Sonique Evolution- My new flash skin - Page 7

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-13-2007, 04:29 PM

here ya go nola... throw these in your skin file and see if that fixes anything.. if the trackart still doesnt update try pressing the art area again.

www.sonicxtacy.com/121307audiopatch.rar

Nola111 · 12-13-2007, 05:19 PM

Thanks Sonic!

Ok here's the latest.

The art does NOT update automatically when changing the playlist, but it now WILL update when I press the album art.

Also, the strange characters seem to be gone, which is great.

The songs are now listing in REVERSE alphabetical order though. Not sure what's up there?

So now it seems I also have a bigger problem with Coverflow as well. I went back into Coverflow to check that Velvet Revolver album (to see about the funny characters since they were showing there too), and the back of the album art for it was showing the tracks of the previous album (Van Halen). So I figured I'd just go back and rebuild my XML files by re-running builder-artist.exe. Well, it won't finish rebuilding without erroring out with a serious error. I tried it 5 times and got the same result each time. Is there anything in your new code that would have affected coverflow?

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-13-2007, 06:29 PM

my code does nothing in conflict with coverflow.. i cant help you with that. But when you say "change playlist" do you mean literally change the playlist via the audiobrowser or do you mean play the next track or press the nexttrack button? if you mean the first part of the question then we're on the same page.. mine does that as well or some reason. If the track art doesnt update when the next song is played thats a problem i dont have

Nola111 · 12-13-2007, 07:39 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

my code does nothing in conflict with coverflow.. i cant help you with that. But when you say "change playlist" do you mean literally change the playlist via the audiobrowser or do you mean play the next track or press the nexttrack button? if you mean the first part of the question then we're on the same page.. mine does that as well or some reason. If the track art doesnt update when the next song is played thats a problem i dont have

I do mean the first part. However, the more I read some of what you're saying, the more I'm thinking I'm supposed to be seeing more than just the album art thumbnails next to the song titles in the playlist. When you say "track art doesn't update when the next song is played..." that makes me believe that maybe I should be seeing large album art somewhere? Like a Now Playing screen or something?

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-14-2007, 08:47 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Nola111

I do mean the first part. However, the more I read some of what you're saying, the more I'm thinking I'm supposed to be seeing more than just the album art thumbnails next to the song titles in the playlist. When you say "track art doesn't update when the next song is played..." that makes me believe that maybe I should be seeing large album art somewhere? Like a Now Playing screen or something?

Yellow circle is "track art" Blue circle is "album art". You see the track art but not any album art? Thats odd cause the album art is captured automatically from Road Runner. All you have to do is have ANY image file in the directory where the track is. The Track art i'm doing manually.. thus it requires the ArtName variable defined in skin.ini.

Bottom line is if the track art changes when you change to antoher song in the current playlist then the track art works the same as mine. Currently, if i change the playlist the art doesnt update until i press on the track art area. This will be fixed. But if u dont see the album art i really dont know what that could be. I'm assuming you can see album art in all other skins?

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-14-2007, 08:53 AM

Three New Features added:

In hopes in turning the "Info" Bar under the track name on top into a real info bar i've added a few things to every skin.

-Larger notification of City and State Traveled thru. Now when you are driving into a new city the info bar chimes and notifies you which city you are now entering.
-Alarm clock/memo function. You can set times and dates to key events and have them ring in and displayed on the info bar. Each event is set right in the skin.. so there's no real need to enter an .ini or .txt file.
-Reminders function. The reminders function as discussed here is now tied into the infobar allowing you to see reminders data in each skin.

Nola111 · 12-14-2007, 10:19 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

Yellow circle is "track art" Blue circle is "album art". You see the track art but not any album art? Thats odd cause the album art is captured automatically from Road Runner. All you have to do is have ANY image file in the directory where the track is. The Track art i'm doing manually.. thus it requires the ArtName variable defined in skin.ini.

Bottom line is if the track art changes when you change to antoher song in the current playlist then the track art works the same as mine. Currently, if i change the playlist the art doesnt update until i press on the track art area. This will be fixed. But if u dont see the album art i really dont know what that could be. I'm assuming you can see album art in all other skins?

I should have asked you to post screenshots a long time ago... it definitely would have made sense!

Ok, no, I do not see that large album art. But fortunately, I figured out why. My folder.jpg files are hidden files (that's how WMP puts them in there when encoding and tagging an album). I have a couple random albums whose folder.jpg files are NOT hidden, and they show up fine. How hard would it be to write it into your code to allow hidden files?

Ok, I'm getting there. Seems a simple reboot fixed my browse-artist.exe crashing issue. Now I just need to find out why clicking on any song on the back of the coverflow art all plays the same song... off to the Coverflow thread for that one!

I'm really looking forward to XM by the way... that's what I use the most in the car. Hurry up Christmas!

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-14-2007, 10:31 AM

unfortunately thats a road runner thing .. i cant enable hidden files in my skin.

Nola111 · 12-14-2007, 02:15 PM

Yikes, ok I better talk to Guino then. The only way to unhide files manually is through command line in DOS, and I can't see myself doing that for 350 files.

MGD · 12-14-2007, 02:20 PM

You have to do this only once for ALL files.
On the command prompt change the dir to your library and it will unhide all files and sub folders in the directory with the attrib command.

1. Open command prompt.
2. cd to base folder of your music collection.
3. Enter 'attrib -s -h -r *.jpg /s'

Nola111 · 12-14-2007, 10:40 PM

Ahh, good call MGD! I didn't even think of using a wildcard jpg. Ok, this will make things a lot easier. Thanks!

You don't know of any apps that will automatically go in and change all my song file names to insert a number in front, do you? I have to go through that process too it seems... my songs have track #'s in the ID3 tags, but not in the filename. So far my experience with RR is that it wants it in the filename.

treetop777 · 12-15-2007, 01:14 PM

This is all IMO; don't mean to criticize.

There is to much going on in the track list, i would eliminate track art.
I would use the top bar to display information about the track, album, artist and so forth then remove that information from the track list itself and leave only the track name in the list.
The ratings indicators look like bugs at first glance - i would use the standard stars; also have it display only for the song that's playing.

Sonicxtacy02 · 12-15-2007, 02:43 PM

i appreciate the feedback... but in all honesty i want for the playlist to be as informative as possible. If i were to remove the track art and ratings lists completely there'd be no real innovation present in that screen. As far as i know i'm the only person to this point to add these things to rr and i take pride in that. You will be happy to know that the final version will only have the ratings stars if you have the ratings neccesary ratings indicators present in the .skin file.

treetop777 · 12-15-2007, 03:15 PM

Nola111 · 12-15-2007, 03:22 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

You will be happy to know that the final version will only have the ratings stars if you have the ratings neccesary ratings indicators present in the .skin file.

Perfect... I was going to ask you for this and you already will deliver! I don't use ratings at all, so this is an awesome addition.

I have another question Sonic:

When I'm in Coverflow and I select a song or an album and it starts playing, what's the quickest way to get back to the Playlist screen? So far, the only way I can get back is by pressing Menu twice, and then pressing Audio again. Is there a way to jump directly back to the Playlist screen from the Coverflow screen? Perhaps even just a simple "Back" button?

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