Windows Media Player 12: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 15:22, 7 February 2010
Template:Infobox Windows component
Windows Media Player 12, developed by Microsoft, is the release of Windows Media Player superseding Windows Media Player 11. It was first introduced in October 2008 at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference and has been released as part of the Windows 7 operating system. [1] It is unknown if it will be released for Windows XP or Windows Vista.
New features
Windows Media Player 12 adds native support for H.264, Xvid and DivX video codecs, AAC audio[2] and 3GP, MP4 and MOV container formats.[3]
Microsoft has recognized AVCHD as one of the popular implementations of H.264 encoding scheme, and has file extensions M2TS and MTS pre-registered in the system. Windows Media Player is able to index content of these files, while Windows Explorer is capable of creating thumbnails for each clip.[4]
The user interface has been redesigned such that the Now Playing view plays media in a separate minimalist window with floating playback controls, and also gives access to the current playlist, visualizations, and enhancements. [2] Enhancements are housed in individual undocked windows. The library view includes the rest of the media management functions. It also can preview songs from the library when users hover over the media file and click the Preview button.[2] Windows Media Player 12 uses Windows 7's libraries instead of its proprietary library database format and can play unprotected songs from the iTunes library. The taskbar-integrated Mini-player has been replaced with controls in the taskbar's interactive thumbnail preview (called the Thumbnail Toolbar) [5], albeit minus the following functionality:
- Volume control function (which can be done in the Volume Control, which has supported per-application settings since Vista).
- The displayed information shown whenever a new song is played.
- The quick launch button (which allows you to access different artists, albums, etc).
- The album information of the song in question.
- The bar which can move ahead or behind for the song in question.
The taskbar icon also supports jump lists introduced in Windows 7.
Media streaming features
While previous versions streamed media to UPnP compliant devices (Digital Media Server role) and could play media by fetching it from a network share (Digital Media Player role) [6], Windows Media Player 12 can access media from the shared media libraries on the network or HomeGroup, stream media to DLNA 1.5 compliant devices and allows itself (once the remote control option is turned on) to be remotely controlled by Digital Media Controller devices which stream media (Digital Media Renderer role).[6] Similarly, the Play To feature once enabled for remote PCs, by turning on remote control of the player, allows compliant devices and computers to be discovered and controlled remotely from a computer running Windows Media Player 12 (Digital Media Controller role).[6] If the devices do not support the streamed format, Windows Media Player 12 transcodes the format on-the-fly. Media from a home network can also be streamed over the internet using an Online ID Provider service, which handles discovery of the computer's IP address, authorization, security, connectivity and Quality of Service issues.[6]
Removed features and issues
- Windows Media Player 12 does not include a Media Player toolbar for Windows taskbar, although Windows 7 new Taskbar features provides parts of the same functionality.
- The Advanced Tag Editor (ID3 tag editor), which allowed users to edit metadata for media files file, is removed. Editing metadata in Windows Media Player library and in Details pane of Windows Explorer is still supported.[7]
- The "Party Mode", "Color Chooser" and "Media Link for E-mail", features present in previous versions of Windows Media Player, have been removed in version 12.
- The context menu entry "Find In Library" was removed. This functionality is now part of Windows Desktop Search, but requires retyping artist and title and opening will interrupt previous playlist.
See also
References
- ^ Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7
- ^ a b c "Hands on: Windows Media Player 12's surprising new features". Peter Bright. Condé Nast Digital. October 30, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
- ^ "Windows 7 RC to natively support .mov files". Chakkaradeep Chandran. Neowin.net. February 26, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
- ^ "Windows 7 next generation camera support".
- ^ Introducing The Taskbar APIs
- ^ a b c d Media Streaming with Windows 7
- ^ "WMP 12 - Where is the Advanced Tag Editor?". Mark L. Ferguson. Microsoft. February 19, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
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