SkypeMCEAnswer.0.4.2

costa

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#41

Post by costa » Wed Sep 04, 2013 1:23 pm

Thank you for the reply. I found that Maxifier, even without two monitors, does exactly what I want it to. It opens WMC windowed mode without borders and centered full screen. Just when I thought I got it, when I turn the TV off-the HTPC is connected via HDMI-when it is back on WMC is placed "beautifully" on the left of the screen, lets say 1/3 of the screen. The resolution is not changed and there are no borders. I tried through DVI and get the exact same problem, so I assume it is software dependent. I cannot figure it out.

I also tried to find a command to open WMC in windowed mode, but have no luck. BTW my HTPC is on 24/7 and uses Intel's 4000 graphics. Lastly, here is the same behavior this guy experienced..has a photo with exact same problem: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1396223/solve ... ver-resume



Quest continues...I am not sure if I can make the program you suggested work..it becomes complicated with the Skype WMC answer going on in the background.

Mashman

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#42

Post by Mashman » Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:40 pm

The popups work fine on my machine.

Did you install MCEPopups? This Skype plugin is from the same developer of MCEPopups. If you go to the original post in this thread, the author provides a link to MCEPopups, and says that SkypeMCEAnswer is dependant on MCEPopups being installed.

costa

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#43

Post by costa » Wed Sep 04, 2013 10:13 pm

Yes, I installed it. The popups work, but the whole point is the fact they do not pop up on top of a full screen WMC. Only in windowed mode...and that's what I have been trying to achieve: A full, no border windowed mode. I have windows 8. As I travel a lot and use Skype often with the family, I want the popup to appear when they are watching TV. In full screen mode turning off the TV and on with the HTPC on all the time works great. But no popups. With windowed mode through the maxifier popups work and screen is great and full until you turn off the TV. When back on as I described WMC is in a smaller window.

SUCCESS
After a quick change in registry, I guess all is well. No resizing of windowed mode WMC after powering off and on the TV. There are some settings of 1024 and 768, which I changed to 1920 and 1080. Will give more details when I am in front of main computer.

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joecrow

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#44

Post by joecrow » Sun Dec 29, 2013 5:26 pm

Just found this and it seems to work quite well. I am having 2 problems though so any assistance and advice will be much appreciated.

I. the mini menu (Mute, End Call etc.) that appears when Skype (ver. 6.11) opens for a video call does not seem to work at all with the remote and also even when I use the mouse and click on any of the options.

2.After ending a call (with the mouse on the Skype menu) it returns to Media Center but with a much reduced volume (MCE volume setting is unchanged) and I have to restart MCE to restore the volume. I tried playing with the Skype audio settings (Volume and auto volume) but so far without success.

I am running Win7 x64

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joecrow

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#45

Post by joecrow » Tue Dec 31, 2013 8:51 am

joecrow wrote:Just found this and it seems to work quite well. I am having 2 problems though so any assistance and advice will be much appreciated.

I. the mini menu (Mute, End Call etc.) that appears when Skype (ver. 6.11) opens for a video call does not seem to work at all with the remote and also even when I use the mouse and click on any of the options.

2.After ending a call (with the mouse on the Skype menu) it returns to Media Center but with a much reduced volume (WMC volume setting is unchanged) and I have to restart WMC to restore the volume. I tried playing with the Skype audio settings (Volume and auto volume) but so far without success.

I am running Win7 x64
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Is anyone supporting this? I know its Christmas holiday time but note that nxsfan has not been active here since early 2013.

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nxsfan

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#46

Post by nxsfan » Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:12 pm

Hi joecrow, as you noticed I stopped developing SkypeMCEAnswer after I moved to Windows 8 (we use the metro Skype application). This isn't by any means better than the Windows 7 arrangement, but we spend more time watching Netflix in the Metro interface than we do watching TV in the WMC interface.

1. The mini menu is an overlay that takes focus and listens for keyboard presses. The ehome IR standard device that most people use with Media Center should produce the correct "keyboard" presses that the overlay can understand. What happens if you click on the overlay and try pressing the numbers on your keyboard?

2. IIRC my plugin does not touch sound levels. I saw you played with auto-volume in Skype, but this has been the cause of the problem in the past.

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joecrow

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#47

Post by joecrow » Wed Jan 08, 2014 4:36 pm

Hi xsfan

Good to see you are still arround and thanks for the response. Sorry for my late reply but I took a long weekend break.
I have resolved the volume problem, there is a "Communication" option in the playback device/Sound setup which was defaulted to reduce volume when telephone calls are detected, looks like that functioned but was not reset on call end. Setting it to "do nothing" and the volume returns to previous level. (may take a look at that further because when listening to radio, Shoutcast plugin, pause has no effect).
The mini menu does respond to key presses from a keyboard when plugged in (not standard on my setup), but still no go with the remote. I am using a generic IR media center remote (with mouse feature) which to the best of my knowledge does simulate keyboard presses and have had no issues with anything else. It almost seems like the remote is being blocked, any ideas for resolving this would be much appreciated.

wbroadley

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#48

Post by wbroadley » Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:41 pm

I can second what joecrow is saying. I'm using windows 8.1 with an HP MCE remote and the mini menu numbers don't work for me either

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joecrow

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#49

Post by joecrow » Fri Jan 10, 2014 1:21 pm

Hi again nxsfan

Found out a little more:- The mini menu responds to the number keys from a keyboard but not the Numberpad keys, regardless of the state of the Number Lock. I am not sure why there should be a difference but there is and I would guess that is why the remote does not work. Both the numberpad and the remote produce regular number characters when typed into Notepad for example! Is input from the Numberpad enabled in the mini menu?

Edit, further a bit later:- Are you using the feature "use number keys to move mouse around the screen"? When enabled this feature disables the Numberpad!

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nxsfan

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#50

Post by nxsfan » Thu Jan 16, 2014 9:46 pm

joecrow wrote:Edit, further a bit later:- Are you using the feature "use number keys to move mouse around the screen"? When enabled this feature disables the Numberpad!
No I don't do anything like that. I guess the Numpad and the HP Remote generates different keycodes to the regular number keys (as you deduced).

I will see if I can take care of this....

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joecrow

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#51

Post by joecrow » Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:14 am

nxsfan wrote:
joecrow wrote:Edit, further a bit later:- Are you using the feature "use number keys to move mouse around the screen"? When enabled this feature disables the Numberpad!
No I don't do anything like that. I guess the Numpad and the HP Remote generates different keycodes to the regular number keys (as you deduced).

I will see if I can take care of this....

Any progress on this yet? Everything else on this app. is working great for me so it would be really nice to have it running 100%

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joecrow

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#52

Post by joecrow » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:13 am

I have found a workaround for this by reassigning the numberpad keys 1,2 & 3 to their corresponding regular keyboard number keys in the Registry.
The mini menu now responds to my remote and to date I have not noted any detrimental effects! :D
If anyone else is interested here is how I did it, download and install the freeware program Sharpkeys
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... -xp-vista/
Add each keychange e.g. "Num: 3 (00_51)" to "Key: 3 # (00_04)" etc. in turn then write all the changes to the Registry.
Please note do not attempt to map the button presses from the remote as this did not work for me as I assume they are decoded/intercepted at a higher level.

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nxsfan

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#53

Post by nxsfan » Sat Mar 01, 2014 6:47 pm

Well done on finding a solution. I didn't forget about you, but it had been so long since I last updated SMA that I didn't have a working build system in place and couldn't find the latest copy of the source code.

The sort of good news is that I have made a project for SMA on Sourceforge and the (slightly outdated) sourcecode is now available.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/skypemceanswer/

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joecrow

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#54

Post by joecrow » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:09 am

Hi nxsfan
I recently ran into a problem with Skype, basically it interfers with the display of streamed flash in MCE if it is signed in and open, even if minimized to the taskbar. Deselecting the "Keep Skype on the Taskbar when signed in" option resolves the issue most of the time but when a call comes and after I hang up via the mini menu and return to MCE, Skype remains open in the background and again causes problems.
Is there a chance the code could be changed for the mini menu to both hang up the call and exit Skype?

mitch

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#55

Post by mitch » Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:53 am

Registered just to say thanks for this plugin nxsfan - largely its working great on my machine.

I had to use version 5.8 of Skype (and try lots of things to block it from updating itself) as anything newer doesn't work with the plugin. ( I believe they changed the API )

I have noticed that the video toggle code appears to turn the video off but not back on but everything else works.
I'd also like to have the IM window at the bottom hidden too when answered but I guess you open this to enable the sending of and auto reply on no answer?

Thanks for putting the code up. I'm by no means qualified at all to start fiddling but I may give it a go if I get a few hours spare anytime.

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joecrow

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#56

Post by joecrow » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:30 am

mitch wrote:Registered just to say thanks for this plugin nxsfan - largely its working great on my machine.

I had to use version 5.8 of Skype (and try lots of things to block it from updating itself) as anything newer doesn't work with the plugin. ( I believe they changed the API )

I have noticed that the video toggle code appears to turn the video off but not back on but everything else works.
I'd also like to have the IM window at the bottom hidden too when answered but I guess you open this to enable the sending of and auto reply on no answer?

Thanks for putting the code up. I'm by no means qualified at all to start fiddling but I may give it a go if I get a few hours spare anytime.
Just wanted to let you know that Skype ver. 6.16 is working fine for me with the plugin. I too have read that Skype have or are planning to change API but no idea whether this is included in the current version 6.3 (I'm not updating either).
Also for me the plugin does both pause and restart the video on hangup!

mitch

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#57

Post by mitch » Tue Jul 22, 2014 10:52 am

mitch wrote:Just wanted to let you know that Skype ver. 6.16 is working fine for me with the plugin. I too have read that Skype have or are planning to change API but no idea whether this is included in the current version 6.3 (I'm not updating either).
Also for me the plugin does both pause and restart the video on hangup!
Interesting.. I had a few goes at it and couldn't get it to work with anything newer than 5.8 I'm Win7 x64 sp1 if that makes any odds.

the plugin does successfully pause/ resume the Windows Media Center video. What doesn't work for me is the mini-menu toggle option 2 Skype video on and off.

In other news I downloaded nxsfans code and can get it to build with although with errors "the following modules appear to be missing - ['api.command','api.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT','api.platform','darwin']

The resultant .exe does appear to work but throws up an error on launch.

nxsfan -any ideas? I am guessing it is looking for things from within the Skype API which I don't have on my machine and I can't find anywhere to download it.

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joecrow

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#58

Post by joecrow » Tue Jul 22, 2014 12:42 pm

mitch wrote: Interesting.. I had a few goes at it and couldn't get it to work with anything newer than 5.8 I'm Win7 x64 sp1 if that makes any odds.

the plugin does successfully pause/ resume the Windows Media Center video. What doesn't work for me is the mini-menu toggle option 2 Skype video on and off.

In other news I downloaded nxsfans code and can get it to build with although with errors "the following modules appear to be missing - ['api.command','api.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT','api.platform','darwin']

The resultant .exe does appear to work but throws up an error on launch.

nxsfan -any ideas? I am guessing it is looking for things from within the Skype API which I don't have on my machine and I can't find anywhere to download it.
Curious, also win 7 x64! I did some playing arround on my desktop, also Skype 6.16 installed the plugin and it worked fine, then downloaded the latest version (I got 6.18) ran and it did an upgrade! After that Skype still showed the API being active but I got no menu in MCE, un/reinstalling the popups and restarting the plugin did not help. Deinstalled Skype and went back to the old download which installed 6.14 but then Skype would no longer acknowledge the API, deinstalled again, this time using revo uinstaller as it had still retained my login details, reinstalled 6.14 but still no go! Very strange.... I will keep playing and let you know. :?

I can confirm that the option 2 does not seem to work properly for me also (never tried it before) it looks like it does turn the video off but a very short time later it restarts.

Hope nxsfan will respond soon as I also have an open question now somw posts back.

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joecrow

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#59

Post by joecrow » Thu Jul 24, 2014 12:53 pm

For mitch

I think I have figured it out, :idea: Following the download and instal/upgrade of Skype 6.18 SkypeMCEanswer stopped working, droping back to 6.14 did not help either (which bearing in mind that it had been working on 6.16 seemed very strange), however I did find a version 6.11 on my PC and after uninstalling everything including the popups and reinstalling I got it to work again. Skype 6.11 has a notice saying it will soon not work and you should upgrade immediately, so I set up a restore point and then answered yes to the little popup that appeared on sign in saying "Upgrade available now" it went through the regular upgrade questions and when finished was at 6.18 and SkypeMCEanswer is still working!
It looks like the upgrade process has acknowledged there is an active API and has not implemented whatever stops it working on a clean install, this may be supported by the fact that the "Turn on automatic updates" button is greyed out after the update, it says you need admin privs to change it but remains greyed even from an admin account and run as administrator.
Given the above it should be possible for you to update your Skype 5.8 in the same way but set a restore point first, better safe than sorry.

qfreddie

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#60

Post by qfreddie » Thu Sep 25, 2014 2:29 pm

Hi

First of all thanks for a great program an initiative!

Than let me confirm, that the popup works with Skype 6.16.73.105, which also logs in.

The problem: i have a HTPC what boots directly into Media center with ehshell.exe as shell replacement.
All i need i run via Task scheduler after the specfic user automatically logs in.
This is how is done in a seamless HTPC setup.
I also start skype like this, even managed to do it minimized, so doe snot steal focus from MC
I cannot run SkypeMCEAnswer.exe however. I have no ideea why. I tried moving it into several locations, created a delayed start for it, changed compatibility modes etc - nothing helps.
Maybe is explorer.exe dependant?

As soon as i close MC, start explorer exe, run MCEAnswer, restart MC - all works fine.

Any ideeas?

Thanks!

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