[Devo7v]

I did a full installtion of the latest nightly (XBMCSetup-20111203-0a31dbe-master) and tried to use the milkdrop megapacks found here. I simply copied "MilkDrop MegaPack (8355).zip" to C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC\addons\visualization.milkdrop\presets\, but it does not show up as a selectable pack from within the Milkdrop config options. I also tried renaming it to "MegaPack-presets(8355).zip" but it still does not show up. Does anybody know how to get this to work?

I've read elsewhere in the forums that people have had issues getting this to work, but they simply say that they got it to work after awhile. Nobody has said what they did to get it to work. Has anybody been able to get preset packs to work within pre-Eden? Any ideas on what else I should be doing?

[newreality]

Hey, so, I've been working on this same problem today. I'm running Windows 7 32bit with Eden Beta3. After stubbornly trying to edit the addon.xml to point it to other *.viz files I want to run, and striking out on renaming my preset packs in various ways to have them show up in the "Preset Pack" list while playing music, I finally decided to take the hint from the ""User Defined Preset Folder" option.

I unzipped my "MilkDrop - BritneysPAIRS (110).zip" that I have kept since the good ole days of the "Bling Bling" edition of XBMC for XBOX, and I put the unzipped folder in the C:\Program Files\XBMC\addons\visualiztion.milkdrop\presets\ folder.

Then, I just brought up the menu while playing a song, selected the gear icon, and chose "User Defined Preset Folder" under the "Preset Pack" chooser. Voila! I have my beloved BritneysPAIRS hand-picked Milkdrop presets back! (thank you Brit, wherever you are!)

However, I would like to get zipped packs working so I can choose between them, as you are able to with the winamp and wa51 packs which are included with the addon. With only one user defined option, this means that you have to unzip your packs to a folder and navigate the file system and choose a new one every time you want to change to a non-included preset pack. This isn't keeping me up at night. This isn't a big issue in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like we're missing something here. I haven't seen any magic in the zip files themselves, as those are just standard zips of *.milk text files describing each effect.

Here's where I'm at in trying to figure this out. The MilkDrop addon.xml is extending xbmc.player.musicviz with MilKdrop_win32dx.vis and pulling only the two included preset packs as options (wa51 and winamp) as well as the user defined folder option. In the settings.xml of the addon in the resources folder, it describes the "Preset Pack" options as an enumerated list with list values of "30020|30021|30022".

Now, in (my user is named "xbmc") C:\Users\xbmc\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\addon_data\visualization.mildrop\settings.xml it lists a customized value of "setting id="Preset Pack" value="2" /> when I have the option set to the "User Defined Preset Folder" in the GUI. This might mean that the three enumerated options listed as 30020, 30021, and 30022 correspond to the three choices in the GUI as winamp, wa51, and User Defined Folder and that option 2 is the User Defined Folder option. So, if this is true, then the addon is coded to provide exactly three options for preset packs, with one being a User Defined Folder option to allow customization. It would seem that two of the code references of "30020", "30021" and "30022" may be hard-coded to the included zipped preset packs. If this is the case, then I don't understand how others have succeeded in getting their zipped preset packs to load as options into the interface.

Does anyone have any thoughts, pointers, or ideas on this? Good visualizations, and the ability to customize them for your own purposes, have great psychological and emotional effects which, if you haven't experienced it, is difficult to describe in words, but has long been one of the great pleasures of XBMC. I used to do a "Music Fest" night with friends once a week, where each person brought one song to listen to, carefully chosen to share with the group, and the night is spent just listening to each others selections in the dark with the visualizations aiding the mood. I'd like to get back to that level of easy customization we had with the old XBMC for XBOX.

[Devo7v]

I dug around with that about a month ago and came up with a similar conclusion. It seems that the Milkdrop visualization packs are hardcoded into the plugin and something needs to be changed on the developers' end before it will function as has been described.

I did find a bad workaround: simply rename your visualization pack to one of the included zips. Like I said it's a bad workaround, but you don't have to unzip the pack. The only problem is that whenever you upgrade XBMC, the preset pack will get overwritten.

I don't know what can be done from the point of an end user, but it would be nice if it would work as it did in earlier versions.

I also just checked another post and saw this reply. It is another workaround and still doesn't solve the root cause of the problem.

[WiSo]

IIRC you can add different custom directories but no zip's. Dunno if this was ever possible but from looking at the code I doubt (or it was accidentally removed).

[stgarf]

Looks like zipped/rar'ed preset packs must either

A) have the same name as ONE of these TWO hard-coded files:

else if (strcmp(id, "Preset Pack") == 0)
{
if (*(int*)value == 0)
{
g_UserPackFolder = false;;
SetPresetDir ("WA51-presets(265).zip");
}
else if (*(int*)value == 1)
{
g_UserPackFolder = false;
SetPresetDir ("Winamp-presets(436).zip");
}
else if (*(int*)value == 2)
g_UserPackFolder = true;
}
else if (strcmp(id, "User Preset Folder") ==0 )
{
if (g_UserPackFolder) SetPresetDir ((char*)value);
}
else
return ADDON_STATUS_UNKNOWN;

return ADDON_STATUS_OK;
}

OR

B) be unzipped in a directory and point the milkdrop plugin to the directory that contains all the .milk files.

Hard coded presets can be seen here:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...opXBMC.cpp
and maybe someone will fix this at some point to search the directory for any .zip/.rar/.7z files.


Hope this helps, feel free to ask me any questions...