My Random Videos - Another Craptastic Plugin By GHackett (1 Viewer)

[ghackett]

Just finished a very useless plugin that I thought I'd share with the MP community. It's called My Random Videos. It works similarly to the PlaylistMaintainer that got such a huge success *sarcasm. The Main difference is, this is actually a plugin, not a seperate program. In the setup you create playlist templates, but they never create actual M3U files. instead when you goto the Random Video Seciton in MP, you see all your templates, and when one is clicked, a shuffles playlist is generated and started automatically. It's pretty useless but I wanted the functionality so now I got it.

It's availbile here
http://www.geocities.com/ghak9999/

If you like it, post, if you dont, post and complain anyway. I just want to know if someone tries it.

UPDATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
v0.0.0.0.0.2 of the Random Videos Plug-in is now availible!!!
It's availible from the same site above and has a couple nice updates and more to come! below are the current updates.

-Added RegExp options for include and exclude.
-Added # of video option when a template is selected
-Changed Randomization - No longer uses MP's Playlist.Shuffle() function - Should be more random
-Added .dvr-ms, .asf, and .mp4 to file types (untested but shouldnt be a problem - please post if it is)
-Added link to the My Videos hover pic on Main Menu.
-Wrote some new FAQs
-Did it all because of two truly wonderful people that are now using my plug-in
GO ME!!!

More Updates v0.0.0.0.0.3
-Added the ability to re-order templates.
-Thats it.

Thanks to all of you who are using it (that would be 2 of you by my count)
I hope you don't mind that I gave you two a shoutout in the new Readme. If you do, I will remove it

Later

 

[talos]

One happy customer here.
And hey - don't oversell yourself will you? Crapplications - lol!

 

[ghackett]

Wait a minute... Are you saying that you actually used my plugin!?!?!?!?! WOO-HOO!!!! Thanks for writing!

 

[Inker]

Haha, your FAQ cracks me up.

Q: Why would you write an FAQ when no one has ever asked you a single question?
A: Well, I obviously have some serious emotional issues stemming from the incredible lonliness I feel due to being such a crappy programmer with no new ideas.

Q: Are you trying to be funny?
A: Well, maybe I can make it as a comedian if this whole coding thing doesn't work out.

Stick with coding for the time being, although you might have potential as a standup guy, lol.

Anyways, believe it or not I can also very much use this. Will surely give it a try this evening and let you know.

Inker

 

[ghackett]

Ok, this is entirely too much for me to handle. TWO PEOPLE!! And one is a Portal-Pro!! Talos & Inker, you two have seriously just made my month! Thanks for your posts!

If you guys have any questions or suggestions post away. One of the things I already want to do is change the randomization. Right now I'm using the Playlist.Shuffle() function that is native to MP but I don't think it's all that random. Let me know what you think after you use it for a bit.

But seriously, you two have made a sad bored programmer very happy and excited to code. (I know it's not funny, but c'mon I'm not a machine!)

Thanks again Guys!!!!!!

---------------------------
GHackett - NYC
So Freakin Happy I could POP!

 

[ASiDiE]

I just had to post something here... I don't know if I will use this plugin or not.... I just have no use for it (Right now)... But I would like to say, It really doesn't matter how many people use your plugin. You wrote it for yourself to use for yourself... isn't that enough? Plugins don't need to be about other people and how many people use your product (unless you are selling it ) As long as your happy with it... thats all that matters!

 

[ghackett]

ASiDiE, you are absolutely right. I did right this plugin for myself, and I have been happy with it. And to be honest, I never expected anyone to use it. But it's just very exciting to see that someone has gotten some use for something i've created! Sure people use the stuff I code at work, but they have to. Now I can proudly say that I have created something at least mildly useful for someone besides me.
So basically, yes I wrote this for myself and I use it for myself. But it's really exilerating for me to think that someone else in this world has "Random Videos" on their MediaPortal Main Menu!!! I can now consider myself a published author

P.S. Get those suggestions in so I can release a new version and write a new FAQ!!!

 

[Inker]

Just tried it. Works well.

Couple of suggestions though. Listed in order of personal importance.

Need to find a way to show the user the playlist. can you try to just call the playlist window before starting to play automatically? this way the user can see what was picked, but he/she can also delete entries that you dont want. This is the most important one for me.

Let me specify, either when creating the template or when selecting a template from within mediaportal (preferred) how many videos to add (say you click on your template and a popup comes up allowing you to select anything from 1 to say 25 (should suffice) videos. I would need this so that I can watch something and fall asleep to it. I dont want it to keep playing all my videos at random while I sleep.

Use Regex to further specify templates. This shouldnt be too hard actually. You can do this easily when adding the shows just run this one additional check on them before actually adding them.
In config when specifying the template, just select your folder, and have two textboxes, one for includes and one for excludes and let me specify filename patterns. If one is empty dont utilize it. This would be good if you have alot of different shows in one folder but want to specify templates only for certain ones.
Example. Include: "simpsons|futurama"
would only pick files that have either simpsons or futurama (or both, lol) in their filename from the specified folder(s).
Example Two: Include "star.trek" exclude: "voyager"
would pick only shows that have "star" followed by any character(s) followed by "trek" but not any that have "voyager" in them from the specified folder(s).

Also, maybe try to bring it into the context menu in myVideos when you select a folder, rather than its own home button.

Hope this makes sense.

Inker

 

[ghackett]

Thanks for the suggestions Inker, good ideas!

1) This is something i've wanted to do from the beginning. Maybe have a 'Playlist' button on the left to view it.

2) Good call. Not sure how I would do this at run-time, but it would be easy in set-up. I still think it would be better to do at run time though. I'm thinking of something like a drop-down box (does MP have these?) with numbers 1-25 and then also, an ALL button.

3) My favorite idea! This will probably be my first addition. Seems really useful. I wish I had thought of it. Oh Well.

4) Context Menu in My Videos. This I won't do for the reason that I use an MCE remote without the 4 extra color buttons, so I have no way to access the context menu. However, I could make it an extra button on the left of MyVideos. But I'm also not sure how to do this. When I wrote this, I didn't use the MP source cause wierd things happened when I did. For now, this one will be on hold, but I really like the 1st three. I also want to be able to re-order the templates so that you can choose whats closest to the top so for me, that will be #4 along with a new randomization scheme.

Thanks a lot for the input!

 

[Inker]

2) Good call. Not sure how I would do this at run-time, but it would be easy in set-up. I still think it would be better to do at run time though. I'm thinking of something like a drop-down box (does MP have these?) with numbers 1-25 and then also, an ALL button.

Just show a popup when the template is clicked and add 20 entries, ranging from 1 - to 20 and another one unlimited or something. You can then get back the result from it and process that.

If you need help just tell me.

Inker