Textualizer

[Brian]

Textualizer_1.0.rmskin

This uses the new Inline Options of the String meter to create an audio visualizer embedded inside some text (made up of the track title and artist).

Settings are located in '@Resources\Includes\Variables.inc'.
Displays up to 50 characters (including spaces).
Colors are based on your desktop background colors using the Chameleon plugin.

See it in action: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpqtgzwihroam1l/Textualizer.gif?raw=1

Note: Since you cannot dynamically change the amount of 'bands' used with the AudioLevel plugin, this skin dynamically sets it by refreshing the skin when the track changes. It uses Lua to get amount of bands needed (up to 50), then refreshes the skin to get the right amount of bands based on the number of characters to be displayed.

-Brian

[dgrace]

That's pretty cool! It makes me wonder if there's a way to pre-render a string and use it as a mask, rather than doing individual color gradients on each letter.



dave

[jsmorley]

Wow! That's some clever work there Brian.

[Kolton]

I'm trying to get it to work. I'm new to Rainmeter. I don't know if this skin is obsolete because of an update or I am doing something wrong.

Let me know.

(Changed "Player=WinAmp" to "PlayerName=Spotify" because that's what I use.)

[Brian]

This skin uses the NowPlaying plugin, which does not fully support Spotify (although it should work since Artist and Title are the PlayerType's this skin uses).
https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/plugins/nowplaying/#playerlist

Also, the AudioLevel plugin does require Windows 7 and above (just pointing this out since you didn't specify an OS).

Lastly, this skin does require the track to change before it gets working right, so you may have skip to the next track for it recognize a "change in track" has been made. This happens because AudioLevel needs to know how many bands it needs during startup of the skin. In order to get that value, the skin runs a Lua script that determines the number of bands, then refreshes the skin using the correct bands value for AudioLevel. So the first time you load this skin, the song may need to change before the skin reacts.


Are there any error messages in your log?

If so, I would suspect the NowPlaying plugin may be failing due lack of support for the PlayerType=Position option on the [Player] measure. If this is the error, you could try PlayerType=Artist or something that is supported. The Player measure is located in Audio.inc at the bottom.

-Brian

[Kolton]

So, I got the text to display (using WMP) when the music plays. But, there's another issue, the equalizer doesn't go with the music, and the text flashes (like every 1 second it refreshes). According to the log, there's a skin refresh every second or so.

[Socks the Fox]

Looks neat! You might also consider an option that samples colors from the album art too :3

[Brian]

So, I got the text to display (using WMP) when the music plays. But, there's another issue, the equalizer doesn't go with the music, and the text flashes (like every 1 second it refreshes). According to the log, there's a skin refresh every second or so.

The skin should only refresh when the track and/or artist changes. You can check that in the About dialog under the Skins tab. If the [Track] and/or [Artist] changes, the skin will refresh. So if your skipping a track every second or so, then the skin will refresh just as often. Otherwise, the skin refreshes should only happen when the song is over and next one begins. If the skin keeps refreshing during the same song, I might try a different player. I mainly use Winamp (I know, its old, but don't have any problems with it).

Just as a reminder, this skin can be CPU intensive and as a side effect, some operations can be skipped in order for Rainmeter to 'catch up'. While most systems should be able to handle this skin, some won't. To adjust some of the Audio settings, open up the Variables.inc file and adjust some of the AudioLevel settings, as well as the Update and divider settings. All of these can be tweaked to make the skin(s) to run more smoothly on different systems. Try setting a smaller FFTSize, FFTOverlap, and NowPlayingDivider. Even a smaller Update value should speed things up a bit.

Beyond that, I am not sure what else can be done.

-Brian