INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: harmonyjim on April 20, 2006, 02:08:51 pm
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I have not yet purchased Media Center, but I have tried it and am very impressed with it.
But I am a collector of a cappella music. Only a very small percentage of a cappella artists will be found in Allmusic.com (eg. Ladysmith Black Mambazo), which renders Allmusic, completely useless to me.
I was wondering if in future upgrades to the product, a user could be given a choice of searching for Artist Info in Allmusic or actually going to the artist's web site. A field would have to created for artist's web site.
I found a product called IMcollector (http://www.imcollector.com) that would give me this choice, however, it is not as good as JRiver in a lot of other areas, especially with respect to having fields appear that I don't want and graphical capabilities for big screen.
For most of my collection, going directly to the artist's web site is the only way I can display info on the artist.
I would be very intersted in purchasing the Media Center if this one concern (which is very important to me) could be addressed.
Are there any add-ins that would help with this?
Jim Frewen
p.s. I know it's possible to do something in the Now Playing area, but this was not very seamless. Perhaps I could put more work into it :-)
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You could try using IE to search google for an image, then right click on it to copy it, then right click on the song and do Image/Paste from clipboard.
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Sorry I don't understand your reply. :)
I want to be able to go directly to the artist's web site. How would copying and pasting an image accomplish this?
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JimH--
I think this is a really hot idea, if I understand harmonyJ. Artists by now have got to be begging for more direct access to their fans, and you could be standing at the gateway taking tickets. Recall your browser thingy in 11.1.029. More or less, I think H wants a clickable link imbedded in a field, which an auto-browser fuction could pick up on during playback.
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I thought you were looking for cover art. Sorry.
You could use the google window on MC's start page to search for the artist. That's as close as we can probably get right now.
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I have saved many artist related web pages on the HD (inside the audio folders) and imported the HTML files to the media library. A double-click on the html file inside Media Center opens the page in the default web browser.
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I have saved many artist related web pages on the HD (inside the audio folders) and imported the HTML files to the media library. A double-click on the html file inside Media Center opens the page in the default web browser.
But doesn't that just create a separate "track" entry. If you are playing a track, don't you have to find the html "track" for the artist amongst all of your tons of tracks?
Or can you somehow put the html inside of a song's tag area?
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JimH--
I think this is a really hot idea, if I understand harmonyJ. Artists by now have got to be begging for more direct access to their fans, and you could be standing at the gateway taking tickets. Recall your browser thingy in 11.1.029. More or less, I think H wants a clickable link imbedded in a field, which an auto-browser fuction could pick up on during playback.
p
Yes, that would be great! :)
But using IMcollector's (http://www.imcollector.com)way of choosing between online libraries like Allmusic and the artist's actual site would seem like an ideal solution. If IMcollector can do it, why can't JRiver. :-)
I have tried to put a link to a fixed artist's web site in a Now Playing template(I could eventually use the artist's library field name as a variable) . It brings up the site , but the navigation controls remain with Media Center, so I can't go backward and forward within the browser!
Jim Frewen
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It is possible to create a Track Info template that displays when you are playing a song.
Maybe in the 3rd party forum, you should post and ask if it's possible to create a HTML link from a library entry.
Example, create a field called : WebLink Then you could enter the site in that field: www.artist.com.
When the song is playing, you could click it, and your internet opens and goes to that link.
Not sure if it's possible, I'm not a HTML programmer.
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But doesn't that just create a separate "track" entry. If you are playing a track, don't you have to find the html "track" for the artist amongst all of your tons of tracks?
That is actually what I want. Here is an example of one of my albums:
(http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/alexb/pix/hunkydory.png)
I have made a view scheme that does not have the audio only restriction. Because I have tagged the files MC can show all album (or artist) related files at the same time. MC has excellent tools for finding tagged files when needed.
I don't read the info files all the time so this system has been fine for me. Besides, because the webpages (or pdf, doc, txt etc documents) are downloaded on the HD they will always be available even the PC is not connected or after the site has disappeared from Internet.
Or can you somehow put the html inside of a song's tag area?
A library field for a working hyperlink is an excellent idea.
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Er, sorry to mention filthy lucre here, JimH, but destination websites pay good money for this. All you have to do is create an additional filed type (tools/options/library/edit/data type) that would be "url" and an active link. Clicking on this in a field, or cueing up a track in playback that had such a url, would magically transport a click-through fee to Minneapolis, FWIW.
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I should mention that in Im Collector (as you will notice in their screenshots), if you don't put a url into the artist's web site field, then the choice to go to the artist's web site doesn't appear as an option. In this way, you avoid unnecessary page not found errors in the browser. And all users are kept happy! :)
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harmoneyjim,
I think you're 90% there: You just need to add TARGET="_blank" to your link code in the now playing template. So the whole line looks like:
<a href="http://TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" TARGET="_blank">TrackInfo_Insert(Website)</a>
assuming you called the custom field "website". Now when you click the link it will open in a new browser window with full navigation controls.
Ed.
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Interbeat, please explain. Is this something doable now?
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harmoneyjim,
I think you're 90% there: You just need to add TARGET="_blank" to your link code in the now playing template. So the whole line looks like:
<a href="http://TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" TARGET="_blank">TrackInfo_Insert(Website)[/url]
assuming you called the custom field "website". Now when you click the link it will open in a new browser window with full navigation controls.
Ed.
Thank-you, Interbeat. I totally get it!
Now, I'll give it a try and let everyone know.
Looks like I'll be buying Media Center.
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It works. Here is an example template:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>URL</title>
</head>
<body>
<b>Artist: </b>TrackInfo_Insert(Artist)<br>
<b>Album: </b>TrackInfo_Insert(Album)<br>
<b>Name: </b>TrackInfo_Insert(Name)<br>
<br>
<a href="http://TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" target="_blank">Website</a>
</body>
</html>
The URL in the custom "Website" field must be without the http:// part because it is already included in the code.
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The URL in the custom "Website" field must be without the http:// part because it is already included in the code.
Alex; does it have to be? I was just thinking that if you were copying and pasting from a browser, it'd be more immediate to put the http:// in the library field. If you did that could the code be:
<a href="TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" target="_blank">Website</a>?
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Alex; does it have to be? I was just thinking that if you were copying and pasting from a browser, it'd be more immediate to put the http:// in the library field. If you did that could the code be:
<a href="TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" target="_blank">Website</a>?
That's fine. The actual link would be identical. I just wanted to avoid duplicating information needlessly.
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I should mention that in Im Collector (as you will notice in their screenshots), if you don't put a url into the artist's web site field, then the choice to go to the artist's web site doesn't appear as an option. In this way, you avoid unnecessary page not found errors in the browser. And all users are kept happy!
If you use TrackInfo_Insert(Website) as the link text as well as the actual link, then no link will show up for files where the website field has been left blank (ie for artists with no websites, so no broken links).
<a href="http://TrackInfo_Insert(Website)" TARGET="_blank">TrackInfo_Insert(Website)</a>
Ed.
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Nice work guys!
-John
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Could someone kindly post a step-by-step, so that anyone with a thicker skull (me, for example) could get this to work?
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It works. Here is an example template:
Thank-you! Yes it works for me too.
Firefox is my default browser, but in this case, clicking "Website" brings up Internet Explorer which loads the Artist's site soooo much slower.
Is there anyway I can make it run Firefox?
Jim
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Could someone kindly post a step-by-step, so that anyone with a thicker skull (me, for example) could get this to work?
Here is a zip file that contains two track info templetes: my example from this thread and an edited version of DJ_Hazelwood's MultiInfo. In MultiInfo I replaced the "Genre" code with the "Website" code.
TrackInfo.zip (http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/alexb/temp/TrackInfo.zip)
Unzip the package into the [MC program path]\Visualizations\Track Info\ folder. It makes two new subfolders, "URL and "Website". The track info templetes will be visible inside MC after that. Naturally you need to create a custom field named "Website" for the URL.
The code line is included in the index.html files. You may want to open them with Notepad for checking the code. You can add the same code to any track info templete.
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Is there anyway I can make it run Firefox?
I forgot that MC uses internally IE when I mentioned the default browser. It is not possible to make a link in one browser to open a window in another browser. IE is a logical choice because all Windows users have it. Other browsers are optional.
BTW, IE is not slower than Firefox on my PC. Perhaps the page was already in your FF cache.
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I was just wondering is it necessary to create new "website" field. Can you simply do a search similar to this code for google search on artist.
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST%22" target="_blank">
or if the url is saved on your computer
<a href="file path/url file name" target="_blank">
if the url was saved as artist name, then
<a href="file path/TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST" target="_blank">
Hope this is clear and doesn't confuse issue.
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Further thoughts on saving artist websites. Save in IE as favorite named as artist. Refer to this in MC by
<a href="file path/favorites/TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST" target="_blank">.
If this were to clutter IE favorites, create folder called Artists in IE (this would change path name in above). You could go further and create seperate favorites for artist details and album details. Don't know how IE would handle so many favorites though.
As you browse, you could save.
You could then call favourite artist websites within MC or by using IE only.
My mind is definitely racing now.....
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Slow down...
IE favorites are saved as shortcuts. I'd need to extract URL from shortcut properties. How to do this using HTML, I have no idea. Back to dreaming unless someone can shed light on this..
Create that new field "website" and cut/paste URL seems to be the way to go.
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A local html file can be used if a correctly formatted link is in the Website field. As a test I linked the AMG review html file from my screenshot with this string:
file://X:\David Bowie\Hunky Dory\AMGreview.htm
(Naturally "http://" cannot be included in the templete code in this case)
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I've been doing something similar with Track Info, but here's one that I have added (WikiPedia):
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%22TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST%22&go=Go" target="_blank">TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST</a>
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Just trying to get link right for local html files saved as artist name. I can replace invalid characters in file name by
<script>var Mfile=("TrackInfo_Insert(Artist)".replace(/ /g,"_")); </script>
(for all invalid characters)
But how do I pass contents of variable Mfile to HTML link as follows
<a href="C:\Documents\Mfile.htm" >
or alternatively how do I code link in javascript? TIA