[plugin] XM Radio (December 18 Update)

[DogWings]

YES! Thank you for taking time to do this. XM should give you a pat on the back for making their product more accessible (and therefore more useful).

[tmar89]

Doesn't anyone like XM

[DogWings]

I love it, but I don't spend much time in the car so I don't get much value out of it. Until now.

Okay, now that I've installed the 1.0 version and had 30 minutes to play around with it I have 1 thing. Is it possible to have the station images be png's rather than jpg's? Being able to do transparency would make it look even better.

Feel free to PM me if you want to curse my mother for having me.

[tmar89]

Here's the problem. BM doesn't support SWF so I have to download the SWFs and convert them to images. This results in the white space from the SWF being saved as part of the canvas.

I looked into the transparency effects. The logos from XM are in SWF format and I use a batch program to convert them to JPG images and crop them. The SWF converter only converts to JPG,GIF and BMP so I chose JPG for size and quality considerations. The next step would be to convert them to PNG and change all white space (or a tolerance of white space) transparency to 100%. If you know of a batch way to convert JPGs to PNG and make white space transparent let me know.

[DogWings]

I will play around with it in Photoshop and see if I can come up with an action set for that. At the very least, I will convert them all to png and round off the corners so they look pretty. If I have to work on them individually I can do that too. I have the time.

[tmar89]

Very cool. But I think its better if its a batch process than doing individually (because I could do that too). My batch process is with Imagemagick so there probably is a way to do this but it wasn't a priority. I'll look into it.

Yay for Imagemagick:


I'll see how this looks in the plugin and re-release 1.0 if I'm happy.

Turns out BM just throws up black for where the PNG should be. I can't seem to get BM to like the new transparent PNG files to work as a background for a Window class.

[Mistergq]

Originally Posted by tmar89

Doesn't anyone like XM

I love Sirius!

[jgourd]

I like XMs programming. I hear lots of music from bands I have never heard of and otherwise wouldn't have heard of. I haven't listened to Sirius but from the reviews I have read, its just like FM without the commercials. Blah.

[Voxelflinger]

I hate when commericals break in to the Playboy channel on my local FM station.

[DogWings]

Originally Posted by Voxelflinger

I hate when commericals break in to the Playboy channel on my local FM station.

LOL - But at least the Matress Warehouse adverts are appropriate.

I think tmar89 has done a great job with this plugin. Hopefully someone will write a plugin for Sirius too, but it seems like it might be good to wait and see what happens with the XM/Sirius merger first?

BTW, tmar (correction - gaines) has a new website worth checking out over at http://beyondaddons.com/

[tmar89]

VERSION 1.1 RELEASED (See first post for link)

Transparent images
UI updates every 5 seconds instead of every second to improve fluidity
Fix for UI sounds re-enabling when exiting BM while in XM screen

And this is a rant. Can someone from SnapStream please listen to the plugin/skin updates through http://www.snapstream.com/ssdn/submit.aspx? I believe its Kilrsat that does it but for the last couple of months any updates I push through that page doesn't get processed but somehow the DVD Library Plugin gets its post update (coincidence???). Luckily the link and the images get updated but the text in the first post doesn't. How about SnapStream makes the author/owner of the first post for plugins/skins the author of the plugin/skin so we can update our own work. Waiting for SnapStream to look in their mailbox is frustrating.

[tmar89]

Originally Posted by DogWings

BTW, tmar has a new website worth checking out over at http://beyondaddons.com/

That's not my page. Credit gaines for that site.

[SSDNAdmin]

Updated

[jgourd]

Haven't tried the latest build. Currently if I add a channel to the right hand preset list it is gone the nest time I use the XM Radio plugin.

[tmar89]

Originally Posted by jgourd

Haven't tried the latest build. Currently if I add a channel to the right hand preset list it is gone the nest time I use the XM Radio plugin.

Do you mean during a Beyond Media session by opening the plugin, leaving it and then coming back or when you exit the program all together and come back to use the program and use the plugin. How many presets are you setting and do any stay?