Media Panel

Overview

The media panel is a way of viewing asssets associated with a ROM. The media panel can automatically display images, and if any video,sound, or ANY other files are found then these can be launched in the default system viewer. For example you can set up a directory to contain all your game guides or other related documents, and if Quickplay is set up to search this directory then it will show these documents in the other media found panel, and by double-clicking on them you can load then in your systems default viewer

Setup

To setup the media panel, you select a system, then you select which type of media you want to display. You can make your own tab for a system by clicking the plus button and selecting a tab type for the new tab, and delete one of the preconfigured types for the system you have currently selected with the minus button. Yes I know its called the 'media panel', but it isn't really setup for video or audio, this is intended as a catalogue, not an attract screen, but you can link to audio and video files, which when clicked will play with the systems default media player

In fact, although you can collage a number of different screenshots for a game in the screenshots tab for instance, sometimes just a single screenshot looks much better - its job is to tell you whether you might want to play the game or not

MAME Setup

There are a number of pre-configured media panel tabs for MAME, ranging from cabinet images to help about which combo-buttons do certain moves in certain games. These are usually found in your MAME/Extras directory (in many of the subdirectories).

In particular, note the 'for MAME clones, use parent rom for scan' tickbox - you usually want this on for MAME/Arcade systems so that if an asset can't be found by the rom's mamename, it gets found by asking its parent if it has an asset. (For non-MAME systems, it doesn't really hurt to have it on)

MAME Info Text Files Setup

See MAME DAT Setup

Searching

To set up search paths either right-click on a folder in the folder-listing in QuickPlay and click on 'Folder Options', or click on a folder and click the 'Folder Options' button on the toolbar above the folder listings. A new screen will appear, and media search paths can be entered in the bottom left of the form. Simply add in your chosen directories and press 'OK' when u have finished.

There are various types of media search - by default Quickplay will only display media that matchs the ROM's filename exactly (with a difference only in file extension). However there are 2 other modes of search which can be configured from the main preferences screen (TOOLS, PREFERENCES). You can specify that the media must start with the ROM's filename so -

ROM = mario.zip

Media = mario_1.jpg

Is a valid result

Alternatively you can tell Quickplay that as long as the ROM filename appears in the media name anywhere to return it as a result - obviously this will return a lot of incorrect entries particularly if a ROM has a short file name.

Image Formats Supported

The following file formats will automatically be displayed in QuickPlay's image viewer, all other file formats can be located in the 'other files found' box and launched by double-clicking on them.

'.png', '.gif', '.jpg', '.jpeg', '.jpe', '.jif', '.jfif', '.bmp', '.dib', '.rle', '.tiff', '.wmf'

Disabling

To disable the media panel simply go to the 'View' menu and click 'Hide Image Panel'. This will disable the image panel until you turn it back on by using the 'Show Image Panel' menu. By disabling the media panel QuickPlay will also work quicker.