Category: Geeks r Us
Hello all,
I've just finished with a bare-bones media player, which I have decided to release to the public. First: it is supposed to be bare-bones. The installer is rather small. In the next version I plan to add a plugin system, which will allow people to install plug-ins that they wish to use. This will allow for the media player to stay light-weight, and for the user to customize it however they see fit with the plugins. As for now, your feedback would be appriciated. (Ideas, comments, etc). As I don't log on here, there is a mailing list where the users of Power Media can talk, which is on the site. That said, the site for this program is:
http://tds-solutions.net/pmp
Enjoy, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Sounds great but I'd like to know more about it. If I have windows media player...why do I want this one? What features most stand out?
I will go check it out.
As for most desired features in a media player I sometimes have issues with now (I've used Foobar, Winamps and Windows Media Player as well as VLC Player):
1. 2. and 3. easy way to convert between formats, especially from .ogg and .flac to .mp3. I realize it is not necessarily the players role, but I think it'd be an extremely nice change to see an easy-to-use interface where this can be done. I have to jump through hoops doing it and the audio converter programs I have tried have had horrible accessibility. I know thee may be licensing issues using mp3 encoder though, Lame only encodes to 128 max, I believe, which is too little, 192 min for any music, 256 preferred.
2. Global hotkeys for play, pause, easy playlist creation, the ability to add songs from Windows context menu and simply use ctrl-s to save the playlist afterwards. In Foobar you can create a playlist through Windows context menu, adding each song to Foobar, but you can't easily save the resulting playlist, which is annoying.
3. Volume independent of Jaws/general volume, and hotkeys to control it, some songs recording level is so loud that you start playing them you can't hear Jaws any more and have to scramble to find said window and pause the song, or use hotkey, rather than being able to listen to it whilst listening to Jaws.
4. Must support .mp3, .ogg, .flac, .m4a and .wma files .. hate to play these in different players, .wav obviously, but I always encode to .flac when I have .wav files as a space saver.
Good luck and I will write actual feedback later.
I might take a look though it would have to be one heck of a program to convince me to leave Winamp behind.
Dan.
I tried this program, it's very very basic, not even much of a menu system...though from what the website said, they just released this version, and will be making it more versatile by the use of plugins. For now, I'm definitely not impressed. One feature I would like to see in a media player, while we're on that topic, is the ability to organize music, since ITunes is the only program that can do this, and while it's come a long way accessibility wise, I still find it a pain in the ass to use, and this player, with its simple interface, would be great for this feature.
Hello,
First, I would like to thank everyone for the feedback. I'm going to put out a new version soon, that will fix a couple bugs. After that, here is the roadmap.
First, I'm looking for a way of making hotkeys accessible, I would like users to be able to assign their own hotkeys for play,stop,next,bac etc, if they don't like the defaults.
Second, I really like the idea of clicking on a file and adding that to a playlist, then being able to save the playlist, and I'll implement that, for sure.
Also on the list is a plug-in system. This will allow for the user to download a very small program, and then choose plug-ins they want added.
While I really like older versions of Winamp, I am noticing that it is becoming really big and bloated, and I want to move away from that toward letting users have full customizability, by being able to select which plug-ins they want.
Again, thanks for all the input. I really wanted to know where this would go, before I put a ton of work into the plug-in manager, and API, which will allow other developers to write their own plug-ins. After the next version, building this system and getting it where I want will take a bit, but I will be sure to post an update here. You can also add me to msn/twitter/aim, with the info found below:
msn: tyler@tysdomain.com
aim: st8amnd2005
skype: st8amnd127
twitter: sorressean
The twitter, my blog/the changelog on the site and here, will be where I post the new versions.
Thanks again,
Just give me something that plays a tun of formats and I'll be happy. I don't care about play lists or any of this right click integration that people are going on about, just give me something simple that works.