Finally stopped Windows Media Player–Overwriting Folder.jpg files ?

If you have been using Windows Media Player / Windows Media Center for any length of time, you will know that WMP is a bugger for overwriting your hi-res Folder.jpg files in your albums folders.

As a result I have never embedded album cover images in to the MP3 files, as if you do that WMP will then take it upon its self to overwrite my hi-res 600x600 Folder.jpg images with a crappy low-res 200x200 Folder.jpg, which Windows Media Center will then cache and you end up with terrible looking album covers in MCE on your TV.

If you don’t embed the cover images in to the MP3 files, then MCE will pickup and cache your nice hi-res Folder.jpg image. This has been working fine for me in Windows 7 / Media Center.

However iTunes requires that the cover image is embedded in the MP3 files, which is why I have never used iTunes fully. We just got a 27” Apple iMAC computer and I plan to use iTunes and get in to all that stuff.

Also developing a new XBMC system at the moment and I am currently working out all the artwork in XBMC, which there is allot more of with all the add-ons for cdArt, ClearArt, FanArt and all that carry on. From my tests XBMC will just pickup and cache the Folder.jpg that’s in the albums folder, so if that Folder.jpg has been molested by WMP, you again end up with a crappy 200x200 cover image in XBMC on the TV. Seems XBMC does not display / cache the embedded hi-res cover images in the MP3 files.

Long story short WMP is and always has been a pain in the arse with Microsoft not knowing what they are doing with artwork images. There is nothing you can do in the WMP settings to stop this behaviour and I always thought there was no way to stop it overwriting Folder.jpg files if you embed cover images.
However a new search today and I have found a genius who apparently has come up with a solution, in my initial basic tests I can confirm that it does appear to work, but I need you to test and confirm as well!

On your Windows PC go in to regedit then browse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences

Create two new DWORD entries

LargeAlbumArtSize
SmallAlbumArtSize

Give them the value of:  ffffffff  and then reboot.  You will need to do this on every Windows PC where WMP looks at your music files.

This Voodoo Magic appears to totally stop WMP overwriting your hi-res Folder.jpg files and even stops it creating the AlbumArtSmall.jpg files.

If this does indeed pan out and works as I think it does, it will finally mean I can embed the hi-res cover images in to all the MP3 files and then be able to add my music collection in to iTunes. Also both MCE and XBMC will pickup the un-molested hi-res Folder.jpg file and cache them for display on the TV.
Thank $%^& for that!

On this screen shot you can see I have embedded the hi-res cover image in to the MP3 files, I used MP3TAG. You can see that my Folder.jpg is still 600x600 and there is no AlbumArtSmall.jpg file in sight!
 

 
The only issue I can see is with Media Center extenders, I imagine you would have to load their user registry hive to be able to make this edit for the extender user accounts. As I only have one MCX and I plan to ditch it along with Windows Media Center, when my new XBMC system is up and running HAHA I don’t really care about that!

UPDATE:

I embedded all my hi-res 600x600 Folder.jpg files in to all my music files, I did it rather quickly using the Actions Import Cover feature of MP3Tag, would have taken weeks manually!

However today I have noticed in some albums folders, not all of them, just seems random in some album folders, there are files like these being created:

AlbumArt_{E6043A2C-BBEB-49C5-BCF0-5259B6332C34}_Large.jpg
AlbumArt_{E6043A2C-BBEB-49C5-BCF0-5259B6332C34}_Small.jpg

The large one is 200x200 the small one is 75x75

I have double checked several Folder.jpg files and they have remained untouched at 600x600 and not down-res to 200x200 this is good news! However this creation of these Large / Small jpg files is an annoying side affect that I would like to be able to stop them being created all together, but not sure how ?

I posted the question on MS Answers here

SoundGraph VF310 15c2:0036 Linux / XBMC

I have an OrigenAE M10 HTPC case which has a SoundGraph IR/VFD unit – Model: VF310 15c2:0036. This is the LCD display on the front of the HTPC case. Before I attempted to get the LCD display working under Linux Ubuntu 12.10 minimal and XBMC V12.0 Frodo, I had read several forum threads and it sounded very difficult to set this up under Linux especially with this particular model, however it turned out to be quite simple.

I already have the IR receiver working in MCE mode, I did have difficulties with this and was having issues with double presses / commands from the remote being sent to XBMC. I had installed LIRC initially and I think that and the inbuilt modules in the kernel for iMon where conflicting, in the end I uninstalled LIRC and only used the in kernel modules. I followed this user guide here and the “Do everything completely in-kernel”" option to get the MCE (Logitech Harmony) remote control working properly. You can see some comments I made on that thread here. I am not going to cover the setup of the remote control here as I had allot of problems with it.

Anyways I am looking at the LCD display today not the remote control setup. This is how I got it working. I also started a thread about it here on the XBMC forum.

To double check which VFD unit you have from terminal type

lsusb

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 15c2:0036 SoundGraph Inc. LC16M VFD Display/IR Receiver

1. From terminal I installed LCDProc

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lcdproc

I then read the relevant parts of the LCDProc user manual here.

2. Edit the LCDd.conf file located in /etc

cd /etc
sudo nano LCDd.conf

Scroll down to the [Server] section and change this line from:

Driver=curses

To:

Driver=imon

Note: There is also an imonlcd driver I tried this initially but I just got garbled text on the display.

Scroll a bit further down to the Welcome and Goodbye messages, change these to suit your requirements. These messages are displayed when the HTPC is turned on from shutdown and when it is shutting down.

# Hello message: each entry represents a display line; default: builtin
#Hello="  Welcome to"
#Hello="   LCDproc!"

# GoodBye message: each entry represents a display line; default: builtin
#GoodBye="Thanks for using"
#GoodBye="   LCDproc!"

Change this setting:

# If yes, the the serverscreen will be rotated as a usual info screen. If no,
# it will be a background screen, only visible when no other screens are
# active. The special value 'blank' is similar to no, but only a blank screen
# is displayed. [default: on; legal: on, off, blank]
#ServerScreen=on

To:

ServerScreen=blank

You need to remove the comment # in front of it to make the setting active.
I wanted to slow down the speed that the text scrolls across the LCD display, I tried changing this setting but it does not seem to do anything?

# set title scrolling speed [default: 10; legal: 0-10]
#TitleSpeed=10

I change it to:

TitleSpeed=1

Save and exit the LCDd.conf file to do that press Ctrl+X on the keyboard then Y then hit enter.

3. In the XBMC settings in System enable the option for LCD/VFD

4. Edit the LCD.xml fie. There is an LCD.xml file in your userdata folder, you can customise and change
this file if required? You can read more about the LCD.xml file here.

I did make one change to the file and that was:

From this:

<navigation>
      <line>$INFO[System.CurrentWindow]</line>
      <line>$INFO[System.CurrentControl]</line>
      <line>Freemem: $INFO[System.FreeMemory]</line>
      <line>$INFO[System.ScreenWidth]x$INFO[System.ScreenHeight] $INFO[System.ScreenMode]</line>
   </navigation>

To this:

<navigation>
      <line>$INFO[System.CurrentWindow]</line>
      <line>$INFO[System.CurrentControl]</line>
      <line>Transport Controls</line>
   </navigation>

Because when I navigated in the XBMC GUI over the transport controls like Play / Pause / Stop etc the second line on the display would output my free memory like this: FREEMEM: 3382MB I don’t know why it does not display the name of the current transport control you are on? So I changed it to simply read “Transport Controls”


5. Reboot and your LCD display should now be working!

This is what gets displayed when nothing is happening

XBMC Running….
Current date and time..

You can change this in the LCD.xml file in the general section.



When I navigate around the XBMC GUI the second line on the display shows what Menu item I am currently on?





Here I am playing a music track Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus, the track play and remaining times are also shown. You can change what gets displayed for music playback in the music section of the LCD.xml file.



Not very clear in the photo, but I am currently highlighting one of the transport controls in the XBMC GUI and “Transport Controls” now scrolls across the screen whenever I do this.



Here I am now in my movie library in XBMC and as I navigate over the different movie titles, if I pause on a title it displays that titles name on the LCD display.



Here I am playing a movie – E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial



This is a bit funky, when in the System settings area and also when I am on some of the other system type menus it looks like this



Summary

The only other slight issue is that when I shutdown the HTPC (S5 Shutdown) the Goodbye message stays on the screen and the LCD display does not turn off. However if I put the HTPC in to S3 Sleep mode instead then the LCD display is turned off and the Goodbye message is not displayed. Also the Welcome message does not stay on the display long enough for my liking.

Overall I am very pleased that the LCD display is now working as I thought it would be a complete nightmare to setup and actually it was relatively simple. I wish I could say the same for setting up the IR MCE remote control, as that was a nightmare!

Please keep in mind I do not have LIRC installed, if you are using LIRC for your remote control this may or may not work ?
 
 
 
Phaze1 Digital

Looking at XBMC Frodo–Aeon Nox skin

My Linux Ubuntu 12.10 Minimal / XBMC V12.0 Frodo HTPC project has been coming along, almost at the point of getting in to XBMC skin configurations. I installed the Aeon Nox skin for a quick look.

Which skin are you using for XBMC? What do you recommend? The Aeon ones always seemed to be the best to me.  Obviously on a proper HTPC build like the one I did recently for this project, horsepower is not an issue, how does this skin perform on devices like jail broken Apple TVs and Raspberry Pi?

Main Menu – Music

The background image of the speakers randomly changes to another background related to music, likewise on the other menu items like Movies and TV Shows the background images are dynamic and change.
On the Music menu (Or on other menus) you press the down arrow on the remote control to show the submenu which shows things like Recent – Artists – Albums – Songs – Files



Main Menu – Movies

On the Movies submenu you can select things like Titles, Genres, Movie Sets (My Movies.dk don’t support sets currently), Trailers, Latest.



Main Menu – Music Videos


Main Menu – TV Shows


Main Menu – Videos


Main Menu – Shutdown


Main Menu - Weather



Main Menu – Pictures

There is still no proper pictures library in XBMC by default, unlike the Windows Media Center pictures library.  Its just a folder / file browsing type of deal. I believe there are some picture library add-ons for XBMC I need to look in to these.


Artists – InfoWall View

I am currently using the inbuilt Universal Scrapers for Music Artist and Album images and metadata. When I installed the Aeon Nox skin, it also installed some additional add-ons. These where called: Artist Slideshow, Artwork Downloader and I think there was another one called CDArt which I can’t find now in the settings, will need to look in to all these new metadata add-ons and see how they are going to work, as I know some of these add-ons actually place new folders and files in amongst your data on your server, unlike the Universal scrapers which don’t do that. So I am cautious about them. Especially if Posters are selected for download and they start replacing your My Movies.dk movie covers.



Artists – TriPanel View


Albums – Wall View

The album cover images have not been downloaded by any of the XBMC scraper add-ons they are all just my Folder.jpg images in the album folders.



Albums – InfoPanel View


Album – Track List


Album Now Playing on main menu

The coloured blocks you can see is a dynamic and moving music visualisation, that spins round and the blocks move up and down, you can also pick other visualisations in the Music Playback settings.



There seems to be two now playing screens? If I click back on the remote control from the main menu when an album is playing, I then get this screen. The top left image of the band is dynamic and changes this is the Artist Slideshow add-on I think.


Movies Titles – Wall View
Looks a bit like the Covers Full Screen view in My Movies in MCE and is the view I normally use.



Movie Title – Info page

I haven’t figured out the Actors and Crew images yet, the parental rating is shown, however XBMC does not have proper parental controls like My Movies in MCE does. You can see the synopsis and other details and also the media information about the file is shown and the SMB path to the server at the bottom. This particular movie is a 1080P MKV file with a DTS audio track.



Movie Titles – TriPanel View

There are 14 different views from what I can tell in Aeon Nox, below are just some of them!



Movie Titles – Panel View


Movie Titles – Posters View


Movie Titles – Shift View


TV Shows – BannerPlex

I really like this view. Shame XBMC does not properly support TV Series that are DVD rips, you can read more about that here.



TV Shows – Seasons – List View


TV Shows – Episodes List

The wife and I have been watching Heroes lately, we are now on season 3 and I have totally lost the plot of what’s going on!
Again Media Info is shown about the file and the ticks next to some of the episodes is the Watched status, the ones that don’t have ticks are unwatched.



TV Shows – Episode Information


Summary

I think the Aeon Nox skin looks great, fantastic eye candy anyways! But its a big change from Windows Media Center and I was just getting use to the default XBMC Confluence skin. I think once I have worked out exactly how these new metadata add-ons are going to function and how they will affect the data on my server, I will feel more comfortable using a skin of this kind. The other thing that is a little daunting is the number of skin settings that you can mess about with. My other concern for myself here at home as I plan to use a Raspberry PI or Apple TV in my girls room, is how a skin like this might perform on hardware like that. I’d rather not have to use different looking skins on different hardware.

Let me know what you think? Any long term XBMC users reading? Any feedback or comments welcome!

mControl update iOS app to version 1.1.2559

I was very pleased to see an update today for the mControl iOS app. Seems they have fixed some things and now I am able to control Z-wave Door Sensors, Motion Sensors and a IP Camera Motion Sensor (Foscam), these are all devices in VeraLite as I am using the mControl Vera Luup Driver.

What's New in Version 1.1

Added new devices to the app
-Added Generic device support
-Added simplified chines language
-Fix Camera streaming
-Added ZigBee ON/OFF/Dimmer device support
-Added ZigBee meter Device support
-Fix thermostat bug
-Fix reconnect issues
Goto Bed, Arm House, Disarm House are all scenes within VeraLite not macros in mControl. Not sure why it says 0 next to them?


However I can now run these Vera scenes from the mControl iOS app.

Before this update it was not possible to run Vera scenes via the mControl iOS app, there was previously no Run button, it would just say Label and you couldn’t select anything.



Goto Bed VeraLite scene in the mControl iOS app.



Porch (Room) – The Porch Sensor is an Everspring motion sensor, you can see the mControl iOS app is correctly displaying the status of this sensor.



I can now Arm or Disarm (Bypass) this motion sensor using the mControl iOS app. Previously before this new update, all security sensors would just say Label next to them and you couldn’t control them.



Back Garden (Room) – The camera sensor you can see is the on-board motion sensor on my outdoor Foscam IP Camera, which I integrated in to VeraLite using the miOS Foscam add-in. This enables you to use the Foscam’s motion sensor as a regular motion sensor device in Vera, which you can trigger scenes off.



I can now Arm or Disarm the Foscam motion sensor in the updated mControl iOS app.



Kitchen (Room) – Patio Door sensor is an Everspring Door / Window sensor device again this device is setup in VeraLite.



mControl iOS app can now control this door sensor and Arm / Disarm it.



Living Room – Nothing new here, the three devices are all Z-wave devices setup in VeraLite, which mControl can see and control via the Vera Luup Driver. The Macros are actually macros setup in mControl and not Vera Scenes in this case.



Looks like the mControl mobile webpage needs updating as well, still missing buttons for some Vera devices.



Always nice to see updates from mControl, I just wish they were a bit quicker.

If mControl do one thing, they ought to create an XBMC add-in like their excellent Windows Media Center add-in, that would be at the top of my mControl feature wish list.

For more information about mControl and their products visit their website here.

XBMC / Vera Integration send notifications to XBMC

This is written for XBMC V12 Frodo. If you want to be able to send event notifications from Vera to your TV screens running XBMC read on.

First you need to enabled HTTP control in XBMC, to do this go to System - Settings – Services – Webserver. Enable “Allow control of XBMC via HTTP”.

The default port number is 8080, my user name is xbmc I did not set a password.



Now for a quick test, open a web browser and enter this in to the address bar and hit enter:

http://192.168.1.7:8080/jsonrpc?request={%22jsonrpc%22:%222.0%22,%22method%22:%22GUI.ShowNotification%22,%22params%22:{%22title%22:%22Motion%20Detected%22,%22message%22:%22Front%20Door%22},%22id%22:1}

Change the IP address to the IP address of your XBMC PC. On your XBMC it should pop up with a notification that has a title of Motion Detected and the message says Front Door.





Customize the HTTP command to change the title and message text for your own purposes.

http://192.168.1.7:8080/jsonrpc?request={%22jsonrpc%22:%222.0%22,%22method%22:%22GUI.ShowNotification%22,%22params%22:{%22title%22:%22Motion%20Detected%22,%22message%22:%22Front%20Door%22},%22id%22:1}

I have an Everspring Z-wave motion detector outside my front door, so I can monitor if someone is outside my house at my porch. In VeraLite I have a scene that turns on my porch light when this motion sensor detects movement (If its night) and it also sends the popup notification to the XBMC PC in the living room.

To do this simply click in to the Luup tab of your scene and add in the HTTP command string.



You need to add some extra code however, the bits highlighted in red below are what you need to add for the HTTP command to work in Vera.

luup.inet.wget("http://192.168.1.7:8080/jsonrpc?request={%22jsonrpc%22:%222.0%22,%22method%22:%22GUI.ShowNotification%22,%22params%22:{%22title%22:%22Motion%20Detected%22,%22message%22:%22Front%20Door%22},%22id%22:1}")

Click the Save Lua button, then confirm changes – Save and Reload Vera.

Now try running your Vera scene and your new notification should pop up on your XBMC / TV screen.



Job done!