Winamp 5.63 Released

[Victhor]

i know what you mean, but i still find winamp to be the most fun to use. what do you want to see in winamp thats missing?

Uff.. Mostly a lot of "visual things", Winamp used to be top notch about visual innovations, now is "just a player", having some of these would be nice:

- Cover flow
- Various types of views on ML album art (not just a plain grid)
- Waveform of playing track
- Simple playlist is nice, but it´s getting aged, a more sophisticated way to display songs would be nice (having some other info attached, like album name or art, year, genre, etc)
- Tabbed playlist
- Easier skinning engine..
- Lots of video improvements..

I can go on for hours.. just take a look at the "Winamp 5 Wishlist", there are just 5 things implemented and 11 workarounds...
For every good program out there, "updates" usually means better and new functions, for winamp latetly it means a lot of "fixes"..

[Koopa]

@Koopa: When will it be available here?

Winamp Essentials Pack v5.63:

Download: Link

Changelog:

5.63:
* Updated: [dca.w5s] Nullsoft DTS Decoder to v1.1
* Updated: [gen_classicart] Album Art Viewer to v0.9
* Updated: [Installer] to 2.46.5 (Unicode)
* Misc: [enc_vorbis] removed Nullsoft Ogg Vorbis Encoder (now, after more than 8 years finally part of Winamp yay)

Official German Language Pack Plus Version | Offizielle deutsche Sprachdatei Plus Version:

Download: Link

I've updated the links in the first posting, both files are hosted on my webspace now, because Winamp.com doesn't work.

[DrO]

But I'm quite surprised about the poor feedback from the community so far...

Sadly, poor feedback is the consequence of poor updates (among other things).. other media players are leaving winamp behind.. hope they wake up soon.

or maybe it's just because people don't know about it or there's not been any issues (which is what usually brings people out).

yes it's not like it was 5-10 years back with the comments but that's just how it seems to have gone with the forum traffic in general.


yes it's not the most inviting of changelogs but if 7 libraries needed to be updated then that's just over a quarter of the changelog (and for some people they were wanting such things so it may not appeal to skinners but it's something that is needed).

probably another quarter of them that i'm accountable for don't appeal either to a lot of people but i'm not bothered if people don't like it if it means that i can now do a drag+drop from the JTFE queue (or other parts of Winamp allowing dragging from) into the ML playlists.

sure there should be big feature fixes / changes / additions but if you want that then you need to go to the Android version (however sad that personally is to have to say *shrugs*).

-daz

[Victhor]

Mmmm... actually, this explains a lot better; http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=345777.

I don´t believe in Santa anymore, so I know it may be too much to expect "cool changes" with every update, but at least it should move one number.. 5.601 was 2 years ago!! If winamp keeps with these "updates" will end up in something like "Prepare for Winamp 5.639.01!!".. (and we´re supposed to clap.. in a couple of years!).

[DrO]

i don't get people's fixations on version numbers. it could have been called 10.9 if wanted - what matters is does it do what you need to do or provide enough to do what you want to do.

that is what matters rather than a version number or how long it has been since moving up a point (so what if we were on 5.5x for 3 years) and ironically i've had people chastise me over my plug-in version numbers for not increasing enough - it doesn't matter as long as the update works!

-daz

[Victhor]

I know, I agree in fact, but I´m trying to point out to what number version means. The paradigm is "big number change = big / cool / wanted changes applied". So I want the big changes, I don´t really care about big number, but it´s sad to see winamp stucked in ".6" for ages (knowing it means so little changes / improvements.. being so much to do..).

[DrO]

it works out as 8 releases in just under 19months which is ~72days (or ~2.3 months) between releases on average (though the average should have been closer to 64days between releases). in the grand scheme of things, that is not a lot of time between updates, or is doing multiple releases in day the way to go back to (yes those sort of days were fun but people generally won't put up with such things nowadays).

i know the number is probably meant to signify something important but it hasn't always signified the amount of work, etc what has gone into a build - look back at changelogs from the 5.5x and 5.6x releases and see how some of what would be deemed 'small' updates by that logic have more valid changes than some of the bigger release numbers.

-daz

[Juanus]

Also,

there might not be a lot of feedback because people don't know its here. I usually get notfied of a new version when the previous version thread gets closed. Then it shoots out an email notification. (That's how I do it because I am lazy) In this case the Winamp 5.623 Released thread wasn't closed so I just found out today. So sorry for the late thanks for the new version post. I am installing it now!

[DJ Egg]

Yeah, we still haven't even updated the main site (which is still on 5.623).
Basically, we're fixing up issues with Winamp For Android v1.3.x
so the main update will probably come after 1.3.2 release.
The in-client update flag hasn't been enabled yet either (check for new versions at winamp startup).
We felt it important to get the exclusive out on the forums, especially for the security fixes (Secunia & other sites are linking to this thread).

Oh and by the way.... regarding updates / changelog....

Also bear in mind this line in the changelog which always covers a plethora of minor undocumented updates:

* Misc: More general tweaks, improvements, fixes and optimizations

[Aminifu]

Sorry to report that the problem with the main WA process still running after WA is closed is still in version 5.63.

[DJ Egg]

Sorry to report that the problem with the main WA process still running after WA is closed is still in version 5.63.

It'll be some plugin to blame.
Maybe a 3rd-party one...
If it's a 1st-party plugin, then I would suspect one of the pmp plugins, maybe pmp_p4s.
You tell us. Got any devices/portables connected?

[Galway girl]

Unfortunately, although some of previous problems fixed with WA 5.623 "stopping" is still an issue. Also when trying to access "Winamp Help" computer freezes. Still it;s getting better.

[Raj_09]

Reply to Victhor

Uff.. Mostly a lot of "visual things", Winamp used to be top notch about visual innovations, now is "just a player", having some of these would be nice:

- Cover flow
- Various types of views on ML album art (not just a plain grid)
- Waveform of playing track
- Simple playlist is nice, but it´s getting aged, a more sophisticated way to display songs would be nice (having some other info attached, like album name or art, year, genre, etc)
- Tabbed playlist
- Easier skinning engine..
- Lots of video improvements..

I can go on for hours.. just take a look at the "Winamp 5 Wishlist", there are just 5 things implemented and 11 workarounds...
For every good program out there, "updates" usually means better and new functions, for winamp latetly it means a lot of "fixes"..

Hi Victhor,

I read your post and subsequent replies and felt compelled to answer. I have been a Winamp user for ten years and my answer is biased as I am a winamp fan. What I like in Winamp is the excellent playback support, extensive plugin system (been using enhancer 0.17 since 2001 and ever since thanks to the wrapper from DrO)and fantastic community working in the background.

I would not like it to become a bloated software with just lots of useless features which do not improve the "core" experience. I will usually have Winamp minimized or on another desktop and use jump to file to go through my playlist. It has not cringed over my 25k+ playlist, which is a rare feat with current media players (beat that itunes or wmp- they crashed halfway). If you introduce a cover flow type of playlist like you suggested, it will inevitably use too much resources without adding much to the music playback experience. It will be just another gimmick feature. The typical occasional crashes that happen are usually fixed by performing a clean install.

While there are some features in the wishlist which I would have loved (32 bit playback, cue sheet support), there are lots of plugins to achieve most of the functionality you might be looking for. Also, if you go through the winamp wishlist, there are lots of features which have already been introduced in current versions. There are other media players which are better at some things compared to others. I personally use VLC and MPC for movies as they are better at video playback. I believe the "core" features for Winamp are music playback and I will not be the only one saying that it is excellent at that.

PS: This is not enough to convey my gratitude but big thanks to DrO, Koopa, DjEgg and all the other devs.

[Raj_09]

Winamp Essentials Pack v5.63:

Download: Link

Changelog:

5.63:
* Updated: [dca.w5s] Nullsoft DTS Decoder to v1.1
* Updated: [gen_classicart] Album Art Viewer to v0.9
* Updated: [Installer] to 2.46.5 (Unicode)
* Misc: [enc_vorbis] removed Nullsoft Ogg Vorbis Encoder (now, after more than 8 years finally part of Winamp yay)

Official German Language Pack Plus Version | Offizielle deutsche Sprachdatei Plus Version:

Download: Link

I've updated the links in the first posting, both files are hosted on my webspace now, because Winamp.com doesn't work.

Thanks koopa

[Aminifu]

It'll be some plugin to blame.
Maybe a 3rd-party one...
If it's a 1st-party plugin, then I would suspect one of the pmp plugins, maybe pmp_p4s.
You tell us. Got any devices/portables connected?

You're right. After extensive testing, I've tracked the problem to a DSP plug-in (iZotope's Ozone). I've been using it for years (originally developed for Winamp 2) and will miss it. I had removed it before and still had the problem, but now it's the only plug-in I'm using that randomly causes the main WA process to keep running. I was using a different group of plug-ins before, so one of them must had also contributed to the problem.

Oh well, time to move on. Everything else I've tried only reduced the occurrence of the problem, but removing Ozone seems to have solved it. I'll give Enhancer with DrO's wrapper a try, my mp3s need a boost.