Messages

61

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 10:24:34 AM »

It doesn't for me. For my skins it always has a black background (0,0,0) and white text (255,255,255)
Maybe I am overlooking some setting?

The plugin currently grabs the background colour of the skin element SkinTrackAndArtistPanel and uses that for the background of the context menu. The text is always set to white currently. I was going to change that to use the foreground colour of the panel which should be the font colour but haven't done it yet.

So because everything always has to be hard - I altered the source code of SharpGL and recompiled it....
SharpGL.dll

This file is for Boroda. Just save that in the plugin folder. On my system it will display the Prāta Vētra band name correctly from your screenshot, well kind of, it converted the accented characters to a and e but that's better than a bunch of square blocks. Other unicode characters are showing up as question marks. I'm hoping that is just a locale issue in windows and they should display correctly for you. Let me know how that goes.

62

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 08:11:42 AM »

yes, replacing dots by commas in floats in skin.ini completely solved the problem.

Well done. I'll see if I can implement your solution for localisation issues.

it seems that option "Use MusicBee default font" doesn't work. see screenshot below, album artist name in column browser is displayed correctly, but in plugin panel is not:

It should using the right font (it does for me). You need to restart musicbee for the change to take effect with that setting. I need to state on the config panel which settings require a restart to take effect.

Also moving 3DBee to different panels can mess up the fonts so a restart is needed to fix it when that happens.

If it isn't any of those issues I suspect its a problem with the drawtext function sharpGL uses to display fonts. Looks like I might have to edit some of SharpGL's source code..... Can you please copy and paste that artist name in here so I can test out the characters on my machine.
Thanks.

Edit: Nevermind, I grabbed them from the bands wikipedia page They don't show up properly for me either. I'll see what I can do.

63

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 07:24:54 AM »

well, fonts don't arise the issues. i'm not sure which fonts are actually used by plugin for cyrillic letters, but replacing provided fonts, by windows unicode fonts doesn't change anything. i'm still thinking that skin.ini files should use utf-8 encoding instead of ansi, but it's also, not my problem at the moment.

the real problem is last 3 lines in skin.ini (at least for coverflow skin). i've commented them:

Code

]#movehorizscene = 0.000000
#movevertiscene = 0.200000
#zoomscene = 0.000000

There is something wrong with the quick reply box on this forum. Whenever I try and use it my post just disappears to the ether. I have to click the reply button first and post that way.

and plugin is working now fine and without any error messages. if i uncomment any of these 3 lines, the plugin (silently, without error messages, and without writing anything to mb error log) displays an empty panel.

Those 3 settings adjust the position of the flow within the panel. So yours will be positioned slightly lower with that movevertiscene commented out.

Those 3 settings get read in as a string and then converted to a float. They are the only settings converted to float so something is going wrong there on your machine. What happens if you take away the trailing zeroes so they are just 2 decimal places? It shouldn't make a difference but there must be something odd going on with the conversion.

Code

#movehorizscene = 0.00
#movevertiscene = 0.20
#zoomscene = 0.00

edit: The problem with openGL is you don't know there was an error unless you specifically query it with gl.geterror() constantly. It will just silently shit itself and give you unexpected results. I suspect some weird conversion is happening with the float values causing GL to error but It's strange the actual conversion didn't produce an error. Maybe it's converting it to a float successfully but to a number outside of the range OpenGL is expecting. It's hard for me to test because it works on my machine....

64

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 05:50:33 AM »

edit:
i see 2 possible reasons, why coverflow skin (and maybe other skins) doesn't work. skin.ini is not UTF-8 encoded, but contains unicode characters (not only Latin-1 characters). included fonts don't contain cyrillic letters. i.e. the problem is my windows regional settings.

maybe, it's some other problem.

That's probably going to be it. Most of those ini files are from the original author of coverjuke, I've edited them a bit but yeah.

If fonts are the issue, you can list whatever fonts you want in the ini files. You just have to put the applicable TTF font files in the font folder of that skin. If you edit the 3DBee xml file and change useMbDefaultFont to true it won't use those fonts for drawing but it will try to load them in the plugin initially so it probably won't bypass the problem.

I do have a plan to change how fonts are handled but it's going to be a while.

65

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 05:33:28 AM »

Patched version of musicbee that allows the panel to be resized when it's placed above the files element in the main panel - https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee35_Patched.zip

i've discovered that plugin (at least 1.2) is working fine for me, but only if i delete/rename "skins" folder in "AppData\3DBee" folder. i get error message "Skin Coverflow is not valid! Attempting to recover..." on plugin initialization in this case, but plugin works. what may be the cause?

The plot thickens...

If you put the skins folder back and restart music bee, what happens?

That's a strange one. It must have the right path because it knows when the folder is missing. Maybe something got corrupted in there somewhere. Try getting the skin folder out of the current version zip file and see if that one works. There is not much in them, it's just an ini file and some images. I don't know why it wouldn't be working.

edit: Actually just try putting the Coverflow skin folder first and see if that works. appdata\3DBee\skin\Coverflow

66

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 04:59:39 AM »

The plugin download page is still showing v1.1, but v1.2 is downloaded.

Fixed. Thanks.

67

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 04:25:37 AM »

i have turned off all plugins except for 3DBee, but nothing changed.

If you install the new version try deleting the XML file before you load it up.

One other thing that I've had happen, if I stuff up the code and cause an error. The plugin will be disabled at startup by Musicbee but the panel it was in will still display with a blank window. It's not until I go into edit preferences-> plugin and hit enable that it gives me an error. And the blank panel will stay there until I fix the issue and enable the plugin or go into arrange panels and click apply.

68

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 29, 2023, 04:06:12 AM »

Version 1.2 available to download
- 3DBee will attempt to navigate to the last selected album on startup.
- 3DBee now uses the album artist field for sorting and the artist name.
- New setting: Animation Threshold. If the selected album minus the current album is greater than this threshold, it will immediately jump to within that threshold and continue scrolling to the selected album. It reduces scrolling considerably on large libraries. If you don't want to use it, just set it to a value higher than the number of albums in your library and it won't have any effect.

I have altered some of the code that may help some people currently having issues. I don't like the chances though....

That's probably the last update for a while. I'm looking at the playlist/now playing caching and that's going to be a bit of work.

If I can find anything that might be causing issues like Boroda has I will get that out straight away though.

69

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 28, 2023, 09:40:06 PM »

Attached are screenshots...

I've never seen that particular problem in all my testing. Usually it's the artist/album info or scrollbar that disappear, not the artwork.
If you haven't already, restart musicbee.
Go to the musicbee menu->Help->Support->View Error Log and see if there is a recent error. If there is paste it here.
What format are your artwork files?

Great! Adding to this.

Buffering the queue list should be possible.
Keeping track of the last displayed cover is on the list for the next startup.
Handling various artist albums better is on the list. I think I will just revert to using album artist, I believe if that field is blank Musicbee will return the artist by default anyway. That seems to be the case when you add the "album artist" column to the files element.

1.
I haven't tested it thoroughly, but am I correct to think that it will always show all albums in a library?
If so, wouldn't it be better if it followed any filtering in place?

That's how it currently behaves. Obeying any filtering in place is on the to do list.

2.
Would it be an option to have the background adapt to the panel background of a skin?
And if the fonts would also follow the font colour of the active skin,

The context menu background and font should already follow the colour of the active skin. Although I haven't tested the font out. It's set to follow the foreground colour of the TrackandArtistPanel which I think sets the font colour. I could add an option in the skin.ini file to create a background that matches the current skin.

3.
While the image is in motion I am noticing some hard borders around the albumart. (I'm sure there is a better description than 'hard borders' for that)
Would anti-aliasing be an option to improve on that a bit?

There is some anti-aliasing done with OpenGL settings that I have on but it's not that great. Higher resolution artwork does reduce the jaggies. There is methods I can implement to do my own but it's not trivial (at least not for me) so it's going to sit in the too hard basket for a while.

4.
Impressive work and dedication!

Thanks! It took a while to get there but I was pretty happy when that first screen loaded up successfully in Musicbee.

plugin successfully writes file "MusicBee\AppData\3DBee\mb_3DBee.Settings.xml". folder "MusicBee\AppData\3DBee\skin" is in place. all 4 skins are located in this folder. i've updated plugin to version 1.1, removed plugin panel, restarted mb, and added plugin panel again. nothing helps.

interesting that plugin floating panel title shows currently playing track name (and this track name in panel title is changed on playing another track). but panel content is always empty.

It's a strange one. Is there anything in the error log?

Also the panel title on the floating panel doesn't show the currently playing track for me. It just says 3DBee all the time for me.  I was wrong, it does change for me but it still could be a conflicting plugin so it's worth checking that out.

That may be Kaivsdoom's problem also.

70

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 28, 2023, 07:20:21 AM »

Now for a wish list item ... I have over 3100 albums (over 42,000 tracks) in my library. I certainly understand the drawbacks of loading the entire library into 3DBee. I currently have it set to the default 50. But since my albums/tracks are often played on shuffle, it takes a bit of time for the flow to catch up with the playing track. I don't know if it's possible, but could there be an option to buffer the tracks in a playlist?

Buffering a playlist is a great idea. I've added that to the list.

There is no easy way to handle that size collection. I had considered setting up some kind of blurred animation where it immediately jumps to within range of the selected album instead of the prolonged scrolling that occurs. So you still get the animation effect as it slows down and see the covers leading up to the selected album but won't have the prolonged scrolling.  I think that will be a better option for large collections and shouldn't be too hard to implement.

I do need to optimize the openGL code as it's slower than it should be but even if it was capable of loading all the covers while scrolling to the next album, with a collection that size you would be thrashing the HDD just to see a blurry cover speed by, it would be pointless.

71

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 11:58:30 PM »

Nice progress, BoringName.

Using 1.1 I notice that when restarting MB, the choice of Flow does not remain consistent. I'm using Circle for Flow and  Vista Classic for skin. When I close and then reopen MB, Vista Classic for skin is still there, but the Flow is now set to Vista. I would think the user's selection for those two options would remain persistent between restarts.

Thanks.

Go the skin folder you copied over during install. It's inside the 3DBee folder.
3DBee\skin\Vista Classic and open the skin.ini file in this folder.
Change

Code

favoriteplugin = Vista

to

Code

favoriteplugin = Circle

edit: I know its a bit janky when switching skins changes the flow automatically but I envisioned some people may setup multiple skins and want different flows for each. Maybe different users or just change based on their mood/day of the week or however they happen to be using musicbee that day..So it's less clicks for them once it's setup correctly. And it's easily solved by just setting the favoriteplugin field in the ini file.

I do have plans to make the skin configuration editable in the UI instead of having to edit the ini file manually.

72

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 11:08:20 PM »

New version 1.1 available for download on the addon page.
- Fixed a bug when a radio station is queued.
- Set the configure form to auto close after clicking save or reset defaults.
- Added a version number to the bottom of the configuration form.
- added readme.txt file to the zip file.
- Better handling of missing folders and notifies the user where the persistent storage folder is located if the skins folder is missing.
- Fixed a bug with the portable version not saving the settings file initially.

I'm trying to be careful to not rush things out. Hopefully these changes don't break anything else...

73

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 09:51:35 PM »

Ok ... when I shut down MB and restarted, I still get the error reported previously when moving 3DBee to the main panel. After second attempt there was no error, and the top resize cursor appeared. I was able to increase the height, and put it in a floating panel.

Thanks again

Sorry it was so complicated. I really don't know why the panels seem to behave differently in terms of sizing. I'm not sure if it's an issue with my code, an issue with Musicbee or just because of the way I nested the elements to make it work.

74

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 09:37:15 PM »

When I tried a second time it appeared under the files element. The two-headed 'resize' arrow shows at the bottom of the 3DBee panel, but not at the top. Moving the panel back to floating and trying again threw the same error and on the next attempt it appeared where wanted. But still couldn't move the top edge.

Hmm. that seems to be an issue moving it from the floating window to somewhere else. If you remove it from the floating window, click apply, then move it to under the files element it will work without error. Once it's in the bottom of the main panel you should be able to adjust the height, if not try restarting musicbee. If that doesn't work I'm out of ideas, I have 2 test systems here and it's working on both installed versions and the portable version I setup this morning...

There is definitely an issue when you move 3DBee around different panels constantly. I couldn't find the cause. You will see the artist and album fonts will go janky or disappear. Once musicbee is restarted it works fine again. I'm hoping when I re-code all the font handling that it fixes it. It's only an issue when moving the panel around, once its where you want it everything should work.

75

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 09:29:21 PM »

Hello..this is a great plugin Boring Name but i don't get cover art no matter what i click in settings.the folders are all in the right place i hope as the plugin works so far.when i try cover in to load the memory then this happens....

The load into memory setting is a bit risky. On my system it will use about 200-300mb of ram while it loads the covers into the GPU memory. it will use more if your artwork is a higher res. I could lower the memory usage here but it will make it slower.... I also wasn't able to test what happens if the GPU memory fills up so that might be an issue too. Just leave that disabled for now until we figure out why the covers are not showing.

Make sure the 3DBee folder is located in
C:\users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\Musicbee
Change the drive letter and <yourusername> to whatever your system is set to.

EDIT: Scratch this, I obviously can't read directions on a Friday. I had placed the 3DBee folder in the standard MusicBee location, not the one in the AppData as directed in you instructions. It is working now, apologies for the false alarm.

All good, I really should handle errors better.....