Topic: NEW Slide Show Plug-in (Read 4358 times)

JimH · « **on:** May 15, 2002, 01:00:00 pm »

On this page

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=6

there is a new "Slide Show" plug-in. It is only supported by Version 8.0 and will download and install automatically.

You can use it to display images from your hard drive or CD. It can also display images from the web for the artist you're currently playing.

More on features:
1. Lets you specify an image folder.
2. Switches manually, or at 2 second, 5 second, 10 second, etc. intervals.
3. Provides 6 or 8 different transitions between images.
4. Images can be in random order, aspect ratio can be maintained.
5. As with visualizations, it can be an internal or external window and can be full screen.

Once it is installed, start playing music, go to the "playing now" screen, use the display arrows in the lower left of the display to switch from visualizations/track info to "slide show". Then right click on the screen to get the configuration menu.

scub · « **Reply #1 on:** May 15, 2002, 01:31:23 pm »

wow it pulls images of the artist of the Internet automatically. nice feature. I think I will be keeping this plug-in.

dragyn · « **Reply #2 on:** May 15, 2002, 01:35:03 pm »

This is a nice plugin.

A problem I see is when you switch tracks while it's retrieving web images, MJ stops responding. The track is playing but nothing else is happening/responding.

The arrows on the control bar should show (X of 20) or something like that..same as the visualizations, track info, etc.

SBrandsborg aka Mouseman · « **Reply #3 on:** May 15, 2002, 01:52:51 pm »

Looks Realy Nice

Holden · « **Reply #4 on:** May 15, 2002, 01:57:38 pm »

Working fine and very nice. Must experiment with this for a while.

Thanks

Holden

claudio · « **Reply #5 on:** May 15, 2002, 02:36:26 pm »

The internet pull is pretty cool! Amazing what sort of pitures it can find.

But it seems to crash/hang Mj very often on track change. Either by clicking on some tracks in playing now or by going Next Track on the MM keyboard. I then hear the classic Windows allert, and then MJ hangs with the last song still playing. Trying to exit brings up the "process not responding message"

Claudio

Media Jukebox PLUS 8.0.273

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1894 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 298 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 2 (Build 2195)

Internet Explorer: 5.50.4807.2300
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4807.2300
Shlwapi.dll: 5.50.4807.2300
Shell32.dll: 5.00.3315.2902
wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc.
Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** May 15, 2002, 02:38:33 pm »

We'll take a look at the track change problem tomorrow. In the meantime, try stopping playback or pausing it first, then changing tracks.

Stebajo · « **Reply #7 on:** May 15, 2002, 03:56:16 pm »

Yes it seems crash/hang when it can't find right Artist's images...

JimH · « **Reply #8 on:** May 15, 2002, 04:19:55 pm »

This plug-in has some hints of what comes next for us. Try the |PLS| and - keys, then the left and right arrows. Page up, page down, home and end also will work.

Mouse scroll button works. Mouse drag works in zoomed mode.

These might work more flawlessly on a directory of images on your hard disk.

All of this is thanks to Matt.

Harry the Hipster · « **Reply #9 on:** May 15, 2002, 05:41:11 pm »

Love it. Pulls some fascinating images from the web. Does seem to induce crashes; haven't figured out yet what the trigggers are.

HTH

JimH · « **Reply #10 on:** May 15, 2002, 06:04:00 pm »

It still has bugs.

Doof · « **Reply #11 on:** May 15, 2002, 07:06:00 pm »

Very nice. The web feature is cool. Although it can return some funky results sometimes.

I was listening to Crash Test Dummies.

I got a picture of a sailboat.

Even though it said it was displaying 1 of 2, all I ever saw was the sailboat. Next Page

Remy Zero seemed to work well, though. Although it did say 20 images, but only showed me 2. I didn't see any indication of it maybe downloading a really large graphic, either... maybe something with my internet connection, though.

Doof · « **Reply #12 on:** May 15, 2002, 07:09:21 pm »

And what's with the Clowns? Next Page

hehe

Jazzwolf · « **Reply #13 on:** May 15, 2002, 07:11:05 pm »

It is a nice pluging but it seems to freeze the system and hangup when it searches for images or changes track. The track is playing but everything is frozen and task manager reports Media Jukebox not responding. I was listening to Willy DeVille and then got an image of Jerry Lee Lewis! Can't figure that one out.. these two are like night and day

Callithumpian · « **Reply #14 on:** May 15, 2002, 07:50:34 pm »

OK, so it's a bit buggy and it hangs MJ pretty frequently - OK I'll turn it off and wait for improvements.
But...
Now when I start MJ and play something, anything, MJ hangs before I can turn the slide plugin off.
So my MJ is ostensibly disabled.
Any suggestions other than reinstalling MJ, Windows etc on a new computer?

Holden · « **Reply #15 on:** May 15, 2002, 07:58:58 pm »

Tried the web slide feature with the following artists: Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Rosemary Clooney.

Got plenty of images of these with the odd unrelated photo. Each would run for several slides, then freeze. Sometimes would work OK as files changed to another artist. The freezes were usually when music going fine with no changes, etc.

On slides from my own folders everything worked OK.

Holden

Harry|PLS|The|PLS|Hipster · « **Reply #16 on:** May 15, 2002, 11:57:48 pm »

Search for Al Haig (pianist, Bird and Getz. 4/4 time) produces pictures of The General ("I'm in charge here", 2/4 time). Don't know what either of them would have made of it.

Other candidates: Navarro (Fats, Ramon); Costello (Elvis, Lou); Potter (Chris, Harry); Sutton (Tierney, Willie); Kent (Stacey, Clark).

Ought to run a contest, Jim.

HTH

nila · « **Reply #17 on:** May 16, 2002, 12:45:23 am »

I'm having a bug that trying to right click to bring up the Menu when it's on slide show mode isn't working properly.
It brings up the Menu but it doesn't let me then move up and down the menu (the mouse moves but the menu isn't highlighted).
Also, clicking on the bar to then choose Track Info pages instead of slideshow mode has the same problem.

KingSparta · « **Reply #18 on:** May 16, 2002, 02:42:04 am »

Ok i have had a chance to look at the slide show plugin...

not bad...

but could it display more than one picture across maybe tobe set in config, and or depending on how wide you have the MJ window?

when new images coming into view maybe: scroll to left, scroll to the right, Scroll Down, Scroll Up, fade out, fade in, wipe left, wipe right, wipe up, wipe down.

JimH · « **Reply #19 on:** May 16, 2002, 03:44:00 am »

Callithumpian,
Try waiting for it. If the picture is slow to download that could cause problems. Set min and max sizes in the program.

Find slideshow.dll in the Media Jukebox folder and rename it or delete it if necessary.

bennyd · « **Reply #20 on:** May 16, 2002, 06:36:30 am »

Cool (except the hangs).

Is it possible to have an ActiveX Plugin so that we can use it in Track Info templates like the visualisations ?

Doof · « **Reply #21 on:** May 16, 2002, 06:53:30 am »

Couldn't you uninstall it from Plug-In Manager?

Doof · « **Reply #22 on:** May 16, 2002, 06:56:06 am »

I can't install it on my work computer. I don't know if MJ (it's weird calling it that after seeing Spider-man Next Page

) just doesn't like our firewall/proxy server or what, but I find I quite often can't install plugins here at work. They download ok, but they just don't install.

Actually they don't install even when I do the manual edit-the-mjp trick. So maybe this system is just messed up. I just did a recent uninstall®einstall of MJ, though.

Matt · « **Reply #23 on:** May 16, 2002, 08:03:14 am »

The hanging / locking problems associated with web images should be better now. Give 1.0.6 a try (available at the plugins page) and let us know if you encouter any speed bumps. (and make sure you have MJ 8.0.273)

Also, you may need to set the load picture timeout to a higher or lower value depending on your connection.

Thanks.

-Matt

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=6

KingSparta · « **Reply #24 on:** May 16, 2002, 09:16:28 am »

matt

tried "beatles", it got to 3 of 24 before hourglass forever set in, music still played up to the last 25 seconds never got control back, had to shut down mj

Ilmar · « **Reply #25 on:** May 16, 2002, 09:31:15 am »

Hi

Installed the 1.06 plugin, and I cant play any music, as soon as you select a track, MJ is stopped by a VB Runtime error.

Removing Slideshow and everything is ok.

Media Jukebox PLUS 8.0.270

CPU: AMD Athlon 1195 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 392 MB, Free - 188 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 (Build 2600)

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc.
Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)

Ilmar

claudio · « **Reply #26 on:** May 16, 2002, 09:31:51 am »

Hi Matt,

1.0.6 is better that the first release, but it still hangs switching artist. I've increased the timeout to "never", but it still happens. I can't really tell what are the conditions to trigger the hang. I've seen it happening a few times when "building image list" message is displayed... but that's not the only condition.

So it is still happening, and this is what I do:

load a playlist in Playing Now
click on a different artist while the previous track is playing

Don't know if it make any difference but I have the fade in-out enable on track change

On the bright side, I've played a bit with typing in various keywords for the internet search and it's really entertaining what images you can pull out of the database... both sacred and profane. Only disappointment was that whan I typed in Toronto, I got a "no images availables" ...

... CORRECTION: it was actually just my typo. Properly spelled I got my images back as expected

Claudio

claudio · « **Reply #27 on:** May 16, 2002, 09:50:48 am »

So I don't know if it is possible already, but a cool features would be to be able to use keywords associated with tracks to get "related" images. Like I could use one of the custom field in the database to store some keywords that I associate to a specifc track, artist...and then use it to trigger a custom slide show for that song... you know, like associating images from Greece (maybe even more precise like the island of Kos ) to the Deep Purple track and a few others that I played all that summer when I was sleeping on the various beaches of the Greek islands many years ago... You get the idea

Claudio

JimH · « **Reply #28 on:** May 16, 2002, 10:13:53 am »

If you're having problems with MJ freezing while displaying images, can you try it with local images? We think the problem may be in our networking code.

Thanks.

Ilmar · « **Reply #29 on:** May 16, 2002, 10:28:20 am »

MJ wouldn't play and there was no sign of any slide show plugin, apart from in the plugin manager.

Ilmar

JimH · « **Reply #30 on:** May 16, 2002, 10:32:30 am »

llmar,
You have to start music playing. Then go to playing now. Then switch from visualizations or track info by using the arrows at the lower left of the display screen.

You can then configure by doing a right click on the display screen.

Again, music has to be playing for this to work. And it sounds like you can't do that. I notice you have build 270. You might get 273 from the thread here.

claudio · « **Reply #31 on:** May 16, 2002, 10:36:04 am »

Yes, the problem is only with images retrieved from the Internet. Everything is cool with local images

Claudio

KingSparta · « **Reply #32 on:** May 16, 2002, 11:11:57 am »

>> Yes, the problem is only with images retrieved from the Internet. Everything is cool with local images
I agree with this comment it only shows up when getting coverart from the internet that i can tell at this point.

Ilmar · « **Reply #33 on:** May 16, 2002, 11:49:07 am »

Thanks JimH

Did not realise is was version specific!

Now mine freezes just like everybody else's Next Page

Quite cool... cant wait for the final version!

JimH · « **Reply #34 on:** May 16, 2002, 11:59:15 am »

We're having trouble figuring out why everybody's doing the web thing and only a couple of people tried it on their own image collections. Anybody else take a look at your digital camera pictures?

bennyd · « **Reply #35 on:** May 16, 2002, 12:16:31 pm »

Hi Jim,

The reason why I use the Web feature is because it shows related pictures for the music that is playing (which would be even more interesting if
it can be incorporated into Track info templates).
My pictures from my Digital Cam have nothing to do with the music I'm playing. I'm using WinXP slideshow for my pictures.

If the Pictures can change per beat and show multiple pic's (like a visualisation), it would be much nicer, now it just acts
like a normal slideshow viewer what's already standard build into WinXP.

Just my 2 cents

claudio · « **Reply #36 on:** May 16, 2002, 12:33:14 pm »

I think you can see it as a slide show where you provide the soundtrack, or you can see it as a cool visualization for your music. I've got lots of images and video on my system, but they are mostly work-related... I don't have many personal digital pictures on my disk, so for me it the second use. Also while I may even use it for a slide show or two in several months, I'll use it as a visualization much more frequently... I guess if the image bank does not get updated frequently, it may become less atractive, if it gets repetitive, but right now I like the idea that I do not know what image it is going to pull .. Configurable image data banks (are there multiple sources on the internet that can be queried?) , custom tags to associate images with music, and random selection (this one already available) will go a long way to avoid make it repetitive.

Claudio

Ilmar · « **Reply #37 on:** May 17, 2002, 10:23:27 am »

JimH:

Not wanting to worry you or aught...

Are you sure that you can pull images off the internet without their associated credits or bylines to incorporate in a commercial product? Wouldn't want MJ to fold after getting sued by the Professional Photographers
International Association of America...

When you use Google Image Search, it is careful to include the original URL of every picture displayed, and I am sure they get away with it because the searcher is ivited to view the images in their orignal context at their original URL.

The image I got (b4 it froze) didnt have a URL.

Can I recommend you check this out b4 you release it...?

Ilmar

JimH · « **Reply #38 on:** May 17, 2002, 11:19:17 am »

We'll add the URL. Good idea.

Marra · « **Reply #39 on:** May 17, 2002, 02:44:04 pm »

Great work but even greater potential. Agree with Bennyd re using within Track Info templates, changing with beat and multiple images.
Agree with Claudio re song specific images via custom field. If bored with current images, simply change content in custom field and sit back and see what happens.
Some of my own - at start of each song show album art already stored on computer. This will display while internet images are being found. If nothing found, atleast screen not blank. Also option to show track details within image (also remove "loading/retrieving" etc messages)
Still hanging occasionally with internet images v8.275 & 1.06.

noborg · « **Reply #40 on:** May 17, 2002, 03:19:53 pm »

Very nice (web pulls), but crashes MJ 8 in my case with local images. Hard to recover, since it crashes every time before I can change the options (had to uninstall that plugin and start over).

What are the constraints on local images? (Format, size)

js

Dell Precision 340 (2.4 GHz P4, 1GB memory)
Windows XP Pro (all updates)
CDROM Drives: HP CD-Writer|PLS| 9900j, Lite-On LTN486 48x Max
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2600.0
Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2600.0
Shell32.dll: 6.0.2600.0
wnaspi.dll: 4.6.0.1021
wnaspi32.dll: 4.6.0.1021

Skinnyfatz · « **Reply #41 on:** May 17, 2002, 03:59:46 pm »

JimH,
Noticed on the dl page, that the new slide-show plugin, is demoware. Does the same 30 day trial as in MJ, apply to the new plug-in?

Callithumpian · « **Reply #42 on:** May 17, 2002, 04:04:57 pm »

I can get MJ going again by just uninstalling the plug-in.

But I found myself quite seduced by the idea and so I re-installed.

The crash seems to result as much from the slowness of the dial-up download.
You have to understand that cable is not nearly so accessible outside the US.

If the song finishes mid-download the plug-in seems to get muddled up and takes MJ out.
Purest lay person speculation.

By the way, where do the downloaded images get stored. I had little look around and couldn't find 'em.

JimH · « **Reply #43 on:** May 17, 2002, 04:41:43 pm »

Callithumpian,
I don't think we store them. Not sure.

We know the problem is in our networking code, because it works fine for viewing images from your hard drive, but we can't find it. Should take a couple of days.

Jim

sekim · « **Reply #44 on:** May 17, 2002, 05:03:32 pm »

Had the same problems as others with this plug-in. To make life good again I just selected 'none' on the display and uninstalled. Of course, dial-up connection my be the culprit in my case.

Luigi1943 · « **Reply #45 on:** May 17, 2002, 10:26:19 pm »

I've tried the slide show using local images (slide show 1.6 and MJ8 b275) and it seems to work nicely, with a few exceptions.

Color depth : Sometimes there is a loss of color definition with respect to the original images and/or to the desktop or to the "Full screen" depths (apparently sometimes it uses only 256 or 4096 colors???). I've not been able to assess what are the conditions.

Slide transitions: If you right-click in the slide (internal) area the resulting menu is canceled on image transitions unless you pause the slide show. You must be very quick (!!!) to pause the show if the interval is set to 2 seconds!

Performance: I've closed the visualization window (with the small arrow) without interrupting or pausing the (internal) slide show. I've noticed that the right-click menu in the content window was canceled after a few seconds. The reason seems to be that when you close the visualization window the slide show doesn't freeze itself. This is confirmed by the system monitor: the cpu load doesn't lower when you close the visualization windows with an active slide show while it lowers if other visualizations were active.

Go on with your great job

Media Jukebox 8.0.275

CPU: AMD Athlon 806 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 115 MB
Resource Info: System - 56 %, GDI - 73 %, User - 56 %
OS: Microsoft Windows Me

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4704.1100
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shell32.dll: 5.50.4134.100
wnaspi32.dll: 2, 0, 0, 0 , ASPI for WIN32 DLL, Copyright © Adaptec 1995
Aspi32.sys: N/A

Marra · « **Reply #46 on:** May 18, 2002, 05:10:13 am »

When you press Next to get next track Slide Show displays no images available. Then if you press stop and play same track images are available. Little bug in great plug-in.

Skinnyfatz · « **Reply #47 on:** May 18, 2002, 07:55:58 am »

JimH · « **Reply #48 on:** May 18, 2002, 08:00:42 am »

Skinnyfatz
> Noticed on the dl page, that the new slide-show plugin, is demoware. Does the same 30 day trial as in MJ, apply to the new plug-in?

Yes. Full version works for 30 days from the day the plug-in is installed. After that, it goes dark.

We're continuing to work on the plug-in, so new versions will also work with the same license. Bugs will be fixed. Features will be added.

Skinnyfatz · « **Reply #49 on:** May 18, 2002, 09:42:15 am »

JimH,
Hate to sound so stupid, but have to ask, once we install it, how do we buy it? the same as we bought MJ? or will it work with our existing MJ license?(Iknow, Iknow, but have to ask).

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: NEW Slide Show Plug-in (Read 4358 times)

scub

dragyn

Holden

Harry the Hipster

Jazzwolf

Holden

Harry|PLS|The|PLS|Hipster

nila

Marra

sekim

Marra