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Questions / [SOLVED] User Breaks MB Theater Mode! (This is why we can't have nice things!)
« on: January 06, 2022, 05:12:51 AM »
Happy New Year Everyone! I’ll try to be as brief as possible but I could use a little help.
Setup:
Windows 10
MusicBee: 3.4.8033 Store
Problem: I use one of the Theater Mode plugins. When I select View>Start Theater Mode from the main menu, MB does not display the background. The elements are all there in the correct place, but the background is just a washed out pastel colored screen. If I instead select View>Theater Mode>Plugin Name everything works fine.
This only affects the one Theater Mode plugin that I installed. Until I started working on a different problem recently, all plugins (including this one) worked fine.
(The TL;DR folks among you can skip to the summary below. The following just describes what I was doing when this happened.)
~~~
Background: I provide this part because in my opinion, things rarely break for no reason. My first question to anyone is, “Ok, what where you doing before this happened?” So here is my very quick story.
1. A couple of weeks ago I installed Minilyrics and the Minilyrics helper plugin. Everything worked fine for several days. Then I noticed that MB would lock up after 4-5hrs. I’d have to kill its process to restart it.
2. Shortly after this I noticed I was also getting a non-descript error msg when going into the plugin panel. So I disabled the Minilyrics helper plugin. No joy. I then disabled other plugins including Theater Mode. Still no joy.
3. Then I uninstalled the Minilyrics program from the computer and the plugin from MB. That fixed the error message! But now I had two Theater Mode plugins on the plugin screen – one enabled & one disabled. Hmmm, how to get rid of the extra one I wondered…
So I started playing around with the files in the different directory paths – \Program Files X86, \Users & \Program Files. During that time I created problems (i.e. double theater mode entries, ratings that wouldn’t update in Theater Mode etc.) and fixed them.
Now I have this one last problem: Theater mode can’t display the background for this one plugin when called directly from View>Start Theater Mode. As stated, it works fine with View>Theater Mode>Name of plugin.
Potentially relevant info:
1. The theater mode plugin (Mod'ernaire) is located in the \Users path in the appropriate TheaterMode.list folder.
2. All other theater mode files (Artist Pictures, Cine View etc.) are located in the same folder on \Program Files\ path.
3. MB settings show the mb_TheaterModePlugin.dll location to be in the \Program Files\ path, not the \Users\ or the \X86\ path.
4. My TheaterModeState.ini file has an entry that is curious to me because the plugin uses a static image –
C:\Users\GTP\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee\Plugins\TheaterMode.List\Mod'ernaire.Rotation
Perhaps that is normal.
Like I said, this problem is probably self-inflicted; but for the life of me I can’t seem to find a way to reset it.
~~~
Summary: The burning question in my mind is, “What is the technical process difference between how MB handles View>Start Theater Mode and View>Theater Mode>pick your theater mode plugin. I’d guess the first provides some kind of relative reference from the mb_TheaterModePlugin.dll while the second directly calls the user installed .xml file. That’s only a guess though and I’d have no idea of how to fix it.
Anyways, thanks for reading and any help/insight anyone can provide.
Setup:
Windows 10
MusicBee: 3.4.8033 Store
Problem: I use one of the Theater Mode plugins. When I select View>Start Theater Mode from the main menu, MB does not display the background. The elements are all there in the correct place, but the background is just a washed out pastel colored screen. If I instead select View>Theater Mode>Plugin Name everything works fine.
This only affects the one Theater Mode plugin that I installed. Until I started working on a different problem recently, all plugins (including this one) worked fine.
(The TL;DR folks among you can skip to the summary below. The following just describes what I was doing when this happened.)
~~~
Background: I provide this part because in my opinion, things rarely break for no reason. My first question to anyone is, “Ok, what where you doing before this happened?” So here is my very quick story.
1. A couple of weeks ago I installed Minilyrics and the Minilyrics helper plugin. Everything worked fine for several days. Then I noticed that MB would lock up after 4-5hrs. I’d have to kill its process to restart it.
2. Shortly after this I noticed I was also getting a non-descript error msg when going into the plugin panel. So I disabled the Minilyrics helper plugin. No joy. I then disabled other plugins including Theater Mode. Still no joy.
3. Then I uninstalled the Minilyrics program from the computer and the plugin from MB. That fixed the error message! But now I had two Theater Mode plugins on the plugin screen – one enabled & one disabled. Hmmm, how to get rid of the extra one I wondered…
So I started playing around with the files in the different directory paths – \Program Files X86, \Users & \Program Files. During that time I created problems (i.e. double theater mode entries, ratings that wouldn’t update in Theater Mode etc.) and fixed them.
Now I have this one last problem: Theater mode can’t display the background for this one plugin when called directly from View>Start Theater Mode. As stated, it works fine with View>Theater Mode>Name of plugin.
Potentially relevant info:
1. The theater mode plugin (Mod'ernaire) is located in the \Users path in the appropriate TheaterMode.list folder.
2. All other theater mode files (Artist Pictures, Cine View etc.) are located in the same folder on \Program Files\ path.
3. MB settings show the mb_TheaterModePlugin.dll location to be in the \Program Files\ path, not the \Users\ or the \X86\ path.
4. My TheaterModeState.ini file has an entry that is curious to me because the plugin uses a static image –
C:\Users\GTP\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee\Plugins\TheaterMode.List\Mod'ernaire.Rotation
Perhaps that is normal.
Like I said, this problem is probably self-inflicted; but for the life of me I can’t seem to find a way to reset it.
~~~
Summary: The burning question in my mind is, “What is the technical process difference between how MB handles View>Start Theater Mode and View>Theater Mode>pick your theater mode plugin. I’d guess the first provides some kind of relative reference from the mb_TheaterModePlugin.dll while the second directly calls the user installed .xml file. That’s only a guess though and I’d have no idea of how to fix it.
Anyways, thanks for reading and any help/insight anyone can provide.