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Multimedia Categories:
Get help playing multimedia files with the Windows Media Player.
Tip topics include troubleshooting multimedia playback, CD
ripping, security and privacy, visualizations, interface
customizations, and keyboard shortcuts.
Windows Media Player 10
Windows Media Player 10 help and tips.
Download and install the software, tweak audio output, add
visualizations while music is playing, increase privacy, rip CDs
to digital audio, and more.
Windows Media Player 11
Advice and support for Windows Media
Player 11. Purchase music and movies from online stores, tweak
the user interface, adjust multimedia playback volume, and more.
Windows Media Player 9
Windows Media Player 9 help and tips.
Download visualizations, listen to radio stations, increase
privacy, adjust volume, and more.
Here are
excerpts from the pool's tips, tricks and wizardry to help you
optimize your multimedia efforts.
• Use
layers as often as you want to. Using a liberal dose of layers
will make it much easier later when it's time to re-edit and
animate. In addition, it doesn't add much to the overall file
size.
• Save
copies of the file as you work when using Flash. This is
especially helpful when you're using a Mac. This will come in
handy when you suddenly experience problems in opening a Flash
file you've been slaving your days with.
• Use
color outline layers and guide layers liberally. Both are found
under the layer pulldown menu. The color outline layers show a
layer in its outline form--- great for getting quick and precise
positioning particularly with scanned drawings. Guide layers are
for positioning bitmap guides or for testing layers you may want
to remove from your final version. They allow you to keep a
layer from exporting.
• Mix
and match programs and media to get better results. Experiment
and try combinations such as flat color vectors with
photographic bitmaps for an interesting and rich output.
• For
additional depth and color to vector images, use gradients; but
don't overuse so as to avoid adding to the file size and speeds.
• Don't
overdo your media. Your audience will definitely get indigestion
from your web site.
• Never
make your audience wait. Downloading an image that takes
millions of years to finish will definitely make your audience
cranky. They'd probably clicked to another site even before your
banner finished downloading itself. "If people have to wait, be
sure it's really worth their while," says HotWired's resident
interface designer.
• Design
delays that cover the loading process. Flash features full
attributes that helps in keeping the audience occupied while
that giant sound file is loading in the background. Flash's
Bandwidth Profiler is said to provide a big help on this.
• Use
the knowledge and wisdom of your friends and colleagues. A good
multimedia comes from a diverse source of skills found in
people. The adage that two minds are better than one definitely
applies here. Talk to other multimedia designers or join groups
and mailing lists to share ideas and knowledge. What you think
is trash for you might be a goldmine for another artist
Multimedia Xplorer is a free one-of-a-kind, all-in-one
multimedia viewer. Whereas in the past you would need a separate
application in order to view each type of image, sound, movie,
icon, etc. file that you download from the web or receive from a
friend, now all you need is Multimedia
Extensive Support for Most Major Multimedia Formats
The
client provides an easy to use click 'n' view interface with
support for a wide range of image (JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP,
WMF, EMF, TGA, ICO, and PCX), video (AVI, MPEG, MOV), sound
(WAV, MID, RMI, AIFF, AU, SND, MP2), and cursor (CUR and
animated cursors, ANI) formats. The Xplorer can additionally
extract icons for you from ICO, ICL, DLL and EXE files.
Multimedia Xplorer offers a built-in file manager for quickly
locating multimedia files, and if you need a little more help
than the file manager offers, you can put the client's
Multimedia Detective to use. The detective searches through your
hard drive and folders for multimedia and image files and then
displays the results for you. Accessing any file from the
detective is one simple mouse click away.
The Logo
Changer and Additional Features
Multimedia Explorer also offers a whole lot more than just
viewing capabilities. A Logo Changer option allows you to change
the default startup and shutdown logos for Windows 95/NT. The
unique QuickPicker and Destinations features allow you to save
your most often used folders for quick access.
Additional features in Multimedia Explorer include a File Filter
(for showing only files of a certain type), batch conversion
capabilities, drag 'n' drop support from the Windows Explorer, a
built-in slide show editor, manual or automatic slide show
capabilities, and the ability to set any image as your desktop
wallpaper.
Features
Lacking Relative to the Competition
At only
$25, this is one application that you'll definitely want to try
out and, more than likely, continue to use on a regular basis.
However, there are a couple of features currently absent from
the client that would make Multimedia Xplorer even better.
First, a
plug-in version would help distance the Explorer from its closest
competition, Thumbs Plus, and would also make the app an
invaluable partner to your favorite Web browser. Perhaps even
more importantly, it would allow you to get rid of some excess
applications by consolidating your collection of plug-ins. Also,
an integrated screen capture client for bringing desktop images
and movies into the Explorer would be extremely useful.
The
Final Word
Overall,
with support for more multimedia types than Thumbs Plus and a
less expensive price tag ($25 compared to $50), Multimedia
Explorer is unquestionably the best application currently
available for handling nearly every single media type
encountered on the Web. You heard it here first - this may well
be the multimedia answer to Quick View Plus!
Looking
for a simple, low-maintenance, ad-free multimedia player, one
that simply plays what you ask it to play and then leaves you
alone? With many feeling that the official QuickTime Player from
Apple has become overly bloated (24MB download and rising) and
overloaded with iTunes and related ads, the (relatively) lean
and mean QuickTime Alternative arrives at the perfect time.
QuickTime Alternative makes it possible to play QuickTime files
without having to install Apple's QuickTime Player, allowing you
to use the player of your choice for multimedia playback (the
open source Media Player Classic is included in the 9MB download
and is used by default).
QuickTime Alternative Screenshot QuickTime Alternative is a slim
and simple advertising-free application designed to easily play
all QuickTime media content, including MOV, QT, and 3GP files as
well as streamed multimedia content and QuickTime content
embedded in Web pages. Plug-in codecs for Internet Explorer and
Netscape/Mozilla are integrated as well.
When
paired with KL's Real Alternative player, users will enjoy
support for nearly every major multimedia format, including
MP3s, MPEGs, AVIs, CD/DVD content, Windows Media (WMVs),
RealAudio (RAs and RPMs), and RealMedia (RMs, RAMs, SMILs, and
more) files.
We
downloaded and installed QuickTime Alternative without any
trouble. It did encourage us to first completely remove the
existing QuickTime player, which we did without hesitation.
After a quick and simple install — there's even a hands-free
installation option — the application more than fulfilled its
promise. We drove it hard, with each video opening virtually
instantaneously and playing smoothly and efficiently.
Considering the application is free, QuickTime Alternative
offers an impressive array of options and functions, including
the ability to bookmark favorite files, adjust volume in the
window, track progress of the file, and more. In short, it looks
and feels like the competing players, which also are free. The
big difference is that QuickTime Alternative, which plays
multimedia content via the open source "Media Player Classic" by
default, runs flawlessly and without the in-your-face
advertisements or stealthy adware components frequently
encountered in competing multimedia players.
That
being said, it is important to mention some of the other
contenders in the field.
UltraPlayer is a clean, competent media player with a simple
interface that allows file management with just a few clicks.
Rosoft Media Player supports a diverse array of audio and video
formats, along with a powerful search function and a pile of
adware, too, unfortunately. Another offering, Ashampoo Media
Player, delivers integrated burning support for audio, data, and
MP3 CDs, plus a 10-band equalizer for maximum sound quality.
Among
the most popular alternative media players is Winamp, a free
application with a 10-band graphic equalizer, internet radio and
TV support, skins support, and groovy visualizations. In other
words, it is chock full of bells and whistles.
But do
you need all those bells and whistles if all you really want to
do is listen to your bells and whistles? When all is said and
done, how much time do you want to spend configuring the skins
and setting the bass and treble on your media player? We
heartily endorse the maxim that life is too short to spend time
configuring skins on a media player.
And that
is why we like QuickTime Alternative, especially when paired
together with Real Alternative. Both tools are simple and
low-maintenance (not to mention, free). They play what we ask
them to play and then leave us alone. And that's exactly what a
multimedia player should do.
 Multimedia
is the presentation of audio, video, animation, simulation
through computer technology. Rather than just static
(non-moving) text or images, it provides a dynamic and changing
scenario where one can gain a greater appreciation of the
subject matter being presented. Unfortunately, a price has to be
paid for this added sensation and that price is the processing
of large data.
All data
processed on a web page is digital and is characterized by
"bytes" or million of bytes "megabytes" or "mbytes". Text is
composed of pages, paragraphs, words and characters where each
character represents one byte. A byte is made up of 8 bits where
a bit is either 0 or 1. A picture is made up of a lot of dots or
"pixels" where each pixel represents one, two or four bytes
depending on the amount of color memory (8-bits per pixel is one
byte, 24-bits per pixel is three bytes, etc.). A small picture,
e.g., 100 x 100, contains 10,000 pixels and therefore requires
10,000 (10K), 20K or 40K to represent it, depending once again
on the color depth (8-bits/pixel, etc.). A page of text, on the
other hand, has about 600 characters or 600 bytes (less than 1K)
and therefore much less than an image.
When you
transfer text or images over the network, pictures or text or a
combination are collected and packaged and submitted as bits or
bytes or megabytes. The speed at which this data arrives is a
function of the speed of all servers involved including the host
(in this case LaxPower), the intermediate servers, and finally
the receiver (that's you), where you have a device, usually a
modem, which transfers data from a telephone line into your
computer memory or fast-memory (cache). A modem that is 28K
transfers 28,000 bits per second. A modem that is 56K transfers
at twice the rate and therefore downloads pages twice as fast.
Systems that run at companies or at school usually run on high-
speed "T-1" lines which is approximately 30 times faster than a
56K modem. So these privileged people get data very quickly.
Slower
systems can handle text without too much problem. When you
introduce graphics, then slower systems do not respond well,
whereas faster systems do just fine, e.g., a wait of only a few
seconds. Now when you start talking about audio and video,
you're talking large data of many megabytes which can take a
long time, e.g., 5-10 seconds per mbyte on a T-1 and 1-5 minutes
on a 28K-56K modem. A video is nothing more than digital data
representing a collection of images (and sound), so if you have
24 frames/sec and 30 seconds of video, you're talking 720 images
* 20K (or 10K or 40K), which is many mbytes and which is
impractical. This is why you don't see a whole lot of videos on
web pages.
For
lacrosse, though, it's important to try and get videos and/or
sound because they provide a more meaningful experience of an
event or happening. So how do we send you a 25 mbyte video that
you can receive in seconds or a couple of minutes instead of a
half hour which most people will not have the patience to wait
for? We employ tricks and compromises!
Tricks
and compromises to reduce data:
- We employ a technique called
data compression. Compression in very simplistic terms
collects data that have the same characteristics and
represents them only once and not multiple times. As an
example, instead of collecting every pixel on an image and
storing its value, why not just collect the first pixel and if
its value does not change, just count the number of
consecutive pixels and store that number? If an image contains
mostly background (e.g., black), then it would be foolish to
store thousands of bytes containing "0" when you could just
represent this by just a few bytes. Also when storing video,
why not subtract data from the next image instead of storing
each pixel again? Compression can reduce images from 50
megabytes down to 1 or 2 megabytes. When you receive
compressed data, the applications which run your program will
be able to "decompress" this data on the fly and you will not
know the difference.
- We reduce the size of the
images. It would be nice to run full-screen images of videos
but the data size would be unmanageable. The smaller the size,
the less the data. As an example, a 400 x 400 image contains
160,000 pixels, but a 200 x 200 image contains only 40,000
pixels or 1/4 the size. Thus if you are disappointed with the
size, would you rather wait four times longer to download this
large amount of data? Does your system have the memory
capacity to handle that much data?
- We reduce the number of
colors or go monochromatic (grey scale) which could also
reduce the file size to 1/2 or 1/4.
- We use the lowest sound
resolution which hopefully will not affect the quality of
sound output. We may in some cases eliminate sound altogether.
- We reduce the video frame
rate (keeping the sound at its current rate). If you watch a
video at 5, 10 or 15 frames, there is a loss in continuity for
the 30 frames/sec that you are accustomed to, but sometimes it
is perfectly acceptable, especially if it means viewing or not
viewing the video. I have even run 2 minutes of video at one
frame per second with the audio at 30 frames/sec and have
found that I captured the essence of the event and reduced the
data to the 1 megabyte range.
- We crop or cut out the
peripheral part of the scene that does not add significantly
to the content.
- We get a faster modem or
faster servers which will be happening in the near future.
I have
employed a number of tricks to get videos down to a reasonable
size for your viewing pleasure. I cannot guarantee the quality
in all cases but compromises have to be made.
We
welcome any feedback on the following:
- Is the image/sound quality
acceptable?
- How long did it take to
download the video?
- Did you maximize to full
screen? Was that better viewing?
- Did you automatically play
the video from an application on your system or did you have
to download a helper application from the web?
- What is your modem's speed?
56K?
- Who is your server? AOL?
School dormitory? etc.
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