Media Player Skin Stopped Working

[Itadaki]

Hello everyone, I'm currently new to rainmeter. So I followed a youtube video half a day or so, edited the fonts on the media player skin and it worked perfectly. Now when I woke up I only changed the position of nexus docks and rainmeter, then the music player skin stopped working properly. I reverted the position, restarted pc, restarted rainmeter, reinstalled the skin/theme, and nothing works. Even tried other music players, they don't work either which puzzled me more.

I'm currently running on an i3 12100, rtx 3060 ti, 16gb ddr4 3200mhz, WIN10 and my WMP is version 12.0.19041.1266 (i searched for the exe and right click properties) also I use 2 monitor/screens, main one is 144hz, other one is 75hz iirc and both are 1080p resolution. The nexus docks, is just the default one and only changed the icons which were taken from deviantart.

Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H_R_mcVBMI
Before https://i.imgur.com/3tdfe2P.jpeg
After https://i.imgur.com/FdEX3Qp.jpg

Been trying to resolve it over an hour, I fail to believe that a simple positioning of the skin/widget would brick it. Please help hahaha at this point I am the crying samurai doge.

Original music player

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
AccurateText=1

[Metadata]
Name=Music Player
Author=Epic Network
Version=1.0
License=Creative Commons Attribution - Non - Commercial - Share Alike 3.0

[Variables]
Scale=0.5
_____________________________________________________

[MeasureArtist]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=NowPlaying.dll
PlayerName=WMP
PlayerType=ARTIST

[MeasureTitle]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=NowPlaying.dll
PlayerName=WMP
PlayerType=TITLE
______________________________________________________

[MeterText]
Meter=String
StringAlign=Center
StringCase=Upper
FontFace=Metropolis Medium
FontColor=255,255,255,255
FontSize=(22*#Scale#)
X=(500*#Scale#)
Y=(0*#Scale#)
Text="#Now you're listening#"
InlineSetting=CharacterSpacing | (3*#Scale#) | (3*#Scale#)
AntiAlias=1
UpdateDivider=-1
______________________________________________________

[MeterLine]
Meter=Shape
X=(250*#Scale#)
Y=(10*#Scale#)R
Shape=Rectangle 0,0,(500*#Scale#),(2*#Scale#) | Fill Color 255,255,255,255| StrokeWidth 0 | Stroke Color #Color1#,0
UpdateDivider=-1
______________________________________________________


[MeterArtist]
Meter=String
MeasureName=MeasureArtist
MeasureName2=MeasureTitle
StringAlign=Center
FontFace=Metropolis Medium
FontColor=255,255,255,255
FontSize=(22*#Scale#)
X=(500*#Scale#)
Y=(5*#Scale#)R
W=(950*#Scale#)
Text="%1•%2"
InlinePattern="[MeasureTitle]"
InlineSetting=Color | 255,235,195,255
InlineSetting2=CharacterSpacing | (3*#Scale#) | (3*#Scale#)
InlineSetting3=Case | Upper
AntiAlias=1
ClipString=1
DynamicVariables=1

Edited music player

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
AccurateText=1

[Metadata]
Name=Music Player
Author=Epic Network
Version=1.0
License=Creative Commons Attribution - Non - Commercial - Share Alike 3.0

[Variables]
Scale=0.5
_____________________________________________________

[MeasureArtist]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=NowPlaying.dll
PlayerName=WMP
PlayerType=ARTIST

[MeasureTitle]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=NowPlaying.dll
PlayerName=WMP
PlayerType=TITLE
______________________________________________________

[MeterText]
Meter=String
StringAlign=Center
StringCase=Upper
FontFace=Metropolis Medium
FontColor=255,255,255,255
FontSize=(22*#Scale#)
X=(500*#Scale#)
Y=(0*#Scale#)
Text="You're Now Listening To"
InlineSetting=CharacterSpacing | (3*#Scale#) | (3*#Scale#)
AntiAlias=1
UpdateDivider=-1
______________________________________________________

[MeterLine]
Meter=Shape
X=(250*#Scale#)
Y=(10*#Scale#)R
Shape=Rectangle 0,0,(500*#Scale#),(2*#Scale#) | Fill Color 255,255,255,255| StrokeWidth 0 | Stroke Color #Color1#,0
UpdateDivider=-1
______________________________________________________


[MeterArtist]
Meter=String
MeasureName=MeasureArtist
MeasureName2=MeasureTitle
StringAlign=Center
FontFace=Metropolis Medium
FontColor=255,255,255,255
FontSize=(22*#Scale#)
X=(500*#Scale#)
Y=(10*#Scale#)R
W=(950*#Scale#)
Text="%1 %2"
InlinePattern="[MeasureTitle]"
InlineSetting=Color | 255,235,255,255
InlineSetting2=CharacterSpacing | (3*#Scale#) | (3*#Scale#)
InlineSetting3=Case | Upper
AntiAlias=1
ClipString=1
DynamicVariables=1

[Yincognito]

Didn't test it yet, but the changed code looks fine, it shouldn't cause any issues whatsoever. I would go for something else in your system as the culprit. By the way, did you test the modified code with the exact same audio file in WMP?

[Itadaki]

Yes tried it with same audio file and several others, I've only modified the code to change some font settings (which shouldn't brick it) then played WMP for a couple of hours with no issues. Went to bed, woke up and just changed some positioning of nexus docks and rainmeter (after repositioning, I unchecked the draggable option in rainmeter so as to not accidentally move it). Booted up WMP to play my music playlist and it stopped working.

The rest of the story you know, however I failed to mention that I also have roundedtb and translucenttb installed if that helps. As you have said, that it might be due to an underlying circumstance in my system, I have been currently trying to remember every trivial click I have done, to hopefully backtrack my actions and reverse it if possible.

[Yincognito]

Yes tried it with same audio file and several others, I've only modified the code to change some font settings (which shouldn't brick it) then played WMP for a couple of hours with no issues. Went to bed, woke up and just changed some positioning of nexus docks and rainmeter (after repositioning, I unchecked the draggable option in rainmeter so as to not accidentally move it). Booted up WMP to play my music playlist and it stopped working.

The rest of the story you know, however I failed to mention that I also have roundedtb and translucenttb installed if that helps. As you have said, that it might be due to an underlying circumstance in my system, I have been currently trying to remember every trivial click I have done, to hopefully backtrack my actions and reverse it if possible.

Actually, after testing out the code, it happens for me too (roughly the same WMP version, Win10 as well). Even more so, it doesn't happen just for the skin you posted, but for the Player skin in my suite... and for the Soita skin downloaded from DeviantArt via the manual:

NowPlaying WMP - Not Working.jpg

The interesting thing is that:
- your skin started by not working with WMP
- added my skin and Soita to the test and they continued not to work
- changed the testing track which again didn't work although I compared the MP3 tags and they were fine
- did some testing with Winamp which - just like in your case - broke too and did NOT work either!!!
- did some minor editing and some Rainmeter / Winamp restarts which made Winamp work
- switched to WMP and this time all skins, including yours worked (couldn't replicate this desired behavior again)
- just when preparing to post here the experience, tried again with WMP and it broke off
- took less time to fix working with Winamp this time

NowPlaying Winamp - Working.jpg

So, you can relax, your code is just fine. This is either a bug in WMP, Rainmeter or NowPlaying. The bad thing about it is that it's inconsistent in behavior and probably difficult to debug (not sure about replicating, maybe other folks can chime in and share their experience when testing). You should post a bug report in the appropriate section of this forum about it.

[Itadaki]

Thanks for confirming that I am not crazy and alone in this for now I will observe this said unusual behavior and see what triggers it.

[Yincognito]

Thanks for confirming that I am not crazy and alone in this for now I will observe this said unusual behavior and see what triggers it.

You're definitely not, that's for sure. Just read your reply on my phone and thought about trying again (I didn't restart Windows, Rainmeter or do anything special on my laptop since the last time I posted here, but ran WMP first and started with the skins prepared for WMP), and lo and behold, WMP worked in all tested skins (your edited code, the skin from my suite, and Soita):

NowPlaying WMP - Working (2023-08-25 19-37).jpg

Two minutes later after saving the earlier screenshot for proof, this time I intentionally exited Rainmeter from the system tray and ran it again (same skins loaded as above, zero changes), and as expected, no skin above worked with WMP anymore:

NowPlaying WMP - Not Working (2023-08-25 19-39).jpg

So, it's going to be tricky to debug, since you have no idea when it will work or not...

On the positive side, didn't need to do anything special to make the skin from my suite work with Winamp again, it succeeded right away, unlike the last time when it broke Winamp + NowPlaying as well just like it happened to you earlier in the day.