Peek API compatible media players?


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Yep, using the 'foo_win7shell' component, foobar2000 can display the artwork of the currently playing track in the thumbnail preview as well as the 'Skip previous', 'Pause/Play', 'Stop' and 'Skip next' controls :) It may also show the 'playback bar'/progress of the currently playing track so you can see how much has played and how much is left, all within the thumbnail; however, you cannot use that bar to skip as Microsoft does not provide the opportunity to develop for that in their taskbar APIs. Still, it will show the progress which is nice and even better than what Windows Media Player provides ;)

You should check out foobar, it is such a fantastic media player because of how customisable it is. You can even make it very similar to iTunes or Windows Media Player. As well as components like this which provide very useful extra functionality, you can also add skins. Check it out and if you have any problems customising it, just send me a personal message and I can help you :) I had to install about 5 components to get mine how I wanted it (a search bar in the UI, this Windows 7 integration, handling of libraries they way iTunes does - with the browser of artists. albums and genres at the top etc), but it didn't take me long.

I've been using foobar2000 for about 3 days now (I listen to music throughout most of the day on my days off) and I continue to be impressed by it.

Hope that helps :)

Edited by Calum
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I don't know why there are sudden sound stutters in music applications under Windows 7. I also get them as well on my laptop, though the occurances have dropped in the later builds. It used to frequently stutter in the public beta build.

One of the suggestions a fellow member made was to disable Powermizer if you have a laptop with a Nvidia GPU.

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:/ Foobar stutters too. Any way to prevent this?

I've had this problem with foobar2000, but only when I was copying over a load of music as well as editing some images with Photoshop, editing a website, using about 5 Word documents and 2 Powerpoint slides, as well as my web browser, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail.

For that reason, I put it down to maybe the RAM usage? It's never happened to me at other times and that time it did happen was only once. It used to happen to me using iTunes on Windows Vista, but that stopped shortly after for some reason...

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The default columnsui plugin has playback buttons on windows 7.

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I do have an NVidia GPU. How do I disable Powermizer? I've never heard of it.

Head over here.

Be forewarned that by disabling Powermizer your system fan might spin up much more frequently, and your GPU may be a bit hotter in some cases.

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Yep, using the 'foo_win7shell' component, foobar2000 can display the artwork of the currently playing track in the thumbnail preview as well as the 'Skip previous', 'Pause/Play', 'Stop' and 'Skip next' controls :) It may also show the 'playback bar'/progress of the currently playing track so you can see how much has played and how much is left, all within the thumbnail; however, you cannot use that bar to skip as Microsoft does not provide the opportunity to develop for that in their taskbar APIs. Still, it will show the progress which is nice and even better than what Windows Media Player provides ;)

It's foo_w7shell, actually. If anyone goes to search for it...

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Hm, I hope Microsoft is aware of this stutter. I filed a bug back in January, but never came up with a good repro step. Running my mouse through the preview windows would sometimes trigger it.

I'll have to see if my ATI desktop exhibits this. No GPU throttling there. Plus 7 utilizes DX 10.1.

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It's foo_w7shell, actually. If anyone goes to search for it...

You're absolutely right! I misread it. Sorry to anyone who may have searched the wrong thing and not found it. Thanks for correcting me - it is called "foo_w7shell"

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No problems here, even given the largest hammering I could give my computer. Prime 95 hammering all 4 cores, Photoshop CS4 x64, uTorrent, Media Center, Opera, Outlook, and 3 Explorer windows going. Managed to get 46% of 8GB of my memory utilised. Running an ATI 4850, with onboard Realtek ALC890 (5.1 speaker set), and experienced no issues with it. No audio skipping, and all the taskbar thumbnails previewed smoothly.

Must be an issue specific to certain setups. Granted mine is pretty powerful, but I am willing to bet it is config specific rather than OS specific as I couldn't repro it.

Also, bear in mind that a lot of drivers for Windows 7 are in development, and performance will probably improve with every release

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What are your settings in the playback>output section of the preferences?

Try changing the buffer length to a higher number.

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Also, bear in mind that a lot of drivers for Windows 7 are in development, and performance will probably improve with every release

Didn't have this problem at all in Beta, and I think a couple others also had stuttering problems in RC but not Beta.

What are your settings in the playback>output section of the preferences?

Try changing the buffer length to a higher number.

I just tried increasing it, and I seemed to get a longer pause.

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