WIIMC Enhancement Pack

[cadbusca]

NOTE: 8/13/2010 – This Enhancement Pack is now superceded by Enhancement Pack II but is left here for users who have not upgraded to 1.0.6 at SVN446 . See: http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=669

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In the spirit of sharing, a number of my enhancements to 1.0.5 are contained in the attached “WIIMC Enhancement Pack.patch”. I offer them as a complement to the outstanding quality and work of the authors in developing WIIMC without which these changes would not have been possible.

The following enhancements are implemented as options and must be turned on after compiling with the patch to override the standard WIIMC behaviour.

1) An Enhanced Browser Bar option to replace the standard “Up One Level” bar that shows the full directory path of the displayed files, or On-line links, along with a mode indicator V/M/P/O and a Back button (< -B) to provide full contextual awareness in all menus. 2) An option to allow the B Button to “click” OK/Left Side buttons in Messages, eliminating the need to point the WIImote at those buttons. 3) An option to lock the folders to be loaded “At Startup” time or “Never” locked or “Always” locked either “globally” as the WIIMC default or “locally” by Mode. This allows for example, Music and Pictures to revert to specific folders only “At Startup”, OnlineMedia to “Always” revert to a specific folder and Video to “Never” revert and always display the last used folder. 4) An option to disable the skip forward right button and left >> arrow icon when playing FLV videos. This will prevent MPlayer from terminating playback if they are used. (Note: Clicks on the timeline remain enabled)

5) An option to start WIIMC in the Music, Pictures or OnLineMedia mode as well as the default Video Mode.

6) An option to add a Warning Message and option to return to WIIMC prior to exiting with the “Home” button.

7) An option to disable the Update Check and eliminate the “Update is Available” nag message.

8) An option to display the onlinemedia url prior to connecting. (For information purposes only)

The following enhancements are on by default.

9) The +/- buttons provide full universal volume control across all menus. This allows control of music or on-line-media music volume without pointing and clicking the remote and control of volume while playing a slideshow. Note that while in music mode a + will also add a playlist item but a second + will remove it and a – will negate the second +. A minor inconvenience given the convenience of universal volume control without the need to point and click the WIIMote.

10) A Warning Message is displayed when selecting a video with .HD preceeding the file extension. This allows HD files which the WII cannot play to be predefined on the PC using post http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=571 and identified by WIIMC.

11) Files containing .HD preceeding the file extension will be automaticaly skipped when using the “Autoplay Next Video” option.

12) The music mode >> next playlist icon is enabled when there is a single song in the playlist. WIIMC requires 2 items in before enabling the >> next icon.

13) The forward and rewind left/right buttons and left/right < < >> arrow icons are disabled when playing on-line media videos, since these are problematic with streaming videos. (Note: Clicks on the timeline remain enabled)

14) The Error message when an onlinemedia stream is not found is eliminated. The prior Loading Message is used as a Warning Message that “WIIMC will return to menu if the stream not found”.

Other enhancements

15) The option to Disable DVD support is already included in 1.0.5 so is not included in this pack.

16) The radio and browser fixes provided in SVN 409 and 411 subsequent to the 1.0.5 release are included in this pack since they replace enhancements previously included this pack.

With these enhancements WIIMC now does what I want it to do, the way I want it. Life is great!

Some conditions on the use of these enhancements

1) Most of these enhancements have been previously provided, suggested for inclusion in WIIMC or posted in bug reports, but have not been accepted or fully implemented for various reasons. I suggest you not bother the authors by asking for them again! They are busy enough making WIIMC great! Adopting, maintaining and supporting other peoples code would only detract from that effort. They can ask themselves if they want them.

2) Do not post or request compiled versions of WIIMC containing these enhancements! That is against the forum rules. Compiling them yourself is easy using the guides published in the Development Forum stickys, and demonstrates your ability to use these enhancements without major support. If you want them, compile them and support them yourself, otherwise stick with the standard supported releases!

3) If you compile these changes, I ask that you agree to install them in a second “WIIMC Plus” application, as follows. On your PC copy and paste the “apps/wiimc” folder which will create an “apps/wiimc-copy” folder. In that folder use wordpad to edit the meta.xml fille and change WiiMC to WiiMC Plus, then replace the standard boot.dol with the compiled enhanced boot.dol. The Homebrew menu will now display both the standard “WIIMC” and the enhanced “WIIMC Plus” application, so you can easily switch between them. (PS: Changing the names to “A WIIMC” and “A WIIMC Plus” will put them at the front of the Homebrew menu.)

4)With both available to you, I ask that you agree to only report problems and bugs on the WIIMC forum that can be replicated using the standard” WiiMC” application and you agree not to report any problems encountered with the enhanced “WiiMC Plus” application that are not reproducable with the standard version. Please restrict any Enhancement Pack issues to PM’s to me.

Before You Ask

1) This Enhancement Pack is a merged patch of 18 individual patch files. I will not distribute them individually except to the development team on request due to the difficulty of merging the individual options correctly.

2) No effort has been made to include changes (if any) required to support languages other than English. I will be glad to update this pack with any changes or corrections that are PM’d to me. Please DO NOT clutter this thread with problem/correction/addition posts! PM me instead, and I will dialog with you and post any results/conclusions in this thread.

3) Most changes have been labeled with //jhb50 comments so they can be identified and searched for in the merged source.

4) The pack has been tested, and works correctly with the released 1.0.5 SVN 407. You can either accept or reject the merge conflict with the included SVN 411 changes. I can play files from local usb or smb shares or stream them using vlc-shares http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=562 without any problems. The use of the .HD enhancement has eliminated crashes caused by playing out-of-Wii-spec video files. Note that the ability to connect to Shoutcast has degraded severely between SVN400 and the 1.0.5 release. With SVN400 connection to the new Shoutcast links is 100%, with 1.0.5 out of 50 connect attempts 22 resulted in crashes and this has been reported. Note that this problem has not reoccurred and Shoutcast is working fine with the latest release.

I hope that this Pack demonstrates what can be done and encourage others to look at customizing their WIIMC experience. I have published 2 guides in Development Sticky’s that show how to implement Turtoise SVN to manage your code changes http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=497 and how to install the development environment to compile those changes http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=489. Both are very easy and the WIIMC code is so well written that it is easy to modify. I am not a programmer yet by looking at the code and how other actions were performed these changes were easy to make.

The following documents the enhancement options:

Under Options/General:
“Lock All Folders” “Never” “At Startup” “Always” “Use Local Settings”
“Expand Menu Bar” “Yes” : “No”
“B Button for OK” “On” : “Off”
“Confirm Exit” “Yes” : “No”
“Start Menu” “Video” “Music” “Pictures” “DVD” “OnLineMedia”
“Check Update” “Yes” : “No”

Under Options/Videos:
“Lock Videos Folder” “Never” “At Startup” “Always”
“Disable flv Skip” “On” : “Off”

Under Options/Music:
“Lock Music Folder” “Never” “At Startup” “Always”

Under Options/Pictures:
“Lock Pictures Folder” “Never” “At Startup” “Always”

Under Options/OnlineMedia:
“Lock OnlineMedia Folder” “Never” “At Startup” “Always”
“Display url” “Yes” : “No”

Enjoy!!

[zany130]

great job

[verms]

So how do I go about applying this? I think somewhere in reading your post, i could no longer process what to do.

[cadbusca]

An excellent question Jakob.

Please see the new Steps 6 and 7 of the “Expanded WindowsCompile Guide” on “How to Apply a Patch”. http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=489&p=2409#p2409

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