There are sites with embedded real-audio players whose streams media
classic won't play. Try
www.4fm.ie
as one example where a friend reported problems with MP Classic.
I think one is best served with all three of the 'big' stand-alone
players: RealPlayer, Winamp, and windows media player. Then, wherever
an embedded player is encountered, the right player will play the stream
appropriately.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Griffith" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 6:57 AM
Subject: [JAWS-Users] Media Player classic
Dear List
I think I want to mount a case for using Media Player Classic as a
default
media player with Jaws.
Over the years I had lots of problems with Winamp, the application
seems
intrusive and relatively hungry on resources. I found it would often
crash
and I would find unwanted extras like Winamp Agent and Dashboard etc
installed.
Media Player Classic in contrast is light, small with a simple clean
menu
interface and as solid as a rock. I have installed it on loads of
systems
and have never come across a problem yet.
I do not worry about winamp type libraries etc and simply play my
music and
other media from windows Explorer. I thought that I would have to
sacrifice
some of the features of WinAmp that Jaws support but thought I would
tell
you of some basic tinkering which results in Media Player Classic
meeting
all my needs.
1. Information on time elapsed, bit rate etc.
You cannot simply read all this information from the menu bar in Media
Player Classic though the properties tab under the file menu will
give you
a lot of information.
To get information like time elapsed etc you can make some changes
which
means this is easily displayed in a window that Jaws can read .
Go to the view menu and select all the information you want
displayed. This
includes statistics information status options etc. I normally turn
them all
on . This information can now be read with the Jaws Cursor by simply
cursoring up and down through the Media Player Classic Window.
To make this process even better you can stop Jaws announcing Graphic
as a
one time customisation. Press insert F2 and open configuration manager
whilst in Media Player Classic. Open the set options menu and go to
graphics
and symbols and tab down to make sure that the Graphics verbosity is
set to
none. Exit and save configuration Manager. You will now find
information
about your tracks playing will be read clearly without Jaws saying
graphics.
Use insert R to cycle through different read restrictions and set
restriction to application if too much is being read from other open
applications on your screen.
2. all the controls in Media Player classic are now intuitive. Play
pause is
space bar, up and down volume is by the up and down cursor keys and
fast
forward and rewind can be achieved at different speeds by using
control
left and right arrows or alt and left and right arrows respectively .
All
other commands are available through a simple menu system.
3. although I have found no inbuilt Playlist creation support in Media
Player Classic, I use a small partner application called Mp3Tag to
quickly
achieve this. This can be downloaded from the Jaws User Programs
page. To
create a playlist of all the files in a folder open Mp3Tag. Press
Control D
for Directory . Navigate to the folder where your Mp3 files are. Press
Control P for Playlist , press enter a couple of time and a playlist
file
has been created in the folder with the mp3 files . This playlist
file can
be open by media player classic. If Media Player Classic is not your
default
playlist player and you want it to be so follow these instructions.
Simply press the application key on the playlist file and select open
with.
Go down to choose program from the resulting sub menu. Select browse
if
media player classic is not displayed in the list and find mplayer.exe
in
the Media Player Classic folder. . Now check always open with this
application and media player classic will play the playlist from
Windows
explorer. Pressing the page up and page down keys will move you
between
tracks in the playlist.
4. It should also be noted that Media Player Classic can be used to
play
Real Media and Quicktime files through ?Real and Quicktime alternative
application, both of which bundle Media Player Classic as their
default
player for these formats.
5,. I have never yet found a sound or video format that I cannot open
with
Media Player classic. The word classic in the title makes it sound
old
fashioned but it seems very up to date with codec's. It opens without
problems files that both Winamp and Windows Media Player has not coped
with
.
I realise this is unlikely to convert devotees of Winamp but may help
those,
like me, who got very frustrated with this increasingly bloated
application.
If you are looking for a free alternative to WinAmp this may help.
Regards
David Griffith
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