Overview

How to map buttons on your remote or keyboard to MediaPortal Actions and Windows

Features

You can map keys on your remote to almost any function (action) or window in MediaPortal:

• perform different actions depending on the window
• create 'layers' so each remote button can perform multiple actions

Note:  You can also change the functions or 'bindings' of keys or remote buttons by customizing Keys and Sounds.

Although the buttons may change depending on the remote you use, the basic method of mapping buttons is the same for all remotes.

How to Map Keys

1. Select Your Remote
2. Press the Mapping button
   
3. Select the button you wish to map
4. Select "All Layers" (unless you wish to configure layers see below)
5. Edit the existing condition, or add a new condition by pressing the New button

Example

Suppose you wish to use your remote to switch from full screen playback to the GUI and back and your remote does not have such a key mapped by default:

1. Select the button you wish to use - in this example the Live TV button
2. Select 'No Condition' in the 'tree' if you wish the button to perform this action when no other condition defined for the button applies
3. Select 'Action' in the Action section - since you want the button to perform an action, not open a window, etc.
4. In the drop down box, in the Action section select 'Show GUI".

That's it, just save your settings and your Live TV button will now toggle between Full Screen and the GUI.  The only hard part is understanding what all the different the Actions mean!  See Actions for a list of 'actions' or functions supported in MediaPortal

Layers

Each button can be mapped in two "layers". Think of layers as the Shift button on a keyboard. When you press Shift, buttons that are normally assigned to one letter, now print out another letter when pressed.

If you setup a button to "Toggle Layer" (see the screen shot above under Action) you can use all of the buttons on your remote to perform two different tasks. This is especially handy when your remote doesn't have many buttons, or you want to set it up with advanced options.

Conditions

Any button can handle conditions. This allows you to send different commands using the same key, but in different windows in MediaPortal. For example, a button can perform one command if you are watching fullscreen TV, and send another command if you are using the EPG.

Conditions are examined or executed from the top down. This means that if you have two conditions for a key press, it will try to match the first one, and if this one doesn't match, then it will try and match the second one. If no condition is met, no action will be sent. 

Thus, normally you would set up a couple of conditions and a default action (with "No Condition") which is then executed if no actual condition is met.

Conditions can be in as many levels as you want.

There are four basic groups of conditions:

1. Window
2. Fullscreen
3. Playing
4. No Condition

Window

Choosing "Window" you can select from a number of predefined windows. You cannot use Extensions' windows.
Note: the list of Windows has been updated for 1.2.0 beta to display only currently valid windows.

Fullscreen

Very basic, choose between Fullscreen or No Fullscreen. This is the actual application state (is MediaPortal running as a window on the desktop, or in fullscreen).

Playing

Choose between "DVD is playing", "Media is playing", Music is playing" and "TV is running". This is especially useful when setting up skip back/forward and menu buttons. When you watch a DVD, you will most likely want the "Menu" button on your remote do something specific, like going to the root menu of the DVD.

The 'Music is playing' condition is only available in MP 1.3.0 and later. This allows you to assign remote keys a different function when music is playing, such as map the My Music button on your remote to jump to the Music Now Playing window from any other window. If no music is playing the same remote button would jump to the Music Files window in this example.

No Condition

Will execute whenever none of the others (if any) conditions are met.

Action

There are several types of actions you can perform with a remote key:

• Action - select an action from the dropdown list - see Actions for a list of supported actions in MediaPortal
• Window - select a Window from the dropdown list - the button will then navigate to that window - see Windows for a list of supported windows and IDs
• Powerdown - select a power down option from the dropdown list
• Toggle Layer - to define a button to select a layer if you create multiple layers
• Process - to close or kill a process
• Gain Focus - transfers focus to the current or selected window

Key-Press Actions

Key-press actions are a specific type of action that allow you to emulate keyboard key presses by pressing buttons on your remote.

Two key fields are enabled when you select the action action and the key press action type.

• The first field allows you to enter the character code corresponding with the key that you want to emulate. For example, you could enter the code '97' if you wanted to emulate pressing the 'a' key. Common character codes can be found here (use the value in the 'dec' column).
• The second field allows you to emulate virtual keypresses that can't be represented with a regular character code. For example, it would not be possible to emulate pressing the 'end' button on your keyboard using a character code in the first field since 'end' does not have a character code. A list of virtual key codes can be found here.

Note: you should only fill in one of the two key fields; the other field should be set to 0.