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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 19 for Windows => Topic started by: Amleth on December 07, 2013, 04:55:31 am

Title: Simple global key shortcuts?
Post by: Amleth on December 07, 2013, 04:55:31 am

With almost every movie player I've used regularly, I've gotten used to a few global keyboard shortcuts, mostly spacebar to play/pause, "f" for fullscreen in/out toggle, left and right arrows to seek, and up and down arrows for volume. I'm having a hard time settling in and feeling "comfortable" with JRiver, even with the extra capabilities, because there's so much interface behaviour that's different to what I'm used to and that doesn't appear to be configurable to something more familiar. JRiver gives me space as play/pause in fullscreen but not in other views, left and right default to volume controls (and only in full screen), and "f" doesn't do anything. I prefer keyboard shortcuts to be consistent across all states of an application, where possible or practical.

I can't find options to configure key shortcuts in the options menu. Do they exist? Seems strange if they don't given how configurable JRiver seems to be in most areas. If I could at least get spacebar working globally as play/pause (as long as MC has focus), I'd feel a lot of relief. I've been using MC for the month trial and a few days more since paying and I'm still frequently hitting space to try to start/stop tracks, and then wondering for a split second why nothing happens. Annoying, but it's a reflex developed over many, many years. :c

Having "f" for fullscreen toggle work globally (or the ability to set a key or key combo to do so) would be good also. I'm impotently pressing this a lot too. :/

Title: Re: Simple global key shortcuts?
Post by: marko on December 07, 2013, 05:29:00 am

These are not configurable via the program options, but you can wrest a little control over the shortcuts with a little external work if you're not averse to that. Here's what you need to do:

• Close MC (and server if you run that)
• Open explorer and browse to your MC installation folder. (On an x64 machine, that defaults to C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 19)
• In there, you will see a folder named "Data". Go into that.
• Here, you need to create a folder named "Custom Resources"
• Having done that, go into the folder named "Default Resources" and copy the file named "Resource.xml" from there to the "Custom" folder you made earlier.
  
• Open the file in the "Custom" folder in a text editor and read the comments to understand how it works.
• Try adding (or editing) shortcuts you desire, saving your changes, then launch MC to test.
• Read notes below!

Notes:

• Keeping the file in a custom folder means that when you update MC, your customisations will not be overwritten by the default file.
• MC gets clever about these custom files and merges the contents with those in the "Default" file. That way, if anything new is added, or changed, you still get the new along with your customisations. Bearing this in mind, once you've worked out how the entries work, you really only want to keep only your custom stuff in the custom file. As an example, I only have two customisations in mine, and my file in the Custom Resources folder looks like so:

Code: [Select]

  <MJRS version="1.0">
 
  <ACCELERATORS>

    <!-- Global shortcuts -->
    <Entry Key="Ctrl;Alt;R" Command="10047" Global="1" />
   
    <!-- Program modes -->
    <Entry Key="Ctrl;z" Command="22029" Param="-1" TranslateFlags="23" />
   
   
  </ACCELERATORS>

</MJRS>

• You need to think very carefully about what you put here. Reading your desires makes me think things like, if you set space bar to play/pause everywhere in MC, and F to full screen everywhere in MC, and you are tagging whilst listening to music, everytime you hit the space bar, music will pause/play, and everytime you type an F, the program will jump to full screen. If you set the 'translate flags' so that the shortcuts are ignored while in an edit box, that could work for you, but tread carefully. At least you'll know what's up if you start getting odd behaviour and will know how to fix it.
• Check the default file for any collisions with your choices. As you can see in my example above, I made the conscious decision to forgo the ctrl+z shortcut default 'undo' behaviour in favour of "show/hide" the tree.

If you need anything else, just shout.

-marko

Title: Re: Simple global key shortcuts?
Post by: Amleth on December 07, 2013, 05:47:38 am

Thanks, I'll try that. Like you say, I was hoping there was built-in support I'd missed so that the program would be smart about listening to key events when the focus is a text entry, etc, and not mess with playback. But hey, if I can get this to work in a similar fashion, it's all good. I'll update later when I have time to fiddle with it.