INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Listener on November 29, 2006, 04:14:11 pm

Title: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 29, 2006, 04:14:11 pm: I've been a paid up user of MC 11 for about 6 months. I just got around to downloading MC 12.120 yesterday. I just copied the downloaded EXE to my music PC and tried to install it. At the end of the install process, I got a dialog telling me that my 30 day trial period had expired.

I clicked on the more info link and got a screen explaining that I could buy MC 11 for $ 40. No info on MC 12 at all.

What's going on here? Do you not offer a 30 day trial on MC 12?

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: modelmaker on November 29, 2006, 08:16:56 pm: Is your system date correct? Have you changed the computer name?

Is MC11 still installed? (It should be).
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 29, 2006, 08:54:35 pm: Thanks for the help, modelmaker.

> Is your system date correct?

Yes, it's correct.

> Have you changed the computer name?

No.

I downloaded the MC 12 install file on my laptop and copied that file to my music PC. Then I installed MC 12 on the music PC. I followed the same process with MC 11 and it worked then.

I downloaded the MC 12 install file with Firefox 1.5.0.8. That has worked in the past.

MC 11 is still working on the music PC. If I changed the computer name, I might expect it to complain too.

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Matt on November 29, 2006, 09:03:03 pm: Is it possible you installed an early release of MC 12?

We don't offer a way to reset the trial. (for obvious reasons)

Perhaps you could try it on another machine?

(p.s. what OS are you using where you had the problem)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 29, 2006, 10:09:34 pm: Quote from: Matt on November 29, 2006, 09:03:03 pm
Is it possible you installed an early release of MC 12?

We don't offer a way to reset the trial. (for obvious reasons)

Perhaps you could try it on another machine?

(p.s. what OS are you using where you had the problem)

I downloaded the EXE file on 12/27 at about 6pm PST. The file is named "MediaCenter120120.exe". I clicked on the link in the sticky thread named "Media Center 12.0.120".

I just tried installing MC 12.120 from the same install file on my laptop. I get a message saying that I have 30 days left on the trial. MC 12 seems to run OK on that PC. (My laptop has a Pentium 4 mobile with 512MB of Ram and Win XP home.)

My music PC has an Intel Core 2 Duo 6300 with a G965/ICH8 chipset and 2 GB of Ram and Win XP Pro.

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 30, 2006, 11:00:42 am: I still need to find a way to try out MC 12 on my music PC. My laptop has only a few music files on it and I don't want to share all the drives on the music PC on my LAN.

Some observations based on using MC 12 with ~100 Flac files and ~ 100 MP3 files on my laptop:

1. MC 12 took much longer to import 200 files than MC 11 would take.

2. MC 12 crashed as I was tagging files. Logging was not enabled so I don't have much detail. I had installed the V2 in_Flac and Enc_Flac plugins.

3. The Noire skin is a disappointment for me. Too much glare. On MC 11, Aruba was the best skin in a poor collection. I hoped for something better in MC 12. The skin effects are awful.

4. You should copy settings from MC 11 as part of the install process. I've changed lots of settings in MC 11 and don't remember what they were or what menu/command I used to change them.

5. The tag window is no improvement over MC 11. I need clear lines or something to relate field names and values. I don't need a blank rectangle for an image I don't have. I don't always need to see that a music file is in MP3 format and is 4:08 long when I'm tagging.

6. You should design the screen layout so that it works well for larger font sizes. I wear glasses so the first thing I had to do was to enlarge the type size twice. You should also design your color choices in skins for reduced glare.

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Mr ChriZ on November 30, 2006, 11:32:34 am: Quote from: Listener on November 30, 2006, 11:00:42 am
3. The Noire skin is a disappointment for me. Too much glare. On MC 11, Aruba was the best skin in a poor collection. I hoped for something better in MC 12. The skin effects are awful.

I think that is some what harsh.
Skins are very time consuming to produce. It's also very difficult
to make something that looks nice but is not over the top for everyday
use.

I really like Noire, and believe the skin effects a major improvement.
(Presuming you mean things like Fade Effects + Transparency, rather than the Skin Effects which were there in MC11?)
In what way do you believe them to be awful?
If there's to much glare maybe your screen is set to bright, or you
could do with an Anti Glare Filter.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: KingSparta on November 30, 2006, 12:07:50 pm: I acualy like the Noire skin, but it does not have a stop button and since it has no stop button, it creates problems when you want to do something to the media file. i think matt said you can dbl click the pause to fix the problem.

I however am not too fond of the progress bar, it makes me have flashbacks to the 70's with what we called at the time "Green Monsters".

Not This Green Monster However It Does Sound Good

Quote
Green Monster - Mixed Drink

1 oz Bacardi® 151 rum
1/2 oz lime juice
3 dashes green food coloring
4 ice cubes

Pour 151 rum, lime juice, and food coloring into a glass with several ice cubes. Shake, and strain into a shot glass.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 30, 2006, 01:12:47 pm: > Skins are very time consuming to produce.

Perhaps JRiver should do one skin that is quiet and calm and liveable.

> It's also very difficult to make something that looks nice
> but is not over the top for everyday use.

Since I need to look at the skin to use MC 12, an "over the top" skin would seem to be of limited value to me. I think that defines "looks nice" to be something liveable. I use MC to play music not to make a fashion statement.

Fancy buttons, weird shapes and color effects don't add value for me either. You may find lots of value in eye candy. I don't.

> I really like Noire, and believe the skin effects a major improvement.
> (Presuming you mean things like Fade Effects + Transparency,
> rather than the Skin Effects which were there in MC11?)

I'm talking about the Tools/Skins/Skin Effects dialog. I don't see anything about Fade Effects + Transparency.

The choices in the drop-down list aren't useful to me. If I could adjust each of the colors used in a skin, I could make something useful to me. There is a color picker dialog, it just doesn't allow me to tune each of the colors in the UI.

There is no documentation of any of the actions in that drop-down list. The Add Color, Add Color (high contrast) seem to affect the overall color but not in a useful way. The other effects are not useful either.

> If there's to much glare maybe your screen is set to bright,
> or you could do with an Anti Glare Filter.

Works fine for every other application I use on that PC.

I'm quite willing to accept that your taste and your experience are different from mine. Use whatever skin you like. I'd like to setup MC 12 to be useful to me.

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: KingSparta on November 30, 2006, 01:26:38 pm: there was one skin made back in MC9 that a user made and had a farm and cow on it, it never got updated. that was one of the best.

Also a skin with a Gateway type (black and white cow) would be nice

MusicMatch also had one called plastic, and made the player look like, well plastic

I preferred the "yellow plastic".
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: glynor on November 30, 2006, 01:51:13 pm: I like Noire too.

I like designs clean-ish, but I'm not a maniac about it. Before Noire I used BlueSteel on all my MC installs. Mostly though... If you don't like the design, can't you just make your own skin?
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: gappie on November 30, 2006, 04:39:44 pm: i agree that the noire skin is very white. :) but besides that it is nice. now the good thing with mc is that you can make your own skin or change one to your own liking.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on November 30, 2006, 06:46:46 pm: > i agree that the noire skin is very white.
> but besides that it is nice.

A little adjustment would make it quite nice for me. Soften the white, lighten the dark gray and make the window title bar and scroll bars areas a bit darker than the base white. Make the blue for selected items a bit lighter and less electric.

> now the good thing with mc is that you can make your own skin or
> change one to your own liking.

I'm starting to look into that.

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on November 30, 2006, 11:08:17 pm: Skins are very subjective...

My initial reaction was that Noire was too bright - but I still liked it. I tried different effects (like negative). It's not too bright then, but it is a bid hard to look at all the time.

Recently I've gone back to standard Norie and mostly use it as is. Every now and again I switch to another skin just for variety.

I don't do skins myself, but assume that before too long there will be multiple variants of Noire as people adjust it to meet their tastes. If they are kind enough to share them, I would love to try them out.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: modelmaker on December 01, 2006, 12:52:13 am: I can't stand the Noire skin - waaaaay tooooo bright, (and as King said, it's missing the Stop button). I've stuck with the Thunderstorm skin - it blends better with my audio equipment.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: hit_ny on December 01, 2006, 03:53:00 am: Thunderstorm !!!!

very easy on the eyes. Could look at it all day, (happens some times). I'm not a fan of brighter skins, they're attractive certainly but not comfortable when your stuck in front of a screen for long sessions.

i pinched the twin music note icons from 11.0 to replace the single ones that suceeded them since in playing now. Missed them too much. Luckily this was just a copy+paste operation to the smallicons.jpg strip. Looking at them in detail, its amazing how much has been put into a small icon of 16x16.

I don't find noire better than thunderstorm, maybe it looks better with a dedicated graphics card which i don't have yet.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: marko on December 01, 2006, 04:25:47 am: Listener, I fully appreciate that none of this helps with your expired trial problem, but....

For me, it's Opus MC (blue). A real piece of class from Dragyn. If you haven't tried it, you should. Very easy on the eye, no bells or whistles.

For me, Noire is a very 'busy' feeling skin, that is perhaps a touch too bright, plus I'm not overly keen on its action window design.
It's not a 'bad' skin, and I do use it in small doses for beta testing stuff, but I could not use it all the time.

The skin that MrChriz is working on looks really fresh. Very modern, clean lines and textures, but again, I'm not convinced I'd be able to use it long-term. Can't wait 'till we get to roadtest it though.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm: I did not like Noire neither when I first saw it. Too "white" for my eyes... and the blue was too "electric" in contrast with the background. I kept on using some of the other skins.

However, since noire was the only one that received the enhancements that were being introduced by the dev. team, I just decided to modify it a little bit to better suit my taste. I'm in no way a programmer but, to be honest, playing a little bit around with the xml file was even amusing. So, I just changed some of the colours that I liked from another skin, used the rating stars from another one, and finally got a "modified noire" that was more pleasant for my eyes. This is how it looks now (The lower banner is a "PlayingNow" skin that I have always visible in my display... all the other programs work resized to cover the available space):

(http://www.deivit.net/mediacenter/noire2.png)

Click here for a larger view (http://www.deivit.net/mediacenter/noire1.png)

I would like to encourage other people to do the same. Modifying the main.xml file is not a difficult task even if you, as I do, are a complete dumb for programming. Just trial and error... and you get the skin you like... or almost ;)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Listener on December 01, 2006, 03:05:46 pm: You've gotten farther than I have. Nice work.

How did you get the alternating background in the file list (stripes? window shading? like an old computer printout?)

Bill
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on December 01, 2006, 11:43:40 pm: Quote from: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm
I did not like Noire neither when I first saw it. Too "white" for my eyes... and the blue was too "electric" in contrast with the background. I kept on using some of the other skins.
...
Deivet,

It's looking good. ;D

Willing to share it? ;) The only Noire skin I see uploaded so far is glynor's SolidNoire. It would be nice to see other variations.

I've never tried making or modifying a skin myself. Maybe I should give it a go. At work other people help me on anything close to programming. They say it's less work to do it for me then repair my attempts.

Randy
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: hit_ny on December 02, 2006, 03:58:19 am: Quote from: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm
I did not like Noire neither when I first saw it. Too "white" for my eyes... and the blue was too "electric" in contrast with the background. I kept on using some of the other skins.
Exactly my impression, the white contrasts too much with the black, not as balanced as thunderstorm.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 09:19:17 am: Quote from: Listener on December 01, 2006, 03:05:46 pm
How did you get the alternating background in the file list (stripes? window shading? like an old computer printout?)

Well, actually I think you only need to enable the gridlines under Tools -> Options -> Tree & View -> Show gridlines (checkbox) to do that. You can show gridlines in any skin... though I should say that those in the noire skin are barely visible on my display.

Quote from: Magic_Randy on December 01, 2006, 11:43:40 pm
Willing to share it? ;)

Sure, no problem.
You can download it from here (http://uppit.com/JV446)

Unzip to the MegaSkins folder in your MC12 directory.

Just to give proper credit, some graphics and color schemes are taken from Dragyn's "Royale (Ergonomic)" skin and the rating stars are taken from the "ThunderStorm" skin by Pixstudio.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: KingSparta on December 02, 2006, 09:26:39 am: Maybe Someone Can Make A Noire 2 Skin With A Stop Button

Hint Hint....
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 10:14:13 am: Quote from: KingSparta on December 02, 2006, 09:26:39 am
Maybe Someone Can Make A Noire 2 Skin With A Stop Button

Hint Hint....

Something like this? ;)

(http://www.deivit.net/mediacenter/noirestop.png)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: KingSparta on December 02, 2006, 11:21:20 am: Works For Me
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 11:34:39 am: Quote from: KingSparta on December 02, 2006, 11:21:20 am
Works For Me

That will be easy, then. It seems that the Noire Skin is prepared to use a "stop" button. You just need to have one!

Download this file (http://www.deivit.net/mediacenter/Playerbar_StopButton.png) It's a "stop button" image. Just place it inside the "noire" folder of your MegaSkins directory... and you're all set. No need to modify anything else, since the XML already has all the entries needed.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 11:47:08 am: Quote from: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm
(The lower banner is a "PlayingNow" skin that I have always visible in my display... all the other programs work resized to cover the available space)

Deivit,

1. Thanks for sharing BlueNoire ;D
2. Thanks for stop buttons - I now have stop buttons working with Noire, SolidNoire, and BlueNoire
3. How do you do the playing now pane at the bottom? Maybe I'm just slow but I don't see how to do this.

Thanks again....

Randy
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 11:53:41 am: Quote from: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm
since noire was the only one that received the enhancements that were being introduced by the dev. team, I just decided to modify it a little bit to better suit my taste...

Deivit,

Just a simple question - if noire is enhanced by JR, I assume you have to update your custom skin to take advantage of the new things. Is that correct? This could be like chasing a rabbit. You never catch up.

Randy
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 12:07:06 pm: Quote from: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 11:47:08 am
Deivit,

1. Thanks for sharing BlueNoire ;D
2. Thanks for stop buttons - I now have stop buttons working with Noire, SolidNoire, and BlueNoire
3. How do you do the playing now pane at the bottom? Maybe I'm just slow but I don't see how to do this.

Thanks again....

Randy

My pleasure, Randy :)

The Playing Now pane in my screenshot is a skin for the PlayingNow plug-in by Rhinobanga. You need to have the plug-in to use the skin. If you are user of the plug-in and would like to have the skin just let me know, I'll upload it. The MC logo on the right hand side is actually a player control... you can pause, stop, etc. using it. This player control was developed by Marko.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 12:13:43 pm: Quote from: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 11:53:41 am
Deivit,

Just a simple question - if noire is enhanced by JR, I assume you have to update your custom skin to take advantage of the new things. Is that correct? This could be like chasing a rabbit. You never catch up.

Randy

Yes, that's the downside. I recently read a post from Mr. Chriz "lamenting" ;) the new enhancements in Noire... since that sort of slowed the developement of his new skin. We have to remember that MC.12 is still in beta, and therefore it's more likely that some things will change again.

Anyway, since BlueNoire is just a small modification over the standard Noire, depending on the "enhancement" probably a couple of copy/paste would do. We'll see ;)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 06:28:43 pm: Quote from: Deivit on December 02, 2006, 12:07:06 pm
The Playing Now pane in my screenshot is a skin for the PlayingNow plug-in by Rhinobanga. You need to have the plug-in to use the skin. If you are user of the plug-in and would like to have the skin just let me know, I'll upload it.

Deivit,

I have the plug-in, so it would be great of you could share the skin.

Thanks again...

Randy
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Deivit on December 03, 2006, 09:45:37 am: Quote from: Magic_Randy on December 02, 2006, 06:28:43 pm
Deivit,

I have the plug-in, so it would be great of you could share the skin.

Thanks again...

Randy

No problem, Randy.

You can download it here (http://uppit.com/GA4S9)

There is a lyrics tooltip when you hover your mouse over the cover art. Also, a more detailed info on the track can be found in the tooltip hovering over the Artist or Album name. You can rate the track with the rating stars and, as I told you in the other post, the MC logo acts as a playback control.

The skin is optimized to be snapped to the origin (lower right corner) and works better if your display is set to 1280x1024, when it covers the whole display width.

I have it always visible and resize the windows of the other programs (MC, Internet explorer, etc.) to cover the rest of the display. This way, I always have the playing track info available while working with other programs, and can rate the song or pause/stop the playback without having to maximize the MC window.

Enjoy it ;)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: Magic_Randy on December 03, 2006, 12:36:33 pm: Thanks Deivit....

Randy
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: marko on December 03, 2006, 03:52:32 pm: Quote from: Deivit on December 01, 2006, 12:40:30 pm
I would like to encourage other people to do the same.

quite infectious once you get started...
Still a long way off finished, called "the fly", I wonder why ;)
(http://www.theganghut.co.uk/pics/ia/12/thefly.jpg)
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: modelmaker on December 03, 2006, 06:05:11 pm: moved to new topic:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=37485.0
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: BartMan01 on December 15, 2006, 10:39:37 pm: Just to back the O.P. up. When I installed MC12 (for the very first time), the exact same thing happened to me. MC11 was still installed and MC12 had never been loaded. System date/time were accurate. Upon first launch it told me my 30 day trial was up. No big deal, since I was of purchasing it anyway.
Title: Re: Your 30 day free trial has expired (before I finished installing)
Post by: marko on January 23, 2007, 02:39:41 am: no stop button?

quick fix:
Open the Noire folder.
Open the file main.xml in a text editor (notepad?)
Change the skin name (Line #2) to something else.
Look in the <PlayerBar> section (Line No. 29) and change the "NumberImages" value for the stop button from 5, to 3
Save the file.
Drop Deivit's stop button image into the noire folder.
Finally, change the Noire folder name to something else (the same name as entered in step 4 is a good idea)
Open MC and select your new skin. The stop button should now be present.

-marko.

Larry, if you unzip these three images (http://www.theganghut.co.uk/files/blue-selection.zip) into the same folder, you'll also get your bright blue selection back too :)