Occasional glitch with theme switching (Winamp status)

Post by **mattcro** » March 30th, 2006, 9:25 pm

A possible theme-switching bug...

I'm using themes and actions to display general system info if Winamp is not playing, and a Winamp screen if Winamp is playing, like so:

if $WinampStat = "playing" then GotoTheme(2)
if $WinampStat <> "playing" then GotoTheme(1)

Theme 1 has two screens showing sys info. One is shown only if MBM is running (has temp/fan info) and the other is shown if MBM is NOT running (shows other non-MBM info).

Theme 2 has a single screen showing Winamp status (except if Winamp is NOT running).

The problem is that the display often reverts to theme 1 (sys info) when I skip tracks in Winamp (while still playing). On these occasions (varies, generally every 5th-10th skip), LCDSmartie never returns to theme 2 (Winamp status) even though Winamp is playing. I have to stop or pause then play to get the theme to switch to Winamp. There are no other actions and no other other screens enabled.

I guess that the Winamp status might briefly change to "stopped" between tracks, but I tried setting a single (fixed) screen to show $WinampStat and it showed "playing" constantly while skipping tracks (while playing).

Running Smartie 5.3

Anyone else noticed this behaviour?

Matt.

Post by **limbo** » March 30th, 2006, 9:47 pm

Look Matt,
I believe that winamp changing the status to a NON playing state in this case (you're right).

I didn't noticed about it till now, I 'll make some tests ASAP.

Post by **mattcro** » March 31st, 2006, 11:14 am

I wouldn't be surprised if Winamp briefly changes the state to "stopped" between tracks, causing the theme to switch. The problem is that Smartie doesn't switch back to the Winamp theme - it seems to get stuck in the non-Winamp theme until I manually stop or pause. It doesn't seem to switch back into the Winamp theme if I continue skipping tracks.

Could it be that Smartie only responds to a change in the Winamp state (and maybe missing a rapid change), rather than repeatedly checking the Action conditions and simply responding to the current state?

By the way, I have my refresh interval and scroll interval set to 250ms, and DLL check interval set to 120ms. The theme switch still seems to occur with lower values (eg 20ms DLL check).

jonny · Post by **jonny** » March 31st, 2006, 2:48 pm

sorry for the stupid question, but why are you using actions to display the winamp screens? I use the "Skip this screen if:" drop down list in the screen configuration section. This works perfectly for me...

Post by **limbo** » March 31st, 2006, 4:39 pm

jonny wrote:sorry for the stupid question, but why are you using actions to display the winamp screens? I use the "Skip this screen if:" drop down list in the screen configuration section. This works perfectly for me...

@ Jonny
skip screen depends on the active status of winamp not the real "playing" status, which means that you will see the screen while the winamp is paused.
in addition the themes cannot switched through this detection!

@ mattcro
A simple workaround on this is to use the warnif plug on the actions window

Post by **mattcro** » July 16th, 2006, 9:57 pm

OK, I've been doing a bit more testing after upgrading to 5.4b3 and having the same behaviour as before when I was using 5.3.2. Winamp is version 5.12.

I added a second screen to theme 2 so that theme 2 (see start of thread) now has a Winamp info screen set to show only if Winamp is active, plus a screen that only displays if Winamp is inactive (it just shows "Winamp inactive").

Starting playback in Winamp correctly switches to theme 2, showing the Winamp info screen. Skipping forward and back through the playlist mostly shows the Winamp screen correctly, but occasionally the second screen (of theme 2) will display, then quickly (after the time-to-show of 1 second) revert to the Winamp info screen.

It appears that the Winamp "active" state changes briefly during track changes. How is the active/inactive state determined? Check if the winamp.exe process is running? Or is it simply if Winamp is actually playing or paused? I notice that $Winampstat returns "stopped" even if Winamp is not open.

I suppose that Smartie skips to the next theme if there are no screens to display in the current theme (either none set to the theme number, or they are disabled, or prevented from displaying because the "skip screen if" condition is true)? That would explain why my previous setup was reverting to the theme 1 screens occasionally during Winamp playback when it's supposed to be in theme 2.

I tried changing the actions so that the theme is manually switched (by a button), and the "Winamp active" glitch does not seem to happen if Winamp is stopped (but open) and I skip tracks back and forward.

I will try to experiment with this a bit more over the next few days...