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Author Topic: Questions about Track Info Screen  (Read 2644 times)

Tuckers

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Questions about Track Info Screen
« on: February 19, 2006, 02:15:42 am »

I looked into how to make custom Track Info screens, and it's pretty easy HTML.  I want to make a very custom screen and I have a couple of questions.

Is there anyway to display all the tracks in an album on this screen? 

Is there any way to have the contents center vertically on the screen?  I have tried various HTML and style attributes and nothing seems to work.
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schmoose

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2006, 01:13:46 am »

as far as centering, using tables and the valign="middle" tag is the easiest.  If you want to use CSS instead of tables, it can be a bit more difficult.  you should first figure out the vertical size of the track info screen or the element you want the text centered in before doing the coding.  the following links can give you some options to center vertically with CSS:

http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0103.htm#footnote

http://www.student.oulu.fi/~laurirai/www/css/middle/

vertically centering dynamic content from the database (ie Artist - Track Title) can be even more difficult with CSS though.  For that, you can have a look here:

http://www.jakpsatweb.cz/css/css-vertical-center-solution.html

again, using HTML tables is the easiest way to go.
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schmoose

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2006, 01:53:33 am »

here's a pic of my track info using tables to vertically center things. it's not original, but more of a modification of other trackinfo's. you can click on it to see a full-sized version.



the zip file is also uploaded to the Media Center gmail account.  the code sure ain't pretty, but it gets the job done on my setup:

http://gmail.google.com
Login:   mcfiles
password:    mediacenter

the zip is in the only current message in the inbox (with the subject TrackInfo -- Aruba_neg_full)
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schmoose

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2006, 02:22:11 am »

Below is a crop of the Info section of my trackinfo:



The formatting probably isn't the way you'd like it, but you can just change that.  Below are the keywords I used to get the track info from MC's database:

Album: TRACKINFO_INSERT_ALBUM

Album Year: TrackInfo_Insert(Album Year)

Born/Formed: TrackInfo_Insert(Born / Formed)

Number Played: TrackInfo_Insert(Number Plays)

Last Played : TrackInfo_Insert(Last Played)

Album Songs: TrackInfo_Insert(Songs)

The one in bold is of course the one you want.  What I did was create a Library Field called Songs.  I used the atagger plugin to download information for my albums and it automatically populated the Songs field with all of the tracks on the album.  Once aTagger inputs this data into MC's database, all you have to do is to tell MC to display that info in the TrackInfo template.  Because Songs is a custom field, you must use the format TrackInfo_Insert(field name), where, in this case, field name is Songs.  For more info on using library fields in the trackinfo templates, see this page:

http://www.jrmediacenter.com/DevZone/Track%20Info.html
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tcman41

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2006, 03:56:05 pm »

Not really sure where to ask these but here it goes.

The visualization in your screenshot appears to be the multi info one by hazelwood, i don't understand how to get this one installed anymore, any help?

I downloaded the css dream track info visual, the one where the code can be manipulated easily to rearrange the objects in it, got most of it figured out but how does one increase the size of visualization in it?

Just in general after installing a bunch of track info visuals, how does one go about deleting ones that they don't want anymore?

TC  :)

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schmoose

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2006, 05:53:28 pm »

1) just download it from here:

http://accessories.jrmediacenter.com/mediacenter/accessories.php

and then unzip it into its own folder in the following directory:

C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Visualizations\Track Info

2) I've never used the css dream track info. maybe someone else could help you.  for my trackinfo, I manually edited the HTML.  The visualization is placed inside a table cell.  Here is what the code for the visualization looks like:

Code: [Select]
<object classid="clsid:CE5BC8B7-ACDF-4118-B22A-DE0D5B73270A" id="MJVisEngine1" data="DATA:application/x-oleobject;BASE64,t8hbzt+sGEGyKt4NW3MnCgADAABWCgAAVgoAAA==" width="290" height="290">
</object>

3)You delete the folder for that trackinfo, which can be found in the following directory on your hard drive:

C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Visualizations\Track Info
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Marra

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2006, 10:17:54 pm »

Well Schmoose this template has got me motivated.  This is what I've been after - but I need to change some fields etc and also overall size.  The problem - I have no idea where to look for the code to adjust, how to adjust etc.  Can someone shed some light on how to start creating a track info template by an absolute beginner.

TIA
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schmoose

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Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2006, 03:23:20 am »

admittedly, mine is just a hack of the multiinfo template, customized to suit my needs. If you've got one you like, but is not exactly what you need, that may be the easiest/best way to go. since they're all freely available, I don't think the authors would mind.  ;)

All of the track info templates are in the following folder:

    C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Visualizations\Track Info

For example, the standard Dreamstate template is here:

    C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Visualizations\Track Info\Dreamstate

You just need to edit the index.html file in this folder.  I like using topstyle or dreamweaver.  You may also need to edit/create graphics files.  (you may also notice the file generated.html, which is the output file displaying MC database info each time a new song begins.)

    http://www.jrmediacenter.com/DevZone/Track%20Info.html will tell you the database fields and their keywords that you can use.[/list]

    Besides the MC keywords, everything else is created using standard HTML/CSS. 

      -
    TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST will insert the Artist
    - the following code would yield Madonna - Holiday[/list]

    Code: [Select]
    <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST - TRACKINFO_INSERT_TITLE</span>
      -
    TRACKINFO_INSERT_IMAGE will insert coverart
    - the following will create a table with one cell whose content will be coverart sized at 290 x 290px.[/list]

    Code: [Select]
    <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
      <tr>
        <td><img src="TRACKINFO_INSERT_IMAGE" width="290" height="290"></td>
      </tr>
    </table>

      - The code in my previous post will insert a visualization at 290 x 290px.
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    Marra

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    Re: Questions about Track Info Screen
    « Reply #8 on: February 24, 2006, 05:31:25 am »

    Thanks schmoose for this advice - my climb up the HTML/CSS learning curve has begun.
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