Change location of Seek Bar?

[bobviolence]

Is it possible to change the location of the seek bar? I'm referring to the bar that pops up during playback at the bottom of the screen whenever you fast forward, rewind, pause, etc.

At it's current location, it is right over the scores of football games. So if I'm fast-forwarding through a recorded game and watching the score to see if it "gets interesting", the seek bar is always in the way. I'd like to move the seek bar up a bit.

I found this registry setting, but haven't tried it yet:

Bottom Margin - How many units should Media Center pull in critical elements from the bottom of the screen?

Registry key - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.PerUserSettings
Registry value - marginBottom
Registry value data type - REG_DWORD

[grittree]

IIRC, you could move the seek bar up or down, but margin wasn't involved. Can't remember if it stopped with SP1, or maybe when moved from XP-mce to win7. Yes, it's an annoyance with football.

[bobviolence]

Thanks for the glimmer of hope ... I've searched the web pretty thoroughly, but never could find anything.

[StinkyImp]

This isn't exactly what you're looking for but when I got irked with the seek bar I set it to vanish as fast as possible.

Seek Bar Timeout - Enter the number of milliseconds to show the paused seek bar while watching TV. (1 second = 1000 milliseconds)

Code: Select all

Registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoConstants
Registry value - SeekBarTimeout
Registry value data type - REG_DWORD

I haven't used this one but the following might help too.

Seek Bar Rewind and Fast Forward Timeout - While watching TV pressing REW/FWD displays the seek bar. Enter the number of milliseconds to show the seek bar when transitioning from REW or FWD to normal playback. (1 second = 1000 milliseconds)

Code: Select all

Registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoConstants
Registry value - SeekBarBriefTimeout
Registry value data type - REG_DWORD

[bobviolence]

Thanks ... I already had SeekBarTimeout set lower, which works great. I tried lowering SeekBarBriefTimeout to see if it made a difference, and didn't notice anything. The seek bar still remains visible as long as you are rewinding, fast-forwarding, etc.

[garyan2]

I'm pretty sure this can only be done by changing resource files within Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll the same as I do with [Tweak WMC].

[bobviolence]

I'm pretty sure this can only be done by changing resource files within Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll the same as I do with [Tweak WMC].

I'm an IT guy ... what's the level of difficulty involved in me doing this?

[garyan2]

I'm an IT guy ... what's the level of difficulty involved in me doing this?

Well, I took a look and it appears the resource that needs to be edited is SEEKBAR.MCML in the ehres.dll file. The MCML is a kind of hypertext/xml hybrid "Media Center Markup Language". So you will have to study it to learn its coordinate system and where its origin point is; whether the screen boundaries, a parent container, or adjacent component within a parent.

You would have to extract the resource file(s), edit, and then merge back in to the dll file. I will note, the ehres.dll file is quite large and all the tools I used (and tried) for my editing of the resource files in the Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll file for the guide tweaks could not handle it. I could never merge any edited files back in. It also appears that the ehres.dll file is going to be locked by a svchost.exe process which you will have to terminate in order to update it... this may be where I went wrong so you may have success with that knowledge.

You might also get a leg up by reaching out to @W10MC that created ModernMedia UI+. I believe he probably tweaked the seekbar and maybe have some notes/pointers.

EDIT: Add a MCML resource. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previ ... v=msdn.10)

[bobviolence]

Gary ... thanks for the detailed response. This gives me a great place to start.

Think I'll create a Windows 7 VM so I can play around with WMC without the risk of damaging my main HTPC setup.

[IT Troll]

Might be worth taking a look at Media Center Themer. It can change resources in memory so you don’t have to modify the system files. It can certainly change the graphics, text and transparency of the seek bar. I haven’t tried changing the position of that, but I have tweaked other UI elements.

The original website has gone now. But there is a little info here.
https://www.thegreenbutton.tv/wiki/Media_Center_Themer

[Space]

Here is the archive link for the original webpage.