Spyware free Multimedia player?

Anyone know of a spyware free mutlimedia player that will play Music CDS and let you record them?

 

winamp 2 will allow cd rips i think.. whether it can do burning i'm not certain on.. maybe it needs the right output plugin. if you can't do it directly, there are some other ways. there's a plugin that will copy an mp3 to another directory with a keystroke (while in winamp). you could set that and then use windows' native burning features (i dunno if this is only xp). another winamp plugin actually creates nero-readable sessions htat you can load into there.

 

How big is winamp and how much resources does it take? I don't want to rip them and put them on CDS I just want to make a folder and put my favorites songs in a folder and play them when I want so I don't have change cds all the time.

 

http://www.winamp.com

there is a version 3 of winamp, but version 2 is better though it is older.

winamp v2.90 installer is 2188 KB.. i believe they are on v2.95 now.

the program itself is rather small, and gets its power from its large plugin selection. the raw winamp folder is just ~950 KB or so, and the executable is ~600 KB.

as for system resources, it's usually 0-1% on play and 0-2% on track change. this is on my p4 box.

if all you want to do is make mp3 files from your cds though, i recommend using a program that is made just for that purpose, such as EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/), audiograbber (www.audiograbber.com-us.net/), dbpoweramp (www.dbpoweramp.com/). there are many others. winamp's power for this is limited.

 

WinAmp & DBPowerAmp - good combo

Hi all - actually notageek, you do want to 'rip' the audio cd. And pin's suggestions are all bang on...

Ripping is just 'extracting' or 'decoding' the cdaudio format ( i think .cda) into mp3 or ogg or windowsaudio or real, blah blah blah or wav for that matter..

So you need a ripper (extractor) and of course a good player (decoder with audio controls and features).

Player - you can't go wrong with WinAmp (the 2.*.* series or Classic...I just up'd to 2.91 and its very good) Very fast, lots of hotkeys, lots of plugins (most of the audio and even video that you will ever need are bulit in or are availabe as plugins), lots of input and output options...however, I only use Winamp as a player and for most other audio file manipulation use dbPowerAMp..

Ripper - dbPower AMp and related software is great. The original feature was the dMC (the music converter) that puts a shell extension in the context menu, and lets you convert an audio file on your HD 'on the fly' to any other audio format that you have the codecs loaded for (Codec = "coder/encoder" for differant audio file formats.).

For example - you have a wav file, you right click and one click you can covert to mp3 or ogg or winmedia etc etc...

Anyway, after using the Music Converter I was so impressed that I also got the DMC CD Audio input (this is the ripper) and I associated it with audio cd (.cda) so that when I put in an audio CD, I get the ripper up right away, and can extract to the HD..Its small, fast and clean. [Added note - the beauty of it is that you do not need 'save' the file and then convert. So a 700MB audio cd in .cda format, can be 'ripped' on the fly into, say .ogg format (which is open-source, hi-quality, but 'lossy' compressor, that might crunch it down to 50MB or even less. There are also 'lossless' codecs, that compress to a larger, but 'true' audio scrunch....]

Then I found the 'dMCAuxiliary Input" plug in and even better - you can rip directly from your microphone or from your 'line-in' audio jack - (ie you can record from old vinyl LPs thru the line-in) and immediately convert to mp3 or ogg on your HD, no need to go thru wav or any native windows file formats..

Great package of features, and 'Spoon' has a fine help section on audio formats and pc music generally. Very informative.

Also look at Codec Central - all available plugins for different proprietary and open source codecs and such. Very very good.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

Have fun

dmc (no relation) hehehe

 

Dmc I know what ripping is I just was stating that I didn't want to rip and burn songd on another CD.

Thanks for the info and programs I'll take a look at them.

 

Hey,

I'm reading this with interest. I might in the near future try to uninstall WMP 7.1 due to the fact that I don't seem to be able to get the latest fix from MS
Thanks for all suggestions !
I have to admit that I hardly use it....

I had already also that dBPowerAmp in my faves-list.
And recently I saw a posting about jetAudio:
http://www.jetaudio.com/products/jetaudio/
Oops, I forgot where I found that posting; could well be here at the board (thanks to who posted it!!).

 

Sorry...hehehe

Sorry notageek, didn't intend to sound patronizing..

One or two point on WinAmp install thats good to note..

1.you should do the 'Custom' install to avoid some links to AOL, (parent of WinAmp);

2. WinAmp asks you about file associations for many audio and video formats - you have to watch ones like Quicktime and Real or lose those file associations to WinAmp, if you use them;

3 watch the .wav association. I do not associate WinAmp with .wav, as I don't want it to open up everytime I sample a .wav on the PC, prefer to use the native 'whatever' in Windows..

4. THe 2.9* series of WinAmp supports Windows video formats, and since I despise Windows Media player, I can use WinAMp to view all the windows video formats. Worsk well and you have more screen controls than 6.4. (I dis-installed all WindowMediaPlayers over 6.4 a long time ago) FanJ - this would work for you....

Cheers

dmc

 

Thanks Dmc. I uninstalled my musicmatch jukebox already cuz It was rather big and it slow my computer down to a crawl and I have a p4 and a lot of memory it it was still slow.

 

Install WiMP6.4..

Hey FanJ - stupid Windows..I don't know if your OS will run WiMP 6.4 (the last ''good one') before that bloated v.7** garbage, but I think that one may still need a WiMP for streaming video in windows format and such in a brower.

I have not tried to stream Windows video thru Opera for example, using WinAmp as video player, but I doubt it works...so you want to keep WiMP 6.4 around if you have it and kill kill kill WiMP 7 and up...

Depending on your OS, search your program files for 'mplayer2.exe' which is the old 6.4 or go to oldversions and get it..

http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=wmp

I find 6.4 is palatable enough...

Cheers

dmc

 

and if for some reason you can't find or use the old mplayer, you can get mediaplayerclassic, which is pretty much the same thing.. very small footprint compared to something like zoomplayer or jetaudio.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli

 

Open-source Mediaplayer..

Hey pin - interesting link. Do you know if there is a Netscape-style plug-in that would allow that GNU mediaplayerclassic to stream winmedia in Opera or Phoenix/Firebird?

Just curious, as I would only try if I thought I could forever deep six WiMP, and I find that installing any media player leads to an hour of fixing file associations and browser plugins without fail.....hehe

By the by, speaking of installing WinAmp, couple of other notes for FanJ and notageek;

1. WInAmp 2.9.* also has the 'visualization studio' light show, for smoking doobies I quess...you can save MBs by not installing

2. Also there is a "mini-browser" that I don't want, but either failed to 'decline' or its by default. I can't remember, but if you can 'decline' do so. Why does it need its own browser...I have it blocked I think by firewall. I know I have AOL servers blocked just as a knee-jerk to something.....Its also possible that it does not work on my machine as I have IERadicated...heheh..

3. Theres also a new 'Music Media Library', that perhaps you can not install. I got it by not paying attention, and haven't looked at it..but my initial reaction is "oh what the f**k is this now". It also tries to "connect to host".

If I had need to re-install 2.91 I would decline all I could except the player and the codecs and plugins.

Actually, I might well go back to 2.81, but I think that it does not have the video support, which was sort of the point of the thing........hehe

I do think WinAMp is sliding into BloatWare, which is why you have to watch the Install. But despite the stupid mini-browser and media library, which I think you can sand-bag with a firewall, its still a really good player....

I've tried a half-dozen others, cool, quint, sonique, real, other bloated pigs, none are as easy, fast and hotkeyed like WinAmp.

As I said before, seems any one of them leads to an hour of mucking about with file associations, so find one like WinAmp and try stick with it for a long time...heheh

Thats my further 2 cents worth.

Cheers

dmc

 

Hey guys,

I tried to give all of you a karma cookie
Keep them coming your suggestions: they are most welcome !!!

I run W 98 SE .
After trying to install WMP 9 series, I restored a backup image (hey, thanks Acronis ), and have now again WMP 7.1.

Cheers, Jan.

 

IrfanView A/V Option

Just one last pre-weekend thought..

IrfanView, the great image viewer, also has A/V capability with a plug-in.

I have used to play Winmedia video, Quicktime etc and to play most audio files....

Its bare bones, but super fast, and clearly free and clean of any baddies. If I was doing it over again, I might use IrfanView as local audio/video player for all except 'streaming' formats. It can't stream, far as I know.

In fact, I used it as 'local player' a long time back, and only went to WinAmp as I wanted to stream 'streamcast' internet radio, and WinAmp did that best..

If you only want a 'local media player' IrfanView could be great, no resource load, very simple to configure and very well behaved as to file associations...

http://www.irfanview.com/

Its a holiday weekend in Canada, see you all later..

dmc

Yippee - another Karma cookie!!!!Thanks FanJ...

 

WMP isn't all that IMHO. Well atleast the latest version isn't. I'm running WIndows XP and my computer came with WMP 8 lol. I made the biggest mistake updating my WMP to 9 cuz now Adaware and Spybot s&d is flagging it. LOL

 

sorry i cannot say anything about integration with browsers... i hate that kind of thing so i've never looked into it.

good luck experimenting!