Playlist Maintainer (1 Viewer)

ghackett

Portal Member
May 9, 2005
30
0
NYC
Hi everybody!
This is a couple of 1sts for me. My first .NET windows app, my first contribution to the mediaportal community, and my first published program (sort of).

This is not really a plugin but more of an add on. it also might be useful to people who dont use media portal. Basically I was getting fed up with MP's playlist interface because i use a MCE remote and makeing and maintaining playlists was very annoying. I wanted to have playlists for my simpsons and fam guy and such, but also lists for all cartoons and fox shows etc...

So each time I got a new show, I would have to update 4 or 5 different playlists which was very annoying, so I whipped up this little app yesterday. I then decided it might be useful to other people, so i prettyed it up today and am releasing it now.

Basically there are 2 exe that are installed. one is the configurator. It's here that you create and define playlist templates. By that I mean, you choose where you want a specific playlist to reside, then you tell the app what folders hold the files (music or video) you want in that playlist. So if im creatign a video playlist for the simpsons, and all my simpsons eps reside in c:\simpsons, then i add that folder to the template. Folders and subfolers are searched recursively, so if you have a bunch of season folders in that one simpsons folder, the files within them will be added. You can add as many folders and as many templates as you want. (be careful about adding folders twice in the same template because the files in it would be added to that playlist twice. )

The 2nd exe is the Playlist builder. This is a small and silent program which can be added to your scheduled tasks to run however often you want, or it can be added to the "My Programs" extension of MP to be run manually through MP. This is the app that actually builds the playlists.

EDIT*
Turns out i can't hotlink straight to the files on the hosting site i'm using so you can download the app and the sourcecode from here...
http://hackettsoft.150m.com/
*

If you get confused, there is a HowTo option under the Help Menu that explains the functionality a lot more clearly than i do here. This app was written in VB.NET (I know, c# is the way to go, but i just know VB so much better) and it is very lightweight. I packaged the two exes in an installer just to make it a little easier for noobs (although I doubt any will use it).

Like I said, I made this for myself, but decided to post just in case someone found it useful. If you like it, please post or email so my ego can get it's fill. (it is oh so small right now).

Any questions, comments, problems, feel free to post or email.

Enjoy!
 

ghackett

Portal Member
May 9, 2005
30
0
NYC
Just for completeness

For the sake of completeness, below are the contents of the HowTo window. I don't think i explained how the program works very well above, so heres a better description...

Here's how it works...
In the configurator, click the 'Add New Template' Button. This will
bring up a Save Dialog. Here you choose where you want this playlist
to be saved. After you choose a location and filename, that filename
will apear in the 'Playlist Templates' List. Now you can either edit the
new template (which is what you'll want to do if you don't want an
empty playlist) or you can delete it if you decide that you made a
mistake. (NOTE: Adding a new playlist template, does not actually
create the playlist immediately. The playlists are not created until
the builder program is run, or the 'Build Playlists Now' button is clicked.)

Editing Playlist Templates...
When you select a template from the list, and click the edit button,
the edit template window pops up. Here is where you add the folders
that hold the files you want in the playlist. You also can decide if this
should be an Audio or Video Playlist. (NOTE: The builder program does
examine ID3 tags at all. The name of each item is simply the name of the
file excluding the extension.) To add folder to the template you can
either use the 'Add Folder' button, or you can drag and drop folders from
Windows Explorer. If you are adding lots of folders to a template, the
latter is recomended.

Finishing Up...
Once you are done creating playlist templates, you must save the config
file. This is where the templates are stored and retrived by the builder
program. You can now run the builder program either by clicking the
"Build Playlists Now' button, or running it seperately. (NOTE: When
run independantly, the builder program is completely silent and will not
alert you when it has finished.)

Builder Program...
Now that you have created your templates, you can add the builder
program to your Scheduled Tasks and run it as often as you like to
automatically maintain your playlists and keep them up to date with
any new files that may be in those folders. If you use MediaPortal,
like me, you can add the builder as a launcher in the My Programs
Extension, to update your playlists manually when you know there
are new files in the folders.
 

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