, the plugin will read this file ("Users\[your account]\AppData\Roaming\PlayingNow\Settings.ini") instead of the file in the Windows folder.
Open this Settings.ini file in Notepad and look for the "Popup" section. You will find:

ShowHotkey=Win+P
ToggleHotkey=Win+Ctrl+P

Another application you use has already bagged the Win+Ctrl+p combo for itself which is why the plugin throws an error about it when it runs. When I press that combo on Windows Seven I get what looks like a display picker panel pop up. Change the combo in the Settings file and then save your changes. That should take care of the error message, which if nothing else, tells us that the plugin is running.

I tried this several times, as I was originally using a shared library, then I tried a library shared library, then a local library, all the steps above with each library, I tried installing your dll over the installed one a couple of times, and I can see it changes the plugin, because it shoes 9.0 instead of a greyed out button after replacing the dll.

I wonder why it won't install.  do you have any ideas?  Does Jim or Matt know why it won't register.  It seems it's not supported any more, but I would love to get it working again if possible, it's a great little addition to MC.

Thanks again for all your help

I'm not sure what's up at your end, but everything went very smoothly for me here with a virgin MC installation. I did not need to go anywhere near the plugin manager. I installed the plugin, opened MC, and it ran. Simples. Then I closed MC, copied the new .dll into the plugin directory, over writing the existing file, restarted MC, and all is good.

"I can see it changes the plugin, because it shoes 9.0 instead of a greyed out button after replacing the dll."

This has me scratching my head a little as I can't imagine what you mean. The updated .dll file has a version number of 14.0.1, but that won't show up anywhere in MC as it installed v13.0.10 and that is what gets written into the registry location that the plugin manager reads its info from. MC is blissfully unaware you have swapped in a new file.
Where are you seeing "9" and which button is greyed out?

Your chosen library should have no bearing on the plugin's operation.

You should get 14 days grace before requiring to register. If your evaluation has expired, I guess you previously installed the plugin more than 14 days ago.
Your serial number is stored in the registry, which causes me to wonder if you are bumping into any possible registry writing permissions that might be in place on your system. I run with UAC turned off, do you?
If not, perhaps you could try turning it off, reboot afterwards to effect the switch off, apply the registration, does it work?, turn UAC back on, reboot to effect the switch on.

If that doesn't work, I have a plan B, but we can't discuss that here

-marko

[JustinChase]

sorry for the long delay, real life got a hold of me for a while 

Thanks again for your help!!  I finally made the time to try this again tonight.

I am running Windows 7, and was using UAC.  I tried to run as admin, but I think it just couldn't register the registration inside of MC properly.

Turning off UAC, rebooting, installing, registering, then restarting MC did in fact register it properly.  I haven't turned UAC back on yet, but I don't expect that to be a problem.

As for the button and 9 issue, before copying over the dll file; if you go to Services & Plug-ins, select Playing Now, the main window shows 2 buttons, on the left is "About", and right next to it is one that says something about Audio Scrobbler (can't remember now) and it's greyed out for me.

After copying the dll, the button on the right disappears, and I get 9.00 in bold letters next to the top-right corner of the About button.  it doesn't appear to be an improperly iconed button, nothing is selectable, other than the About button.

I as also able to get the settings.ini worked out also.

Thank you very much for the detailed help, I really appreciate having this working again!!!

Maybe someday J River will bring it back officially (and a little juiced up)