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Spotify Plugin Released! Now with less bugs!

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VasTex
Posts: 407
Joined: September 20th, 2012, 3:17 pm
Location: USA - Montana

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by VasTex »

I'm aware of being able to refresh the skin, but in my mind that is not a 'fix'. That's a workaround for something that should be able to resolve itself. For example, if your computer freezes we could use your method and simply 'restart' the system. That's a clean a effective fix, yes, but who wants to restart their system every time it runs into an issue? I would rather have the system resolve the issue on its own.

That being said, I'm aware of update mechanics and how grabbing info works, but my skin is set up in such a way that it handles its own updates and refreshes, when needed, automatically. It knows when new artwork should be grabbed and goes to get it. I'm not speaking about the fact that my skin is not updating, but the file gathered from the plugin never changes. Refreshing the skin, unloading and reloading the skin or using a different skin altogether or anything short of restarting Rainmeter refuses to fix the issue. The plugin never grabs new artwork until Rainmeter is restarted when this issue occurs. Thankfully it doesn't occur often.

As for the lag. This issue is persistent for me regardless of my internet connection. Connected or not the lag stays until the skin is unloaded. My internet speeds are also very high and stable. (30mbs with a steady ping to google of roughly 10ms).

When it comes to pausing the player and leaving it for a while I have had no issues there.

Currently my skin is set up to check for the following:
-Is Spotify Running?
-Is the song progress above 0%?
-Is there a commercial playing?
-Is the song playing or paused or stopped?
-Has the song changed?

There should be no issues with my skin currently. I have a feeling a majority of your issues lay with your skin and not the plugin. Regardless I could be wrong and I feel it would be appropriate to look into your issues as well.

I have yet to run into the issue of a memory leak with Spotify though.
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borsTiHD
Posts: 7
Joined: June 27th, 2014, 8:09 am

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by borsTiHD »

Hi again,

I will search for your skin and use this as a reference.
Many thanks you all and sorry for interrupting.

greetings :welcome:
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.raptor
Posts: 220
Joined: April 3rd, 2013, 11:03 pm
Location: Norway

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by .raptor »

Thanks for the feedback guys! I really appreciate it :thumbup:

Issue 1: Could be caused by the method I use to not get a new image each time. I will look into it, but leave it as is for now.

Issue 2: Well, that's because I feel like I am wasting space if i unpack an image from the dll. If you download the default.jpg in the first post, and put it in that folder, everything should work alright.

Issue 3: This issue on the other hand concerns me quite a lot. Quite easy to reproduce aswell, since setting update rate to 100 and moving a skin around lags a lot. The fix is quite simple when i plan it, but i expect this will be quite a lot of code to fix. Read: Fix planned, just don't hold your breath.

Suggestion 1: Well, i would only have to remove the rounding off in my code, so why not?

Suggestion 2: In some way i think this will create more issues then it would fix (for example several skins storing a copy each). I will look into this as anyway tho, just don't expect a change on this before the other issues are gone.

LeVvE: (The other guy in the pc-always-on club)
The issue with the plugin losing connection to spotify when being idle happens here as well. I guess it should be possible to fix. (The plugin should be able to restart itself)

As for the memory leak, this is the biggest issue at the moment. I'm perfectly aware that this plugin is the cause, but i cant help but feel like its not my fault :p
The plugin pretty much just mimics the same behavior as the spotify embedding. I have no doubt that the issue is on Spotify's end, but i will still see if there are steps I can take to make it better

borsTiHD:
No worries mate, just ask if you have any more problems.
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VasTex
Posts: 407
Joined: September 20th, 2012, 3:17 pm
Location: USA - Montana

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by VasTex »

Good to hear fixes will be on the way eventually. I'm most excited about the percentage used in the progress option.

As for Suggestion 2, I don't see an issue with each skin having it's own copy of the image. Who's going to be running 5 or more different skins using your plugin at the same time anyway?

I feel like storing it in the calling .ini's config would be the best solution. For example, if my folder path looked like:

C:\Users\...\Documents\Skins\My Suite\Spotify Player\Player.ini

I see no reason why storing the image right alongside the .ini would cause problems. I understand not wanting to bloat someone's file system with duplicate images, but again, who's going to running enough Spotify Players utilizing your plugin to make that much of an issue? The images are small in size anyway.

Regardless at the end of the day it's your decision, but I do agree, work out the major issues first and deal with the details later.

I'm still not seeing the memory leak issue you two are, but I'll run Spotify and my skin over night and see what I get.

Thanks again for keeping up with all the attention your plugins been getting!
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.raptor
Posts: 220
Joined: April 3rd, 2013, 11:03 pm
Location: Norway

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by .raptor »

As a thanks for all the help and feedback, i made this version for you while i work out the bigger issues ;-)
Last edited by .raptor on January 23rd, 2015, 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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exper1mental
Posts: 269
Joined: January 9th, 2013, 7:52 pm
Location: Clemson University

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by exper1mental »

.raptor wrote:Progress
Returns current track progress(between 0 and 1)
Your documentation here is incorrect. Rather, Progress is the percentage of how far through the song you are. The values it returns are between 0 and 100 not 0 and 1.

Also, using this plugin causes rainmeter to lag/stop responding when refreshing/loading the skin that is using it (with a noticeable increase in CPU usage too). In addition, it literally seems to slow down the update rate of the skin using it, causing choppy animations and stuff.


Here is a .rmskin (does not include plugin) showing the problem (FYI I am using the 64-bit plugin):
iTunes Mini 4 Spotify.rmskin
The two skins to use to compare and see the problem are MiniPlayerShadowSpotify.ini (automatically loaded when the skin is installed) and MiniPlayerShadow.ini. The ONLY different between these two skins is the integration of your SpotifyPlugin.dll.
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.raptor
Posts: 220
Joined: April 3rd, 2013, 11:03 pm
Location: Norway

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by .raptor »

exper1mental wrote: Your documentation here is incorrect. Rather, Progress is the percentage of how far through the song you are. The values it returns are between 0 and 100 not 0 and 1.

Also, using this plugin causes rainmeter to lag/stop responding when refreshing/loading the skin that is using it (with a noticeable increase in CPU usage too). In addition, it literally seems to slow down the update rate of the skin using it, causing choppy animations and stuff.


Here is a .rmskin (does not include plugin) showing the problem (FYI I am using the 64-bit plugin):
iTunes Mini 4 Spotify.rmskin
The two skins to use to compare and see the problem are MiniPlayerShadowSpotify.ini (automatically loaded when the skin is installed) and MiniPlayerShadow.ini. The ONLY different between these two skins is the integration of your SpotifyPlugin.dll.
The lag issue is being worked on as we speak, as you would have known if you read the last 3 posts in this thread.

About the progress, i have no issue with it here. The documentation is not incorrect, its just incomplete. Unless you specify that you want the result as a string, it does give a result between 0 and 1. (Kinda why the bar still works)
If you do specify that you want it as a string it gives back the percentage 0 - 100.
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VasTex
Posts: 407
Joined: September 20th, 2012, 3:17 pm
Location: USA - Montana

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by VasTex »

Yes, the issues you've listed have been discussed at this point already, but Raptor is correct in his documentation of the Type=Progress values in his plugin. When gathered in the format MeasureName=MeasureProgress (For example, when used in a Bar meter) it returns the correct percentage between 0 and 1. However, when requesting the percentage as a string value (For example, Calc=[MeasureProgress]) it is returned as a percentage from 0 to 100. I personally see no issue with this as that is what I would have expected although it being an undocumented change in value was confusing at first, but nothing I couldn't remedy myself.

As Raptor stated, the lag issue has been noted on several of the previous posts.

---

As for myself I'm just posting here again to confirm what we discussed earlier in terms of the Memory Leak issue. It's definitely related to the plugin sadly as the memory usage of Spotify increases on every update of the skin (plugin) by roughly 0.01mb to 0.03mb per update. This memory leak stops the moment the skin is unloaded from Rainmeter, but the memory usage of Spotify does not return to normal until it's been restarted. Perhaps this has something to do with the information being grabbed and not disposed of or re-used properly? I'm really not sure how either your plugin or Spotify handles memory consumption, but you can definitely see the increase when the plugin is running as opposed to not running. Maybe it's a cache issue? I honestly have no idea.
:confused:
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.raptor
Posts: 220
Joined: April 3rd, 2013, 11:03 pm
Location: Norway

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by .raptor »

VasTex wrote:Yes, the issues you've listed have been discussed at this point already, but Raptor is correct in his documentation of the Type=Progress values in his plugin. When gathered in the format MeasureName=MeasureProgress (For example, when used in a Bar meter) it returns the correct percentage between 0 and 1. However, when requesting the percentage as a string value (For example, Calc=[MeasureProgress]) it is returned as a percentage from 0 to 100. I personally see no issue with this as that is what I would have expected although it being an undocumented change in value was confusing at first, but nothing I couldn't remedy myself.

As Raptor stated, the lag issue has been noted on several of the previous posts.

---

As for myself I'm just posting here again to confirm what we discussed earlier in terms of the Memory Leak issue. It's definitely related to the plugin sadly as the memory usage of Spotify increases on every update of the skin (plugin) by roughly 0.01mb to 0.03mb per update. This memory leak stops the moment the skin is unloaded from Rainmeter, but the memory usage of Spotify does not return to normal until it's been restarted. Perhaps this has something to do with the information being grabbed and not disposed of or re-used properly? I'm really not sure how either your plugin or Spotify handles memory consumption, but you can definitely see the increase when the plugin is running as opposed to not running. Maybe it's a cache issue? I honestly have no idea.
:confused:
Yeah, I'm having serious trouble with trying to fix the memory issue. I wish i could ask the Spotify developers about this, but the method i use is not exactly documented...
Might have stumbled across another method of doing it, so seems like i just have to keep researching :?
Entry_Plug
Posts: 2
Joined: July 3rd, 2014, 7:59 am

Re: Spotify Plugin Released!

Post by Entry_Plug »

Hi all..

First of all.. thank you so so so so much for this plugin. I dreamed for so long !

Can you tell me how to add this plugin for this awesome music player ? http://whimsy3sh.deviantart.com/art/Evolution-Music-Player-1-2-371577439

I tried but i failed :/