Plugin: J. River Media Center / Jukebox Explorer

[cncb]

I just posted the v1.2 update which adds playlist creation and saving/restoring of the playback queues between sessions.

Note that I also am now bundling the SageJRMCServer with the main plugin download so if you are one of the few that downloaded it manually before please delete your other download and follow the installation/registration steps for SageJRMCServer for the new location. This will allow you to get updates without needing to download the server dll manually (although you will now need to have JRMC closed when updating the plugin).

[mediahome]

This is great. Adding JRiver's product to SageTV makes up for it's weak music handling. However, using Sage for the playback is good and bad. Your plugin works from my Sage extender (good) however, my music is in WMA Lossless so the extender can't play it (bad). Bummer!

It would be great if you had an option to playback via UPnP/DLNA. The extenders support UPnP/DLNA so they should still be able to do the audio rendering. Using JRiver's UPnP/DLNA server would allow me to set it to transcode the audio to a format that the extenders can handle. I would finally be able to use Sage to access my music library.

The other really cool opportunity of using UPnP/DLNA is that you could support the multi-zone features of JRiver's product. One could use the Sage UI to "send" playlists to other zones in the house. This would be a very nice whole home music server solution.

Please, Please, Please do it!
Mediahome

[cncb]

Originally Posted by mediahome

This is great. Adding JRiver's product to SageTV makes up for it's weak music handling. However, using Sage for the playback is good and bad. Your plugin works from my Sage extender (good) however, my music is in WMA Lossless so the extender can't play it (bad). Bummer!

Unless you need WMA lossless for something else I would suggest converting to FLAC since the HD200 can handle it with no transcoding necessary.

I'm not so sure the HD200 is a Upnp renderer. I don't see it listed in JRMC's Playing Now as possible zones, at least. Do you see differently? I still will consider your request but this would complicate this plugin quite a bit (Sage would be controlling/managing playback through JRMC which would be playing back on an external device).

[mediahome]

I have over 16,000 WMA Lossless files in my library so I really don't want to convert them to FLAC. SageTV's lack of support for WMA lossless is the only issue that I have with that format.

Yes, I don't see the extender show up as a renderer either. Curious. If you bring up the HD200 in standalone mode you can connect to a PlayOn UPnP server and use the HD200 to render content via UPnP. Perhaps it is a renderer but just does not broadcast it's presense?

Yes, I suppose that it would complicate things but good things don't come easy. I am not an expert in UPnP but I think that it would be more a matter of "Sage would be controlling/managing playback through JRMC which would then tell a UPnP renderer to play content from a UPnP server."

[cncb]

Originally Posted by mediahome

I have over 16,000 WMA Lossless files in my library so I really don't want to convert them to FLAC. SageTV's lack of support for WMA lossless is the only issue that I have with that format.

Yes, I don't see the extender show up as a renderer either. Curious. If you bring up the HD200 in standalone mode you can connect to a PlayOn UPnP server and use the HD200 to render content via UPnP. Perhaps it is a renderer but just does not broadcast it's presense?

Yes, I suppose that it would complicate things but good things don't come easy. I am not an expert in UPnP but I think that it would be more a matter of "Sage would be controlling/managing playback through JRMC which would then tell a UPnP renderer to play content from a UPnP server."

That is a lot of files but you can just set JRMC to convert them and walk away for a night (or 2) .

I am not an expert either but while the HD200 can play back UPnp stuff this is different than allowing something else to control its playback which I don't think is supported in the firmware. If it did, it probably would only support it in standalone mode which means the JRMC plugin would not be able to run anyways.

[kkapp]

hmm, plugin works fine on the through the server but on the hd200 extenders it doesn't play the songs... I have mp3's and flac files, will load album art and song lists and such but when it goes to the screen where it should be playing, just the artwork, no play.......

[cncb]

Originally Posted by kkapp

hmm, plugin works fine on the through the server but on the hd200 extenders it doesn't play the songs... I have mp3's and flac files, will load album art and song lists and such but when it goes to the screen where it should be playing, just the artwork, no play.......

If it plays properly on the server it should play properly on the HD200 assuming it can handle the file format without conversion (should be the case for mp3 and flac). Did you happen to just install the plugin? I have noticed some funny behavior right after installing until I reboot the server and the extender.

[kkapp]

no, had it installed for a few weeks, tried to get it to work on the extender a few times with no luck...??

is weird, it will say playing 1 of 1 but nothing, no bar showing how much has played or left to play or anything

[cncb]

What happens when you try to play/restart the song in the Now Playing screen (press Select and then choose "Restart Current")? Can you play the same file successfully through the Sage default file browser (Search | Browse File System)?

[EnterNoEscape]

I had the same issue on the HD200, but the HD300 worked fine. I'm not really sure what to make of it. I just thought I'd put in my $0.02. I haven't used the plugin much since I have this issue.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I had the same issue on the HD200, but the HD300 worked fine.

Was this with FLAC files? There was a similar issue with the HD300 that was fixed in the firmware. The HD300 would occasionally get into a state while playing FLAC files where it would not be able to play any audio files until it was reset (unplugged). I wonder if a similar fix is necessary for the HD200?

[EnterNoEscape]

It seemed to not matter what the format was. Both FLAC and MP3 didn't work, but when I went into the normal music section of SageTV, the files would play without issue.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

It seemed to not matter what the format was. Both FLAC and MP3 didn't work, but when I went into the normal music section of SageTV, the files would play without issue.

Strange. Up until a month ago I was using HD200s exclusively with this plugin without issue.

[EnterNoEscape]

It's really not a big deal to me as there were other things about J. River I found that I didn't like such as the fact when I look at a list of the artists, it doesn't list the track artist, so compilation discs all get put under Various Artists. It kind of peeves me that we still have recently updated software out there that doesn't appear to read the track artist.

Your plugin is really good. I especially like the ease of customization. It's JRMC I'm disappointed in.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

It's really not a big deal to me as there were other things about J. River I found that I didn't like such as the fact when I look at a list of the artists, it doesn't list the track artist, so compilation discs all get put under Various Artists.

They have both "Artist" and "Album Artist" fields and the default Artists view lists "Album Artists". So, this could be why you are not seeing the track artists listed. Assuming your Artist field is filled in appropriately it would be easy to modify the view to list what you want. Let me know if you would like to try it.

[JohanDW]

I have just installed the plugin & configured JRMC. I am using my HD300 for audio playback. Everything seems normal, but it will only play the first track from the (every) playlist. Then it will stop.

When I want to hear all the songs of a playlist, I have to press "next" at the end of every track to make it play the next track. Otherwise nothing will happen anymore. That is not really the intention I assume :-(

Did I miss any setting? I have looked for it but don't find it. All the tracks are regular mp3's...


Johan

[cncb]

Originally Posted by JohanDW

When I want to hear all the songs of a playlist, I have to press "next" at the end of every track to make it play the next track. Otherwise nothing will happen anymore. That is not really the intention I assume :-(

I have seen similar behavior on first installation but this usually goes away after a server and extender reboot (pull plug). Let me know if this is not the case.

[JohanDW]

Thanks, restarting PC has solved the problem. Now the playlists are played completely!

But one remaining problem: the current playing track data (artist, trackname and artwork) is not refreshed when moving over to the next track.

Willing to do some debug work here - just give a shout.

Tx for the support

[cncb]

Originally Posted by JohanDW

But one remaining problem: the current playing track data (artist, trackname and artwork) is not refreshed when moving over to the next track.

Have you imported any of your music into the Sage database (via Media Center Import Directories)? If so, you need to either remove those files from the database or change a property in Sage to prevent it from playing files continuously from the Sage database (it plays files unexpectedly and can't be controlled from the plugin).

[JohanDW]

Sorry, have been sick for a week. Yes that was the solution! I did have the same music also imported in SageTV. Thanks for the support. Are you open for some change requests?? Would be nice to see eg. the next 3 pending tracks in the now playing screen....