MediaPlayer Plugin/STV Import: Winamp Media Player Plugin

[GollyJer]

geogecko,
That was it! It's working great for me now.
Winamp 5.5, Milkdrop2, SageTV 6.3.5, SageMC 6.3.6.

[JDizzy]

I have just installed the latest versions of both Sage and SageMC.

I used to have this Winamp plugin installed and working in an earlier version but can't seem to get the visualizations going now.
I have it now to where the music is sent through Winamp and have read through the docs several times.
Are there newer docs? When I opened 'Studio' (Ctrl/Shift/F12) I did not see anything that was referenced in the docs (and pretty well made a mess trying to hack around with editor).

I added the lines to the properties file, changed the Winamp config..but got stuck on the editor... any suggestions?

Or, would some one give me a copy of their file with this already added....or is that even possible?

[Madcoder]

Originally Posted by JDizzy

I have just installed the latest versions of both Sage and SageMC.

I used to have this Winamp plugin installed and working in an earlier version but can't seem to get the visualizations going now.
I have it now to where the music is sent through Winamp and have read through the docs several times.
Are there newer docs? When I opened 'Studio' (Ctrl/Shift/F12) I did not see anything that was referenced in the docs (and pretty well made a mess trying to hack around with editor).

I added the lines to the properties file, changed the Winamp config..but got stuck on the editor... any suggestions?

Or, would some one give me a copy of their file with this already added....or is that even possible?

There was a bug introduced some time back that you might be experiencing. Try to take Sage out of fullscreen mode. Right click the titlebar of the Sage window, and make sure the Always on top check mark is checked. Then put Sage back to fullscreen mode. It should work then.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by geogecko

After many months of this not working, all of a sudden, with the change of one setting, I got it to work correctly.

In the past, when I've tried to start the visualization, I would just see a black window with text saying something like "Visualization started or running."

The setting I changed, was to put a checkmark in the visualization preferences (configure), where it says "Minimize Winamp when going fullscreen."

This is the opposite setting that the instructions tell you to do, as quoted here:

So I'm not sure if this will work in all cases, but I will keep you all posted on how it goes.

I'm using version 5.21 of Winamp, and after all the settings in the first post, and then this one modification, in my startup folder, I also have Winamp set to startup. This causes me to always have Winamp up on the desktop, no matter what. I thought it would just be in the systray, but that hasn't been the case. But now that the visualization is working, I don't really care...

You may need to do this.

Gerry

[geogecko]

Mine is still intermittant, even after that change...I'm rarely ever brave enough to try and visualize anything any more, due to it not working all the time...

=(

I thought it was fixed, but several hours later (maybe days), it stopped working again.

[JDizzy]

Originally Posted by Madcoder

There was a bug introduced some time back that you might be experiencing. Try to take Sage out of fullscreen mode. Right click the titlebar of the Sage window, and make sure the Always on top check mark is checked. Then put Sage back to fullscreen mode. It should work then.

I know of this and have tried.
My hangup is when I go and start Sage and load the editor (Ctrl/Shift/F12)
I import the 'WinampHelper Menu' into the file.
I search through all that and never find where I am supposed to 'drag the WinampHelper Menu' to.
Nor can I find the 'MediaPlayer OSD' mentioned that needs to be deleted....

Then the docs say, "repeat steps 4-11 for the following menus:
'AlbumDetailPage' and 'Music by Artist'

I mean...where is all this Stuff at?
In previous versions of Sage I could find the above mentioned items... but I
can't see to find them in 6.3.
As I said, does anyone have a 'stock' STV with this loaded in that I might try, or start with?
(I am running the latest 6.3.10.166)

Or, maybe a few tips on what the new items are that need editing withing that file....

EDIT
I just ended up loading J River Media in Theater View from the Sage menu and am using that for my music and visuals.. it cannot run Milkdrop but can run GForce visuals.

[geogecko]

Nope, it hasn't worked reliably for a long time for me. For me, I know it will fail 100% of the time, when I have someone over, showing things off... =)

I really liked it, but may be replacing the HTPC in the living room with an HD Extender anyway, and the HTPC will go headless, thereby having no need for this plugin anymore, as cool as it is...

[geogecko]

Anyone able to remove this plugin and restore normal SageTV audio playback? All of my files are FLAC, and once I set the "mlbdude/use_winamp_plugin=true" property to false, and removed all the "media_player_plugin_class/???=WinampPlugin" to just "media_player_plugin_class/m4a=", I just get an audio playback error.

I was pretty sure that Sage supported FLAC files now, if I'm not mistaken. Is there something else I need to do in order to make this work with Sage again?

[GollyJer]

I'm not sure what you need to do to get it working with your setup, but I can confirm that Sage works great for FLAC playback.

[jkohn]

EDIT
I just ended up loading J River Media in Theater View from the Sage menu and am using that for my music and visuals.. it cannot run Milkdrop but can run GForce visuals.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how you did this?

[sonoman]

Will this plugin work with the ST-200 extender?

[jkohn]

No, you can't run Winamp on an extender I don't think. It's too bad, because Milkdrop is the only real reason I haven't dropped my HTPC for an extender.

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by jkohn

No, you can't run Winamp on an extender I don't think. It's too bad, because Milkdrop is the only real reason I haven't dropped my HTPC for an extender.

Interesting. That was my whole reason for keeping the HTPC as well, but the plugin hasn't worked reliably for me in months... Does it work most of the time for you?

Of course, now that Blu-Ray drives for PC's are so cheap now, that is another compelling reason to keep the HTPC...

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Interesting. That was my whole reason for keeping the HTPC as well, but the plugin hasn't worked reliably for me in months... Does it work most of the time for you?

Yes, it works for me. I took a slightly different approach, though. I didn't try to integrate the visiualization plug-in directly into Sage using Studio. Instead, I have a girder macro that minimizes Sage and then sends a command directly to Winamp to start the visualization. I also enabled the "hidden extras" in Sage so that I can use the Custom 4/5 commands to navigate songs in the playlist while the visualization is running.

Of course, now that Blu-Ray drives for PC's are so cheap now, that is another compelling reason to keep the HTPC...

I recently got fed up with buggy BD software on the PC and bought a set-top Blu-Ray player....

[sonoman]

That's too bad. I really liked the visualizations and winamp's player beats the hell out of the music player in Sage. Much smoother playback of flac files and plays some mp3s that Sage stalls on.

jkohn, how do you setup the Custom 4/5 commands to navigate songs? I would like to setup a couple of commands for my harmony 670 to skip to next song or previous song.

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by sonoman

That's too bad. I really liked the visualizations and winamp's player beats the hell out of the music player in Sage. Much smoother playback of flac files and plays some mp3s that Sage stalls on.

jkohn, how do you setup the Custom 4/5 commands to navigate songs? I would like to setup a couple of commands for my harmony 670 to skip to next song or previous song.

There's a setting in the .properties file, called "enable_extras" or something like that. When you set it to true, the Custom4/5 commands will navigate songs during music playback. (This "enable_extras" turns on a bunch of other features you may or may not like, but you can go to Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Customize to configure them, they're listed under "Malore's Extras").

[sonoman]

OK, I enabled the hidden extras but how do I send the custom 4/5 commands. Simply pushing 4 or 5 during playback doesn't work. Am I missing something simple here?

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by sonoman

OK, I enabled the hidden extras but how do I send the custom 4/5 commands. Simply pushing 4 or 5 during playback doesn't work. Am I missing something simple here?

In Setup, go to detailed setup, and then Commands. You'll need to map the Custom4/Custom5 commands to the keystrokes you want to use since they're not mapped by default.

[sdsean]

Originally Posted by Madcoder

There was a bug introduced some time back that you might be experiencing. Try to take Sage out of fullscreen mode. Right click the titlebar of the Sage window, and make sure the Always on top check mark is checked. Then put Sage back to fullscreen mode. It should work then.

With Sage MC (6.38a), SageTv 6.59, Java 1.6.0.10, and the current winamp plugin, i was able to get this work just fine with winamp 5.8 after
making sure the above was done along with all the instructions.

Interesting that this was my issue, had to read through 20+pages of posts before I found it. . . frustating. .

[bunch92]

Hi, I am trying to uninstall this plugin , but the uninstall procedure seems out of date :

Uninstallation
==============

SageTV does not have a simple method of automatic installation/uninstallation for plugins. To remove this plugin and eliminate all traces of it, execute the following procedure:

1) Press Control + Shift + F12 to open SageTV Studio.
2) Scroll down to the "WinampHelperMenu" menu.
3) Right click the "WinampHelperMenu" menu, and click "Expand Children".
[...]

I do not have a WinampHelperMenu at all ....

Any idea ?