<< - - DigitalFX 4.0 [Released 07/25/08] - - >>

JohnWPB · 12-11-2001, 11:04 PM

The DigitalFX 4.0 Skin is released! The new version of the skin has many new features, mainly the highly anticipated BLueZX3 RRMedia Database Plugin. This is a total Audio Database solution for Road Runner.

Please see post #3 for issues and fixes. Please post any bugs here in the thread. Thanks!

From the Plugin thread Located Here:

Quick Feature list:
Browse Modes: Artist, Album, Genre, Songs, Folders, Recently Added, Recently Played, By Ratings
-Genre's also give you three sub choices of Artist,Albums,Songs from the selected Genre
Sort list Modes: Title, Track, Artist, Album, Genre, Filename
Fast song searches (Make that instant)!
Search by: FileName, Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Times a Song been played or All
Song Rating's
Builtin 10 Disk Changer, changer features for the changer include:
- Play / Name / Rename / Clear/ Restart / any of the 10 disks
- Add selected browse list item to a disk (good for adding media to a disk)
- Add or Replace contents of a disk with a saved Playlist
- Auto resume to song and time when returning to a disk
- Add/Remove Songs from a disk
- Backup / Restore all disks
Builtin 10 Virtual rotating playlist history (optional by setting)
Top x played songs (user selectable!)
Most x Recently played songs (user selectable!)
Find recently added songs to the database
TON'S of labels for just about any thing that you would want to be displayed...

I hope to have a video up of the skin going through some of its features here soon.

Literally countless hours have went into creating this skin! If you use the skin, a donation in any amount is greatly appreciated, but of course is not mandatory. Again, it is just greatly appreciated

Many MANY thanks to the people who have made donations, it is VERY much appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!:
kbreeden(x3), Dave, AfterDigital(x2), Arnis, K&M, SteveC, DeadlyAP1(x2) , Jarred(x2), Damien, jmciver, swwesq, Volsfan(x2 + a Fusion Brain!) ,klundy(x2),Dan, Jarred(x2), jjnit, Tabamoura, Abertano, Nasa, sentiensx Treetop777, Grahm, gkapog, Felix509, Mtnet2000, Smitty0881, INH, TechsatHome, swwesq che420H, chgrec, barnyard, TimmyM, Carputer1, KShoes, cherrybomb, sprungjeep, ckny & spongerd82, Jarred, DaveDog(HD Radio Donation!), ToNNo, digeratix, LookAtTheCat,wingnut75,Charly, vicky_obee, Ralphie, Esko, gla502, 2 girls one cup, morpheus2010, japeeler, devin98 and kegbus

Sorry, from the PayPal emails, I do not know some of your screen names on the forums, if you want me to replace your name with you screen name on the forums, just drop me a PM.....

You can Download the skin at JohnWPB.com

New features and enhancements:

Added the ability to save individual user settings that can be recalled at any time. It saves skin colors, wallpapers, EQ presets, Playlists, Favorite weather cities and many other skin functions.
Added dynamic color sliders (Thanks to BlueZX3) that allow you to change the slider and pointer colors using the skins color palette.
New adjustable overlay that allows you to change the brightness of the skin with a slider. Great to dim down the skin for night time driving. (Thanks to BlueZX3 for his help on this one)
Re-Worked the Font and background color chooser. It is no longer flash based.
Replaced Internet Radio stations that stopped working and added another 10 stations to the mix.
Complete new look for the skin, giving it a more "glassy" and cleaner look
Most of the icons have been re-done, and fit better with the look of the skin.
Added a Playlist feature for the main menu, so your playlist can be displayed and scrolled in the center of the main menu.
Added a Plugin manager, to allow you to turn plugins on and off directly in the skin, and no need to add the X, Lines in the main menu skin (Thanks to BlueZX3 for writing the plugin for this)
Completely rewrote the Screen Lock Utility from scratch. It has many new features, and even restarting the computer will not bypass the lock screen (Great for Valet Parking or taking the car into the shop).
Indicators now are throughout the skin on any screen that has a "top display area". Indicator show: Direction of travel and quality of GPS signal strength, Shuffle, Repeat, Online status and if a CD or DVD is inserted into the system.
New games have been added in the Games menu.
Added support for the new Garmin GPS software
Added CNN News radio button, that plays the CNN news stream that updates every hour.
Incorporated Sonic's Movie Show times (For those in the United States)
Ran out of space, and a 3rd screen of buttons is now available to place on the main menu buttons.
Re-Did the weather to be more Bandwidth friendly. When you load the weather, it will just display conditions and icons. If you want the maps, you can click the Load Maps button.
Fast user Switching that will save all settings for up to 6 users. This includes colors, wallpapers, playlists, Songs on the 10 disk changer, Favorite weather cities, radio presets and more...
Re-Worked the CD and DVD insert plugin. When you insert a Disk into the drive it will automatically begin playing. If you click on the indicator on the top of the screen, you can eject the disk, or play the disk. When the disk is ejected, it will resume the last song / playlist you were last listening to, at the last position you were listening it it at. It will slowly ramp the volume back to where you have it currently set.
Options on the album cover art browser to choose how many albums to display on the screen at one time ( 6, 8 or 18 covers at a time on screen)
Complete re-work of the Gauges screen and now includes a custom "virtual accelerometer"

NOTE: As the skin is transparent, the images you see in the background are a different variety, and whatever background or color you pick, will be the same on all screens.

Main Menu with Visualizations turned on:

Settings screen where you can chance the Static and 3D logos, colors, wallpaper, Skin Font, menu layout, plugins
and Skin Themes. The Menu layout give you choices for what is displayed in the center of the main menu: Choices are
Playlist, 2D and 3D logo's, Speedometer, or a photo Photo.

RMMedia Virtual 10 Disk Changer:

Gauges & GPS Status

Current Weather: (Press and hold the buttons at the top of the screen to change the location)

Audio Player With visualization turned on

Audio Rating

iGuidance Full Screen with the overlaid button to switch back to standard view

Vehicle Maintenance to keep track of oil changes, tire rotation ect. The last column calculates based on what you
enter in the last mileage and interval column.

Weather Live map that is dragable and zoomable. It will default to 1 of 3 things, to your GPS Location, to the Lat
and Lon you set in the ini, and if neither is available, will default to the center of the U.S.

HD Radio Skin. Top Right shows HDRadio is active, meaning you are listening to a station that is broadcasting HD.
Status shows that Sub Chanel 1 of 3 is playing. To change Sub Channels, click the Sub 1-6 buttons lower on the screen.
"Save Title" will save the name of the currently playing song (If the stations transmitsthe RDS signals) to a text
file you can review later to purchase that song.

The 2 titles and artist shows whats on each sub channel of that station at the same time, simply click one, and it will
switch to that stream.

JohnWPB · 03-07-2008, 11:03 AM

Question: How can I add my own buttons to use on the main menu?
Solution: BlueZX3 was kind enough to write a REALLY cool little application! It allows you to remove buttons that you do not want, and add buttons as well. All with a nice Graphical user interface. Here is a screen capture:

You can Check it out, and download the plugin in THIS POST.

Question: System appears to hang with 3D logo's, Clocks, Color Changer, and/or there is a white Background where flash objects should be, whats wrong?
Solution: Download This file from Adobe.com, then close all web browsers and run it to install the latest flash files.

Question: The wireless manager skin is not showing anything, or information is incomplete or incorrect, how do I fix this?
Solution: you have to be using the windows wireless manager. Many WiFi cards come with their own software. Just uninstall the software, and only install the drivers for your card. You can try using add/remove programs to remove the manufacturer provided drivers. If all else fails, remove the wireless software from the manufacturer, and the wireless device in device manager, then unplug it. Plug it in, and windows will then prompt you for the drivers. Insert the CD and windows will install the drivers to enable the device. If the CD auto runs, and tries to install their software, just cancel it.

Question: Do I need to uninstall DigitalFX 2.0 before installing 3.0?
Solution: It is recommended you leave 2.0 installed, to refer back to for settings and such that you may have made. Both can reside as separate skins on the same system, and you can easily switch back and forth.

Question: How do I change the buttons on the main menu?
Solution: Press and HOLD one of the menu buttons. You will then have 2 screens of choices that you can assign to that button.

Question: I do not see a list of music files, logos or other lists in the skin, whats wrong?
Solution: Go to the settings skin, digitalFX skin settings, and turn off iLists. about 1 out of 10 systems have issues with using the ilists.

Question: How can I have a music CD or DVD start when it is inserted in the drive automatically?
Solution: Open the skins/DigitalFX 3.0/Scripts folder and find the AutoLaunch.ini file. Open it in notepad. Change the drive letter to your CD.DVD Drive. Now, when you insert a CD/DVD in the drive it will automatically play. When ejected, it will resume the song you were listing to, at the position it was at before you inserted the CD.

Question: How do I change the default location where it's zoomed to, and the zoom level?
Solution: This has to be done manualy (for now at least) Open the Weather_Interactive.skin in notepad, and find this line:
F,-14,-15,839,541,"WeatherMap.swf?&lat=26.61&long=-80.12&viewPortWidth=830&viewPortHeight=550&initialWeath erLayerType=radar&initialZoomLevel=8&wxAnimateOnStart=true"
Change the &Lat= &long= values (Bolded above) to your lat and lon. Optionally you can play with the zoom setting on the end of the line, to change the level the map is zoomed when you open it.

Question: How do I change the icons displayed on the main menu screens?
Solution: Simply open the Road Runner/Skins/DigitalFX 3.0/Menu Icons folder, and replace any of the PNG's with your custom icons. Make sure to use the same name for the icon you are replacing.

Question: I Don't have a temperature board on my CarPC. How can I remove the labels from the top of the main menu?
Solution: Open the Menu.skin, and Menu2.skin files and remove the following lines:
L,516,4,71,25,#DFX1R#,#DFX1G#,#DFX1B#,16,"Arial"," TEMP2","left"
L,408,4,101,25,#DFX1R#,#DFX1G#,#DFX1B#,16,"Arial", "=Computer:","right"
L,212,4,89,25,#DFX1R#,#DFX1G#,#DFX1B#,16,"Arial"," =Interior:","right"
L,311,4,87,25,#DFX1R#,#DFX1G#,#DFX1B#,16,"Arial"," TEMP1","left"
NOTE: This must be done in all skins in the DigitalFX 3.0/Menus folder or when you change the menu layout, your changes will be overwritten.

Question: The Internet radios is not working, What do I need to do?
Solution: You need to associate your MP3 files with Winamp in windows. Also make sure you have a decent speed Internet connection.

Question: Why are the Traffic Camera's and CDRip screens black?
Solution: These are external plugins, and do not support transparency.

Question: How do I get the lyrics to display in the skin?
Solution: The Lyrics need to be embedded in the actual MP3 file's ID3 Tags. Use a program like Zortam to look for the lyrics on the net, and embed them in your files. There is also a small free program a member on thh forums wrote here, its not perfect, but it does a pretty good job.

Question: My HDRadio will not work with the DigitalFX skin, whats wrong?
Solution: I have been told by at least 10 people that the HD Radio Skin in DigitalFX 3.0 works well for them (And works here as well), so I know its nothing to do with the skin at this point. It has to be a setting or hardware problem somewhere. This is unfortunately not a skin related issue, and thus nothing I can really do to help. You can check this thread for problems and solutions from other users.

Question: Why does album art flash at start of song then disappear?.
Solution: You do not have Embedded album art in your MP3's. Go into the plugin manager in the skin settings, and turn off MP3Art.

Question: When I start the skin, all I see is a 1" bar down the middle of the screen. How do I fx that?
Solution: The DIgitalFX skin uses transparency. Open the rr.ini file in Road Runner's root folder and ensure Fastmode=-1 is in there. If not add it, if its another value, change it to -1

Question:When I load the skin, all buttons appear to be gray till I mouse over them, what's causing this?
Solution: Open the skin.ini in the FigitalFX folder. Look for the line that begins with Background=
Background=C:\Program Files\Road Runner\Backgrounds\Gray_texture_dark.jpg
and change to the path / directory structure of your system.
NOTE: You can also go to settings, DFX Skin settings, Change wallpaper and choose one from the list. This will set the above line for you from within the skin.

JohnWPB · 03-07-2008, 11:04 AM

All Bug Fixes and reports are now handled by a project manager. (MANY thanks to Nitr8 for setting this up on his server!)

Simply go to Johnwpb.com and click on the "Report Bug" link, right below the download link for DigitalFX 4.0

You will be asked for a username and password. please use the same name as the forums. NO email confirmation is needed, just set a username and password, so you can edit your comments if you decide to do so at a later time.

If you use your correct email address, you will receive notifications when your bug report has been responded to. Your email is 100% safe, and is not a part of any mailing list ect.

wingnut75 · 03-07-2008, 12:25 PM

4th to download load !! WOW !! Great job John

morris_the_cat · 03-07-2008, 12:26 PM

Yay! 1st post of likely thousands!

edit, dang 2nd....

john1701 · 03-07-2008, 12:28 PM

Nice going! no problems so far!

krnpimpsta · 03-07-2008, 12:37 PM

Sweet, I can't wait to get off work.. I'll be sitting in my office's parking lot for half an hour today downloading, installing, and playing with 3.0.

Thanks for the great skin. Donations en route.

tigergibb · 03-07-2008, 12:40 PM

w00t! 9th download. installing it as i type

btw.. THANK YOU!

slvrsol · 03-07-2008, 12:44 PM

thanks for your hard work!

barnyard · 03-07-2008, 12:46 PM

First of all thanks John... we've all been looking forward to the new skin!
A little problem though, the installer keeps hanging at 30% Any ideas?
Also a teeny tiny bug, notice it says 2.0: