"Now Playing" as Screensaver? Options

[will]

Hi AMIPland,

I've been hunting around for a way to display the current song/artist from iTunes as the screensaver on my system. I have a dedicated geek/media pc that I use as my stereo. I'm sure AMIP has all that I need to get this accomplished but I can't seem to connect the dots. Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

I've been trying to figure out how to make my own screensaver but every search turns up something like 'Display your son's picture with "sweet child of mine" in the background! it's easy!' - not really what I'm looking for.

I'm sure there something out there that will just dump the clipboard to the screen at intervals but dang if I can find it. I can do a little hacking so, if I need to, I'm down but I just don't know where to start. I keep thinking of stupid complicated hacks like running LAMP on this box and using php but that's just getting corny. Perhaps just a couple of decent links to roll my own screensaver?


Thanks for any help!

Will

[Serge]

Some screensaver that reads text from file and shows it may do the trick. Configure AMIP to dump song info to file and configure the screensaver to monitor the file and display the text.

[will]

Hi Serge,

Thanks. The problem is I can't seem to find one. I'll have another go. Thanks for the software!

Will

[Loft]

will, any luck with that screensaver?

[FrankX]

I've been having a play with the standard Windoze XP "3d Text" Screensaver to try and help solve this one... You know the one that rocks 3d text on the screen.

Anyhow, the text that the screensaver should display is held in the registry in ...

CODE

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Screensavers\Text3D]

I have been trying the following preset ...

CODE

/template: (C:\np3DtxtScrnSvr.in) C:\np3DtxtScrnSvr.out

/exec: (C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe /s) C:\np3DtxtScrnSvr.out

This has the file np3DtxtScrnSvr.in with the following ...

CODE

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Screensavers\Text3D]
"AllScreensSame"=dword:00000000
"SurfaceType"=dword:00000001
"Specular"=dword:00000001
"SurfaceColor"=dword:00777777
"CustomTexture"=""
"CustomEnvironment"=""
"UseCustomColor"=dword:00000000
"UseCustomTexture"=dword:00000000
"UseCustomEnvironment"=dword:00000000
"MeshQuality"=dword:000001f4
"Size"=dword:0000000a
"RotationSpeed"=dword:0000000a
"RotationStyle"=dword:00000001
"DisplayString"="%name"
"DisplayTime"=dword:00000000
"FontWeight"=dword:00000000
"FontHeight"=dword:00000060
"FontItalic"=dword:01000000
"FontCharSet"=dword:00000001
"FontPitchFamily"=dword:61005400
"FontFace"="Tahoma"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Screensavers\Text3D\Screen 1]
"Leave Black"=dword:00000000
"Disable Hardware"=dword:00000000
"Width"=dword:00000000
"Height"=dword:00000000
"Format"=dword:00000000
"Adapter ID"=hex:e2,1e,b7,d7,24,1a,cf,11,2d,6d,ac,5c,a0,c2,cb,35

... this should output the parsed template to another file called np3DtxtScrnSvr.out (obviously, replacing "DisplayString"="%name" with the NowPlaying info') which is then imported to the registry using the /exec command (regedit.exe /s is silent mode for regedit.)

Unfortuantely, I've not had any success yet as for some reason the /template isn't actually outputting ANYTHING to the .out file. And to say I am unformiliar with updating the windows regisrty in this way is a total understatement. lol

But in theory it should work the way will asked for... I'll re-post if I manage to get it working. If anyone spots any probs in my preset plase let me know. (ie. why it isn't outputting anything to the .out file!? lol)

Luv FrankX