next »

[amit]

It is possible somehow to make the winamp viz window to stay on top?

[dardevilbrequin]

 

Woaw thanks a lot for that plugin !!
That was the only missing feature that was making me staying with winamp.

Now I can see all my album art , collected during years !!!

Really great job

[Chocobito]

I never probe this plugin waiting por the final version but today I dont wait anymore and... Wow, really stable and work flawless, excellent work Barna 

[Barna]

one more thing: I can do fine without downloading images but it would be better if images were downloaded  and looked for in a single customized directory instead of the file's own directory.can make this optional?

0.9 now asks if covers should be stored into the songs directory or a default one when enabling to save covers on disk. Hope it works as imagined :-)

It is possible somehow to make the winamp viz window to stay on top?

It does take the setting from the XMPlay window, so you need to enable always on top for XMPlay in its options (Options -> Miscellaneous -> On top). If you want a custom option for the visualisation unrelated to XMPlay's status, uhhh, maybe I can add that for the next version.

Everyone else, thanks for the acknowledgment. Looks like we're getting to 1.0 soon, probably will rename the thing then too...

Here's 0.9 download: http://www.nukular.ch/winamp_svp_0.9.zip

[amit]

Does the amazon downloader consumes 99% of cpu cycles while working? (it was similar in previous versions)
While it consumes all cpu power network files cannot load. Is it possible to lower the priority of ACD when calling for it from plugin? maybe it will help.

(thanks for the single folder option )

[Barna]

Hmm... I'm unsure if that is caused by ACD or because of the regular cover loading procedure. The plugin reopens the audio (mp3) file as it looks for covers embedded in the ID3 tag again just after XMPlay opened the file for playing. Are you sure the experienced lag doesn't happen when ACD is disabled?
Well I'll try to lower the thread priority of the cover loading part and the priority of the launched ACD process for the next version. Maybe things get better. If not, probably the only thing that could solve that would be a short delay in cover loading.

[amit]

The process that takes 99% is ACD .When ACD is disabled this problem does not exist. Does ACD takes so many resources at your system also?

Is it possible differentiate in xmplay between opening a file and actually playing it? Maybe it would be possible to start ACD only when actual playback of a file starts and not when it only tries to read a file.

[Barna]

Well, try this release... It launches the ACD process with IDLE priority.
http://www.nukular.ch/winamp_svp_0.9.1.zip

The covers should only be read on an the actual playing of the song. The plugin checks the current playing song filename and tags (as filename doesn't change on radio streams for instance) three times per second. So only after XMPlay actually started the song covers are loaded / ACD is started.

Mmh, maybe I'll look into getting an alternative to ACD in the near future... I'm not sure if ACD, as an old unsupported VB6, to be replaced with .NET, application is the way to go. Talking with the Amazon webservice to query for covers doesn't seem to be that complicated.

[amit]

The problem with the network files is solved but now the "save to one default folder" option is not working (or am I doing something wrong?) .It isn't saving the covers to selected folder.  Is it working for you?

[Barna]

uhm, how are you listening to your network files? Are you accessing them via network file system or are you listening through a http:// webserver? If it's through http cover saving does and should not work, as usually http streams are radio and who would want to save all covers from a radio stream anyway. But I guess it needs another option in that case.

[amit]

Most of my music is located on a local http server and the address is http://localhost:8045/....  I wasn't aware it was intentionally not downloading but it makes sense to avoid downloading covers for live internet radio.

[BassFan]

Feine sache das Plugin läuft auch unter BassVis mit einschränkung
gruss BassFan

[piovrauz]

mmm, I think there is another litlle thingie I can ask for: the ability to display cover(s) when playing files frome an archive (7z,zip,...); I mean, if the cover(s) is/are in the archive file. what's about that?

[Barna]

I'll try to use the XMplay archive features which seem to be available to my vis plugin for that. If that doesn't work out, there are rather slim chances for that. I just checked the programming interface and it at least looks like enough features are available to implement that, but maybe it's somehow limited to music only or something else I didn't consider. I'll try tonight.

On another note my last big change since last release is an integration of the auto cover downloading feature. This works out pretty well. It's now even able to download multiple covers and let the user chose which one to save to disk.

As it's nearing 1.0 anyway I'm looking into a release with a new name, but I have yet to find one :-) Anyone has an idea? As it is both cover display and winamp wrapping it will probably end up with something weird. Splitting it into two plugins doesn't really make sense as long as Winamp needs it's own vis-window anyway (my integration into XMPlay of these failed horribly).

[piovrauz]

Pretty good news then

Another thing I noticed is that if the title contains utf8 stuff (japanes characters, for example) it's show on milkdrop as a bunch of ?. Is it possible to fix this or it's an issue with milkdrop itself?

btw, thanks for the plugin again, I love it

[Zarggg]

That's an issue of Milkdrop itself. It does not support non-ASCII set charcters, IIRC.

[Barna]

There we go! 0.9.5, almost ready for the big 1.0 :-)

A few minor fixes for some random widely unused Winamp plugins are also covered but not really interesting.

Most of the updates since 0.9 are regarding the cover feature and cover downloading.

As mentioned, the plugin now integrates its own cover downloader, Amazon Cover Downloader is not needed anymore.

With this come a few new features like no temp files needed if the covers aren't stored anyway and the download of multiple covers.
If saving of covers is enabled, the user can select a different cover after downloading and chose 'Save selected downloaded cover' from the menu to keep (or overwrite an old) one.
Also (re)downloading can be done anytime by selecting 'Download now' in the menu to recheck covers or to select another one to save on disk.

Saving for covers coming from network streams or songs stored in archive files is now available if a default save directory is enabled for the downloaded covers (this also adds the new menu option 'auto save stream/archive').

Reading of cover images stored inside an archive file is also supported (thanks to XMPlay API).

Download: http://www.nukular.ch/winamp_svp_0.9.5.zip

mmm, I think there is another litlle thingie I can ask for: the ability to display cover(s) when playing files frome an archive (7z,zip,...); I mean, if the cover(s) is/are in the archive file.

As mentioned, should work now.
I only tried it with one archive and type of archive (ZIP), so I'm looking forward to your test report :-)

Another thing I noticed is that if the title contains utf8 stuff (japanes characters, for example) it's show on milkdrop as a bunch of ?. Is it possible to fix this or it's an issue with milkdrop itself?

Unfortunately Zarggg is correct.
This can be worked around on newer Microsoft OSes (since XP) by setting another locale. This can be done either globally (i.e. selecting Japanese as the default locale for applications which don't support Unicode in region/language settings) or for one process (xmplay.exe for use with the plugin). You need a special tool to change the locale for a single application called AppLocale which can be downloaded here. I'm running it now and it works quite good, you can see a updated screen shot on the first page.

[piovrauz]

Dang! milkdrop U .... I'll give a try with apploc, but I don't like it much...
The nice other thing: archive image loading, all working!

[Barna]

Glad it works like you expected :-)

Yeah AppLocale isn't the nicest solution... There have been patches to make the warning message that appears every time you start something with AppLoc go away (link) - but thats not much better.
Well Nullsoft has been fixing their Unicode issues in the last few years, maybe we get a compatible MilkDrop until 2010 or so :-)

[amit]

Barna , Do you remember the problem I described regarding opening network files while ACD downloding? Now the problem re-appeared with the internal download algorithm. The cover downloading seems to conflict with opening (local only?) network files  causing them both to halt .