INTERACT FORUM

Windows => Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins => Topic started by: joshhuggins on August 16, 2015, 09:29:33 pm

Title: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 16, 2015, 09:29:33 pm
I hate to even bring this up since it is close to 10 years since the last update to James Dickson's Playing Now 1.3 (JDPN) plugin but thought Marko and a few others might want a heads up and who knows maybe JDPN could get a bit of love in MC21? We can dream right? ;D

Anyway, I performed an in place upgrade to Windows 10 on my home system with MC 21.0.2 and JDPN1.3 installed and registered and the plugin is still working great. Yea! At work I let the Windows 10 Media Creation tool blow everything away and after reinstalling MC21.0.2 and JDPN1.3, JDPN will not register the Serial.JDA file. FWIW, would hate to see JDPN die off, but maybe it's time to move on? :'( Thanks for the ears!
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on August 16, 2015, 11:40:02 pm
I'm OK, as long as it's working!

Now, I don't think I documented it, but somewhere, in the dim recesses of my mind, I'm thinking that I had to figure out where it's writing in the registry when you do that, and then had to go there, and mess with the permissions so that it could write it's stuff.

I'm sure I used Revo Uninstaller to monitor the changes while I tried to register.

It will be a while before I move to W10, October at least. Let me know if you need a hand figuring it out. I'm sure only one of the key locations was an issue.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 17, 2015, 11:43:37 am
Hi Marko,

Yeah I tried digging thru the registry manually as well as using Sysinternals Process Monitor while trying to register the Serial.JDA file but could not come up with a tip to find what file or registry value gets changed. If I can come up with something I'll post it here too. Thanks!
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on August 18, 2015, 03:45:04 am
So, here's a thing...

Run MC as administrator.... Does PN work (in evaluation mode) now? If it does, register while MC is running as admin, then restart as normal...

Does it work, or go back to "expired"?

I have it working now, but am not sure which of the things I did fixed it, so we can go through them a step at a time until we find the one that works for you :)
That first step is a "must" as without it, your key won't get written to the registry, hence the 'expired' status.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 19, 2015, 04:38:48 pm
So I uninstalled PN, Ran the PN installer as Admin just for fun. Started MC as Admin, Registered PN, Closed MC, Restared MC as Admin and it's all working now when launching MC normal as well. Thanks Marko for the heads up on running as admin, that seems to be the ticket. Now to put a note in my backup folder for PN to remember next time.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: KingSparta on August 20, 2015, 02:38:48 pm
that was a nice program.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on August 20, 2015, 03:56:12 pm
It still is :)
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on August 24, 2015, 01:07:08 pm
Matt,

Is it possible that, if nothing else, J River could remove the licensing code from the plugin?
It is the only thing preventing us from sharing, and it's still working flawlessly for those of us that kept our installers.

-marko
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: theoctavist on September 19, 2015, 04:07:18 am
id love to have this..
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on May 24, 2017, 06:42:41 pm
2017 Windows Creators Update-Update: I needed to do a full reinstall and lately I have been repathing my Documents folder to a secondary drive. When the dialog that pops up for you to locate the Serial.JDA file to install your Playing Now license, the dialog would flash and then lock up MC. I used the Restore Default to reset the path for my user accounts Documents folder back to the default location, and then the dialog would still flash but would eventually stop enough at a folder location. I didn't try to navigate the dialog to find the Serial.JDA file, but instead copy and pasted my Serial.JDA file into that location (which caused more flashing of the dialog, but the file eventually pasted) and then the dialog accepted the Serial.JDA and registered the plugin. I restarted MC as Admin one final time and everything worked as expected from then on.

(http://www.joshhuggins.com/images/mediacenter/DocsPath.PNG)

Would like to once again beg JRiver crew if they could please unlock the program if they are not going to revamp it any time soon. It's such a cool feature, I know others would dig it! Thanks.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on June 03, 2017, 09:20:05 am
Nice one Josh, thanks for the heads up. I just ran into this exact same problem.

C'mon JRiver, please unlock this for us. I've attached two dlls for you in case you don't have them! :p :D

1.3.0.10 was the last official release.
1.4.0.1 was a dll that Rhino made for me to cure a tooltip crash in MC.
Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the 'cure' was to simply remove the custom tooltipping altogether, but, it did fix the crashing.

Something's changed in MC since 2009 though, because for me at least, 1.3.0.10 is no longer crashing.

So, waddaya you guys reckon? You gonna unlock it for us?

Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: Fex on June 03, 2017, 12:00:21 pm
So, waddaya you guys reckon? You gonna unlock it for us?

Please.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 23, 2017, 12:46:58 pm
Would like to once again beg JRiver crew if they could please unlock James Dickson's Playing Now if they are not going to revamp it any time soon. It's such a cool feature, I know others would dig it! Thanks.
* joshhuggins is listeng to: 'Down To The Nightclub' by 'Tower Of Power' from the album 'Bump City' [Duration: 2:45 | 192 kbps mp3 | rated 4/5 | played twice ~ last played 19/03/17 ;D
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: broncodan on July 05, 2018, 05:17:38 pm
Hi,

I was trying to reinstall this plugin and I am having the issue you noted above with the registration not taking.  Can you tell me where I need to paste my serial.jda file? 

Thanks.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on July 05, 2018, 10:07:15 pm
Run MC as administrator
Go to Services and Plugins in the tree and select Playing Now
Register in the normal way
Close MC
Run MC in the normal way, and that should be you good to go.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: broncodan on July 06, 2018, 11:45:33 am
Thanks Marco.  I had to uninstall and then re-install as noted above.  For whatever reason I had to do it twice to get it to work (but maybe that was an error getting into run as administrator).  It's been years since I have used this and forgot how much I actually missed it.  Is there a particular skin that you use?  I think at the time I collected all the ones that were out there as I have quite a few.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on July 06, 2018, 02:35:36 pm
You shouldn't encourage me to post about this thing. I'm so enthusiastic about it it's probably not healthy. It's been an integral part of my MC experience since it came into existance, and it's a testament to how well it was written that it still works today, after being dead in the water for what, ten years?

I made a plethora of different skins for it way back when, and still have those around, somewhere. Skinning for it is so, so versatile, as James gave us control over absolutely everything... Where it pops up, how long it stays for, how long it takes to pop up, custom tooltips created from any existing library field, all sizes of album art, and so on :)

The skin I've used for long and weary now, pops up, and stays around, along the top of my screen. It gives me access to the playing now list, so I can skip to any track in the list, handy tooltip info for the current, previous and next tracks, artist bios, album reviews, ability to rate the current and previous tracks, and volume control....
(https://mpw.scot/pics/ia/PlayingNow/Snap-021.jpg)

(https://mpw.scot/pics/ia/PlayingNow/Snap-023.jpg)

(https://mpw.scot/pics/ia/PlayingNow/Snap-024.jpg)

(https://mpw.scot/pics/ia/PlayingNow/Snap-025.jpg)

(https://mpw.scot/pics/ia/PlayingNow/Snap-026.jpg)

It doesn't scale, and is made to fit a 1920 pixels wide screen, without covering the left and right corners of a maximised window.
I've attached it to this post if you want to give it a spin...

Before loading it though, you would need to create a custom, expression based library field called nps using the expression below, otherwise, it will spawn constant pop up error messages about not being able to find that field... it takes care of things like "Played once", "Played Twice", "Never Played" and stuff. :)
Code: [Select]
if(isequal([filename],last.fm,8),Last.fm Radio Play,if(isempty([number plays]),first time played /(Imported formatdate([date imported,0],dd MMMM yyyy)/),if(isequal([number plays],1,2),played once,if(isequal([number plays],2,2),played twice,played [number plays] times)) ~ last played formatdate([last played,0],elapsed) ago))  if(isempty([number plays]),,/(formatdate([last played,0],dd//MM//yy)/))
-marko
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: broncodan on July 06, 2018, 04:17:54 pm
Thanks.  I like some of the functions (playlist access) that you added, along with the previous rating - so you can go back after a song and rate it.   I see what you mean by Popups....  I didn't close and re-open MC after I added the calculated field.  All good now. 

what do I have to add to add a hotkey to get the popup to come back up? i know that the default used to be windows P but now that brings up my dual display (project) properties.  I would like to change it to something else that isn't used (but have no idea what).  Anyway - Thank you. 

And to the devs....  get this implemented, it's been years...  ha ha..
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: theoctavist on July 31, 2018, 05:27:10 pm
how to install? copying the dll into plugins doesn't work nor does installing like a VST.

halp

Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 01, 2018, 12:55:57 pm
how to install? copying the dll into plugins doesn't work nor does installing like a VST.
It was a purchased program that had an installer. The .DLL files above are just update libraries that helped keep the plugin running. I would be willing to toss up the installer if JRiver OK'ed it since they own the rights to it now.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on August 01, 2018, 12:58:01 pm
Marko, does it look like the image rendering is fuzzy now? I am guessing that the recent changes in Windows 10 related to the new interface scaling has to do with it. Perfect time to update it for MC24 right? ;D  :'(
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: metaleloi666 on December 09, 2018, 07:24:18 pm
So? Anyone can make this great plugin work with version 24?
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: joshhuggins on December 10, 2018, 01:01:33 am
So? Anyone can make this great plugin work with version 24?
If they purchased it back in the day, it can be made to work with version 24 which is what I run it on now. I never saw if JRiver said if it was ok to share or not since they have the rights to it now AFAIK.
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: marko on November 17, 2022, 01:30:37 pm
Nice one Josh, thanks for the heads up. I just ran into this exact same problem.

C'mon JRiver, please unlock this for us. I've attached two dlls for you in case you don't have them! :p :D

1.3.0.10 was the last official release.
1.4.0.1 was a dll that Rhino made for me to cure a tooltip crash in MC.
Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the 'cure' was to simply remove the custom tooltipping altogether, but, it did fix the crashing.

Something's changed in MC since 2009 though, because for me at least, 1.3.0.10 is no longer crashing.

So, waddaya you guys reckon? You gonna unlock it for us?
Five year bumpity-bump with the addition of a request to make it work on 64bit MC :)

-marko
Title: Re: James Dickson Playing Now - Windows 10
Post by: Striker on November 17, 2022, 01:41:43 pm
Five year bumpity-bump with the addition of a request to make it work on 64bit MC :)

-marko

Marko it might help if you created a new post in the v30 forum and referenced the thread above.