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Topic: Windows Media Player 11 released (Read 36859 times) previous topic - next topic
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Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #25
Yes, that's MIA... But something similar is partially there.  If you multi-select items/tracks from the main view, it will show "X items, X minutes" to the right of the volume control for a few seconds before it disappears.  However, total "size" is gone.


I noticed that, but find it insufficient. I like the more detailed stats for bragging rights in my AIM profile and on social networking sites . I'm thinking of using MediaMonkey to generate the stats instead (while retaining WMP11 for library management and playback).

To be fair, from observation of MediaMonkey's tallying of such things, it seems MS may have cut the stats feature from WMP to save on resource overhead. It often takes MM (free edition) about 5 seconds extra to load my entire library while it counts the contents. If it came down to a choice between the stats and snappier response, I'd choose the former.

Also, apparently WMP now embeds album art directly into the audio files themselves. I hadn't noticed that before. Is it a new feature, or has it always done so? I'd always thought it inserted an image in the album folder and hid it in Windows Explorer... details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...1/albumart.aspx
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #26
It only embeds Album Art by default if you use the new simple "Paste Album Art" feature to add the image.  (It also scales/recompresses the image to idiot-proof it.)  Art pulled from the online metadata will continue to sit in hidden files by default.  As with WMP 10, embedded art will supercede the file based art if it exists.

(In WMP 10, Album Art could only be embedded using the Advanced Tag Editor UI.)

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #27
Dam Microsoft's player is still far behind from other players. They just made some new UI improvements like the album art stack (which is pretty neat) and sync music with players and cds is alot better thanks to the new interface and tfg it does not use about 100% cpu when browsing for music like iTunes 7 does. But it is still lacking certain features like AAC and ID3v2.4 support .

And also the VBR bugs that have been on WMP for years have not yet been fixed  , such as displaying the bitrate on a VBR mp3 and getting the track length wrong when fast-forwarding a track (this is common with VBR Mp3, but can fixed with the VBR-I or Xing header on certain players such as foobar2000) and I want be surprised if WMP did not supported Fhg's VBR-I header. As for getting gapless playback on WMP the chances is very small since they have not made any big or not any changes on the mp3 decoder  .

An example of a VBR bug on WMP11:
[a href="http://img476.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wmp11vbrbitratebughf3.png" target="_blank"], that was dam useful and they also removed the track length time on the playlists  .
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #28
Also they removed the Advance Tag Editor  , that was dam useful and they also removed the track length time on the playlists  .


You want some cheese with that whine?

They did not remove the Advanced Tag Editor. It's right there when you right-click any of your music files: Advanced Tag Editor.
myspace.com/borgei - last.fm/user/borgei

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #29
WMP 11 is gapless with WMA ripped from CD (or purchased from a music store) in almost all cases.  But you are correct... there are no improvements with the fairly generic FhG MP3 decoder they use.  So there is no support for LAME gapless MP3 nor any "tricks" to guess, like iTunes 7 now does.  The incorrect initial average bitrate reading on MP3 VBR (LAME) is still there.  Maybe next version they'll lose FhG.    WMP 10/11 does store a more accurate MP3 bitrate average in the WMP library once the track is played to the end, though.

Yes, the Advanced Tag Editor is still there.  It's mostly hidden for a reason: It's not that great for the masses and it hasn't been updated to support all of the metadata fields now available.

The Total Items and Total Time do appear in the top of the List Pane under the Album Icon/Info when in the Now Playing tab... while stopped... and maybe some other scenarios.

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #30
Also they removed the Advance Tag Editor  , that was dam useful and they also removed the track length time on the playlists  .


You want some cheese with that whine?

They did not remove the Advanced Tag Editor. It's right there when you right-click any of your music files: Advanced Tag Editor.


All right it is still there but it is in the Media Library instead of the playlist like on 10, silly me. Microsoft does have some habbits of hidding any useful features.

WMP 11 is gapless with WMA ripped from CD (or purchased from a music store) in almost all cases.  But you are correct... there are no improvements with the fairly generic FhG MP3 decoder they use.  So there is no support for LAME gapless MP3 nor any "tricks" to guess, like iTunes 7 now does.  The incorrect initial average bitrate reading on MP3 VBR (LAME) is still there.  Maybe next version they'll lose FhG.    WMP 10/11 does store a more accurate MP3 bitrate average in the WMP library once the track is played to the end, though.

Yes, the Advanced Tag Editor is still there.  It's mostly hidden for a reason: It's not that great for the masses and it hasn't been updated to support all of the metadata fields now available.

The Total Items and Total Time do appear in the top of the List Pane under the Album Icon/Info when in the Now Playing tab... while stopped... and maybe some other scenarios.


I ripped a CD to WMA on WMP11 beta 2 to see if WMA playback is gapless and it was not gapless at all. And the chances of M$ of improving mp3 support is low becuse the want you to use their crappy audio codec.

Yeah the tag editor on WMP is quite dated but WMP does write tags without any problems unlike with Winamp + iTunes does.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #31
But it is still lacking certain features like AAC and ID3v2.4 support .


AAC is supported through the Orban plugin or ffdshow.

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #32
I encode to wma and play with wmp11 and it's gapless.

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #33
I encode to wma and play with wmp11 and it's gapless.

Well it must have been a bug on Beta 2 or VBR WMA is not gapless. WMA gapless is kinda pointless if it only works on WMP, i doubt that any DAP will play WMA gapless since Cowon, iRiver and Samsung can not be bothered to get gapless playback to work on Vorbis  and Vorbis should have gapless playback out of the box.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #34
@ /mnt: Just played VBR WMA 9.1 Q98 rips on WMP 11 from a search-generated playlist - gaplessly on my PC. Not too sure what you're talking about. Also just played a couple consecutive (as on the original CD) songs in sequence from Chevelle's "This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In" release in VBR MP3 and didn't hear any gaps myself... but maybe that's just me.
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #35
Regarding WMP 11 not supporting AAC... Why do you expect MS to support AAC out-of-the-box?

Does iTunes support WMA out-of-the-box? (No, just a crappy lossy->lossy conversion which results in poor quality files, which they do not mention anything of at all). Atleast in WMP11 you can easily add AAC support through 3rd party addons. And with the release of Zune i expect a update that adds native AAC support aswell, since the Zune supports AAC natively.
myspace.com/borgei - last.fm/user/borgei

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #36
Atleast in WMP11 you can easily add AAC support through 3rd party addons. And with the release of Zune i expect a update that adds native AAC support aswell, since the Zune supports AAC natively.


To be fair, I think Flip4Mac offers a 3rd party add-on that give iTunes WMA playback capability. But you're right on the first point - other good media players ship without AAC support: MediaMonkey, for example.

As for Zune, MS isn't tying it to WMP (WMP isn't necessary for interfacing with the device), so native AAC support in WMP is still doubtful for the future...
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #37
What is situation about Windows Media Audio 10 Pro, has this codec finaly released in public?

Windows Media Player 11 released

Reply #38
Yes, it ships with WMP 11... so it's obviously public now.