Mini Mods - vbMp3 & XEON vbMp3 Player

vbMp3 Player + XEON vbMp3 Player
See second Message for CMPS Block version for vbMp3 Player. XEON vBa CMPS install instructions are in the XEON package.

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vbMp3 Player designed by Syrus XL
http://www.digitalport.co.uk
IMPORTANT: No longer supported on here - if you require advice or support then this is only available from www.digitalport.co.uk

Requirements: Any vBulletin forum (requires no database to function)


XEON Update:
The Xeon vBmp3 player will be released soon to full vBulletin integration, this means you will able to add tracks to the 5 playlists from the AdminCP, all urls,track titles and playlists are stored in the database.

[high]Supporters:[/high]
If you would like to support my work with this modification please contact me via PM regarding donations, and I will add you to the supporters list. You will receive advanced notice of future beta releases, and also permission to beta test them.

Support: Only given to members that have clicked 'Installed'.

[high]The 'mighty' XEON vbMp3 player now available for download.[/high] Note: XEON is a beta release, replacing the 'Black Gloss' version. There are a few bugs with playlist switching, these will be 'fixed' in an update, hopefully within the next few days. This is a high-quality designed mp3 player and has many new features that the iPod 'lookalike' lacks. If you have the space, I would recommend you update to the Xeon version. The vBa CMPS XEON version is also demonstrated at this address, [high]Click HERE for Xeon vbMp3 Demo[/high], this demo is using the full vBulletin integrated beta version all populated from the vb database.

XML Editing:
To change track data, edit the XML files with Notepad or Wordpad, and enter your own urls and tracks.

XEON Facts & Features:

• 50 mp3 playlist bug fixed, can now hold upto 100 tracks(debugging test environment).
• Multiple Playlist Switching(*see important note below).
• Volume control.
• Panorama (Balance).
• Visual Effects.
• Multiple function display.
• Blue Neon 'Media' effect buttons.
• Larger font display (as requested).
• Player coding updated for future vBulletin integration.
• XEON uses approximately 100 movie clips.
• Protect from Import implemented, to prevent copyright.
• XEON comes with 5 populated example playlists.
• XEON is fully compatible to the forthcoming Pro vbMp3 Player.

XEON To do List:

• Incorporate 'float' coding, enabling the player to 'float' within the main vBulletin forum or vBa CMPS.
• Add 'float' close button to XEON flash player.
• Add Alpha background to flash player (for 'float' to work correctly)

Note: These changes will only affect the XEON mp3 player, it will still remain compatible with the Pro version vBulletin integration.

*XEON Known issues:
1. A bug on XEON means I had to currently release it only in a beta stage. The issue relates to playlist switching, this has been currently set to only 5 playlists, the bug relates to when you click to load a new playlist, you may recieve no autostart upon new playlist load. This 'issue' I am working on, and hopefully have an updated version with unlimited playlists, by deleting the 5-button bank and replacing it with forward and back buttons to skip through playlists. Please note you may experience strange behaviour if you only populate a XML playlist with less than 5 tracks.
2. A sizing problem in the vBa CMPS block requires reversed dimensions.
3. Problem with populating any playlist with over 100 tracks, will cause the player to go into an infinite loop, and become unstable. [high]This was not caught during the 1,000 'dummy' track environment test.[/high]

XEON Fixed Issues:
An issue with the popup window displaying the height and width the wrong size is now fixed.

XEON vbMp3 Player Installation:
The Xeon uses very similar installation code to the vbMp3 Player, full instructions are included in the XEON download package. This player has been tested with the forthcoming vBulletin full integration Pro Mp3 player, soon to be released. For Pro Player details see towards the end of this post.

XEON vbMp3 Player in CMPS:
This is now been added to the XEON package. Full instructions on how to change the background color to match your style is also documented.


vbMp3 Player
This mp3 player is designed as a popup for your members to listen to, while browsing your website. The actual flash mp3 player is designed to read data from mp3 ID tags, or you can enter the artist and tracks manually using the XML file included. The flash player is designed not to auto-start, so you may scroll through all available tracks. All buttons function and you can also select tracks by using the scroll controls and double-clicking a track.

2 sample tracks are already included the playlist XML file {Note: The urls in the example tracks are void, you must replace these urls with your own}.

This modification should function on any vBulletin board from version 3.0 upwards, since only a small piece of javascript is used to create the popup mp3 player window, from the navbar. However, the CMPS block version has only beem tested on vBulletin 3.6 and vBadvanced CMPS 2.2. The planned major addon version will be developed for vBulletin 3.6.1 and higher, since it will require changes to database.

Configuring of tracks is all done in the XML file, do not rename this file because the flash file will fail. Mp3?s can be uploaded to the same server as your site or an external site (just change the complete URL in the XML file). So to add tracks all you need to do is edit the plylist.xml file, and enter the urls and track data (if needed).

NOTE: Using external servers may cause the player to run slower, this can be changed by altering the soundbuffer value of the song/track, in the XML file, which will override the value in the flash file.

Streaming & Sound Buffer parameters in the XML file
There are 2 parameters they may confuse some people so heres an explanation on how they work.
Both can be set in the XML file and set per mp3 track.

Streaming:
If set to 'False' will cause the player to download an entire mp3 before playing.
If set to 'True' will play the mp3 track as soon as the 'soundbuffer' value is reached.

Sound Buffer:
This parameter controls the number of seconds before the mp3 will start to play, obviously it will only work if 'streaming' is set to 'True'.

Using other mp3 Players:
The coding used on this modification can be used with many other free or commercial based mp3 players around the internet, with slight alterations. Please note that the other full integrated version will only work with the players we release, due to the call routines used within the player.


UPDATES:
[high]06/10/06:[/high] + XEON vbMp3 Player released This is a high-quality design, all graphics are vectors, and created in Flash 8.0, all embedding code has been updated for this player. The package contains various versions of the player, and 5 example populated playlists.
[high]01/10/06:[/high] + vbPlayer 1.01 added: Player with AutoStart and Shuffle(randomize tracks) disabled. Some minimal code optimized. Requires either the vbMp3 player download or CMPS vbMp3 Player for additional files to function.
Pop up code updated to show link only to registered members.
+ Alternative vbPlayer added: (autoStart Enabled) requires main download to function. If updating from previous version, you may need to clear your browser cache, before the new version will show. Same vbMp3 player just autoStart enabled.


Click INSTALL to receive notifications of updates of this modification.

vbMp3 Player Installation:
=============
Requires uploading of 3 files and 1 template edit.

Upload the following files to your forum ?ROOT?

vbPlayer.swf
plylist.xml
ipod.htm



Template Edit:
==============
AdminCP -> Styles & Templates -> Navigation / Breadcrumb Templates -> navbar

Find:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="calendar.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[calendar]</a></td>

After add:

<!-- vbMp3 Player Start -->
<if condition="$show['member']">
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--

function OpeniPod(){
iPod = window.open('ipod.htm','iPod','directories=no,height=430,width=190,location=no,menubar=no,resizable=no,status=no,toolbar=no')

return false;
}

-->
</script>
<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="#" onclick="return OpeniPod()">vbPlayer</a></td>
</if>
<!-- vbMp3 Player End -->

End of template edits.
================

How to Enable all visitors to see vbMp3 Player
To Enable all visitors to see this link, remove the following code from the above code:

<if condition="$show['member']">

and this

</if>

Enjoy!

Known Issues:
=============
Always have more than one track in the playlist available or the flash file will fail (excludes the new Xeon player).
Place no more than 50 tracks in playlist (excludes the new Xeon player).


Future planned release details
Change name of mp3 player to vBmp3 Pro Player.

AdminCP

• Use of AdminCP to populate flash player via using the vBulletin product plugin system.
• Playlist urls and track details stored in database as opposed to the current XML file.
• Allow playlist to show thumbnails of tracks being played, if available.
• Create multiple playlists to populate flash player.
• Playlist will include stream variable and buffer enable/disable per track.
• Usergroup permissions for use. Good for lowering bandwidth consumption if hosting your own mp3's.
• Allow admin to set if player should popup or use Flash 'float' in page (requires flash button on player).
• Allow admin to set autoStart variable (effectively lowering bandwidth upon false page loads).
• Allow admin to set default variables.
• Allow admin to enable/disable tracks without deleting.
• Possibility to allow users to add tracks to a favorite list.
• Ability to color match the player to the webmasters style.
• Admin can set color 'tint' of player via RGB or hex values, default will be silver.
• Color 'tint' of buttons.

Enhanced Flash Player

• Fix player to use more than 50 tracks per playlist.
• Pre-loader for slower connections.
• Controls for volume, pan(balance), etc.
• Control to enable/disable 'shuffle' of tracks.
• Use buttons to view available playlists.
• Use image slide to view images of tracks if available.
• Incorporate equalizer.
• New player to be created wider to fit CMPS when used in center block.
• Old players will be backward compatible.

DEMO:
=====
Please note the demonstration for this modification is no longer available.

In Development:
2 new skinned players - Both of which are shown below. Both players will have more features than the present skin, and other updated files. Your input is always appreciated, to further enhance this modification.

SCREENSHOTS:
Screenshots below show both the popup and CMPS block versions (see post below for CMPS version).
The other screenshots are players in development (not yet available), enhanced to use the center column of the CMPS.

[jailer]

Happy Birthday to the little 'un chief.

Got this installed and running now. Got me two probs. First one was using CMPS with the index page not in the forum folder. Adding ipod.htm to the CMPS URL list didn't work, and changing the url path in the template to the direct path made it look for "forum/www.mydomain.com/forum/ipod.htm" ??
Anyway, fixed it by making two playlists, two swf's and two ipod.htm's - one of each in the forum folder and and one of each in the root. No biggie.
2nd prob is *some* MP3's play either slowly or too fast. I'm sure this is nothing whatsoever to do with VbPlayer, but wondered if you'd come across the prob and/or if you knew a fix.
Driving me up the wall. Each MP3 I have a prob with is fine locally, is fine when I download it from the server suing a hyperlink, BUT when played thru VbPlayer, it's speed is screwed up.
Any clues?

[syrus.xl]

Originally Posted by jailer

Happy Birthday to the little 'unchief.

Got this installed and running now. Got me two probs. First one was using CMPS with the index page not in the forum folder. Adding ipod.htm to the CMPS URL list didn't work, and changing the url path in the template to the direct path made it look for "forum/www.mydomain.com/forum/ipod.htm" ??
Anyway, fixed it by making two playlists, two swf's and two ipod.htm's - one of each in the forum folder and and one of each in the root. No biggie.
2nd prob is *some* MP3's play either slowly or too fast. I'm sure this is nothing whatsoever to do with VbPlayer, but wondered if you'd come across the prob and/or if you knew a fix.
Driving me up the wall. Each MP3 I have a prob with is fine locally, is fine when I download it from the server suing a hyperlink, BUT when played thru VbPlayer, it's speed is screwed up.
Any clues?

That would cause a problem, if the CMPS index.php was outside the main vB forum directory.

As for the speed differences on mp3's, this wouldn't be the player causing the problems, but the actual mp3 encoding. If you have varying bitrates, then the mp3's will sound like they are speeding up or slowing down. If you encode all mp3's to use a fixed bitrate of 128k then it should fix this little problem.

[jailer]

Originally Posted by syrus.xl

That would cause a problem, if the CMPS index.php was outside the main vB forum directory.

As for the speed differences on mp3's, this wouldn't be the player causing the problems, but the actual mp3 encoding. If you have varying bitrates, then the mp3's will sound like they are speeding up or slowing down. If you encode all mp3's to use a fixed bitrate of 128k then it should fix this little problem.

I guessed it might be an encoding issue.
It's a radio session converted from real to MP3 so probably allsorts of issues with it.
Thanks for that and your hard work. This is an absolute peach of a mod.

[syrus.xl]

Once I get this CMPS version done and packaged, then I'll start designing a new look mp3 player with much better features, taking into consideration other members suggestions.

Thanks for the compliment!

[lanc3lot]

Hope the download it function it will then can be implemented (i mean for specific usergroups maybe, not just for everyone (put a statement if condition for usergroup=12 for example)

[syrus.xl]

Originally Posted by lanc3lot

Hope the download it function it will then can be implemented (i mean for specific usergroups maybe, not just for everyone (put a statement if condition for usergroup=12 for example)

Do you mean, to download the actual mp3 playing at the time having a download link?

[jailer]

Originally Posted by syrus.xl

Once I get this CMPS version done and packaged, then I'll start designing a new look mp3 player with much better features, taking into consideration other members suggestions.

Thanks for the compliment!

Sounds great.
Wanted to say I've resolved the speed issue by recoding with Lame (as I usually do.. lol ) rather than the poor app/codec I was using previously.
All sorted now, and this is the perfect addition to a music related forum.
I look forward to the updates!

[lanc3lot]

Originally Posted by syrus.xl

Do you mean, to download the actual mp3 playing at the time having a download link?

Yes, i mean in the flash player u will make, when i song is selected, to have a download link for the actual mp3, but for a specific usergroup. So they can download the mp3 if they want it . Also, maybe display the size of the file somehow? So ppl in slow connections, know what they will encounter?

Anyway, suggestions

[syrus.xl]

Originally Posted by lanc3lot

Yes, i mean in the flash player u will make, when i song is selected, to have a download link for the actual mp3, but for a specific usergroup. So they can download the mp3 if they want it . Also, maybe display the size of the file somehow? So ppl in slow connections, know what they will encounter?

Anyway, suggestions

It could be incorporated, but then there is the matter of copyright infringement. I maybe wrong on this (so don't quote me), but I am under the impression that it's legal to listen to mp3's on the internet, but not to download them, unless you have an original copy. But to me this contradicts itself, because any form of streaming whether it be mp3's or video, can be accessed via your browsers cache anyway.:surprised:

This law does vary considerably from country to country. This is why certain P2P websites carrying torrents, can get away with it.

The actual idea of this modification was just to allow mp3's to be streamed through the player, not actually download them as well. I don't think I've ever seen a mp3 player with download capabilities.

[elricstorm]

I am using the latest CMPS and am having issues as well. I tried following what some people were saying but I just want to see what I can do to get this to work. Here's my setup:

Followed all instructions on installation - nothing happens or works on main page or forums.

My paths are as follows:

root\forum\(files are here)
root\cmps_index.php

So, my cmps index is out of the forum directory.

Also, with CMPS I created a special "forum" page so that the portal can wrap around it. This is my existing setup now.

Is there something special that I need to do to get this to work with my CMPS or with my forum?

Thanks in advance.