Hi... I have added a new feature (the new MClient album cover art browser) to the MVPMC project. This feature should now be part of last night's autonomous build ( http://www.mvpmc.org/builds/ ). I put up a screen dump on my page at mvpmc.org ( http://www.mvpmc.org/~stuart/ ) if you would like to see what it looks like.
In short, given your slimserver music server has been set up correctly,** you should now be able to browse your album collection on an MVPMC box by viewing the album's cover art. This should have no impact on those who are already using MClient and do not wish to browse their slimserver collection using cover art. (Well, the MENU button now is used to access this new feature. To access the slimserver's MENU feature you will now have to press "shift" or, actually, the RECORD key and then press MENU within a second or two. If you keep pressing the MENU key you will stay in the shift mode and cycle through the different slimserver menu styles. If you wait more then several seconds... well, you get the idea...).*** To access the new browser feature, press the MENU key. A pop up will appear on the On Screen Display (OSD) allowing you to pick from 2 new local menu features. The "control another client" feature has not been implemented - yet - anyone interested? High light (GREEN) the Browser text and press OK... The album browser screen displays 6 albums at a time. It first numbers the 6 boxes, then loads the text information, and finally loads the cover art. If there is no cover art for an album, the text stays up on the screen. Right now, for some reason, it takes longer to figure out that there is no cover art then it takes to load actual cover art. So, try to find as many covers as you can. **** At the bottom of the browser screen there is a GREEN bar indicating where in your collection you are. At first there isn't any bar at all (you are at the beginning of your collection). As you move through your collection the green bar will grow from left to right. The bar is normalized to your collection size. This is, if you are at album 193 in a 200 album collection the green bar will almost reach across the bottom of the screen. At the top of the browser screen is an information box. Notice that one of the 6 album boxes is high lighted (GREEN). This is the album which has user focus. The particulars of this album are displayed in the information box. To change user focus use the UP, DOWN, LEFT & RIGHT keys on the remote control. To play the high lighted album press the OK button. To move to the next group of 6 albums move the user focus off the edge of the screen. If you move off the right you will go to the next 6 albums. If you move off the left you will go to the previous 6 albums. The browser will wrap at the end of your album collection. It is likely the wrap will occur on the screen such that you will see the end and beginning of your collection at the same time. You can also skip to the next or previous 6 albums using the Fast Forward or Reverse keys respectively. Note, you *may* push these button in rapid succession (faster than the album art is loading) making the browser bar crawl across the screen. But, (for now), if you slow down such that the autonomous sequence of events start loading the first album's cover art, I recommend you stop until all the covers are either loaded or the text says no cover art found. If you don't stop you will get a mix of old and new covers - which is - confusing. An excellent idea from from one of the early browser testers: If you are browsing you can press any of the remotes numbered buttons and jump to a point equal to that number times 10%. So, you can jump to the middle of your collection if you press 5 while browsing. I think that covers it. Let me know of any problems you encounter. Things we need to work on: 1) It probably shouldn't take as long as it does to figure out there is no cover art. 2) The cover art loaded is incorrect if the user skips between groups of 6 albums while cover art is being loaded. Other things that should work better now: 1) When using more then one client on the same slimserver server, the clients will occasionally pull the wrong cover art. Now the cover art request is qualified using the MAC of the client. So this should not be a problem anymore. --- ** If you are running slimserver, you probably already know about it's web interface: ( http:/<slimservers_machines_ip_address>:9000 ). If you can see cover art on these pages while playing an album, you should be able to see the same while browsing by album cover on your MPVMC box. *** Note, using the RECORD key as a time shift key is a MClient concept. Because most of the key presses actually pass through the slimserver server before being operated on my the MVPMC / MClient application, the key mapping for MClient has always been slightly different and independent from the rest of the MVPMC applications. **** There is a wealth of information on this subject over at slimdevices.com (getting cover art for slimserver). Most if not all of the utility programs that find cover art scrape the internet looking for title matches. As such, you may be out of luck if your CDs are old and are no longer being published. However, you can always drop your own pictures into slimserver. I have mine set up where an album is in it's own directory and the cover art, in the same directory, is called cover.jpg. Also, this MVPMC feature is only set up to handle some if not all JPG files. So try to stick to that format. ...thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. 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