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[MrC]

I thought it might be fun to start out an MC Tip of the Week series.  Let's see how far it goes.  Let's see how useful it is.  Feel free to comment, add your suggestions and improvements.  Let's jump right in with the first tip...

Does that ever-shifting display status line at the top of the Player bar get under your skin?  If it doesn't... good - you're a better person than I am.  But if it irks you even a little, like it does me, you can fix it.

Why does it bounce around?  MC tries to center the text string, but the bitrate is a constantly changing width, using between 1 to 4 digits.  So the line is constantly in flux, especially for tracks whose bitrates bounce between n and n+1 digits.



The default status line shows the file's current playback bitrate using the pseudo-field [Bitrate (Labeled)].  We can customize the display status to reduce the bounce.  Right-click the Player's status, and select Customize Display...

Now, find the [Bitrate (labeled)] field in the Status line, under the Play Mode (Main) area.  Replace [Bitrate (labeled)] with the expression:

   mid(/ / / / , length([Bitrate]), -1)[Bitrate (Labeled)]

and OK your way out.  Be sure to copy and paste the expression above, as it contains some magic* characters that you won't notice just by examining the line with your eyes.

The expression determines the length of the [Bitrate] value, and then uses mid() to pad as necessary up to 4 characters so that the [Bitrate (Labeled)] value does not jump around (so much).  It is not perfect, but works pretty well.

* What are those magic characters?  They are a form of white space called a Figure Space (U+2007), and they are about as wide as regular characters, so are good for these types of padding needs.

Enjoy and have a good weekend.

[r_harms]

I think this is a great idea and I sure do appreciate your efforts!

Just learning of another area where an expression can be used gives me hope to expand on ideas of my own.

Maybe down the line you could do a couple examples of (very) simple RegEx expressions to give us some foundation to move forward on our own instead of us just begging you for use of your mind...

I've got MrC to thank for many of the things I've accomplished with Media Center. I've even managed to do a few recent ones without any direct help because I found examples and code from posts he had already offered up to the community.

Like I said, Many thanks!

Rick

[jctcom]

What he said.

Carl.

[Arindelle]

Yep me too MrC -- another good idea.... keep 'em coming, I'll stay tuned. 

[terrym@tassie]

Briliant idea- I go as far as to say that we could do with a separate board to contain discussion on MC customisation using expressions, Theaterview, tagging etc.
I'm sure there must be loads of good stuff that folks have developed and uncovered that could then be used by other users.
I've got some niche stuff to do with correctly tagging downloaded BBC TV and Radio programmes and displaying them nicely in Theaterview (Theatreview for BBC of course) for example.
I think this sort of stuff can get "lost" on the main board.

[Gl3nn]

Thanks, MrC.

Great idea.  Please keep it coming.

[filupmarley]

This is great! Thanks MrC

[astromo]

Great stuff.

Where do I sign up to this as an RSS feed?   

[Samson]

Keep 'em coming MrC, !

[nels]

Is there a way to push a setting like this to the client?

[MrC]

Open up this page on the client, and copy/paste.  :-)

[nels]

Thanks MrC. This doesn't work on MC19. I changed the expression back to [Bitrate (labeled)] and that doesn't work either. Nothing displays. This is with flac after running Audio Analysis with MC19.

[Matt]

Thanks MrC. This doesn't work on MC19. I changed the expression back to [Bitrate (labeled)] and that doesn't work either. Nothing displays. This is with flac after running Audio Analysis with MC19.

Remember that real-time bitrate is not available with memory playback enabled:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81982.0

[nels]

thanking you

[thediscman]

Thank you so much! I was looking for *exactly* this.

I added Dynamic Range (with a label) to my second line display and the bitrate field was causing my newly expanded line to shift around so much that I just removed bitrate. Thanks to your tip, I can put it back in.