Media Player Suggestions

[Jazman]

vlc ...Amrok is good in kde

I dual boot with win and kubuntu

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Jaz


Use K9Copy...one touch decodes and shrinks in one operation for DVD's

 

[Jase71]

Gotta say guys, downloaded the free Winamp 'lite' and I love the indexing, the three-pane view, as well as the pop up track details. Thnaks you all so much. (so far). Very intuitive to my state of mind.

Windows Media Player has been destroyed! All my MP3's are now defaulting to open with winamp.

 

[jonocarroll]

OK, so I could run a dual OS like you do, and use Fedora/Linux/whatever for all apps except those that are Windows Specific (like my audio gear, and photoshop). That would mean no 'cross-contamination' if Im surfing the net with Linux ?

I'm really being sold on this idea.

Just in case you've misunderstood something here, I'll clarify - 'dual booting' means you have two options when you 'boot' (start up) your computer. You either start in Linux, or in Windows. There's no great way to have them both run independently at the same time (there are ways, they're just not great). It's not as simple as surfing the net in Linux while photoshopping in Windows.

What Wine does is creates a sort of 'little Windows environment' while you're running Linux - it creates a temporary filesystem with all the system files you should need to run a Windows program. In this case, the risk of infection is minimal, since you can just delete the little Windows filesystem should it get infected (Wine may even do this every time by default), and the Linux filesystem is reasonably impervious to virus attacks (permissions on every file FTW!).

If you dual boot, when you turn on the machine you choose which OS you want to use. If you have specific software in different OSs, you need to boot into them one at a time. I've done this for a long time, and it's no real hassle. Windows to use a symbolic algebra program I had, but everything else in Ubuntu. Eventually, the math program was made for Linux, so now I hardly ever boot into M$. There are heaps of free programs under Linux for almost anything you could want to do, and software companies are starting to make Linux versions of some software.

There's a chance that your audio software will work in Linux. I've heard of getting Photoshop going too. As someone previously suggested, get a LiveCD (I recommend Ubuntu - great hardware support now) and test out the machine. You can probably even test out Windows software under Wine (I believe it is installed on the LiveCD) - you just won't be able to keep anything after you shutdown. A LiveCD is an even more miraculous version of the 'little Windows environment' - it's a 'little Linux environment' that gets installed essentially in the RAM (memory). You can run it with no hard-drive in the machine. It does nothing to your Windows files, and is a great way to see what an OS can do.

Good luck with it all!

 

[petesbrew]

Not too IT savvy, and my Gigabeat sync's with Media Player, and we were told to get winamp off our work pc's. D'oh!

+1 for hating Itunes with a passion. Got a belated b'day pressy from my sister in law.
"I was in JB HIFI getting a voucher, then I saw the Itunes one and thought this is waaay better!"
Argh... don't you hate stupid people? And it took ages downloading a cd last night.

At least there's some good free podcasts on itunes, unless someone can point me in a better direction.

 

[Jase71]

been using Winamp over the weekend, it's the best player ive used, cheers to all for the suggestions. Loving the layout, the seamless fast searchinmg of 10,000+ songs (still a long way to go!) and the three paned view of artist>albums>tracks. It sounds better than WMP through my Hi-Fi, it lookks better, it doesnt drag the CPU down, it doesnt access the internet at random moments and clog bandwidth. I can close off the marketing bullshit as well. It handles huge tasks in a matter of nanoseconds, and never once crashed or even stumbled in teh few hours I was working with it.

One issue (for me) is that I cant sync it to my W910i, which is a shame considering I just bought an 8GB stick for it.

And one glaring stupid omission in the features list of Winamp is that it you cannot create a playlist and burn it to CD in MP3 format. There is a bit of a workaround, for those unaware, you can download a .dl file (gen_yar I seem to recall its name as) and drag it into the program directory, which will then allow you to save the MP3's of a given playlist to a remote folder (say on the desktop) which can them be navigated to easily enough via Nero.

I'm referring to Winamp Pro, not the lite version (I 'upgraded' after a day , so it's certainly an inherent omission, not simply something that's been cut out for the freebie version.

 

[Jazman]

duke im away of k -9 has worked on stuff windows couldnt do i also like acid rip for avi

 

[petesbrew]

duke im away of k -9 has worked on stuff windows couldnt do i also like acid rip for avi

Can you please repeat that in english? :huh:

 

[Jase71]

Can you please repeat that in english? :huh:

I think 'acid' is a hint

 

[raven19]

I managed to delete my library file in iTunes last night, so had to reload my tunes back in. What a pain, my own fault though! Trying to free up hard drive space. <_<

All that effort to add 4 more albums to my ipod.

I reckon I would use other software if I didnt have an ipod.

I used to use Winamp years ago, and it was pretty good back then I thought.

 

[mwd]

Gave foobar2000 a quick whirl after a recommendation from Goofinder on here.

Seems to be pretty good and gives a good sound from my desktop speakers. Builds up a library list quite well too.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

acid is a ripping programe for DVD's...

 

[Jase71]

really ? Because Acid Pro is the name of a well known mixing & editing suite for audio mastering. Wonder how someone else could 'rip' the name off ?

I was actually making areference to what he might be on, and the reason we cant understand what he was talking about.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Jase...Jazman has a special keyboard for his PC... :lol:

 

[PostModern]

I managed to delete my library file in iTunes last night, so had to reload my tunes back in. What a pain, my own fault though! Trying to free up hard drive space. <_<

All that effort to add 4 more albums to my ipod.

I reckon I would use other software if I didnt have an ipod.

I used to use Winamp years ago, and it was pretty good back then I thought.

Winamp has supported ipod databases for a while now. Just plug it in to your PC while Winamp's running and it'll recognise the device and do that stupid ipod file renaming garbage, no worries.

 

[Jase71]

How do you (or anyone else) find the Winamp syncing with non iPOD portable MP3 devices ?

I can't get it to work, but then again I think my phone/walkman is rooted. I've never bothered with the factory software, preferring to navigate to the folder in an 'explorer' style, and just dump my music in (drag&drop). But now that I have an 8GB card, I want to create playlists with ease, so I tried to install the Sony Ericcson disc. It simply doenst see my phone. Actually the only way I can now open the phones folder is to select 'Mass Storage'. This never ocurred before with either this porable MP3 player or my previous player.

So, um, yea maybe my phone is getting old (one year only from the 'latest & greatest - of course thats the warranty period gone - damn disposable society) but out of interest can one import playlist details into a portable device with Winamp ?

Have to say again guys, thanks for the recommendations, Im sooooooo happy with Winamp for my home digital player.