thumbs folder (1 Viewer)

[Dadeo]

How is it that your XP path is working in Vista Windows Explorer? That could be very useful to know as it does not work for me! And that would explain why the XP path in the skin file is working for you.

EDIT: BTW thanks for taking the time on this, if I can figure it out, it will be very helpful for my skin and maybe for other skins as well.

 

[petrovice]

Maybe it´s a security issue, because the only difference to the standard Vista installation is that I have disabled UAC. But then it will not work for all of the users. Upcoming MP 1.1 will help you, because I have read that they will move some folders to MP installation root.

 

[kyleh0000]

plz take a look at the NowPlaying XML from theatre skin. Nanogod is using the Cache Folder image from an artist to view it in the background. Works under XP and Vista without modifications!

Regards,
Peter

thats funny im actuly modding this skin and this wasnt working for me under vista, anyway i found a solution that works for Vista and XP but......it only works in MP 1.10

the skin folder and thumbs folder are put in c:\program data\ect ect or in XP c:\documents and settings\ect ect

as they are both in a location relative to each other you can now use this to get it work

..\..\..\Thumbs\Music\Artists\#Play.Current.ArtistL.jpg

now we dont need to code a second control

now a bit off topic but i have been using the Audioscrobbler to get my artist images, however they are not in wide screen and they dont look any good when used a background, does anyone know of a plugin i can use to grab widescreen fan art images for artists?

cheers

 

[Dadeo]

kyleh0000 - thanks - great to know ..\..\..\ is working in 1.1.0, I was hoping it would!!! YAHOO, now there are so many more things I will be able to do!

I don't know of any plugin that automatically grabs artist fanart (widescreen images). Sorry. I have over 2300 artists and even Audioscrobbler took a while.

About Audioscrobbler:
1. What I did was use keepaspectratio, centered and zoomfromtop tags on my artist image control which makes a lot of them look better. It does not work in every case though.
2. With these tags, 80-90% actually work well for me and I have had several other users report the same. But it is the luck of the draw! Audiocsrobbler is pulling those images from Last.fm. There are often many images for an artist on last.fm and it seems to pick them at random since somtimes I get diff images when I run it! I'm not sure which one it selects.

Although there are some sites with music fanart, like Home Theatre Backdrops */*Home, I found the largest collection of widescreen images was on Last.fm itself so you can always go there via web and select your images manually. There is often at least one widescreen one.

When I cannot find any image that 'works' for backdrops, I just take one I like and turn it into fanart and store it in my fanart folder - but if you have a lot that don't work that could take some time!

Another trick is to just google for desktop backgrounds for the artist. Some of those can work, once resized. If you are just using them on your own system it is OK, but if you want to distribute them you have to watch out for copyright issues.

Yeah, I know, a plugin would be a lot easier! Maybe there is some way RTV can modify the Audioscrobbler plugin to select which image is selected i.e. widescreen.

 

[kyleh0000]

yeah i have way to many artisits to load it manualy, but i was more thinking of doing it for the skin

so when a song is playing the backdrop changes to the wide screen of the artist but i might just have it cycle some general music images then scale down the images i get for the artisit and put it in the skin somehow

anyway thanks for everyone's help happy skinning!!

KYLe