Thread: DigitalFX 4.0

Hi Guys,

This thread is WAY TOO long! Just spent 2 weeks making sure I read every post so I dont get flamed!!

OK, have latest RR installed, and DFX4.

Cant get CD Rip to work properly in the skin.

When I load CD Rip, the buttons on left side (Up, Remove Song, Down & Menu) all work, but the Reload CD, Rip 1, Rip All & CDDB buttons don't work, even tho you can 'select' them (they change when touched).

If I run CD Rip as stand alone program, it works. If I use the supplied skin and .skin file that comes with CD Rip, I can get it working in DFX4, but will only rip 1 CD then have to reboot before it can do another.

So, it APPEARS to be something in DFX4 causing the probs, and I suspect (but dont know enough about it), that has something to do with the exectbl.ini line, which is

"CDRIP","LOAD;cdrip.skin;RRCDRIP;RUNQ;$RRPath$\CDR ip\CDRip.exe"

As the .skin file looks OK.

Am using the version of CD Rip that was installed by either RR or DFX4.

Any ideas???

As I note, I want to rip to .MP3 format, but it appears the WMP only rips to .WMA format

Originally Posted by treetop777

Look in the FAQ, you have to set it up.

Actually, I did not see anything about setting up the External Apps in the FAQ.

I have Calc and Notepad, but nothing else.

I'd like to add some others, but I can just minimize RR for now (using the hidden feature - to launch my app).

Originally Posted by Cdeldridge

You create your playlists in winamp, saving them wherever you would like (for instance C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Music\Playlists). Then you setup RoadRunner through the RRConfig (under music\playlist path) to pull your playlists from this folder to then use in Road Runner.

I have seen a lot of posts like this one, and wanted to shed some insight on playlists and how they work in RR. There is no need to have to use Winamp stand alone, or another program to create your playlists. This can be done fast and easy right in RR.

I thought long and hard on how to make playlist management in the DFX skin as easy to use, and as intuitive as possible.

Here are a few tips and examples:

First, any time you play a song in RR, it is added to a "On the fly playlist", this is how you are able to see whats playing when you go to the playlist screen in the skin. This list is not saved automatically, and is used as a temporary holder for the song/songs.

- To add individual songs of your choosing to a playlist:

select the song in the browser list and at the top click "Add Sel" (this adds it to the above mentioned "On the fly playlist") Now you can browse to a different folder, and "Add Sel" another song, as many as you want to add. Then clicking on the "Playlist Manager" you can save that list for recall later.

- To add every song by a particular artist:

This can be done in one of two ways

You can do this by browsing the root folder, selecting the artist, and clicking the "Add Sel" button. You can then go to the playlist manager and save that list for recall later.

Another way is to use the search function. Press search, then artist, and enter say "Blondie". This will display all songs in your music library by Blondie, no matter what folder, album ect the song is located in. This is good as you may have compilation disks, random folder with music in them ect. Once the results are displayed, click the "Playlist manager" and then save list, and name it something like "Blondie"

- Adding a genre to a playlist

Click "Browse Mode" then choose"Genre". You are presented with a list of all the genre's of music in your collection. Highlight "Rock" for instance in the list, and then click "Add Sel". Now go to the playlist manager, click Save, and enter "Rock" for instance as the name of the playlist.

- Adding a list of songs returned in a search result:

Do a search for a keyword "Rain" for instance. You will then have a list of every song that contains the word "rain" in the title. Go to the playlist manager, and select Save, and enter the name of "Rain Songs" for instance.

- To add songs to an existing playlist

First load the playlist you want to add the songs to. Now browse in any method you want, select what you want to add, and click the "Add Sel" button at the top of the screen. When you are done adding what you want, simply go to the playlist manager again, select the name of the playlist and click the "Replace" button at the top of the screen.

- To add EVERY song in your library to a playlist

On the browser screen highlight the very top line at the top of the list "Entire Collection" and click "Add Sel". then go to the playlist manager and save it as something like "All Songs" NOTE: For large collections, this can take time for RR to add all the songs, and if that playlist is active when RR is closed, it can add time to the RR start up process next time.

Any playlist that you create can be added to or replace the contents of one of the 10 virtual disks. Simply select the playlist in the playlist manager, and click the
"To CD" button, you will be asked what CD to put it on, and if there are already songs on that disk, it will ask of you want to add the songs to that disk, or replace the songs on that disk.

Using the "Sel To Disk" button works very similar. Essentially it just stores songs in 10 "hard coded playlists" This just makes it easier to play and recall the songs, as it just takes a simple tap to go from one playlist to another. Select what you want, a folder, artist, genre ect and click the Sel To Disk. You will be asked what disk you want to save the songs on, and if you want to add or replace songs if there are already songs on that disk.



NOTE: When you are adding songs, and creating playlists, you can first sort them randomly, alphabetically, by artist, genre ect before you save the playlist.

I hope this is helpful in understanding how the playlists, and music in managed by RR and the skin.

Hey John,
I just learned something new and wanted to share it with you. Remember when I was searching for a solution to the issue with DFX4 still showing the Artist and Album from the Audio Player when you switch to FM or XM and I wrote an elaborate RRCode section into my Exectbl.ini to change it. Well now that we have "ACTIVESOURCEID", I tried a simple label BYVAR and it works.

Example label:
L,169,93,390,30,0,00,16,xirod,"BYVAR;ACTIVESOURCEI D;rdsname<<rdsname<<TRACKNUMBER||= - ||xmstation<<TRACKNUMBER||= - ||srstation<<Tagalbum<<= <<= <<= ","SCROLL-CENTER"

The above is from one of my skins and as soon as I update all of the referenced labels in them, I'll give DFx4 a go and report back. This will definitely eliminate the last nasty bug in your menu.skins.

John -

Are there assumptions for this?

Like, are you assuming that our Music Path and Playlist path are different? Should they be different?

Most peoples playlistpath resides inside their music path somewhere

Originally Posted by Minoritydan

John -

Are there assumptions for this?

Like, are you assuming that our Music Path and Playlist path are different? Should they be different?

You can store playlists in each of your album folders, and use it to play that album, but that is built into RRMedia, as well as the skin.

RR uses a separate path to store playlists, the Playlistpath= in the rr.ini.

This is the spot where RR saves all playlists you create from inside RR. This way they are all in one place, and you can browse them and pick what you want. If you have playlists in each album folder, you have to do all the browsing to get to them, and may as well just play the music without the playlist if you have to browse all the way there anyways.

Personally my playlists are stored in Road Runner\Playlists\

Originally Posted by GizmoQ

Hey John,
I just learned something new and wanted to share it with you. Remember when I was searching for a solution to the issue with DFX4 still showing the Artist and Album from the Audio Player when you switch to FM or XM and I wrote an elaborate RRCode section into my Exectbl.ini to change it. Well now that we have "ACTIVESOURCEID", I tried a simple label BYVAR and it works.

Example label:
L,169,93,390,30,0,00,16,xirod,"BYVAR;ACTIVESOURCEI D;rdsname<<rdsname<<TRACKNUMBER||= - ||xmstation<<TRACKNUMBER||= - ||srstation<<Tagalbum<<= <<= <<= ","SCROLL-CENTER"

The above is from one of my skins and as soon as I update all of the referenced labels in them, I'll give DFx4 a go and report back. This will definitely eliminate the last nasty bug in your menu.skins.

Hey Giz... I have already found some issues with the way mitch had added that and helped to get it working more correctly for the next release

John, thanks for the info about playlists with RR. I'm still a newbie so this is all pretty new to me. Minoritydan, did the last playlist I uploaded correct your problems? Is it working properly for you now? Just wanna make sure as this is my first contribution.