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Windows Media Player Plus

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:54:22 +0000

Windows Media Player Plus is a third party plugin for Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. It adds a series of features to the media player, more precisely to Windows Media Player 12 and 11.

The plugin adds several useful features to Windows Media Player including a more comfortable tag editor that can be accessed by right-clicking songs in the player’s interface.

Windows Media Player Plus can also display song information in the Windows Media Player title (nothing’s displayed there otherwise with the option to customize the title using an Advanced Title Formatting.

A type as you find search is integrated into the Media Player library. The plugin will automatically find the first instance of the typed in phrase while the user is typing.

There are also two settings to restore media and plugins in the player. The Restore Media at Startup option can restore several items on startup of Windows Media Player including:

Restore last active playlist
Restore last active media item
Restore last play state
Restore last playback position

It is possible to select multiple items in the options. Windows Media Player will automatically disable option plugins on startup if the player has crashed in the previous session. The Restore plugins after crash setting can be used to quickly re-enable the disabled plugins.

Users who use Windows Media Player as their default media player may want to consider installing Windows Media Player Plus to extend the player.

Installation of WMPP is straightforward. Instances of Windows Media Player need to be shutdown before the plugin can be installed.

Windows Media Player Plus can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Global Hotkeys Windows Media Player Plugin

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:55:42 +0000

Microsoft’s Windows Media Player does not support global hotkeys by default. It comes with a full set of hotkeys that work when the window of the media player is active but these shortcuts stop working once the player’s window is minimized or in the background of the computer desktop. Some keyboard drivers enable media key support so that the computer user can control playback with media keys on the keyboard. There is however no solution for users without media keyboards.

WMP Keys is a plugin for Windows Media Player 12, Windows Media Player 11 and 10 that adds global hotkey support to the media player. The plugin is supplied as a msi file which needs to be installed when the media player is not open. It then needs to be activated after installation in the player’s options.

This is done in Windows Media Player 12 by clicking on Organize > Options. This should open the options menu with a plug-ins tab. The WMP Keys plugin is listed under background plugins. Placing a checkmark in the box and clicking the apply button will activate the global hotkeys for Windows Media Player.

The default hotkeys are:

Play/Pause Ctrl+Alt+Home
Next Ctrl+Alt+Right
Previous Ctrl+Alt+Left
Volume Up Ctrl+Alt+Up
Volume Down Ctrl+Alt+Down
Fast Forward Ctrl+Alt+F
Fast Backward Ctrl+Alt+B
Rate [1-5] Ctrl+Alt+[1-5]

These hotkeys can be changed by clicking on the Properties button in the same menu.

WMP Keys can be downloaded from its Sourceforge project website.

Windows Media Player CD-Text

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:08:33 +0000

CD-Text stores additional information on a audio CD. The information consist usually of the album, name, song name, track info and artist. Many computer music players like Winamp or MediaMonkey can read CD-Text and display the information. Instead of playing track 1 the user would actually see the track name and related information.

Windows Media Player never officially supported CD-Text which is where WMPCDText comes into play. The plugin for Windows Media Player 10 or 11 is capable of reading and displaying CD-Text information in Windows Media Player.

The Windows Media Player plugin comes with an option to automatically load the CD-Text information if present on the CD. The alternative would be to right-click on the tracks of the CD to load the CD-Text information into Windows Media Player.

This obviously only works with CDs that make use of CD-Text information. Many burning software programs can burn CD-Text including Nero, ImgBurn or iTunes. The Windows Media Player plugin will run on Windows 2003, Windows XP and Windows Vista with administrative rights required on XP and 2003.