Apple Music Plug-In .properties file/Application Windows Settings location on Mac?

[1-i-Pi]

Where is the .properties file located for the Music Plug-in? On the Standalone i know of the file "projectMDSL.properties" that has the application window settings so I'm wondering where that would be located for the music Plug-In. I'm trying to change the presets display duration, among other parameters.

Thank you for your time

[kblaschke]

There is no configuration available for the Music plug-in. It's a completely separate codebase, so the property/configuration file handling of the standalone version is completely missing.

Unless someone with a Mac steps up and adds a Cocoa-based configuration UI to the plug-in, it'll sadly stay like this.

[revmischa]

I think you can go into the package (Show Package Contents) and edit the presets and config file. Or it reads from /usr/local/share/projectM.

[kblaschke]

I think you can go into the package (Show Package Contents) and edit the presets and config file. Or it reads from /usr/local/share/projectM.

That won't work, even if there's a config file. It's all hard-coded for now.

[SoCuul]

If people would find it useful, I could potentially contribute a cocoa-based configuration UI.

[kblaschke]

If people would find it useful, I could potentially contribute a cocoa-based configuration UI.

Sure, this plug-in hasn't seen active maintenance for a while now, so any contribution is highly appreciated!

[SoCuul]

I've been working on the GUI and have the defaults working correctly. I'm trying to build the plug-in itself, but am having trouble.

I built libprojectM (4.x.x version), and installed it into my /usr/local/lib folder. However, when trying to run cmake for the plug-in, I keep getting this error:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:24 (find_package):
  By not providing "FindlibprojectM.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project
  has asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by
  "libprojectM", but CMake did not find one.

  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "libprojectM" with
  any of the following names:

    libprojectM.cps
    libprojectm.cps
    libprojectMConfig.cmake
    libprojectm-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "libprojectM" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
  "libprojectM_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files.  If
  "libprojectM" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it
  has been installed.


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

I did try changing the package name in the CMakeLists.txt file from libprojectM -> libprojectM4 with no luck. I don't have very much experience with cmake, so any help would be appreciated 😆

[kblaschke]

I've been working on the GUI and have the defaults working correctly. I'm trying to build the plug-in itself, but am having trouble.

I built libprojectM (4.x.x version), and installed it into my /usr/local/lib folder. However, when trying to run cmake for the plug-in, I keep getting this error:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:24 (find_package):
By not providing "FindlibprojectM.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project
has asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by
"libprojectM", but CMake did not find one.

Could not find a package configuration file provided by "libprojectM" with
any of the following names:

libprojectM.cps
libprojectm.cps
libprojectMConfig.cmake
libprojectm-config.cmake

Add the installation prefix of "libprojectM" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
"libprojectM_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files. If
"libprojectM" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it
has been installed.

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

I did try changing the package name in the CMakeLists.txt file from libprojectM -> libprojectM4 with no luck. I don't have very much experience with cmake, so any help would be appreciated 😆

Well, the whole plug-in wasn't updated to projectM 4 yet. I did some preliminary work on that up to the point it builds & runs though, but never really merged the branch. The last commit was named "WIP" and I can't really remember where I left it off, as since then I didn't have had any Mac to try it on anymore. I don't know whether it builds or not, but given the overall broken state of the plug-in, I just merged it into the upstream master, as it'll still work better than not at all.

Most notable change is replacing the settings struct with individual API calls, so this might be an area where you have to adapt your changes.

Rebase your branch on latest master and see if that works better!

[SoCuul]

I got it building! Now just have to get everything implemented 😆

Had to:

• Clone the projectM repo, and build/install static library versions (with cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF ..
• Created a folder called assets with folders presets and textures inside
• Run rm -r *; cmake -DPRESET_DIRS=assets/presets/ -DTEXTURE_DIR=assets/textures/ ..; make package

I've noticed that for some reason it seems that the visualizer isn't loading any of the presets, and is just showing the main projectM one. I'm not sure if that's an issue to do with this frontend or just the state of the projectM commit I built.

[kblaschke]

The master build may be broken from time to time. Ideally use the latest stable version (4.1.6 at the time of writing this).

[RdWing]

I'm interested in getting this to work. Have Mac, can test. Current plugin version doesn't seem to be reactive to input music at all.

[kblaschke]

I guess it's noteworthy that the iTunes visualizer API, on which this plug-in is based, is no longer publicly documented. Apple possibly supports it to keep old plug-ins working, but since they've killed iTunes in favor of Music, the API was also removed from their official SDKs. We use parts of the old API headers and ship them with our code, while Apple only provides the exported functions in their libraries, but no dev kit anymore.

Additionally, there were some subtle changes made to the actual viz API in the past, e.g. I've noticed a while ago that Music now only updates the waveform data every 200ms (5 times per second) no matter which (shorter) interval you request. My guess is that Apple does this on purpose so visualizers can't be used to grab a copy of DRM-protected media (which would be a bad copy anyway, as the API provides integer 8-bit samples only). Their own visualizer seemingly runs at a higher update rate, so I fear the short refresh interval is available only if the plug-in module is signed with Apple's own Developer ID certificate - signing it with a valid non-Apple ID didn't change it.

[SoCuul]

I guess it's noteworthy that the iTunes visualizer API, on which this plug-in is based, is no longer publicly documented. Apple possibly supports it to keep old plug-ins working, but since they've killed iTunes in favor of Music, the API was also removed from their official SDKs. We use parts of the old API headers and ship them with our code, while Apple only provides the exported functions in their libraries, but no dev kit anymore.

Additionally, there were some subtle changes made to the actual viz API in the past, e.g. I've noticed a while ago that Music now only updates the waveform data every 200ms (5 times per second) no matter which (shorter) interval you request. My guess is that Apple does this on purpose so visualizers can't be used to grab a copy of DRM-protected media (which would be a bad copy anyway, as the API provides integer 8-bit samples only). Their own visualizer seemingly runs at a higher update rate, so I fear the short refresh interval is available only if the plug-in module is signed with Apple's own Developer ID certificate - signing it with a valid non-Apple ID didn't change it.

Is it not? You can still download the iTunes Plug-In SDK from the developer site. It's evident it's been abandoned for a long while now, but they're still supporting it in some capacity (they also built a separate visualizer service for the transition to Apple Silicon).

[kblaschke]

The iTunes SDK/library doesn't include the visualizer part though.

The "iTunes Visual SDK" was released in 2001 and dropped in 2011, and thus is no longer available anywhere on Apple's developer pages for reference or download. The C/C++ headers also aren't available in their official SDKs anymore, so we have archived the required files in our code base.

If you can find a link to the actual, proper SDK, that'd be a nice-to-have information which we may add to the ReadMe.

[SoCuul]

Oh, I was referencing the Visual Plug-Ins SDK from the apple developer downloads page: https://download.developer.apple.com/Applications/itunes_visual_plugins_sdk/iTunesVisualPlugInsSDK2_0_1.zip