I had the same problem. I installed winamp 554 and shpeck stopped working. I reverted back to the 5531 I still had and everything's fine again.

MilkDrop 2.0e uses some additional Winamp functions, which are not supported by Shpeck v0.2.4, obviously. While this fix is trivial, I made some other fundamental changes to the current codebase and didn't manage to finish the release last weekend as I wanted, sorry. The new version "should" be available "soon".

Last three times I checked, the server was fine and people had routing problems along the way. Try this cached mirror.

Visualisation data are always gathered just before playback and that is not changeable. Most people probably want to see what they hear.
I never thought about this to be an issue (maybe because I never saw the output without RG applied), but I'll see if I can also imagine things and maybe address this sometime.

I don't know if I'm blind or somehing but...where are the configuration options???

In foobar preferences I don't see anything. I go to visualizations and it says "select a subpage" but I don't see any.

I've tried right clicking inside a shpeck panel but it doesn't give a configuration option. and the little buttons at the top of the panel don't do anything either

this must be really obvious...

I'm using v.0.9.5.4 with columns ui 0.3 beta 2

If the component loads fine and you can even add the panel to the layout, but there is no preferences page, something must be really broken. I don't know what could it be, though, sorry.

---

New beta version of Shpeck is available here.
Changes:

• Improved Winamp emulation (MilkDrop 2.0e compatibility).
• Panels have per-instance settings - global embedded window preferences apply to "stand-alone embedded windows only", titlebar configuration is available in context menu under "Appearance...", plugins are indexed by basename instead of full path. (This all essentially means you have to redo most of your settings.)
• Panels have option to "Stop When Hidden", which obviously automatically stops the plugin when it's not visible. Can be used together with "Autostart Plugin" to run virtually more plugins at once (e.g. in tabs), as long as only one Shpeck window is really visible at any time.
• Starting a plugin using the menu commands runs it in the first found visible panel with "Autostart Plugin" set to "[one / any]", or in a stand-alone window if none is found.

That should be it, play with it and be sure to report all the weird behavior, resource leaks and how you liked the 0.1.3 version more.

Yay! Seems to work fine--thanks!

I don't get feelings of superiority for finding the previous compatible version of milkdrop like I did with 0.1.3...regression?

I downloaded the last version and the config page now appears. I don't know if you fixed anything or it somehow fixed itself, but I'm a happy guy now

great plugin, thanks a lot

Thanks for this brilliant plugin!
Milkdrop 2.0e works like a charm with that latest beta dll.

Some feedback:
When I was trying to get it to work with the 0.2.4 dll I had to install the visual c++ as mentioned in the first post in order to get foobar to load the dll.
After I got it to work with the beta dll I cleaned up by uninstalling winamp (moved the appropriate files to the foobar folder) and the c++ I installed and it's still working perfectly!
I don't know if it's because of the new dll or something else, but I tought it was worth reporting.

Thanks, it also worked for me!

Is this plugin still maintained? I cannot get it to detect any plugin besides AVS.

- Windows Vista x64
- tried both shpeck 0.2.4 and 0.3.0 beta1
- Winamp 5.54/Foobar 0.9.5.5, default install

I only want to use Milkdrop. In WinAMP, it works (2.0e).

Any suggestions?

No. Unfortunately, this plugin is not maintained at the moment, please try again later.

However, I found the following in the FAQ, README and Wiki page:Have you tried that?

popup window

hi, i am using this plugin to run milkdrop 2 and it is great. but somehow milkdrop 1 does not work. i guess this is fine. just one quick question. sometimes when i run milkdrop 2 or AVS, it comes on the plugin panel, but often the visualization comes out in a separate popup window. i have looked into setup or config, but could not find how to make the visualization stick to the plugin panel or in a separate popup. is there anything i am missing? thanks in advance.

ftc

The way it's supposed to work is to use a panel always when it's available. If not for whatever reason, the plugin will run in an external popup window.
Does that happen with no apparent regularity or when you are doing some particular action, like when switching between MilkDrop2 and AVS?

(And I guess you are using the latest beta version, right?)

Thanks a lot for your immediate reply, Yirha.

You are right, I am using the beta version.
Now it works fine on the panel. I don't know why exactly, but I have played around with it more after reading your reply. All I changed is to check Stop when hidden and [none/any] from Autostart Plugin. I am not sure what none/any means. Before I checked Milkdrop 2 from Autostart Plugin.

By the way, if I put Milkdrop 1 in it. It does not work and as soon as I tried to click to switch to another panel, there is an error message about running out of video memory and foobar2000 freezes. And there are other winamp vis plugins that do not work. This is just for your reference and it does not really matter to me at all since I have Milkdrop 2 working.

I would like to express my great appreciation to you for writing this component since I love foobar2000 and the only reason sometimes I do not use it is that it has no visualization. Now I can stick to foobar2000 all the time.

ftc

When "Stop when hidden" is checked, the plugin is stopped and unloaded when its window is "hidden", then ran again when it's "visible" again. For instance, no resources are taken when foobar2000 is silently minimized in the notification area this way.
It can be also used to circumvent the limitation of only one visualisation active at once - when two instances of Shpeck are added to different tabs in the layout, both with enabled "Stop when hidden", it looks almost as if there were really two individual plugins running together.

Or at least it's supposed to work so... The whole panel embedding code is still a bit shaky and it will need some more tweaking to work fully reliably. It's probably the cause of your miserable MilkDrop 1 experience as well.

As for "other Winamp plugins" not working - they are originally made for Winamp and historically and as such, they often depend on either some peculiar feature or even quirks and hacks to work. Although knowing which plugin specifically doesn't work could help me improve the component (and it happened in the past, e.g. with vis_classic), I can't say it will always be possible to make it work.

Yirkha:

I think the "Stop when hidden" feature is great. It enables me to let the visualization always running and when I select other panels, it will automatically be stopped so to save resources (CPU). The specific visual plugin I have in mind is called Punkie_172. It can be downloaded from winamp's website. But that is not important as Milkdrop is providing almost all I need. And when I start Punkie_172, there is an error message about not finding some header information.

I agree with you about the shakiness of the panel thing. I just ran foobar and the visual went to a popup window. Then I quit foobar and restarted it. The visual stayed on the panel without my changing anything.

Another problem is probably not due to your component, but rather Milkdrop. When I press F2 to display title, it can display title in English fine. But when the song is in another language, for example, Chinese, the title does not display.

Also when an where are the title formatting string in "Current track" and "Playlist entries" displayed?

Here is a feature suggestion. Is it possible to make visualization into the background of a Panel Stack Splitter? I have in my mind the possibility of making visualization the background of my Lyrics Show Panel.
Currently Lyrics Show Panel is able to display lyrics in a transparent mode and I am using a Panel Stack Panel with a static picture as its background.

Thanks a lot.

ftc

Thanks about the tips - Punkie_172, non-latin titles - I'll look into this as well, sometime.

"Current track" is what you see for instance in MilkDrop on song changes and when you press T or F2. Additionally, plugins as well as various other applications use this to get the title of "now playing" song, and AFAIK they generally expect it in the "Artist - Title" format, so you probably shouldn't change this unless you need to perform some additional magic to get proper artist or title data from your tags.
"Playlist entries" format is used for playlist entries, surprisingly - press P in MilkDrop.

I'm sorry, I don't know much about Panel Stack Splitter nor how it works because of my elitist prejudices. However, there was a similar request some time ago about the same thing - using Shpeck as a background - in Panels UI. I think it wouldn't work at all or without ugly flicker, because plugins like MilkDrop draw their contents directly from an off-screen DirectX/OpenGL surface and nothing external can be reliably drawn on them. Or something like that.

Thanks a lot for your quick response, Yirkha.

ftc

Yirkha:

I forgot to mention that the non-latin title works for track changing. But if I press F2 (supposed to bring up the title etc.), it does not work and nothing comes out.

ftc

Anyone else experiencing problems with foo_vis_shpeck and the latest Nvidia drivers, version 178.13? After installing them, I get the error "Unable to create a DirectX device." Any ideas? By the way, I'm using a GeForce 8600GT and Windows XP.

Shpeck does not access DirectX or OpenGL graphics libraries - the plugins do that themselves, have their video card related settings, etc.

You could try to reconfigure the particular plugin, reset its settings (perhaps uninstall/install again), or at least say which one it was so others could test it.

Ah, good point; I forgot to mention that the error occurs with MilkDrop 2.0c. I'll play around with the settings to see if that does the trick.

Edit:
Yeah, resetting MilkDrop's settings did the trick. Thanks for your help Yirkha.

Here's some freshly fried Shpeck v0.3.0 beta 2:
>> foo_vis_shpeck-0.3.0-beta-2.dll (286 KB)

Changes since last stable v0.2.4:

• Fixed: Better Winamp compatibility (MilkDrop 2.0e).
• Fixed: Length of title formatting in Preferences is no longer limited to window width.
• Fixed: Startup nag-screen sometimes didn't appear.

Changes since v0.3.0 beta 1:

• Panel button images are now stored in theme configs (will partially break your current panel configuration).
• Plugin (re)scan spams useful messages to console to help with troubleshooting.
• Better message is shown when plugin claims to be for an incompatible version of Winamp.
• Fixed: Unicode titles in playlist (IPC_GETPLAYLISTTITLEW).
• Fixed: Endless loop when plugin in a panel failed to initialize.
• Fixed: Plugin in a panel with Auto-stop is not stopped when the panel is hidden.
• Fixed: Hiding a panel with MilkDrop1 results in "OUT OF VIDEO MEMORY" message and lockup.
• Fixed: Titlebar of panel was not painted when the sidebar was shown.
• Fixed: A few other cases where panels would behave in weird ways.

Two other comments:
* freetochoice's plugin "Punkie_172" returns smaller version number of the visualisation interface than is in the Winamp SDK I use. I first thought it was made for some older, incompatible Winamp (it says 2000). But after I had downloaded some even older plugin from 1999 and it worked fine, my best guess is the Punkie_172 author made a typo or something, and Winamp itself never actually bothered about the version number. I didn't modify Shpeck in any way regarding this, except such plugin are rejected immediately during the scan and a meaningful message is generated.
* Non-latin titles in MilkDrop2 - it didn't support them at all in version 2.0d, currently available 2.0e added a few internationalization features and shows them at most places correctly, as Shpeck supported Unicode version of Winamp messages for some time already. Unfortunately, the "current track display" enabled by F2 is not working yet, although it uses the same information as e.g. the large text shown on song change. Maybe it'll work in MD 2.0f...

Enjoy your beta and be sure to report all weirdness you might encounter ;)

Yirkha:

Thanks a lot for your new version. I understand the problem now and appreciate your effort very much.

freetochoose

Sweet, thanks for the new version Yirkha. And congratulations on your promotion to moderator!

Yirka:

The new beta is great. I think it has corrected two problems I had.

1) Now Milkdrop and AVS stays in the panel unless I switch to the fullscreen mode.
Do you know one called Twisted Pixel? Somehow when I run it, it goes to a separate popup.
2) Chinese characters are displayed correctly in Milkdrop when changing track.
However, if I press F2 to bring out the song title, it just leaves a blank space where the title should be.

These are minor issues and not that important.

Thanks for your new issue.

ftc

No, I'll look at it later, thanks for the tip.
However, are you sure it is supposed to be able to run in a panel? Only some newer Winamp vis. plugins have that ability - usually an option called "integrate with Winamp (skin)" or similar in their settings.
Edit: OK, I downloaded that plugin and it indeed cannot be run in a panel. A reliable way to decide whether a particular plugin is able to do so or not (and if it doesn't have an setting for that directly, obviously) is to have the "[x] Show title bar for stand-alone windows" enabled in Shpeck's preferences. Then, if the plugin supports the embedded window mode, the popup window would have a titlebar; if not, it would not.

As I tried to explain in my previous post, it's not my fault and I can't do anything about it:Or am I wrong and it works fine in Winamp?

I don't know about beta 1, but with beta 2 I can't select "winamp directory" if winamp.exe isn't there:

If I put the winamp plugin folder in fb2k folder, I can not select it from the shpech pref. (the button is grayed) if I don't put winamp.exe in the fb2k folder.
But after putting winamp.exe in fb2k folder I can select it and afterward delete the file and shpech works fine (like 0.2.4.)

i love you Yirkha. thanks for this makes me a happy man. if windows were my primary OS and i had the funds i would give you some money. unfortunately negative on both

Crashes when i try to run milkdrop 2.0e (even while music is playing). Other visuals work (milkdrop 1.04e, AVS...)

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Did you use latest Shpeck v0.3.0 beta 2 or another version? Did you run the plugin in a standalone window or in a Columns UI panel? Did it crash the whole application (a crashlog was generated and opened in Notepad) or did only a popup message "Plugin crashed in ..." appear? If the former, would you mind pasting the crashlog here in a [codebox‎][/codebox‎] tags?

Hi there,

I am running the one attached to the first post of this thread (Shpeck 0.2.4 from 2008/05/29 22:55 UTC). I am not using columns UI, just the default UI and the visuals run in a standalone window. Foobar2000 itself doesn't crash just displays a popup box saying: "The plugin crashed during initialization."

Find a copy of MD2.0d or use Shpeck 0.3.0 beta.

weird bug with shpeck 0.3.0beta2 and milkdrop2.0e, when i start the visualization in desktop mode and i click icon on desktop a window with the move to directories command appear. i have to click cancel two times to make the program start.

Make sure you tell the MilkDrop guys, they'll be thrilled to fix that - I can't.

yes i'm sorry, i was thinking it was relative to the plugins but i tried later this post with winamp and the same thing happen as also crash of explorer '
so it surely milkdrop or just my computer who's suck