Getting the most out of WMP6?

My video file player of choice is Windows Media Player 6 (currently 6.4.09.1121).

Ever since WMP7 came out, I've just wanted a few things from 6.

One thing is to be able to use a playlist. I have a lot of music videos and it would be nice to just load a bunch of them up and play them. Is there any way to do that in 6? If not, what are the "previous" and "next" buttons for?

The other problem I have with the program is that the search buttons are always grayed out. Why? I can load any file into ATI's file player, and I can fast forward and rewind through all of them, and skip between them.

Thanks for your help. Of course, even if I can't do these things with WMP6, there's still no way I'm going to use the latter, bloated versions.

WMP version 9 just came out....yer gettin' a bit behind the times there dude.

Yeah, but 7, 8 and 9 are full of features that I couldn't care less about. I don't want all those library programs, visualizations, skins, and crap like that. WMP6 is suprisingly simple and fast for an MS program. That's why I use it.

Yes, WMP7 and 8 were really bloated and slow. WMP9 is even more bloated, but it's not as slow as the previous ones, and you can just hide all the goofy features and windows you don't want to use. So I keep 6.4 on my system, but I use 9 as my main player. If you switch to the "compact" skin, it doesn't seem to consume any more resources than WMP6, and seems to start up just as fast.

To answer your questions, WMP 6.4 does allow streaming clips with multiple segments, and you can apparently open playlists (.m3u files.) It doesn't, to my knowledge, let you build a playlist and add/delete things from it. I also don't think it lets you open multiple files via drag-and-drop or browse.

I suggest at least taking a look at WMP9, disabling all the "send stuff to Microsoft" features, and switching to the compact skin. It's not as bad as 7 or 8. And I am definitely not a Microsoft sympathizer.

I might give it a try. I am excited, however, to hear that it reads m3u files. Forgive the question, but can you open videos with that type of playlist file?

So what about the fast forward and rewind stuff? How come I can do it in other programs?

No idea on FF/RW... Planned obsolecence?

I thought that .asx files were the .m3u of windows videos.

?

Paul

Yup. Check out ASX Maker, which works pretty well for me, as long as you have a set list of files you want to play in a particular order. AFAIK, there's no way to shuffle within WMP6.

does anyone have a copy of WMP6? I cannot find it anywhere and microsoft deny that it ever existed as far as downloads are concerned.

Thanks guys! I don't think I'll really need to shuffle, so that's okay.

From part of the help file:
"Rewind
Rewinds the current clip. Only available with certain types of stored (not live) media."

Argh. That's annoying. I've quickly gone through and tested half of my music videos, and none of them allow you to FF or REW through them. Hell, it doesn't even work on WMV files! If the damn help told me what those types of media were, I might even go through and re-encode them all.

www.oldversion.com

Someone on this board filled us all in on that site. Great place.

Original post removed,
edited for stupidity,
I have found that reading the post fully helps in replying.

OK, after the stupid post, here is some useful info (possibly)
The video stream alway has to have keyframes encoded into the stream to provide the FF capability.
Check out http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/keyframes.htm for an explanation and fix.

Okay, I kinda get that. Well, what I didn't get was the relationship between keyframes and a player's ability to fast forward in a clip. As far as I understand it, if you have all the frames in a movie, you should be able to FF. But I've loaded several avi's into WMP6 and it can't FF through those.

Still confused sorry

Try it this way round....
When the player displays a movie, it only displays the changes between the previous frame and the current frame.
Imagine a movie where the background never changes and has a person talking.
The first frame will have all of the scene, but each subsequent frame only has the changes from the previous frame. So in order to FF, the player must read all the way from the very first frame.

The reason for the keyframes is to give the player something to display when you fast forward.
Without the initial frame it doesn't know how to display anything without first interpreting all of the frames that came before were you want to FF to.
So if you don't have the keyframes, the player would have to literally decode every frame in order to FF, which most likely wouldn't be that fast.

That means that the keyframes are just a full frame from which the following frames can change from, then all FF has to do is display all of the keyframes in sequence and not bother with the others.
The downside to keyframes is that because they are a full frame, the filesize is usually much larger than a file that only has a few fullsize frames. Which is why you will not be able to fast forward with most of the downloaded movies, they filesize penalty is to high.

I hope that made sense, I get the distinct impression that I was rambling again

I suggest at least taking a look at WMP9, disabling all the "send stuff to Microsoft" features, and switching to the compact skin. It's not as bad as 7 or 8. And I am definitely not a Microsoft sympathizer.

Hmm, I'll keep this in mind for next time I reformat my machine. I have been using RealOne lately, since it can play almost everything, including Quicktime 6 files. Getting it to be a decent player involves quite a few option changes, but once it's set up, it works well.

Okay, I kindof understand that. So is there a way to correct it?

Ah yes. But the point is that the ATI player can seek through the file whilst WMP can't.

- Trevor

Ah yes. But the point is that the ATI player can seek through the file whilst WMP can't.

That's true, I think I had forgotten that That is puzzling

*edit*
At the least, is there something that I could do with, maybe, TMPGEnc, to re-encode the files to the type that can be FF'd through? I'd rather not use Virtualdub, as I've never been fond of that program (although the last time I used it was in a pretty primitive state).

Also, can TMPGEnc cut out parts of a file when it's re-encoding like inserted credits and such?

not to good but, WM8 encoder will allow you to re-encode and set keyframes. I have not checked WM6 or 7 encoders.