Fun with Skins Media Player 12
Fun with Skins Media Player 12
Explorer Media Player 12 Guide
(New Windows 7 media player)
(fantastic windows 7 tips to use the windows media player 12)
Fun with Skins Media Player 12
when you’re using windows media player 12, the part that you see on the screen is just one snowflake on the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The real ”guts” are in memory, and invisible. That part you see on the screen is called the user interface, abbreviated UI, and often referred to as simply the interface or skin. Some programs, including Windows Media Player 12, allow you to change the interface without changing the functionality of the program.
Windows Media Player 12 comes with several skins for you to try out. These skins are for Now Playing mode, not for Library mode. To see them if Media Player is in Now Playing mode, press Alt to open the menu, and choose View O Skin Chooser. If Media Player is in Library mode, right-click the area to the right of the breadcrumb, then choose View O Skin Chooser.
Click each skin name in the left pane to get a preview of how Media Player 12 will look if you apply the skin. To download additional free skins, click the More Skins button above the left column. When you find a skin you like, click the Apply Skin button.
I am using the Halo skin. Once you’re in a skin, you’ll need to point to various symbols and buttons on it to figure out what’s up. You’ll see the name of the control in a tool tip.
When you’re in the normal Full mode, you can click the Switch to Skin Mode button in the lower-left corner of Media Player’s program window to switch to a skin. From the keyboard, press Ctrl+2 to switch to Skin mode. Press Ctrl+1 to switch back to Full mode. To get out of the Skin Chooser in Full mode, click the Back button.
Extending Media Player 12 with Plug-ins:
Plug-ins are optional add-on capabilities that you can purchase or, in some cases, download for free. A plug-in might be as simple as a new visualization or skin. Or it could be an audio or DVD driver or enhancer that extends the capabilities of Media Player. Some plug-ins add capabilities to Media Player 12. It all depends on what you download and install. To see your options, click Tools O Download and choose Plug-Ins.
Some plug-ins are free, some aren’t. Once you’re at the site for downloading plug-ins, you’ll need to review what’s available and decide for yourself what’s of value to you. If you don’t see anything you like on the first page, click the link to get to the wmplugins.com site. Or, just browse to www.wmplugins.com with your Web browser. There you’re more likely to find some freebies that you can try without paying for them.
To manage any plug-ins you acquire, click Tools O Plug-ins and choose Options.
Windows 7 Tips
Converting File Types Media Player 12
Suppose you’ve ripped a bunch of CDs to WMA format, and then acquire a portable media device that only plays MP3s. Do you need to rip all those same CDs again? The answer is no. Media Player 12 can automatically convert files as it syncs them to your portable device. For example, it can convert WMA files to MP3 format. It can also convert video files.
To configure file conversion options, click Tools O Options and click the Devices tab. Then, click the Advanced button to open the File Conversion Options dialog box.
In the File Conversion Options dialog box, you can specify whether video or audio file conversion happens in the background. Syncing in the background can speed up syncing. By default, background conversion is on for video and off for audio.
You can also specify a better quality for video by choosing the Choose Quality Over Speed when Converting Video option. If you need more space for temporary files created during conversion, click the Change button and choose a different location. You can also specify the amount of disk space to allocate for the temporary files, and delete any temporary files currently in the temporary location.
For other types of conversion options, consider searching any download site for the type of conversion you need to perform. For example, you might go to www.tucows.com or www.download.com. Or, you could use a more generic search engine like Google. Type in the words that best define the type of conversion you need to perform, such as Convert WMA MP4. I’m also partial to Pocket DVD Studio, at www.pqdvd.com. It has versions to convert DVD for various devices including Zune, Pocket PC, iPod, and others.
Music, Metadata, and Searches (Media Player 12)
You also learn how you can store media information such as artist, album title, genre, and so forth with songs. That media information is a form of metadata Metadata, in turn, is information about a file, and it doesn’t apply only to music. Pictures, videos, Microsoft Office documents, and many other file types support metadata.
You don’t have to be in Windows Media Player 12 to take advantage of metadata. The Search features in Windows 7 allow you to search and group things based on metadata in any file. For example, if you click the Start button and type an artist’s name into the Search box, songs by that artist show up in the Start menu.
Of course, there isn’t a whole lot of room on the Start menu. So you could instead click Start, choose Search, and type jazz in the Search box, and you’ll get all the files that have the word Jazz in their metadata or content. You could narrow that down to only files whose Genre property contains the word jazz by searching for genre:jazz.
You’re also not limited to searching for one thing. You can specify multiple criteria separated by the words AND or OR (uppercase letters). For example, here’s a search that finds all tracks in which the composer is either Beethoven or Mozart: composer:beethoven OR composer:mozart.
If you want to locate all MP3 songs that have Clapton as an artist and a year greater than 2003, the following search would do the trick: type:mp3 AND artist:clapton AND year:>2003.
For experienced users, this is a far cry from the old days of searching for filenames. But it’s not the kind of thing you master in a minute. Searches are only successful when you know how to construct them correctly.