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[drhyoung]

Hi,

anyone know how I (and the family) can easily download an image that is being displayed from Theater View, for example a family photo.
Is it just a keyboard shortcut in Theater View that I need to know ?

Thanks.

David

[MrHaugen]

What do you mean with download? If the image is already in your library, there's a high chance you have it on your local disk. Do you talk about streaming or what? Are you sure you're not looking for sync or something?

[drhyoung]

Poor explanation on my part...

We have a PC acting as a "media server". It is noisy so lives in the basement.
It runs MC17 server and client.
All the family's music, images and video reside on it.

Other PC's in the house run MC17 client and access the MC17 library on the "media server".
We run Theater View on the MC17 clients, because it is easy for everyone to navigate.

Often someone finds a family photo ("image") they want, but can't easily download it to the desktop of the PC they are using.
We can't even copy and paste the filepath tag of the image being viewed in Theater View to then allow us to use Windows Explorer to get to the file.

Any help greatfully appreciated.

Thanks,

David

[MrHaugen]

I see. There are a few limitations here. The best way that I know of is to go to standard view, right click the photo and choose "Locate on disk (external)". I'm not sure however if this works trough a library server client or not.

[rick.ca]

Create a custom field to serve as a flag for files to be copied. That field can easily be tagged in Theatre View, then used in Standard View to identify the files for copying. If this is a frequent need, you could even tag files with a code (e.g., the user's initials). That code could then be used to determine the files to be synced to a specific folder on a client machine. That would be done by defining a 'Handheld' device as the target folder, and configuring it to sync a smartlist where [Sync Flag]=[code].

[drhyoung]

Hi Guys,

thanks for the ideas.
In our situation rick's approach seems the best fit.

Would be good though if MC had a menu item in Theater View to simply "Download" to a folder (network or local).

Thanks again.

David

[MrC]

@Matt - I tried to create an External Program under Items to Show in Theater View options.  The command was Windows command interpreter, C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe.  Two cmd.exe process are created, and they never go away.  Furthermore, no command window appears, regardless of the option to Hide MC while program is running.

MC will launch mspaint.exe just fine.  Is this a problem with MC in Theater View working with old-style command shell programs?

(btw. the idea here was to use command shell's copy program with MC passing [filename], allowing the OP's users to select a Copy command from Theater View to copy the given file(s) to the Desktop or some pre-defined folder.)

[Matt]

@Matt - I tried to create an External Program under Items to Show in Theater View options.  The command was Windows command interpreter, C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe.  Two cmd.exe process are created, and they never go away.  Furthermore, no command window appears, regardless of the option to Hide MC while program is running.

I believe we put the command into a batch file and run the batch file.  And if you call cmd.exe from a batch window (which is running in a command window) I don't think it does anything good.

[MrC]

Ok.  I tried another approach, but this failed.  I created a user-defined global keyboard shortcut, but was unable to pass a get [Filename (path)] expanded upon invocation.

So, I'll ask, is there any way to pass the path of the currently selected file in Theater View to an external program?  Using a defined External Command in Th. View didn't work, as you have to leave your current location to navigate to the root level (ext. commands can only be placed at the root).

[rick.ca]

So, I'll ask, is there any way to pass the path of the currently selected file in Theater View to an external program?

I don't think so. As a follow-up to my suggestion, I thought an update could be accomplished by doing a Sync Handheld from Theatre View (MCC 23015, 0). It seems that's ineffective unless a Recheck Sync is done first, and there's no MCC for that.

[Matt]

So, I'll ask, is there any way to pass the path of the currently selected file in Theater View to an external program?  Using a defined External Command in Th. View didn't work, as you have to leave your current location to navigate to the root level (ext. commands can only be placed at the root).

Not really.  The program thing is designed to launch an application, not perform actions on specific files.

I suppose you could configure playback of that type of file to use an external program in Options > File Types, and then 'Play' the file.  But it's going to break regular playback.

[MrC]

I found a goofy way.  It's sneaky.

Subvert the Send To > CD Labeler functionality.  The CDLabeler.exe program can be replaced with one that reads CDLabeler.ini (which is created to pass info via file from MC to CD Labeler), grabbing the Track info from that file (which contains the full path to the file), copies the mentioned file(s), and then deletes CDLabeler.ini for next use.  A hotkey can activate this.

Obviously for this to work on an LS client, common server/client file path mappings are required (which many of us use for local file playback anyway).

Notwithstanding this uber-gooberishness, an easy method for the user's request does seem like a good idea.

[drhyoung]

It works !

But it takes a bit, especially if you have a client-server setup.
The CDlabeler.ini then contains a URL instead of a filepath.

I am using a compiled VBscript that uses an XMLHTTP object to download the image and write it to disk.

"Yes" to the MC18 enahencement.

And thanks for all the help.

David

[drhyoung]

Having successfully used the "goofy way" it's crossed my mind that my CDLabeler.exe will get overwritten with the next MC17 release.

Is there any way to stop that from happening - other than switching off auto-update ?

David