Dom, 22/11/2009; 17h

|  | 

19:30

• 17:00

  Santos 4 x 0 Coritiba | Santo André 4 x 2 Avaí | Sport 0 x 3 Fluminense | Botafogo 3 x 2 São Paulo

• 19:30

  Flamengo 0 x 0 Goiás | Vitória 2 x 1 Barueri | Atlético-MG 0 x 1 Internacional

clique e assista aqui

Atlético Paranaense x Cruzeiro

Corinthians x Náutico

ASSISTA AQUI

Cupa Romaniei Timisoreana
Marti 19:00

FC Brasov – Gloria Bistrita

  Sport.ro Live Online  WMP sau SOP.

detalii in chat

FC Brasov – Gloria Bistrita meciul Live Online

onmysite.ro

ASSISTA AQUI 

wmp è sempre + pesante, si blocca e blocca il pc! per non parlare di quando lo si minimizza sulla barra start! io ultimamente nn riesco più a utilizzarlo!
quindi mi sono rotto e l’ho rimpiazzato!

per i video ho istallato l’ottimo e leggerissimo VLC che apre tutto e senza problemi anzi se hai un divx o file video danneggiato prova a sistemarlo (per me è stata una salvezza+di una volta!)

per la musica invece vi consiglio MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/action/download/mcube_winbuild_stable
un programmetto facile facile. lo installi, scegli il layout più semplice,
poi apri dal menù File la cartella musica e ti organizza lui la vita! meglio di un IPod!

scegli in base all’artisa all’album etc… ti fai le play list etc..
inoltre Udite Udite: quando lo abbassi sulla barra lui si mette nella tray e nn rompe, lasciando spazio visivo e virtuale per le finestre aperte! infatti è talmente leggero da non intreferire neanche se hai un miliardo di programmi in esecuzione!

quindi….. ADDIO WMP

It always seems like there’s a standard, and then a third party comes along and makes it ten times better. Windows Media player is really great, but it doesn’t support enough formats. Same with Quicktime. The solution? VLC.

VLC Media Player is a great player. It’s got a good interface, and support many formats. It can play audio or video, as well as DVDs. It can be resized everywhere, while playing, with the vdieo adjusting automatically. But best of all, you can apply skins!

It’s a small, quick download. Check it out. http://www.videolan.org/

Here is the  Windows Media Player ( WMP ) plugin site for Firefox.

http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx

08:02
Sidder på hotellet og nyder morgenkaffen mens jeg kigger ud på regnen. Godt jeg ikke har overnattet i et lille spids-telt på en græsmark.
Vejrudsigten siger regn her først på dagen og opklaring og lidt sol over middag.

10:08
Warm up er netop afsluttet på en små-våd bane så de har ikke kunne teste setup da alt tyder på et tørt race e eftermiddag. Tom kørte på 8. bedste tid og Bakkerud fik sneget sig op som 3. sidst i de sidste minutter efter eller at have ligget sidst hele tiden.
Timo havde bedste tid og Paffett var kun 10er, så Audi er foran i det psykologiske spil.

Turen herud var noget for sig. Politiet har overtaget verden og lukket veje, svingbaner og slukket lys-kryds som det passer dem. Hvis det havde været USA ville de nok have kaldt det undtagelsestilstand…. Man kan ikke andet end følge med strømmen og håbe man ender på en P-plads, så jeg ved ikke hvad man ville gøre hvis man skulle noget andet end til DTM.
Jeg endte på en græsmark ude i et industrikvarter og der var i teorien en shuttle service, men ingen busser om 1000 mennesker så jeg snørede støvlerne og heikede af sted.
Her viser tyskerne sig så fra den bedste side og havde afmærket en rute ned gennem parcelhus kvarterene med skilte for hver 500 m. Fuldstændigt som at være på orienteringsløb til en børnefødselsdag

Fußweg

I får så lige et kort afsnit af “De er tossede de tyskere”:
I den lille by hvor mit hotel lå er der en beton fabrik og de henter deres råvarer på den anden side af byen. De fleste steder havde man nok kørt det til fabrikken, men her har man valgt at bygge en 12 km lang svævebane som går hele vejen over byen. Banen består af små vogne som vel er dobbelt størrelse af en trillebør…..

Matriale svævebane

11:54
Så er banen tør i ideal sporet og solen titter frem ind i mellem. Pt er det Porsche Carrea Cup der kører og Thiim ligger 5er. Der er lidt for langt mellem bilerne så der er stort set ingen nærkampe og løbet er en smugle kedeligt…..
På billedet herunder er det Thiim i midten på vej gennem Nordkurve.

Thiim i midten på vej gennem Nordkurve

14:10
Så er vi i gang. Super tæt race og Tom sidst efter han blev skubbet rundt på første omgang. Rettelse, nu er Han anden sidst efter han har overhalet Bakkerud. Rettelse 3. sidst efter endnu en overhaling og han kører i øvrigt hurtigste tid!
Pt er Timo mester.

Tom K. sidst efter han blev kørt af

15:15
Tom humper hjem som sidste mand efter Lauda skubber ham rundt på 2. sidste runde.
Timo vinder mesterskabet fra en anden plads og Paffett tager sejeren. Super race!!

Tom K. humper hjem

15:45
Så er der fest i Audi garagen med live musik fra et tysk band….
Jeg har ikke videre travlt med at komme af sted, alle skal hjem nu så der må være totalt trafik kaos.

Fest hos Audi

Se alle bilederne her

10

E

Náutico 2 x 1 Barueri

ASSISTA AQUI

13:09
Er taget til Hockenheimring for at se Tom K vinde i hans sidste DTM løb. Jeg købte billetten af en kollega og det er en super plads på Nordtribunen. Lige ved indgangen til første sving
Her er temmeligt friskt vejr, 12-14 grader vel jeg tro og tidtagningen starter om en halv times tid. For at fordrive tiden ligger de og kører sidelæns med en flok C63 AMG taxier. I pitten står Audi / Mercedes kampen mellem den nye SLS og den nye R8 V10 Spider. http://yfrog.com/081j3zj eller http://yfrog.com/0i51938680j
Fortsættelse følger…

View til højre

View til venstre

14:22
Super spændende qualifying…. Bakkerud røg ud allerede i første runde som anden sidst. I anden shoot-out lå Tom K under stregen hele tiden men på sidste omgang kører han sig op som 7er. Sådan er det når man ved hvor meget snor man kan give konkurrenterne
Legg er lige kommet hjem bag på en mortotcykel så hun må haver sat bilen af et eller andet sted….

3. Shoot-out og Tom er igen under stregen og han kører som en hooligan heeeelt ude på grænsen gennem sving 1. Tror Audi bruger ham til at teste opsætning, han ser helt anderledes ud gennem svinget i forhold til Timo og gnister fra undervognen hele vejen igennem….. Denne gang klarede han ikke cuttet og starter som 5er
Inden sidste een runde shoot-out: Ekström, Paffett, Timo og De Resta

Og de 4 første blev: Ekström, Paffett, Timo og De Resta. Perfekt blanding af Mercedeser og Audier – det bliver sq en spændende start i morgen
Eneste bekymring er at Taxierne ser meget mere clean ud gennem sving 1 mens Audi’erne ligner en stjernekaster med gnister fra undervognen og er vildt urolige hele vejen ud af svinget…..

Sidste shoot-out

18:53 – Tilbage på hotellet

Super dag selvom det var små-koldt, tror jeg skal have min hue på i morgen…. I Porsche Carrera Cup qualifikationen kom Nicki Thiim ind som 5′er i hans blå/hvide Porsche og de er helt OK. Han har allerede sikret sig tittelen som bedste rookie i sæsonen og er 5′er i stillingen så det ser ud til han følger i fatters fodspor.

Thiim i pitten

Derudover så jeg Tom K. som vi kender ham. Se billederne herunder, først står han og underholder en hel flok fans, de forsvinder stille og roligt efter han har sagt farvel og de har klappet. Men Tom bliver selvfølgelig stående til den sidste er færdig med at stille spørgsmål. Det er sq klasse!!!

Tom K.

(Det er Tom med Audi kasketten et eller andet sted i flokken….)

Tom K. - Fans på vej videre

(Det er Tom med Audi kasketten til højre)

Tom K. - Bliver hængende og svarer på spørgsmål til den sidste fan er glad

(Det er Tom med Audi kasketten til højre)

Nu vil jeg se om jeg kan finde noget at spise her i Leimen og i morgen får I løbende opdateringer…. og jeg regner selvfølgelig med at vi får Tom ind som 1′er, selvom det nok er mere sandsynligt at han han bliver brugt til at hjælpe Timo til den samlede sejer.

Vista ve Windows 7′de bütünleşik olarak gelen bu özellik sizi izinsiz girdiğiniz kablosuz ağlarda ele verebilir. Bu özelliği kapatmak için WMP (Windows Media Player)’da bir yer bulamadım o yüzden ayarlardan bu servisin nasıl kapatılacağını söyleyeceğim:

WMPNetworkSvc

Win+R tuşuna basıp (ya da Başlat>Çalıştır) “services.msc” yazdıktan sonra “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” “WMPNetworkSvc” servisini bulup, özelliklerini açtıktan sonra başlangıç türünü “devre dışı” yapın. Daha sonra da servisi o an için durdurabilirsiniz. Durdur butonuna bastıktan sonra artık Ağ Bağlantılarım’da media player ve kullanıcı isminiz gözükmeyecektir.

MKV (DivX 7) là định dạng phim chuẩn HD đang được sử dụng rất rộng rãi trên mạng, rất nhiều phần mềm coi định dạng MKV là “bình thường” và có thể phát một cách dễ dàng như KMPlayer, VLC Player hay JetAudio nhưng đáng tiếc là Windows 7 (và các phiên bản Windows trước) vẫn chưa hỗ trợ nên các ứng dụng của Microsoft như Windows Media Player hay Media Center đều không thể phát được định dạng này. Nay với gói cài đặt bổ sung DivX Tech Preview cho Windows 7, tất cả các ứng dụng dựa trên nền tảng Microsoft Media (WMP, Media Center..) đều có thể phát được định dạng MKV, đồng thời Windows Explorer cũng hiển thị được tập tin MKV ở dạng thu nhỏ (thumbnail).

Tôi cũng vừa mới biết đến định dạng MKV cách đây vài tháng vì rất ít khi coi phim, nhất là phim HD vì nó có dung lượng khá lớn, từ 1.5G trở lên, tải ngoài tiệm thì đến…kiếp nào mới xong ? Bộ phim chuẩn HD mà tôi xem đầu tiên là Spring Breakdown (đến giờ coi vẫn chưa xong, hichic) có dung lượng 1.57G. Tôi định xem bằng Windows Media Player của Win7 nhưng “ngạc nhiên chưa ?” – Win7 cũng…pógiò luôn ! Thế là tôi phải tìm và tải về JetAudio để xem. Sở dĩ tôi định xem bằng Windows Media Player là vì tôi đã cài sẵn DFX – giúp nghe nhạc xem phim “đã” hơn. Bộ phim thứ 2 là Transformer 2 với dung lượng khoảng 8G (HD-Bluray), phải “làm việc” cật lực trong 3 ngày trời mới xem được, quá đã !
Đọc tiếp… »

After my piece on the curious uprising of Grooveshark (back on September 6th, yes, it’s really been two months!), which is soon to be storming the music industry. I decided to direct my powers of persuasion towards Grooveshark themselves. This resulted in them very kindly granting me an interview (which I hope to be the first of three).

The first of the three piece interview is with one, Ben Westermann-Clark; User Relations. Ben is a people person, musician and all around nice guy and he gladly let me sit down and talk with him in regards to Grooveshark. Here’s what was said.

M: Hello there Ben, glad you could join us today, now first off can you tell us what you do at Grooveshark?

B: First off, I’m really glad to field your questions, Matt, and thanks for all your awesome support of Grooveshark!  My role, like most of the folks here at Grooveshark, is diverse and things can change a lot day-to-day. Mostly, I’m Community Manager for all the users of Grooveshark. It’s a mix of customer interaction, public relations, tech support, and overall image and branding. Basically, anytime a user talks to Grooveshark (or Grooveshark talks to a user), they’re probably talking to me.

M: It sounds like a lot of hard work, how long have you been working for Grooveshark, do you enjoy your job?

B: I love my job–it’s fun! I’m fortunate, really: I get to talk to all kinds of different people, experience music all day, and help a few people out in some small way, to boot. I think most people hate their jobs (like in the movie Office Space), but in the 2.5 years I’ve been at Grooveshark I’ve noticed that anyone who’s here long-term equally enjoys what they do. Nobody is here for the paycheck (at least not until we get raises ). It sounds corny/lame, but we’re really here to try to help people enjoy music.

M: I have to say, you do manage to pull it off rather well, I’ve told a lot of my friends about Grooveshark. Can you possibly tell us a little about yourself and in the end, what led you to work for Grooveshark?

B: My biggest passions are people, music, learning, arguing, and internet.  I grew up with a very tech-oriented family, and I was constantly curious not just about the technology but how its history and how it affected people. I also got into making music at a pretty young age, and like most people in their early 20s or younger, the internet has pretty much been a staple in my life for as long as I can remember. So ending up at Grooveshark–which is a cool mix of all three–was a pretty natural development.

M: Sounds like you’re going to be enjoying that for quite a while. For the readers delight, what is your favourite film and why?

B: Favorite anything is such a difficult question to answer. I tend to like TV shows and films with very, very realistic characters. I don’t need exploding robot dogs or people farting in Ashton Kutcher’s face to be entertained–I need The Insider. Rushmore. Dog Day Afternoon.

M: Do you have any pet peeves, personally or professionally?

B: In the office–people chewing loudly or smacking their gum. Kinda like in high school when you were taking a test, there was always that one kid who would click their pen over and over.  In general, in life, I just really hate driving. Somehow it always manages to stress me out–which sucks in a place where public transit is laughable (the south).

M: Finally, what can we expect from Grooveshark in the future?

B: We’re looking to hit mobile devices very soon so people can listen to music literally anywhere. We’ve also been working hard on the new version of Grooveshark that VIPs now have early access to, adding features, refinements, and cool goodies to that.

M: Thanks a lot Ben, it’s been a pleasure. 

That concludes the interview with Ben Westermann-Clark, who I have to thank for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. Next up, I’ll be talking to an employee from the software engineering side of Grooveshark.

Hace mucho que no pongo algún software a descargar, pues ahora les traigo un programa que me resultó muy útil a la hora de meter canciones a los iPod (en vez de usar el molesto iTunes que cada vez tiene mayor peso). Se tratá del J. River Media Jukebox 12 (que ahora se puede descargar gratis).

Como les comentaba, este programa es más sencillo de utilizar que el iTunes a la hora de poner las rolas a tu iPod, además de que también se sincroniza con otros dispositivos como celulares o reproductores MP3.

Además ofrece muchas de las funcionalidades del Windows Media Player, como por ejemplo, organizar tus listas de favoritos, ripear y grabar CD’s, visitar tiendas de música en línea, etc.

Aquí la página oficial del software:
J. River Media Jukebox

Gracias por tu visita!

A thoroughly scary and disappointing thing happened to me this weekend that made me reevaluate my cavalier way of doing IT work at home (you know, where the data is actually important).

I admit I was over-confident about certain things.  Heck, the thing we were doing worked before, so why shouldn’t it work again?

Here are some of the lessons and quirks that I uncovered:

You’ve got 720 minutes

Windows Home Server (WHS) does some really great things.  It mirrors your files so that in case of most hardware failures, your content is safe.  It backs up your other computers so that you’ve got peace of mind when your computers start making funny noises… but what’s backing up your WHS box (I would link in JungleDisk here, but they just pulled their WHS backup beta until further notice)? 

What if you make a mistake (or something else does), and you lose some files?

The good news is that you actually can recover files that are accidentally deleted from a WHS network share.  For 12 hours.  You may be able to right click on the folder in question and look through the “Previous Versions” of it and recover the lost content (review the link to see the steps – there’s also a client tool that could help there, but I’ve not used it).

Here are the key points to know about when it comes to previous versions in WHS:

• Depending on your disk space, you may only have 12 hours to figure out there is a problem AND recover the files (recovery isn’t instantaneous)
• If you only have 1 previous version available (due to disk space), it will disappear at noon or midnight.
• You must do the recovery from the network shares (log into the machine and open explorer, type in “\\<your machine name>”, right click on a folder and select Properties and work from there), not the “d:\shares\” folder in WHS.  You won’t see any previous versions from the “d:\shares\” folder.

So, if there is all this protection involved – even without a backup of WHS itself, why was this such a problem?  Enter the next set of factors…

Windows 7 and media libraries

A challenge for a friend and I has been figuring out how to seamlessly incorporate a vast collection of Apple Lossless (ALAC) .m4a music into his Media Center and Windows Media Player.  Zune seems to be a lost cause since it decides to use its own DirectShow filters and its own special media library. 

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, but have ALAC encoded files without DRM, I would suggest you:

• Install iTunes somewhere
• Open your vast ALAC library of music
• Change the default music encoding scheme in iTunes to WMA Lossless or something similar
• Go away for a while and let iTunes churn

Anyhow, let’s just say I’m thoroughly convinced that ALAC files are just not meant to live together with any Microsoft Media Center type product.  Go to some other media center type application for your HTPC, use iTunes, or convert your files.

We were able to get the files to play in Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player 12 (in Windows 7) by installing QuickTime and the RiverPast QuickTime DirectShow Filter.  The catch is that you can’t see the “tag” information in the files.  So song name, album etc. are all going to be empty unless you install some sort of Windows Media Player plugin.  It’s possible this could let you stream music over http on your WHS box if you install QuickTime and the DirectShow filters there too (untested).

I’m not going to suggest an AAC music information plugin for Windows 7 WMP 12.  Somewhere along the line of attempting to get these ALAC files merged into the Windows Media Center and WMP media library, something started deleting the music files silently.

This could have been any one of several moving parts in this setup (note, this did work in Vista).  However, we did not discover there was a problem until about 10AM when we noticed that all the music files in the artists beginning with “A” and most of the “B’s” were already gone.

By the time we figured out how to recover files from the shadow copies (we tried using the d:\shares folders at first instead of the actual \\<machine name> shares), it was 12:01 PM.  The previous versions disappeared, and all was lost.

Note, his WHS volumes were very full, so it could only keep one shadow copy around.

Other Windows Media Player 12 and Win 7 Media Center quirks

Independent from the above problem, we couldn’t even add any music to the WMP / MCE library.  We also could not view the library setup at all in Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player 12.  The symptoms of this problem are:

• In Windows Media Player 12, right click the Music entry on the left and select “Manage Library”, and nothing happens.  Or find another way to select “Manage Library” and again, nothing will happen.
• In Windows Media Center in Windows 7, if you select Tasks and Media Libraries, the option to “Remove a location” will be grayed out and unselectable.  You can attempt to add a new location, but you’ll never know for sure if it worked.

If you run into this situation, this may have happened to you:

• You mapped a network shared folder to a drive (say “M:” for your “\\homeserver\Music” shared folder)
• That drive mapping somehow disappeared

On a whim, I added his M: drive into the mix to see if that changed anything.  I didn’t realize he used to have drive M: in his setup. After doing this, I was suddenly able to manage his media libraries in both WMP and MCE.

Moral: Test test test

Yup.  It seems simple enough… we should have copied a bunch of his ALAC media to a temporary location and pointed all our efforts toward that.  The drawback there was the colossal amount of time it takes to rebuild the media library.  But then again, he wouldn’t have lost any media by my hand.

Oh, and maybe throw an extra drive into your WHS box if you get near 70% capacity.

Occasionally, Windows Media Player (WMP) may be unable to play a video file because it will say that it does not have the correct Codec. These warnings are not particularly helpful because not only can you not play the file but WMP doesn’t tell you what Codec you need.

The video files you are likely to have will have the file extension of .avi, .mpg etc and the most simple way to find out what Codec you need is to do the following :

1. Go to the video file.
2. Right click the file to display the menu and go to ‘Properties’.
3. Go to the ‘Summary’ tab
4. Click the advanced button (If the only button there says ‘<< Simple’ then the Advanced button has already been clicked.
5. You should now be able to see Image, Audio and Video properties.
6. For the necessary Codec you will need to look at ‘Video compression’. In my example, it was showing ‘XVID’.
7. It’s this video compression name that you would use on Google or Yahoo to find the correct Codec to download..

Occasionally, Windows Media Player (WMP) may be unable to play an audio file because it will say that it does not have the correct Codec. These warnings are not particularly helpful because not only can you not play the file but WMP doesn’t tell you what Codec you need.

The sound files you are likely to have will have the file extension of mp3, .wav, .dss etc and the most simple way to find out what Codec you need is to do the following :

1. Go to the audio file.
2. Right click the file to display the menu and go to ‘Properties’.
3. Go to the ‘Summary’ tab
4. Click the advanced button (If the only button there says ‘<< Simple’ then the Advanced button has already been clicked.
5. You should now be able to see Bit Rate, Audio Sample, Channels, Audio sample rate, Audio format.
6. It’s the Audio format that will show the name of the Codec and it is this name that you would search for on Google or Yahoo to find the correct Codec.

Aqui está uma das mais novas versões desse poderoso player. Essa versão traz muitas novidades, funcionais e visuais, alem continuar sendo o player mais usado do mundo. Faça o Download do Windows Media Player 11 Para Windows XP:

By: Áulus Silva

são paulo e santo andré aovivo em WMP não trava bem melhor que JUSTIN TV

ASSISTA OS OUTROS JOGOS AQUI!

I have been greatly enjoying Windows 7 recently. Microsoft has done a lot right with it. I enjoyed it so much that I actually migrated my primary workhorse from OpenSUSE to Windows 7. Being able to pin programs to the taskbar as well as programs like remote desktop having quick access to recently used links through the start menu are nice little touches. One of the great things about 7 though is Homegroups. They’re a much needed breath of fresh air for your average workgroup. I can see this benefiting small businesses a lot as you get some immediate access to easy file AND printer sharing. The printer sharing part was what I liked best. Just add yourself to the homegroup and ta da it is there. But what I am going to touch on today is something that gave me some grief for a few hours last night and this morning.

I decided to give this streaming media thing a go. The music I was wishing to listen to, which by the way is the fantastic Piano Concert #2 by Sergei Rachmaninov, was on another system. So I thought that this would be a great time to test out the streaming capabilities. I quickly switched it on in the homegroup for that system and started up Windows Media Player on my desktop to give it a go. Sorry! Access denied. WMP was complaining that it cannot access the file. This would happen for everything in the music library on that system. Interestingly enough though, was that videos and pictures would work just fine. I found it odd to be a permissions issue since that was working, and also if I browsed through via Explorer I could play the same music files with whatever media player I chose, including WMP. It didn’t quite seem like a permissions issue, especially since WMP’s error message was so generic that it could be anything, but I wasn’t quite ready to discount it yet. So I gave it a good night’s sleep and returned to the problem in the morning.

After a cup of mocha things became a little bit clearer. I decided to test playing music on the problem system from my desktop, thereby reversing the stream. This worked just dandy. So I gave the music folders a permissions inspection and found the problem. On the system that could stream music from the library there was an extra user with permissions, namely the WMPNetworkSvc who had Read permissions on the folder. The problem system did not have this permission. Unfortunately it wasn’t so simple a fix as just adding the user as the system would report that the user did not exist. Inspecting other folders such as the pictures and video folders did report the proper permissions. Thusly I fixed things with a bit of Powershell magic, and if you use this don’t forget to substitute your account name for MyAccount:

Get-Acl C:\Users\MyAccount\Videos | Set-Acl  C:\Users\MyAccount\Music

This turned a trick! I could stream music to my heart’s desire. Now as for speculation as to why this particular permission is missing, the only guess I have is due to this system being a system that was upgraded from XP, to Vista, to Windows 7. I could quite easily see something getting fouled up along the way, especially since this is over a number of years. It is a good test system though. The other system I have has gone from Vista to 7 and it did not exhibit the same issue.

With the release of the WMP Property Handler Plug-in it’s now possible to get full library and playback support for FLAC files in Windows Media Player. The required plug-ins and codecs will likely be combined into a single installer at some point, but for now it’s necessary to install the following components:

• FLAC Property Handler (FLAC support for Windows Explorer)
• WMP Property Handler Plug-in (allows WMP to use FLAC support via Explorer)
• FLAC File Registration (playlist and library support)
• FLAC DirectShow Filter (FLAC playback support)

The files necessary to install these components are available on the downloads page.

Note that each of these components may have different system requirements. At the time of writing this the minimum system required for full FLAC support is Windows Vista or higher (32-bit editions only) with Windows Media Player 12.

If you’re reading this you probably know that Windows Media Player doesn’t natively support FLAC format audio. With the help of other software it can be coerced into playing FLAC, but incorporating it into the library and allowing drag-and-drop is another story.

I’ve written two registry patches: one to register FLAC files with Windows Media Player (not the same as file assocation), and one to unregister should you wish to remove it. They’re both available on the downloads page.

To enable FLAC support download and double-click the registration .reg file. Click ‘Yes’ to merge the changes. To undo these changes and remove FLAC support use the unregister file.

WMP Property Handler Plug-in allows Windows Media Player to read and write file metadata the same way Windows Explorer does: using existing property handlers. This means that by installing appropriate handlers for file types (such as FLAC) Windows Media Player can view metadata (such as FLAC tags) for those file types in the library and the playlist pane.

Currently this plug-in is only available for Windows Media Player 12 (or higher) on Windows Vista or higher, and will only run on 32-bit versions of Windows.

The latest installer is available on the downloads page. After installation ensure the plug-in is running by checking Tools -> Plug-ins in Windows Media Player.

Screenshots:

Note: This plug-in does not enable playback of FLAC files or any other format in Windows Media Player. It simply enables WMP to read any metadata that Windows Explorer can.

I like Windows 7. It’s got all the things I liked about Vista (Aero Glass, cleaner-looking user directory structure, better support for multiple network interfaces, more text labels and fewer incomprehensible icons, to start) and it’s got the Dock from Mac OS X. So it stood to reason that the Media Player that comes with Windows 7, namely, Windows Media Player 12, might be worth another look.

I’ve tried to use Windows Media Player a few times before. I think the last time was when WMP10 came out, back when I was still running XP.  It was ugly, glitchy, and liked to freeze for long periods of time for no reason, especially when network shares were involved or the library was much above 20 GB. Once in a while, it would eat its own database and refuse to show anything until I nuked the library database files on disk and reimported everything. Not so good.

Normally, I’d use iTunes, but over the past couple of releases it’s been hard not to notice that Apple is a lot worse at writing Windows software than Microsoft is at writing Mac software. I’ve experienced redraw glitches, funky-looking (i.e. not ClearType) text rendering, general sluggishness, and an inability to turn off annoying things like those go-to-the-iTunes-store arrows which can be taken care of with a preferences editor on the Mac. Also, my iPod 4G finally died. RIP Inductive Satanograph 2004-2009. You’re syncing and charging over FireWire with the angels now… *sniff*

A lot of people use WinAmp, but the UI is like a cheesegrater being rubbed across my corneas. It’s one step above a Taiwanese OEM’s overclocking utility. There are things with command-line interfaces that are prettier and more usable than WinAmp. It’s skinnable, so theoretically there could be a skin out there that fixes this problem, but so far every 3rd-party skin I’ve seen has been worse than the default.

So. WMP12. Been using it for a few weeks now. Turns out it has problems. Big ones.

Tag Support

Surprisingly, WMP12 supports MPEG-4 tags better than MP3 tags. I’m not aware of any published standard for MPEG-4 tags. Tools like AtomicParsley and Mutagen appear to have been built based on inspection of iTunes-tagged files. WMP12 had no problem reading my collection of MPEG-4 AAC music, album art and all (except for the problems it has with all album art, which I discuss below.)

However, it doesn’t support ID3 v2.4 tags on MP3s at all. The word from the WMP team at work is that this is intended behavior, because v2.4 isn’t widely supported. Umm… The standard’s been out for nine years, guys. You should at least be able to read them even if you don’t write them. Why not ask the Xbox 360 team for some code? The 360’s media player can read them. I don’t know if it supports fancy features like replay gain frames (RVA2) but at least it gets title, album. and artist right.

This is not an insurmountable obstacle; downgrading from v2.4 to v2.3 doesn’t cause any problems in my music library. I ended up writing my own Python utility for reading and writing v2.3 tags, because Mutagen won’t write anything except v2.4, and after downgrading (and cleaning up a few screwed-up files with a hex editor), metadata started appearing in WMP12.

Metadata

Unfortunately, WMP12 doesn’t seem to support the ID3 TPOS frame or whatever the MPEG-4 equivalent is. This is the disc number field in iTunes, the one that lets you specify where a track belongs in a multi-disc set. It’s listed as known by the Windows Media Format SDK, but there’s no way to display it in WMP12, and it doesn’t affect sort ordering, so it might as well not exist. Without it, all the tracks on a multi-disc set get zippered together, sorted by track number and then alphabetically:

On top of that, the Advanced Tag Editor is gone, and the Edit context menu option seems to be broken for some data types: I can’t clear a wrong release year, for example. On hitting Return, it snaps back to the previous value.

Album art

I have nice high-quality album art from Amazon, Discogs, iTMS, or the web embedded in almost all of my music files. WMP12 finds it, creates a tiny little downscaled copy, and uses that for album art display instead of the full-resolution stuff in the music file. Then it poops invisible JPEG versions all over the library folder structure (Folder.jpg, AlbumArtSmall.jpg, and friends.) There was a workaround for earlier versions, but it’s gone now. Look at this Now Playing window. Doesn’t the artwork look lonely? And blurry?

Glitches

Every so often, I’ll start WMP12 on my home machine and it’ll go through the entire library and make two entries for each track. They’re pointing to the same file location, so nothing’s being copied, but everything is listed twice. This is infuriating. Sometimes it goes away if I relaunch WMP12. Sometimes it doesn’t. It goes away if I delete the library databases in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, but it can come back just as easily. Possibly related is that Last.fm’s scrobbler has stopped scrobbling tracks played in WMP12.

Neither of these glitches happen on my computer at work, and the only difference I’ve noted so far is that the Music library at home includes a folder on an external hard drive (which is always plugged in), while the Music library at work only includes the My Music folder. Don’t know what’s going on here.

Conclusions

Man, they’re not even trying any more. Time to reinstall iTunes.