Windows Media Player 11beta Released

dalk

Windows Media Player 11beta has been released.

If you have a large music collection on Media Center Edition 2005, you will know how painfull it can be to wait for My Music (WMP10) to do whatever it is doing with the library...here's hoping WMP11beta is better at managing large libraries.

8T8

I tried it out and it seems to work well though my own music collection isn't that big to begin with.

The interface is a definite improvement over WMP10 as far as I'm concerned but one thing missing that I cant see in WMP11 is the ability to hide the tabs at the top (burn, sync etc) you could that in WMP10.

Also a nice feature I thought that was when playing a DVD it goes auto full screen.

A further nice side effect is that the bug that caused a dxva.txt file that appeared after you played a wmv in MPC no longer happens so yay!

HLF

Media Player won't see Mpeg4 files. I have upgraded to MP11 and also tried the Codecs updates on various sites for playing Mpeg4 files but still can't get MCE or Media Player to see the files. Any ideas. Thanks

P.S. MP11 is similar to the GUI through MCE.

8T8

Not sure what codecs your using or what type of MPEG-4 (ASP or AVC ?) but a catch all solution is to use FFDShow which is a directshow compatible decoder that supports many types of video and audio. Windows media player and other directshow based players require a directshow complient codec for playback which most are these days, I'm kinda surprised nothing worked though the lack of Haali's media splitter could have been a factor.

Download this FFDShow build, now download Haali's Media Splitter. When installing FFDShow make sure the media codec selections are at the default though you can untick the post processing and volume normalization if you wish.

After FFDShow is installed, install the Media Splitter this is required to parse the .mp4, .mkv etc container so it can hand off the correct type of video and audio to the codec as those containers can hold a variety of video and audio formats.

So with those installed WMP & MCE will be able to play your MPEG-4 files I wrote a small post about FFDShow's settings which you can read here if you want more info.

MunkyHed

WMP11 won't install on my MCE 2005 PC. It's asking me to install update rollup 2. I can't do this as the PC isn't connected to the net. Is there a standalone version of rollup 2 that i can download here at work and take it home on a USB key to install on my MCE PC??

8T8

Yes you can get the Update Rollup 2 from this link.

Or do a search for WindowsXPMediaCenter2005-KB900325-usa.exe the file is about 29MB in size.

HLF

Thanks 8T8.
Media Player will now play Mpeg4 files. One problem, Media Player will only see the Mpeg 4 files under the “Other Media” option so you loose all the file info and MCE still won’t see these files. I presume for the same reason as the is no "Other Media" option in MCE.
Is there something else I should be doing.

Egyptian

The design is nice, but overall I prefer WMP10

__

8T8

HLF wrote:

Thanks 8T8.
Media Player will now play Mpeg4 files. One problem, Media Player will only see the Mpeg 4 files under the “Other Media” option so you loose all the file info and MCE still won’t see these files. I presume for the same reason as the is no "Other Media" option in MCE.
Is there something else I should be doing.

The library features video section only recognizes formats that are .avi, .wmv or mpeg etc.. in other words only the file types that are supported by WMP out of the box. Unforunately it seems .mp4 and friends will only appear under the other category. Hopefully that will change as it is still beta before the final release.

As for MCE not playing the files I don't follow if WMP can play the file MCE can play the file because MCE's player is WMP. In order for videos to show up in MCE you must have the codec installed which you have done then add the folder to the watched folder list in MCE. Run the add folder wizard in My Videos to do so you can get to it by pressing the {I} more info button on your remote.

HLF

8T8 wrote:

As for MCE not playing the files I don't follow if WMP can play the file MCE can play the file because MCE's player is WMP. In order for videos to show up in MCE you must have the codec installed which you have done then add the folder to the watched folder list in MCE. Run the add folder wizard in My Videos to do so you can get to it by pressing the {I} more info button on your remote.

The Mpeg4 files are Audio files created in iTunes and the Add Music option in MCE under My Music does not pick up the files.

If you run the add folder wizard in My Videos you can only pick up the folder if you copy it into My Videos. It will see the folder then but won’t pick up the files inside the folder.

8T8

HLF wrote:

The Mpeg4 files are Audio files created in iTunes and the Add Music option in MCE under My Music does not pick up the files.

If you run the add folder wizard in My Videos you can only pick up the folder if you copy it into My Videos. It will see the folder then but won’t pick up the files inside the folder.

Ah okay I thought you were talking about MPEG-4 videos, the AAC audio format also resides in the .mp4 container.

It seems there may be issues with MCE reading the tag information of AAC files in My Music (I wouldn't know I only use MP3's) there is a plug-in for MCE called Music Bridge (free) which will keep your tracks in sync with iTunes and MCE & also correct some of the bugs in relation to not reading the tags on the AAC files or so it says...

However metadata aside you should be able to play AAC in files in MCE regardless that is unless they are DRM protected by Apples Fairplay.

HLF

Have to leave it for the moment. Will get back to it on the weekend. Thanks for your help.

HLF

“Music Bridge” did not seem to do much; in fact WMP/MCE sees 4 less Albums now. I think I will stick with iTunes for playing music, as it is a better setup and easier to find songs. It’s a shame because MCE good for everything else.

Thanks for the pointers 8T8

8T8

HLF wrote:

“Music Bridge” did not seem to do much; in fact WMP/MCE sees 4 less Albums now. I think I will stick with iTunes for playing music, as it is a better setup and easier to find songs. It’s a shame because MCE good for everything else.

Thanks for the pointers 8T8

Oh well, if you are still having trouble playing back AAC endoed files in MCE try the CoreAAC decoder instead.