A very rational request...

[mockingbird]

Here's a very rational request:

Disable screensaver/standby while playing audio.

Scenario: I've got around 30 songs loaded up in a playlist playing through my computer monitor's speakers. I walk away to do some stuff while still enjoying the music. 5 minutes later, the screensaver comes up, no problem there. 5 minutes after that, the screen shuts off and the music cuts off.

So I don't really care about the screensaver as much as I care about the monitor not shutting off.

Thanks.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

So I don't really care about the screensaver as much as I care about the monitor not shutting off.

For now, why not modify your computer's power plan to extend the time before the monitor is shut down?

[musicf8]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

Here's a very rational request:

Disable screensaver/standby while playing audio.

Scenario: I've got around 30 songs loaded up in a playlist playing through my computer monitor's speakers. I walk away to do some stuff while still enjoying the music. 5 minutes later, the screensaver comes up, no problem there. 5 minutes after that, the screen shuts off and the music cuts off.

So I don't really care about the screensaver as much as I care about the monitor not shutting off.

Thanks.

If the music shuts off, it sounds like your computer is going to sleep after some time. As Aminifu mentioned, change your power settings. I think I have mine set to never go to sleep (but the monitor does turn off). When I want it to go to sleep I will set it it to sleep.

[DrO]

or it's a screen with built-in speakers.... and there were some 3rd party plug-ins which did just what is being asked for, but like mentioned above, it's better to change it in the OS settings rather than having Winamp (or a plug-in) to try to force override what the OS is otherwise configured to be doing.

[mockingbird]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

For now, why not modify your computer's power plan to extend the time before the monitor is shut down?

Sure, that'll work. But I like the screen shutting off because if it's dark, I don't want the screensaver lighting up the room.

Originally Posted by musicf8

If the music shuts off, it sounds like your computer is going to sleep after some time. As Aminifu mentioned, change your power settings. I think I have mine set to never go to sleep (but the monitor does turn off). When I want it to go to sleep I will set it it to sleep.

It's a monitor with built-in speakers, so when the screen shuts off, the speakers shut off.

Originally Posted by DrO

or it's a screen with built-in speakers.... and there were some 3rd party plug-ins which did just what is being asked for, but like mentioned above, it's better to change it in the OS settings rather than having Winamp (or a plug-in) to try to force override what the OS is otherwise configured to be doing.

I tried Auto Video Fullscreen 1.2.5, but that didn't work.

Either way, I disagree. Speakers in monitors are very common, and I think it's worthwhile to integrate the feature to disable energy plan settings while Winamp is running.

[DrO]

Auto Video Fullscreen is a broken plug-in that should not be used, hence why it's not on my site and will not be coming back.

maybe it is common, but making programs force override things that the OS allows to be configured is not something that i want to implement natively. and as i said, there are 3rd party plug-ins which do it and based on knowing how mine never worked 100%, i still don't think that is a valid option to go with and it should be changed in the OS settings. so we'll have to agree to disagree on the matter as i'm not going to natively implement it.

[musicf8]

Are they really that common? I mean besides AIO and tv+monitors. I always found monitor speakers to sound horrid or be way over priced. Why not just go out and buy some computer speakers?

[mockingbird]

Another reason to switch to VLC.

I've been using Winamp since the late 90s by the way.

[DrO]

i'm not going to bow to such comments of "i'm going to player x, y and z" as clearly if that's what you're already thinking then there's no point in keeping using Winamp. if it's that much of an issue then find a plug-in developer (as there were loads who chirped up a year ago and have proceeded to do sweet fa) or an existing plug-in which will do what you want (as that's the whole point of plug-ins right as a user from the late 90's would know) as there's far bigger things to focus on than what you're looking for when a simple change of an OS setting can do just what you're wanting to achieve.

[mockingbird]

I'll keep using it Winamp, but I will not try out the newer version.

You're a programmer, you shouldn't be designing software. Programmers obsess with the minutia and ignore useful features because programming is incredibly boring and they try to make it exciting for themselves by adding challenges.

So no doubt you're obsessing over small features no one cares about and therefore you have no time to consider useful ones.

[DrO]

this feature falls exactly into the category you're decrying of "obsessing over small features no one cares about". when i was a 3rd party plug-in dev then yes i would spend hours on weird little requests like this that most people would never use. that is not viable to do as things stand with "official" development.

and if reducing crashing, resource usage and speeding up the player and other things that make it easier to manage Winamp in the long term is pointless to you, then so be it but it's not for us and what we want at this time since it makes for a better experience for the majority, especially if it makes Winamp more stable in the long run.

[mockingbird]

What are you trying to do, re-invent the wheel?

You guys had WinampTV, and you blew it. Those glory days aren't coming back.

VLC is already optimized for video. Your sitting on minute optimizations for minor performance gains is a waste of time.

I've never used your software to watch videos before, and I never will. All I use it for is playing MP3s.

Another feature that seemed useful today:
I was playing my playlist, and it came to an end. I wanted it to restart from the beginning, and restart the shuffle. The quickest way to do that was to close and re-open the player. This should happen when I click the play button at the end of the shuffle. Don't tell me to click loop, because I'm not sure if I'd want a loop at the end of the shuffle.

Thanks

[DrO]

where has this video talk come from ? no one has mentioned video apart from you until the post above.

[djpete]

and let that be a lesson to all.
Don't do drugs.
:-)

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

So no doubt you're obsessing over small features no one cares about and therefore you have no time to consider useful ones.

Sounds like you're the one obsessing over a feature very few care about, especially when extending the monitor shutdown delay in the OS solves your issue.

Originally Posted by mockingbird

But I like the screen shutting off because if it's dark, I don't want the screensaver lighting up the room.

Since the monitor's speakers cut off when the monitor shuts down, I guess you don't mind the music stopping when it's dark. Or do you want the display off and the speakers on?

I'm all for being able to customize how software works, but there are limits. How about contacting a few monitor vendors and asking for a monitor that shuts down the display output and leaves the built-in speakers active. Who knows, maybe one of them will think such a product would sell well enough to be worth making.

[mockingbird]

Originally Posted by djpete

and let that be a lesson to all.
Don't do drugs.
:-)

I thought that was the point? This should be the new Winamp slogan:

"Winamp! No longer the number one choice for DJs needing flexible 3rd party support for their techno music ectasy raves".

For the record, I'm listening to old religious songs recorded in the 60s some of which are over 100 years old

I'm all for being able to customize how software works, but there are limits. How about contacting a few monitor vendors and asking for a monitor that shuts down the display output and leaves the built-in speakers active. Who knows, maybe one of them will think such a product would sell well enough to be worth making

Maybe I can buy some of AOL Time Warner's excess monitors at a discounted price?

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

Another feature that seemed useful today:
I was playing my playlist, and it came to an end. I wanted it to restart from the beginning, and restart the shuffle. The quickest way to do that was to close and re-open the player. This should happen when I click the play button at the end of the shuffle. Don't tell me to click loop, because I'm not sure if I'd want a loop at the end of the shuffle.

You are quickly losing credibility. If you just shutdown and restart, the selected item would still be at the end of the playlist. You can quickly reshuffle, move to the new beginning of the playlist, and restart playback without restarting Winamp (there are even keyboard shortcuts for this, if you don't want to use the mouse).

[mockingbird]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

You are quickly losing credibility. If you just shutdown and restart, the selected item would still be at the end of the playlist. You can quickly reshuffle, move to the new beginning of the playlist, and restart playback without restarting Winamp (there are even keyboard shortcuts for this, if you don't want to use the mouse).

I apologize for my ignorance, but shutting down and restarting starts the playlist from new and I get a new random shuffle.

What I would like is to simply hit the play button at the end of the playlist and get a completely new shuffle that starts playing automatically.

The behaviour now is that it just re-plays the last song played.

I also noticed that double clicking a song in a folder has a noticeable delay until it opens up in Winamp 5.x (When Winamp is already open), whereas this delay wasn't present in Winamp 3.x.

[djpete]

a bit of caffeine or similar small utility could stop pc from going to sleep.
http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/

[mockingbird]

Appreciate it.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

I apologize for my ignorance, but shutting down and restarting starts the playlist from new and I get a new random shuffle.

To be clear, I meant by "reshuffle" to use the PE's "Randomize list" context menu command and not the PE's playlist shuffle feature.

Anyway, djpete has provided a work-around provided you can accept the monitor keeping the room lit when it is dark.

Originally Posted by mockingbird

I also noticed that double clicking a song in a folder has a noticeable delay until it opens up in Winamp 5.x (When Winamp is already open), whereas this delay wasn't present in Winamp 3.x.

What 5.x version are you using? I don't have a noticeable delay, maybe it's hardware dependent. I don't remember the 3.x performance, tbh.

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

..
You're a programmer, you shouldn't be designing software. Programmers obsess with the minutia and ignore useful features because programming is incredibly boring and they try to make it exciting for themselves by adding challenges...

bwuahahahah.....now that is hilarious. As a 'programmer', I for one find the above assertion so damned incorrect.

We as programmers design and build software, obsessing over the application...not necessarily individualized functions...though, that has some implication on the overall development effort. We break up our development internally into chunks (or bites if will)...that are easily workable into a solution (and god forbid testable).

I don't find my job nor my development boring. I don't try to make it more exciting for myself and I work and have worked with a great deal of other programmers. Our goals are always to make a workable product that people enjoy to use, is easy to manage and provides a solution to a given need/problem.

Your suggestions, improvements are things that as stated are baked into the OS; There are many ways to accommodate your needs...from my world, if Winamp controlled my Desktop Monitor in any way...I'd be very suspect of it; With high end monitors that do include audio speakers they include management software for the speakers that are independent of the visual display and do pass-through audio on their HDMI interface/or are powered separately through USB otherwise.

My BenQ has this configuration option and a management suite that comes with it; though, my speakers are disabled as I find them woefully, under powered for my tastes.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by garetjax

...

My BenQ has this configuration option and a management suite that comes with it; though, my speakers are disabled as I find them woefully, under powered for my tastes.

I should have suspected that such equipment already existed. Although I've yet to hear a desktop monitor's built-in speakers with an acceptable level of sound quality for playing music. Bose and others manage to do an incredible job with small speakers, but even they are larger (woofers and sub-woofers) than what you find in most desktop monitors (30 inch or less) I have seen.

I also agree with your comments about programming and programmers. It is never a good idea to try to make a point by being rude. I hope mockingbird's insults were the result of frustration and passion for his request rather than a true belief as to what programming and programmers are all about.

[djpete]

I was just setting up a computer for a customer and saw in settings for WMP that it has an option to enable or disable screensaver when playing. Not trying to cause trouble but WMP definitely has this option.

[DrO]

it also screws with your file tags without permisson at times so we can do the same thing as well

[djpete]

haha. Maybe leave that one out

[musicf8]

Originally Posted by djpete

I was just setting up a computer for a customer and saw in settings for WMP that it has an option to enable or disable screensaver when playing. Not trying to cause trouble but WMP definitely has this option.

The issue wasn't the screen saver, it was the monitor shutting off/going to sleep.

[djpete]

I see. well similar area of settings in any case

[djpete]

Hang on, first post says
"Disable screensaver/standby while playing audio."
So I presume if screensaver is being stopped from coming on then that would also stop standby

[djpete]

Here's the screenshot.
So by default WMP stops screensaver on playback.

[Aminifu]

The power plan option to turn off display after x minutes of user idle time (no keyboard or mouse activity) is separate from whether the screen saver is active or not.

[djpete]

fair enough

[Aminifu]

Even-though the screensaver and display shutdown are separate things, WMP does override the power plan's display shutdown option when playing a movie in full screen mode. I don't know exactly how it does this.

The bottom line is that the Windows API does provide at least 1 way to counter a display shutdown. For example, the "SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, (LPARAM) -1)" command could be sent periodically to turn the display on (every 0.25 seconds or fast enough to prevent audio dropout). The "-1" LPARAM value is undocumented and thus could change or go away, but it is working for now. There is probably a less brute force way to accomplish this kind of thing.

If mockingbird hasn't succeeded in pissing DrO off, maybe he will look into giving Winamp the ability to override a display shutdown (as a selectable option) when he is able to take the time.

It should also be simple to add an option to disable Windows screensaver when playing audio, since there is already one to disable the screensaver when playing video. On the other hand if it is desired that the screen just go dark, there are screensavers that will do that.

[DrO]

it would be via that same message and Winamp already tries to use it for preventing the screensaver when playing video. and timings of screensaver then monitor power off are staggered so blocking one action will then affect the other and so on.

but as was so tactfully put, i'm "obsessing over small features no one cares about" if i was to action this which as things stand "because programming is incredibly boring", i just don't want to do it as this request bores me more than actual coding does. so yes i'm pissed off still about this as there's ways to go to get something done and being told your job is basically a pointless waste of time is not the way to go, especially when it's pointless minutia which would have taken a few minutes to implement.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by DrO

... so yes i'm pissed off still about this ...

Ok, you have every right to be angry. But never forget that there are many, many more people who appreciate you and love what you do.

[MrSinatra]

yes, the OS has its own settings, they are global and that is as it should be.

however, each app usage case is unique, and so I personally don't see it as unwise for an app to over-ride the OS global settings if/when appropriate.

I think its very obvious that a user might want restrictive global settings except when using a given app, or even just specific functions in the app. when using that app, they want other settings, and then, when the app is closed, (or the specific functions stop being used) back to the global settings. it is not unreasonable to want that all to happen automatically. who wants to change settings every time they use an app, and then back again afterwards?

lots of apps that do AV stuff do give the user the ability to over-ride the OS global settings for screensaver and monitor shutoff. sometimes by simply preventing screensaver, u also prevent monitor shutoff. do I think winamp should make this the number one priority? no, but I do think its a reasonable request. winamp already has the option for when playing video, why not add one for when playing audio? this would cover those using visualizers as well.

[altae]

Sorry to interrupt but I think it's kind of funny how people here always point to 3rd party plugins to get certain things done when actually 90 % of them are buggy or outright broken.

And I don't see why Winamp should become any faster, smoother, whatever. It's already fast, it's already smooth.

But where it has actually fallen behind is features. Small ones like the feature requested in this thread or big ones like offering a selection of output modes to choose from.

I mean if I were a developer of Winamp and even Windows Media Player, which has always been a completely hopeless piece of software, offers features my software does not I would be seriously pissed.

But apparently if you're a Winamp developer it is enough to tell people that the feature in question is useless, that there is no time to implement it anyways and if all that does not do it you can always tell them to find themselves a 3rd party plugin dev. that does the job for them.

Well, it's not my software, it's entirely in the hands of the Winamp team. But like I said elsewhere, it might be wise for the Winamp staff to question themselves why Winamp, once the player of choice of almost everybody who seriously was into audio playback under Windows, has become completely irrelevant.

Ok, AOL took some bad decisions, nobody could have predicted the success of Apple with it's Ipods, Iphones and Itunes... But that's not all. There have been other failures by the development team.

Globally refusing feature requests by longtime users is one of these failures and it's not really something that makes your software very successful. Especially if you are trying to save a product from disappearing completely from the market.

But maybe I should simply shut up and start looking for 3rd party plugins, I might be able to pluck some from the nearest tree

[musicf8]

Originally Posted by altae

<snip>

Winamp came around when people really didn't any way to listen to MP3s and wmp (6.4) sucked with it came to that kind of stuff because of limitations or the ability to listen to codec specific music (actually I don't think you could listen to mp3s right out). Microsoft just recently made FLAC native, so it isn't without its issues still.

With that being said, it is because the masses will want just something that works, and if it works fine, why change? why use a third party? this is why IE has held the top market share for so long, and still does. Also, while it may not be the only reason, the iPod/iPhone is the primary reason that people began using iTunes over winamp (unless I see data otherwise) and since Apple has been good to keep people from using other software for syncing, it's a given.

I personally believe that winamp is feature complete and I really cannot see what else would really push winamp into the next era with the exception of maybe moving to the metro/universal/windows app design, but I am not sure how that would work with Android and iOS.

The thing is, yes there's a lot of abandoned and broken plug ins, but a good chunk of those are useful for such a small group of people, less decoders which usually work just fine nowadays (for music). I am all adding features that would benefit the users as a whole, but im greater against the "whole software bloat/make everyone happy" idea.

/imo

[DrO]

when I was a Winamp developer I gave up many hours of my own time to do things like this sort of request, as well as in the years before that via my plug-ins when the dev team didn't exist or weren't interested in such things for whatever reason. so don't call that sort of crap altae as some of us devoted far too much time on the false hopes that you're talking about in doing everything anyone asked for to see it not help at all.

yes I said no in this case since at that time there were far bigger issues to contend with compared to what you and others is just seen as a little checkbox and so must mean it's super simple thing to add.


you're just narked you're not getting native ASIO support as that's all you're concerned about. so what about all of the other long term requests like native cue support, karaoke features, upnp/dlna support, better podcast management, better tag editing and anything else from the 100s of requests that have been made eh ?

as they are more valued to those who requested them and they would also likely say ASIO support or whatever feature is pointless as it's all about getting what they want.

[Pretzel4]

Originally Posted by mockingbird

Another reason to switch to VLC.

I've been using Winamp since the late 90s by the way. // What are you trying to do, re-invent the wheel? You guys had WinampTV, and you blew it. Those glory days aren't coming back.VLC is already optimized for video. Your sitting on minute optimizations for minor performance....

VLC is crap. They never come out with a stable release, and while I like the fact that it'll play everything under the sun, the pylon as a logo is just stupid.
And ps the only reason I'm bitching about VLC on a Winamp forum is because you threw a hissy when the dev team didn't make a product low enough for your shithigh standards.