An awesome media organization program

btvillarin

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I just wanted to post a program that I've absolutely grown to love, so I hope you all don't mind. It's called Media Center. You can look at the website for more details, but my opinions are mainly from an iPod user.

I have a decent size song collection. But, they're all just...there. Other than being organized by folder structure, tags are messed up, I don't listen to a lot of songs, stuff like that. Anyways, I've been able to batch tag songs, rate songs, create smartlists that can be based by rating, last played, genre, and more.

I don't use any other media program anymore...not even Winamp.

Plus, the support is amazing! I was having problems with synchronizing with my Ipod (the playlists would disappear), and one of the developers worked with me and others with the same problem. Now, he got it fixed and things are dandy!

If you have a lot of music on your computer, take the trial for a spin. Good chance it'll help you out a lot to sift through those songs you probably don't listen to anymore, like I have. I've freed up quite a bit of space already, and I'm still going. :smile:

Website: <A HREF="http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/" target="_new">J. River Media Center</A>

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alltaken

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can i ask, have you tried the new Winamp5

it has all the features missed by the old Winamp

rating songs, great search options in the medialibary, automatic album art and info as well as internet radio and tv. its honestly easier to use than ever and with the rigth skin i have my computer set up pretty logically. the media libary does away with needed to organise a tree structure in folders, you can search by most played, words, albums, artists, genre, favorites etc... and seriously its NICE.

i havn't actually tried the program you are talking about, but if you are comparing to winamp 2 or 3 then i sugest you just give this a test and homour me :D (not trying to be a winamp fanboy LOL)

p.s. what kind of CPU and memory does your program use? just curious really

Alltaken

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btvillarin

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Syncing with my iPod right now, it uses about 19,000 K of memory, and things are still speedy.

Would there be a point to trying out Winamp 5? :wink:

Bryan

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alltaken

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oh ok, i don't think winamp 5 suports ipod yet. but i may be totally wrong in this (will go check). (checked and winamp has a plugin for Ipod that has has mixed success but is pretty new, so will soon be good i guess)

and i guess there is a point in trying it out. you might like it better i dunno :S but if what you have works fine then no there is no point in trying it out.

maybe someone else comes across this thread and sees wants to try it out :S

for me winamp uses 2mb mem minimised in classic mode, and 4.5mb minimised in the modern mode, while maximised its 4Mb and 6Mb respectivly.

although it doesn't particuly bother me how much mem it uses coz i have 1 Gb but when i am rendering 3d stuff or using photoshop its handy (as you could imagine)

anyway have a good one.

Alltaken

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btvillarin

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I haven't heard anybody swooning over Winamp...and a supposable plugin for the iPod.

There's a mini-me mode which turns the large interfact to just a tiny player. With a a few hundred songs quequed, it takes about 13MB of memory and stays under 10 CPU.

I'm not trying to compare, but just show that this program is one of the best in its fields. Winamp is just for playing music and having nifty skins, IMO. Other than all this stuff, if it didn't exist, I'd still be using Winamp.

Merry Christmas! :smile:

Bryan

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alltaken

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Hmmmmm

ok then you are not comparing apples to apples.

Winamp is now a multimedia player, that can play nearly any file format (i use it on strange file formats like FLAC with plugins) it plays Video files now also.

this is a screenshot of the Media libary (as it is set up on my screen) <A HREF="http://doug.mud-puddle.co.nz/albums/upload/wiamp5.jpg" target="_new">http://doug.mud-puddle.co.nz/albums/upload/wiamp5.jpg</A>

note that it has
Internet radio
Internet TV (streaming video)
search for audio, artist, genre etc... 9each option narrows down the options in the next box along to find songs quick
search for video
playlist editor and manager

then
Most played
recently played
recently added
never played and top rated

these options all have a different interface layout in the main window with ratign options for songs you like etc...

the devices can be accessed a the bottom such as CD drives.

you can bookmark songs etc...




its a far cry from the winamp i think you used last, bit more than a MP3 palyer with skins LOL. i don't even play MP3's on it LOL

yeah merry christmas, have a good one bro

Alltaken

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btvillarin

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My bad, Winamp <b>is not</b> just for music. I know Winamp lets you play lots of media formats, so I apologize. It's just that I already got settled into Media Center, with the ratings set and all. If I'd switched, I'd lose <b>smartlists</b>, which I'm not quite sure is supported in Winamp.

Looking at Winamp, seeing that it has a <b>play count</b> and <b>last played</b> columns are pretty impressive. I'm sure it still has a long ways to go, for support with handheld devices. MC9 finally fixed a bug for the iPod, so I'm like all stoked and stuff... :lol:

Most likely, I'm open to new things. I'm not even using MS Office anymore...I'm using OpenOffice.org. So I don't count things out. :wink:

Bryan

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alltaken

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LOL yeah me too, only microsoft thing i have is WindowsXP LOL all the rest is open source or free stuff.

anyway have a good one


Alltaken

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BunnyStroker

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I have to admit, btvillarin: when I first read your post, my first response was, *ahem*:

<b>SHILL!</b>

But I did download it to try it out. I'm pleasantly suprised! It's a really great media organization program. I'm going to try it out for a few weeks - It might very well become my main audio player.

Thanks for the heads up!

<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by BunnyStroker on 12/29/03 10:55 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

btvillarin

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:cool: Good to hear! It's totally stable for me right now, and what I use it for, so I really wanted to pass it along and spread the word. Hope you'll do the same.. . :wink:

See ya!

Bryan

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BunnyStroker

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Ack. I'm back to winamp, for the time being.

The reason? Media center handles MP4 files rather poorly. The developers are working on it last I checked the forums, but until they can manage to deal with MP4 tags and seamless playback I gotta stick with Winamp.



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