Windows Media Player Plus! - Various enhancements for WMP Options

[Tim De Baets]

I would like to announce the release of Windows Media Player Plus!, a free plug-in that offers the following enhancements/improvements for WMP:

• Tag Editor Plus: an alternative for WMP's Advanced Tag Editor. Tag Editor Plus works on WMP 12 too, where the Advanced Tag Editor has been removed.
• Global hotkeys, allowing you to control WMP from within any running application.
• Party Shuffle: a dynamic playlist, that automatically gets filled up with randomly picked songs. Of course, you can still add songs yourself, and reorder/remove songs, just like with a normal playlist.
• Real 'find as you type' in the library: you can simply start typing to search, without having to click on the Search field first.
• Access the standard Explorer right-click menu of a media file directly from within WMP.
• Restore last active playlist, media item, and playback position at WMP startup.
• Show currently playing media in WMP's title bar.
• Advanced playback options: Stop after current and Close after current, to automatically stop playback or close WMP when the current media has ended.
• Let WMP play/pause when you press the space bar.
• Disable group headers in the Library Pane.
• Enhanced and configurable replacement of the Windows Live Messenger Music plug-in (What I'm Listening To).
• Show currently playing media in Skype's mood message.
• Access the properties (settings) of any WMP plug-in from within the main menu (Tools - Plug-in properties), without having to go to Options first.
• "Play next" option when right-clicking a media item in WMP 11's library (WMP 12 already has this by default).
• Quickly re-enable all plug-ins after a WMP crash.

Windows Media Player Plus! is written for Windows Media Player 11 and 12.

For more information and screenshots, please visit the official Windows Media Player Plus! web page.

Download Windows Media Player Plus!

July 4, 2010: version 1.1 fixes a crash when accessing the Windows Media Player Plus! settings while the plug-in is disabled.

March 19, 2011: version 2.0 offers an improved Tag Editor Plus (now with support for album art and batch editing), global hotkeys, Party Shuffle, and much more.

March 30, 2011: version 2.1 fixes some stability issues that were still present in the recently-released 2.0 version.

November 18, 2012: version 2.5 adds full Unicode support, 'Find in library' for Windows Media Player 12, support for Windows 8, and a whole bunch of bugfixes and improvements.

May 19, 2013: version 2.6 adds support for showing the currently playing media in Skype's mood message and fixes some stability issues that were uncovered after the release of version 2.5.

This post has been edited by Tim De Baets: Yesterday, 16:42

[koawmfot]

hey tim thanks for the work on this one.

when i saw the screenshot for the tag editor plus i thought maybe you had figured out a way to force WMP to sort by disc number. the problem is that it writes the field but WMP doesn't use it to sort. it is spelled out a bit in this thread here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums...9d-64ea9a07953e

and in this post in this thread:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums...36-778c21554017

i still don't see the filename collision issue with only the set field. if i picked an equally poor naming convention that didn't accomodate for this with other fields that may be duplicated across two discs, or even the same disc, i'd have the same problem.

is there any chance you'd be able to fix this issue or force WMP to use the set field with the next version?

This post has been edited by koawmfot: May 24 2010, 14:02

[LANjackal]

hey tim thanks for the work on this one.

when i saw the screenshot for the tag editor plus i thought maybe you had figured out a way to force WMP to sort by disc number. the problem is that it writes the field but WMP doesn't use it to sort.

If you're having that problem, it's because you're not using WMP's standard disc number convention.

Title Disc #

is what WMP uses. So for example, for a multidisc release of AwesomeAlbum, "AwesomeAlbum Disc 1" and "AwesomeAlbum Disc 2" will give you the proper ordering in the library. I know this because I've manually added multidisc albums to my library before.

Basically WMP takes its defaults from the AMG metadata lookup service it uses. If you use AMG's conventions for manually edited tracks as above, you'll be OK.

[koawmfot]

... So for example, for a multidisc release of AwesomeAlbum, "AwesomeAlbum Disc 1" and "AwesomeAlbum Disc 2" will give you the proper ordering in the library. I know this because I've manually added multidisc albums to my library before.

Basically WMP takes its defaults from the AMG metadata lookup service it uses. If you use AMG's conventions for manually edited tracks as above, you'll be OK.

that was kind of discussed in the links i provided above. it really is a personal preference thing, and for conformity to the standards of multiple other players. the field is there, WMP sees it and can write it, but it does not use it to sort, so i was inquiring if it would be possible to tell WMP to use it. i don't want to seperate the album into different discs. i want to go into MC and chose play album once and have it play the whole album in the right order. i have a twelve disc collection of bethoven sonatas and would have to add each one when really it is a full release. the workaround i used for now was to set the tracknumbers to 101-110, 201-210, etc... this just messes up support in other players somewhat.

[Tim De Baets]

Yes, sorting by disc number is certainly something that I'm going to look into for the next major version of WMP Plus!. I can't promise anything yet though, it may be too hard or simply impossible to implement.

[theironyuppie]

Yes, sorting by disc number is certainly something that I'm going to look into for the next major version of WMP Plus!. I can't promise anything yet though, it may be too hard or simply impossible to implement.

seriously looking forward to this! definatley a must!
another suggestion, maybe add an auto update feature or a suggested update that u can turn on or off?

[Tim De Baets]

Well, I have tried some things in the meantime. The displayed track numbers are relatively easy to change, but sorting still happens for the original values, so that's not very useful. I'm afraid that it will be very hard to change the way WMP sorts tracks, so it's unlikely that this will be included in the next major version.

Auto-update would indeed be a nice feature. I have already planned more than enough new features for WMP Plus! 2.0, but perhaps a later version will have this.