iTunes on Media Portal (1 Viewer)

[mbuzina]

At the moment: No. The only way I know of is to set up your music on a share and connect your machine to that share.

MP keeps a local Database of music info (and can also browse shares without the DB), but if you search on the forum there are a few tips on how to setup a networked solution (I only use one system @ the moment).

 

[je_zza]

Okay, thanks for your reply.

I reakon a great feature would be connecting to the iTunes running on other pcs and letting you play the playlists, just like iTunes connects to other pcs on the network and you can see their librarys and playlists. Then again its iTunes fault it doesn't let you export playlists to a .m3u playlist file etc

 

[deppeler]

Is this the only way to play an mp4 in MP as it takes forever to load/start iTunes in the background first just to play a song....

 

[kingkabra]

Export Itunes Playlist

I found a very cool and easy way to export them to m3u from a command line so you can schedule it as a task.

Here is the URL for the utility:
http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/

then I created a batch file that I run with the Windows Scheduler. the file looks like this:

E:\itunesExport.exe -library="D:\My Music\Itunes\Itunes Music Library.xml" -includeLibraryPlaylist -include="Playlist1,Playlist2" -dir="D:\My Music\itunesM3U" -includeAAC -includeProtectedAAC

I run this daily so I always have an updated playlist in my MP.

Hope this helps!!

 

[deppeler]

Actually it would be better if MP could play iTunes (mp4) files through QT player as it loads a heap faster than iTunes.

 

[domb]

hi there. i've had a look at the itunes plug-in on media portal and not really sure how it works. all i need is a plug-in that will enable me to control itunes. ie... choose a playlist, enable random and then skip tunes adjust volume etc while itunes runs in the background. is anything like this available?

love mediaportal by the way! a bit better than comprodtv!!!

 

[brickbat]

I don't think the itunes plugin does what you want. I know this because I want the same thing. I spent a boatload of time organising my itunes library and I don't want to do it again for any other application. I am not a programmer but I figure it this way.

The best way to do it would seem to be to develop an MP plugin that hooks in to itunes. The hooking in can be done using itunes plugins that are 100% based on javascript. I don't know either javascript or C# but I have a feeling I could learn Javascript faster than c#.

From scratch I reckon it will take me 2 months. I'm thinking of trying it as a learning experience. I have a lot of experience with VBA macros in Excel which is basically scripting.

One thing I don't understand is that Visual Studio only seems to look at Javascript in a Web context. But I am sure there must be a way to program C# to call Javascript applications without it involving web-pages.

I think it would take me the longest time to do the user interface stuff in MP. Can I get any feedback on whether there is demand for this and whether anyone can help me with it.

 

[domb]

well i know at least one person who would use it! if i get a chance maybe i could try and help. i know nothing of programming either but it would certainly be a good place to start!

thing is i have just bought Windows MCE and depending how that goes I may abandon MediaPortal altogther, unless there is a nice stable release sometime soon...

I think a lot of people will want to see a plug-in that will view and play through the library's they already have (and spent a lot of time sorting!), rather than sifting through the folders trying to find tunes one at a time.

i think this would be a better way to go personally, rather than thinking people will abandon itunes (or even windows media player) for mediaportal which does not support syncing with devices etc. i dont think there will ever be anything to rival itunes as far as organising a music library...

 

[brickbat]

ok...I have skimmed the sdk document. The samples were in Javascript but you can call the itunes library classes from any Visual Studio Language and a few other. My personal preference is Visual Basic just because of my VBA background. It seems like it gives access to pretty much everything itunes can do through this library.

So, now the question is, If I am going to get help from MP developers then I will learn and use C# for it. If I'm not going to get help, then I would prefer Visual Basic because it should be a lot easier for me to learn. I'm assuming it will compile into some sort of dll or exe so it shouldn't matter to the MP developers what I do it in.

What do you think?

 

[Brocklander]

You might want to look at what Simex is doing before you get underway.