Media Keyboard Support For Unsupported Media Players

So called media keyboards have to prerequisites before the media keys can be used on the computer system. A media key is an additional key on the keyboard that is used to control media or programs on the computer. The most common keys are those to control music on the computer and to open a web browser or the email client. The prerequisites are a media keyboard driver that needs to be installed on the computer system and a software that is making use of the keys.

Not all media players come with that functionality though. Media Keyboard 2 is a software program that adds support for media keys in several media players that do not support those keys by design. The software adds media key support for the following applications: VLC Media Player, XMPlay, Winamp Classic, FreeAMP, 1by1, Xion and Zinf.

Media Keyboard adds support for the play, pause, stop, previous and next media keys in the listed applications. The software uses less than four Megabytes of computer memory while running and will run on all Windows operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows XP.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Friday January 23, 2009 -
Tags:media keyboard, media keyboard driver, media keyboard software, media keys, media players, windows software

Responses so far:

1. -=Ben=- says:

   January 23, 2009 at 7:16 pm

   Where is Songbird support?
   It is my favorite media player.
   http://www.last.fm/user/BenOnUserstyles

   -=Ben=-

   Reply
2. garbanzo says:

   January 24, 2009 at 10:15 pm

   @-=Ben=-

   songbird already has global hotkey support. if you can’t get it to work natively with your multimedia keys, either remap them to other keys, or just use a tiny hotkey app like HoeKey or Hotkey Master to do the extra work for you.

   both those hotkey apps can also send winapi messages to apps like iTunes, letting you set global hotkeys for controlling them, too.

   Reply
3. Roman ShaRP says:

   January 25, 2009 at 11:48 pm

   I do this on A4 Tech keyboards my way:
   1) set up keyboard driver to send some key combination code on media key press – “Ctrl-Alt-Right” for the “Next track” for example.
   2) set up Player to recognize “Ctrl-Alt-Right” as “Next track” command.

   I find that this can have one advantage over the classic media key support: I programmed my “Swiss knife” Windows PowerPro to generate “Ctrl-Alt-Right” on the mouse left click – right click “chord”, pressing left button and then pressing right. So now I can switch to the next track with simple clicks, without lifting my hand from mouse and even without additional buttons on mouse :)

   Reply
4. alf says:

   January 26, 2009 at 5:31 pm

   Thanks for finding this one, it`s a really useful program! But it`s called “Media Keyboard 2 Media Player” (2=to).

   Reply