get albums from albumlist into milkdrop

[Mandark]

hi there!

i'm using the winamp/milkdrop/albumlist solution as a fullscreen mp3 player and i'm very happy with it. there's only one feature i'm missing, and that is to be able to bring the albums from albumlist into the menu of milkdrop, so i can navigate and choose between the albums inside milkdrop.
any suggestions how to achieve this?

regards, mandark.

[SouthyPar]

Well, without knowing any flat-out programming, what I did was manually extracting the list of albums from AlbumList, then made a script which would automatically convert that into an .m3u that included all of the albums, linked to one few-seconds long .mp3 called "Loading...".
When I clicked a button on my remote, Girder would then forced Winamp to load up that .m3u, and it will be displayed instead of the "Tracks list" in MilkDrop. I used DVDSpy to determine the index number of the album that was selected, and then sent that number to AlbumList.

If you were somehow able to convince the author of AlbumList to make an auto-export function for creating a .txt list of albums, which could be triggered by a Windows Message, you could make the entire process dynamic. Right now, every time you add or remove an album from your list, you have export the list and run it through the m3u conversion thing again.

I'll try to dig up my old files, but I'm not sure I still have them.

[Mandark]

hi southypar!

thanks for your reply. thats a great idea. a bit complicated, but it should work just fine. could you send me the stuff you have (girder group, script, etc.), if you can find it? my email is:
mandark@gmx.at
thanks a lot in advance!

-mandark

[SouthyPar]

Sorry, I must've deleted it somewhere along the way.
As for recreating it, I don't think it's all that much worth, at least until one of two things:

The author of AlbumList incorporates an export-to-txt feature.

OR

MMcM (or some other kind soul) chooses to expand the current DVDSpy Winamp2 plugin to include AlbumList support, and extend it to the point of being able to trigger the IPC_GETALBUMNAME for any given album (so that we could create the list of albums on our own and then convert it to .m3u every time it is needed).

Otherwise, I think you'll find it just gets too annoying to manually export the list to .html, copy and paste it into a text, and then use some script to convert it to .m3u *every single time* you add\remove albums.

I personally have switched to a different frontend for navigating albums, and just use MilkDrop when I feel like floating around

If you want to do this no-matter-what, I'd help by running down exactly what I did back then more specifically.

[Mandark]

well, i dont change my albums often, so i think this solution would do fine for me. i managed to create the playlist and everything is working. i also got the number of the album with dvdspy. but how can i send the album-number to albumlist to play it? unfortunately, im new to using dvdspy. i hope this is not too complicated.
btw. what do you use for navigating albums on screen?

-mandark

[SouthyPar]

If you want to order AlbumList to play album #13, you use the Windows Message plugin and fill the WParam/IParam listboxes to 100 and 13 respectively, while selecting AlbumList as your target. So, you basically do that, only instead of sending the number 13, you use the girder variable in which you've stored the selected album's number.

what do you use for navigating albums on screen?

What exactly do you mean? I'm not sure I understand your question.
You send MilkDrop the letter P for showing Playlist, and browse your list using the up\down keys. I don't know of any OSDMenu-like program\plugin that can be shown and navigated while MilkDrop is running. If there was one, that would indeed save you a LOT of trouble.

By the way, did you see my MilkDrop\Girder trick of Number-Selection? Using that in conjunction with what you're developing now should work really well.

[SouthyPar]

Also, I forgot to add another thing: If you pull this off this way, the "Show Albums Menu" button you will create is a one-way trip. Meaning, once you've pressed it, you cannot go back and decide you want to hear the rest of the current album - because the playlist has already been changed.
Fixing this would be pretty complicated.

So, as I've said, it's functional, but very cumbersome.

[Mandark]

hi!
thanks again for your help, but i cant seem to get this working. the problem is, i cant get albumlist to play a specific album. lets look if i got this right:
i use sendmessage plugin and fill in:
message number: 0
wparam: 100
lparam: 13 (for album number 13)

and as target i choose:
Name: Winamp Album List
Class Name: Winamp AL
Executable: WINAMP.EXE
with nothing else of the settings checked.

when i test the command, nothing happens. whats wrong?

btw, by the above mentioned question, i just meant, what (plugin or mp3 player or so) you (personally) use for navigating albums and playlists on screen with your remote.

-mandark

[SouthyPar]

Oops, sorry, I forgot. You put 1024 in "Message Number".

I use 4am Music Console.

[Mandark]

well, i actuelly did it. it works great now. it took me some time, but now i know a lot more about girder and its plugins.
thanks again southypar!
i also checked out the tread with your milkdrop numeric song selector solution, but the links to the zip file and the pictures seem to be broken. maybe you could fix it. it looks very useful.

-mandark