(Pandora) Saver2

[Ares]

Working pretty well so far! Two things I've noticed...

1. When PS restarts to update, it launches the installer, which tries to download the update, but fails! This is because IE is still set to use PS's proxy, but PS isn't running any more.
2. Could you have the Pandora Client autologin on startup, if you have it set to remember you? That'd be sweet.

[ZigZagJoe]

Working pretty well so far! Two things I've noticed...

1. When PS restarts to update, it launches the installer, which tries to download the update, but fails! This is because IE is still set to use PS's proxy, but PS isn't running any more.
2. Could you have the Pandora Client autologin on startup, if you have it set to remember you? That'd be sweet.

1 is likely caused by your network configuration being bugged: exit sproxy, and make sure that in IE use proxy is not checked.

Though, on further thought, when using the old versions' updaters this would be a problem: if you had set ie proxies enabled and used the update system, your system proxy is now set to use SProxy and will need to be reset. This was caused by the update exiting SProxy in a non-kind manner. it saved settings, started the installer, and did the programmatic equivalent of using taskmgr to close the program; sproxy never got to set the proxies back.

2 - see the client's settings: Menu->Config->Login automatically

Edit: Found a bug causing text in shaded mode to not scroll. Working on a fix. Fixed.

01/12/10: 1.2.2 build 20

Will now note build number on changelog - it is way too low, but better than nothing.

Client: Fixed a bug causing text to not scroll while in shaded mode

SProxy: Advanced settings now exits kindly

Saver2: Small bugfix in update mechanism

[XDS]

you should put your paypal donate link directly in your signature too ~.-

[XDS]

Sorry I should have said CAD is 10$ for a 10 year license per there beta prices.

All that is needed however is one license to acquire the SDK

[mrloopie]

I just upgraded to the install version and I must say that I like the progress you are making on this awesome app.

When I use the Pandora client it no longer displays song title or artist. I went through advanced config and couldn't find where to turn this on.

I originally used the installer in late December and now I am seeing a discrepancy in the version info after downloading and updating to the current version today...

SProxy title bar displays 1.2.1a

SProxy Config displays 12/26/2009 - v1.2.1a however Saver2Core 1.2.2

Not a big deal really but I was wondering if I am actually up to date? Is this linked to not seeing song/artist?

[XDS]

Not a big deal really but I was wondering if I am actually up to date? Is this linked to not seeing song/artist?

I was wondering the same thing.

[ZigZagJoe]

I just upgraded to the install version and I must say that I like the progress you are making on this awesome app.

When I use the Pandora client it no longer displays song title or artist. I went through advanced config and couldn't find where to turn this on.

I originally used the installer in late December and now I am seeing a discrepancy in the version info after downloading and updating to the current version today...

SProxy title bar displays 1.2.1a

SProxy Config displays 12/26/2009 - v1.2.1a however Saver2Core 1.2.2

Not a big deal really but I was wondering if I am actually up to date? Is this linked to not seeing song/artist?

The setting in SProxy's settings is currently entered manually - i tend not to remember to change it unless major changes are made. Last significant changes to SP was back then, so...

Hmm... i see that bug too now. With no text. Ugh. Don't know what happened here.

Actually, on further thought, I do, come to think of it. The thread that updates the player's loading status (the buffering etc) is probably having one last go but is passing an empty arg so it overwrites the main thread setting the text proper. Simple fix, at least.

Uploaded fixed version.

I took another poke around the decompiled applet earlier (magic numbers are related to time played), and looked at various stuff in the XML data. Nothing to get a full album art. I took a look at the gadget's stuff, but as i knew a while ago it uses a completely different protocol - there's some analogues, but it on the whole has no usable similarities.

Will take a look at amazon's album art thing at some point.

[bulletp2000]

Feature(s) request: Two options in the standard player that I use are:

1) Move song to another station

2) I'm tired of this song

Do you think that you could add these to your player?

Thanks for all of your hard work.

[ZigZagJoe]

Feature(s) request: Two options in the standard player that I use are:

1) Move song to another station

2) I'm tired of this song

Do you think that you could add these to your player?

Thanks for all of your hard work.

I'm tired of this song is already implemented (see rate songs dialog) though it does not yet have an option on the main player screen.

Move song is just a double feedback set (it sets as negative feedback on the current station and sets positive feedback for the station to move to). Could be done, though.

[Ares]

As far as fetching album art goes, you might find AlbumArtDownloader useful. It's an open-source C# app that fetches artwork from dozens of sources, including Amazon.

[XDS]

As far as fetching album art goes, you might find AlbumArtDownloader useful. It's an open-source C# app that fetches artwork from dozens of sources, including Amazon.

Nice!

[ZigZagJoe]

As far as fetching album art goes, you might find AlbumArtDownloader useful. It's an open-source C# app that fetches artwork from dozens of sources, including Amazon.

Hmm, taking a look at it's interesting in that it uses psuedo-c# scripts, but there seems to be some asinine syntax differences as i can't quite get it to work in proper c# - the regex returns no matches.

Regexes are pretty much indecipherable to me, so, yeah... i'll try poking at it but i'm not too confident.

[mrloopie]

I have used Saver2 generated playlists in several players (AIMP2 is my current favorite) and all works well until iTunes. Now I remember why I haven't used it since v5...

Anyway, I can import Saver2 generated playlists and iTunes will process the list and allow me to play the songs right away, however after i close iTunes and come back to the playlist later, iTunes can not find the songs. I am currently using iTunes for my ipod touch and no matter what I do I can not get the playlist to transfer to my ipod.

So..

I load up the playlist in AIMP2...re-save the playlist with a slightly different name and everything works fine in iTunes...playng and transfering...

Saver2 not running during iTunes secessions

iTune 9.0.2.25

Aimp2 (portable) 2.11 (15.03.2008)

Any ideas why this is happening? iTunes? or PS2 generated playlist?

[ZigZagJoe]

iTunes probably doesn't care for the relative paths which saver2 uses, I'm guessing. When you close and reopen it it forgot the CWD and could no longer find the files. When you re-save it it's probably putting absolute paths in so itunes has no problem with it.

Working on a new release for today or tomos; main thing is it adds a song options menu with the various song URLs, approve song, i'm tired of this song, move song, create a station from song artist, and so on. Unfortunately, it seems this will prevent resizing from working "nicely": for some reason, the menus refuse to resize now as well as pictureboxes in panels (needed for some layout stuff).

Move song will have two implementations, the "soft" pandora implementation (where it just suggests the song for the other station) and a better implementation where the song is added as a seed to the chosen station.

[Sirlaughsalot]

I just want you to know I love this program and use it every day. I do however wish that it did a little more library editing. Such as, if you have a specific thumbed down song in your library, it would delete that song. Which I would think is possible, however, due to permissions in Vista (Not sure about Win7) it could have problems deleting it if not ran as admin.

This is an awesome program though, and I greatly appreciate you creating it for free. Keep up the good work ^_^

[ZigZagJoe]

I just want you to know I love this program and use it every day. I do however wish that it did a little more library editing. Such as, if you have a specific thumbed down song in your library, it would delete that song. Which I would think is possible, however, due to permissions in Vista (Not sure about Win7) it could have problems deleting it if not ran as admin.

This is an awesome program though, and I greatly appreciate you creating it for free. Keep up the good work ^_^

I'm working on adding this now, it's been requested enough and I've got time to burn. Something to keep in mind is one should not use move song and ban song as these both send negative feedback when it may not be desired for the song in question to be deleted. No way to get around this, I've found.

Also added a quick station change/creation to the client: when the stations button is visible, right click it, and a menu of stations will pop up with an option to create one as well

[toddy]

Just wanted to chime in on this thread. This program is freaking AMAZING, thanks.

[ZigZagJoe]

Just wanted to chime in on this thread. This program is freaking AMAZING, thanks.

Glad you like it :)

New version uploaded. No new plugin yet, but i hope the other bits make up for it.

01/18/10: 1.2.3 build 152

Saver2 can now check for larger album art on amazon - most songs have 500x500 album art available!

A quick station change/create menu has been added to right click of station button and shade mode controls on the client.

Added a song options menu (approve song, tire song, new station from song/artist, various pandora urls) to the client main screen.

The client can now show tray bubbles when songs are played. Enable in menu->config.

Songs that already exist will still be added to playlists - this allows stations to have overlap in songs.

Client: Removed shuffle songs, as it was essentially useless.

Client: The window will now become visible when focused (click on taskbar)

Client: Slight changes in menu wordings

Client: Faded in opacity now limited to sane values

Client: Song urls now accessible from rate songs dialog

Client: Fixed window flickering when fading was turned off with low opacity levels set

Client: The last station will now be remebered correctly.

Saver2: Playlist writing functionatly moved into saver2.

Saver2: Playlists may now be written with absolute paths for compatability with itunes

Saver2: NOTIFY_SAVER2_SONG_SAVED notification will still be sent if the song is ignored due to already existing

Saver2: Version incremented due to some changes rendering it not backwards compatable (not that this is a problem...)

Saver2: File tagging code improved significantly

Saver2/Pandora: Support for deleting songs (badly rated songs) added.

The new plugin is not in yet, not quite happy with how it works.

Known bugs:

Client: Menus will not resize when main window sized, nor will button images or shade mode controls.

Client: The tray icon can not display a menu for unknown reasons.

Pandora: Using the move song and ban song will cause songs to be deleted; they use the feedback mechanism to work. Not fixable.

Pandora: Songs deleted when negatively rated will still be referenced in playlist files. Not fixable.

[Sirlaughsalot]

Update is awesome, it is a shame with the playlists thing :\... With the badly rated songs, does it just delete a file if it is negatively rated then? Or like if it is on the negatively rated list, does it delete it then as well?

[ZigZagJoe]

Update is awesome, it is a shame with the playlists thing :\... With the badly rated songs, does it just delete a file if it is negatively rated then? Or like if it is on the negatively rated list, does it delete it then as well?

If the file is negatively rated, it will be deleted (and the folder tree will be deleted if there are no other files in it besides album art). It will NOT be removed from playlists at the moment.

Absolute paths for playlists can be enabled in advanced settings, but you will need to use a tool to prefix all the existing entries in each playlist with the save folder, otherwise duplicate entries will be added (or you can just delete all the playlists and leave it on turbo+shuffle for a while to let them be repopulated slowly)

[thetrent]

I registered here just to share my thanks for this incredible application. Thank you so much for putting this together! After finding this, I actually went ahead and bought a year subscription for pandora one.

[bulletp2000]

Thanks for adding - move song to another station. YOU ROCK!

Another small request: Could you please make all four buttons unique sizes again?

They don't have any window text (because you are using windows bitmaps for the faces).

I had PandoraHelper hooked up to find the four buttons - it was working great with your version from Jan 12 because each button was a unique size.

Now with the code version from Jan 18th, the first two buttons are identical sizes.

As always, I really appreciate your work on the entire Pandora Saver suite.

Sample code from SendMsg():

case PLAYPAUSE:

buttonHighlight = 1;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Window, sequence, width, height)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 32, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 28, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, 0x000000B3);

break;

case PLAYNEXT:

buttonHighlight = 2;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 34, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 28, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, 0x000000B0);

break;

case PLAYRATEDWN:

buttonHighlight = 3;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 20, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 20, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, (uint)Keys.Subtract);

break;

case PLAYRATEUP:

buttonHighlight = 4;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 18, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 18, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, (uint)Keys.Add);

break;

[ZigZagJoe]

Thanks for adding - move song to another station. YOU ROCK!

Another small request: Could you please make all four buttons unique sizes again?

They don't have any window text (because you are using windows bitmaps for the faces).

I had PandoraHelper hooked up to find the four buttons - it was working great with your version from Jan 12 because each button was a unique size.

Now with the code version from Jan 18th, the first two buttons are identical sizes.

As always, I really appreciate your work on the entire Pandora Saver suite.

Sample code from SendMsg():

case PLAYPAUSE:

buttonHighlight = 1;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Window, sequence, width, height)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 32, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 28, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, 0x000000B3);

break;

case PLAYNEXT:

buttonHighlight = 2;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 34, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 28, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, 0x000000B0);

break;

case PLAYRATEDWN:

buttonHighlight = 3;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 20, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 20, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, (uint)Keys.Subtract);

break;

case PLAYRATEUP:

buttonHighlight = 4;

if (custPlayer)

//SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 18, 20);

SendClick(Pandora, buttonHighlight, 18, 18);

else

SendKey(Pandora, (uint)Keys.Add);

break;

Uploaded an optional update which gives each button invisible texts (playpause,nextsong,ratebad,rategood) & verified their presence in spy++.

I'm curious though, why do you want to control the client like that? If you are using SProxy, you could use the client's web interface to send the same commands ... and the client can handle play/pause media buttons, too. If you didn't want to save music, you could just disable the pandora saver in saver2's settings (last page, plugins, deselect the check next to the name).

/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/pp    play/pause
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ne    next song
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/vd7    vol down by 7%
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/vu7    vol up by 7%
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/rh    rate badly
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/rl        rate good
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ts        toggle shuffle
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/tt        toggle turbo
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ss[SID]change to station where [SID] is a valid station ID. Can't use this with unknown shared stations atm (that is, you haven't imported them).

None of these return anything of importance (a 302 found)

[bulletp2000]

Uploaded an optional update which gives each button invisible texts (playpause,nextsong,ratebad,rategood) & verified their presence in spy++.

I'm curious though, why do you want to control the client like that? If you are using SProxy, you could use the client's web interface to send the same commands ... and the client can handle play/pause media buttons, too. If you didn't want to save music, you could just disable the pandora saver in saver2's settings (last page, plugins, deselect the check next to the name).

/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/pp    play/pause
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ne    next song
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/vd7    vol down by 7%
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/vu7    vol up by 7%
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/rh    rate badly
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/rl        rate good
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ts        toggle shuffle
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/tt        toggle turbo
/pluginrpc/Pandora%20Client%20C1.3/do/ss[SID]change to station where [SID] is a valid station ID. Can't use this with unknown shared stations atm (that is, you haven't imported them).

None of these return anything of importance (a 302 found)

Thanks for the quick update. That will make my life easier.

Last year when you posted the source code to PSaver1, I hacked the source code so that the client will use PandoraHelper to automatically send ratings to Pandora.com based on a tag in my MP3 files. So I am actually using your new client with the older version of SProxy.exe. (It works - cool).

Ultimately, I should take my hacked code and make it into some sort of plug-in so that I can use it along-side your new SProxy2 app. But I haven't had the time yet . . .

As for the web client . . . I can't use the client's web interface anymore because EnumChildWindows fails to find the Pandora flash window anymore. I've played around with this and it is NOT a firefox issue. My application runs in a Virtual Machine where NOTHING has changed except for the data feed from Pandora. I think they have changed something, but I don't have any stream captures of Pandora feeds from the past when it used to work to compare side by side. I'm thinking that they have changed the PROGID of the flash application or one of its settings.

But, anyway I switched to your new client application which now gives me all of the same features that I used in the original client app.

One other note (THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT) -- has anyone else noticed that the mplayer.exe tends to "skip" quite a bit. It will play normally for a while, then it will skip like an old vinyl record for several skips and then finally will correct itself. But then the play elapsed window is incorrect and the song will end early. This is VERY noticeable if my system is doing something CPU intensive (like compiling). The old client web interface never had this problem even under system load.

Again - NOT A COMPLAINT - just an observation. People that get really nice working code for free are not allowed to complain. :)

[ZigZagJoe]

Thanks for the quick update. That will make my life easier.

Last year when you posted the source code to PSaver1, I hacked the source code so that the client will use PandoraHelper to automatically send ratings to Pandora.com based on a tag in my MP3 files. So I am actually using your new client with the older version of SProxy.exe. (It works - cool).

Ultimately, I should take my hacked code and make it into some sort of plug-in so that I can use it along-side your new SProxy2 app. But I haven't had the time yet . . .

As for the web client . . . I can't use the client's web interface anymore because EnumChildWindows fails to find the Pandora flash window anymore. I've played around with this and it is NOT a firefox issue. My application runs in a Virtual Machine where NOTHING has changed except for the data feed from Pandora. I think they have changed something, but I don't have any stream captures of Pandora feeds from the past when it used to work to compare side by side. I'm thinking that they have changed the PROGID of the flash application or one of its settings.

But, anyway I switched to your new client application which now gives me all of the same features that I used in the original client app.

One other note (THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT) -- has anyone else noticed that the mplayer.exe tends to "skip" quite a bit. It will play normally for a while, then it will skip like an old vinyl record for several skips and then finally will correct itself. But then the play elapsed window is incorrect and the song will end early. This is VERY noticeable if my system is doing something CPU intensive (like compiling). The old client web interface never had this problem even under system load.

Again - NOT A COMPLAINT - just an observation. People that get really nice working code for free are not allowed to complain. :)

I take it, by old client web interface, you mean the pandora.com flash client?

The url's I posted are for the standalone client, not the pandora.com client. Though, you can't use them unless the standalone client is being run as part of SProxy. (not pandora.exe). So, you'd end up with something like http://127.0.0.1:8888/pluginrpc/Pandora%20...nt%20C1.3/do/pp

Btw, just to clear things up, there's no relation between the pandora.com flash client and the standalone client i wrote besides the fact they are both pandora players; the standalone one is a complete reimplementation of a pandora client. No flash or anything here.

Also, it's Saver2, not SProxy2 :P Good to hear nonetheless; i don't think there have been any core functionality changes to SP for a long time, it's mostly been bugfixes and usability stuff.

Hmm, that's a bit odd; regarding mplayer stutter. Looking at it, the download+push threads and mplayer itself will always be running as above normal priority, so it's a bit odd that something is choking especially as no disk use is happening.

Maybe you are running out of RAM, and something is causing swapping? Some slop in the time elapsed is normal as the estimation isn't exact (it's based off of the file size), up to about 7 seconds normally. More than that and mplayer is probably having some sort of problem (based on the output you noted, this seems to be the case). Need to add a facility to get mplayer's output methinks.

/me shudders a bit at the thought of pandorahelper, that was one of the first (if not the first) C# apps i wrote (and later grafted into PandoraSaver and then mutilated into a Saver2 plugin). Did work, though.