[Release] LH_NowPlaying (v3.00)

[Triscopic]

LH_NowPlaying
Latest Version: 3.00

LH_NowPlaying is a plugin that lets you...
...display the name, artist, album or playing time of the currently playing track in one of many players...
...display how far through the track you are using a progress bar...
...display the cover art for the current track...
...control shuffle / repeat states...
...and more!

e.g.:

• iTunes: Full, native support.
• Winamp: Full, native support.
• foobar2000: Full support via the Foobar_Winamp_Spam plugin (no specific home page but v0.98 is located here) or the foo_rainmeter.dll plugin. This latter option is now preferred with v3.00 of LH_NowPlaying as it allows full control over foobar.
• VLC Player: Full semi-native support - enable the web interface in VLC (see here for a guide) and make sure you've correctly set the port on the plugin settings page. (Thanks to Stephan1200 for the guide and suggestion)
• Windows Media Player: Partial support via the "Windows Live Messenger Music Plugin", found under Plugins > Background.
• Spotify: Partial, native support.
• ...and any other player that supports the MSN Now Playing interface, such as Last.fm, OpenPandora, Songbird(+LiveTweeter), Zune and others."
  

Compatibility chart from the plugin:


¹ If LCDHost is running as an administrator and iTunes is not (or visa versa) LH_NowPlaying will crash. Either run both as administrator or neither.

² Foobar via Foo_Rainmeter.dll fully supports shuffle and repeat. The winamp spam dll supports sending shuffle and repeat toggle commands, but cannot read the values back.

³ Some users of 64 bit windows report that the MSN interface does not function with any application (i.e. the issue is unrelated to LCDHost); others have reported no problem.

⁴ The MSN interface only supports the seperate Artist, Album & Track details, hence players using this system cannot display the progress bar or album art and cannot access or set shuffle/repeat data.

⁵ The Title bar interface only supports the seperate Artist & Track details, not the album name. As with MSN, players using this system cannot display the progress bar or album art.

[Triscopic]

New in v3

v3 is a major rewrite of NowPlaying, moving the code base away from the pidgin-musictracker source to the excellent rainmeter-nowplaying source.

Major improvements include:

• MP3 tag reading, including cover art for Winamp & Foobar!
• New "Remote Control" object class allows you to add more control to a dedicated now playing layout.
• Full support for VLC Player! This also includes a fix for the media keys which do not work natively with VLC
• Advanced key bindings to control Shuffle & Repeat as well as to close the music player.
• Ability to show shuffle & repeat settings from the media player on the layout
• Ability to show track rating
• Lyrics! Yes, the plugin can show lyrics, although this isn't fully functional yet - best to set them to scrolling for now as LCDHost's text object doesn't allow word wrapping at the moment.
• A fix that attempts to spot when iTunes isn't running with the same permissions as LCDHost and prevent LH_NowPlaying from trying to connect to it (and subsequently crashing)

[Insane]

cool very nice.

whats the chances of showing the album art from itunes/etc for the song playing?
now that would be cool....and completely possible surely?

[Triscopic]

Well it's not quite as easy as that, but I will look into it.

[Triscopic]

Release Notes:

Updated to 1.01:

• Fixed "StaticText" duplicate entry from appearing.

[Triscopic]

Release Notes:

Updated to 1.02:

• Minor changes to LH_Text inheritance
• Signed

(No download for this version as it is bundled with the LCDHost installer)

[nfsking2]

An excellent plugin. But I'm wondering if somebody can add the support for Zune Player and Windows Media Player?

[novax1]

Hi a question you will give more options to show custom winamp.?
 title
 artist
 album
 track number
 year
 playtime
 volume
 album cover
 Thanks i greetings 

[Triscopic]

An excellent plugin. But I'm wondering if somebody can add the support for Zune Player and Windows Media Player?

This comment pulled me back into investigating WMP. Rest assured I really want to do this, but M$ do not make it easy (I spent weeks on it). Still no success, but I think I did make some progress. Maybe I'll get time to go back to this but don't hold your breath.

Hi a question you will give more options to show custom winamp.?

Not gonna happen, sorry. Rather than try to master a whole new API, I just pull the text right out of the application's title bar.

If/when I get time to revisit this plugin, I want to get WMP working, then I want to steal Lethys foobar player stuff () and then I might look at pulling album art from iTunes (another thing I poured a couple of weeks into but couldn't work out). Currently that's all that's written on my notepad under "LH_NowPlaying To Do / Wish List"

[Burle 17]

Hello

a little Question. How great is the chance that LH_Nowplaying supports VLC (VideoLanClient) in the Future?

And you said M$ makes it hard  for you to be supported in the Plugin. Perhaps i have an silly idea. The normal Software from the G19 have already this support (in the Windows sideshow plugin). Perhaps it is able to get the Information from that plugin not from the WMP???

[Triscopic]

VLC? That's not a music player is it??

Sadly there are no apis for extracting data from the logitech plugins. Good lateral thinking though.

[Ender91]

VLC is a everything-player....

[Burle 17]

VLC? That's not a music player is it??

Sadly there are no apis for extracting data from the logitech plugins. Good lateral thinking though.

VLC is a I-can-play-ANYTHING-you-want-player   

And thanks 

[Ender91]

However, other plugin are able to get info from vlc....maybe you can use them to figure how to do the same in LCDHost...? (they are provided with the source files...)

[Triscopic]

I am ashamed to admit you wrote VLC and I read VNC. I thought you were talking about streaming sound from another pc via VNC.


Added to my NowPlaying to do list. I will do it, but I can't say when. Breath holding not recommended.