Middle-clicking a track in the extended playlist to queue it is broken: instead of selecting the track underneath the mouse pointer, middle-clicking selects the track at the bottom of the window and queues that. Double-left-clicking and right-clicking works correctly. In the mini playlist, middle-clicking queues the currently selected track, not the track underneath the pointer.
Tested in XMPlay 3.5.0.5. I'm running Windows XP SP3, and using the Microsoft IntelliMouse drivers v4.12.

It works normally here (XP SP3, 3.5.0.5), so I guess it's your mouse driver. Does the driver provide some fancy functions that might confuse XMPlay? Does middle-clicking on the visual window (for example with xmp-coverart) work properly?

The mouse driver provides button remapping, and does something with the scroll wheel to make it work in programs that don't natively understand it... hmm. Yep, adding XMPlay to the exclusion list fixes it.

Yay, new XMPlay!

Middle-clicking a track in the extended playlist to queue it is broken: instead of selecting the track underneath the mouse pointer, middle-clicking selects the track at the bottom of the window and queues that. Double-left-clicking and right-clicking works correctly. In the mini playlist, middle-clicking queues the currently selected track, not the track underneath the pointer.

Tested in XMPlay 3.5.0.5. I'm running Windows XP SP3, and using the Microsoft IntelliMouse drivers v4.12.

I've got a semi-repeatble crash in XMPlay when adding multiple files to the playlist (the list currently contains 5474 items, and I'm dropping 5701 files in 285 folders on to the playlist titlebar). I've managed to trigger the crash with as few as 230 files in 2 folders. When it crashes, the playlist window stops adding new files and the track counter stops increasing, however the UI is still responsive. I've not been able to narrow the cause down to a specific file or plugin, and the last track visible in the playlist changes each time.

32-bit WinXP SP3, Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU, 4GB ram. Using XMPlay 3.4.2.0, size 269892 bytes, file date is most likely 28/6/07 2:46:24pm. There's a shedload of plugins installed as well: dsp_4orm, dsp_oddcast_v2, dsp_sc, in_cube, in_gsf, in_line, in_mp3, in_noise, in_skale, in_usf, in_vorbis, lamedll, snesapu, unrar, xmp-ac3, xmp-ape, xmp-flac, xmp-midi, xmp-msn, xmp-ra, xmp-7z, xmp-arj, xmp-exe, xmp-lha, xmp-mmcmp, xmp-modpacker, xmp-pp, xmp-rar, xmp-wad, xmp-xpk and xmp-zip.

Dr. Watson log attached.

Mp3tag can do a freedb lookup based on file lengths, though I doubt it'll work unless you have a complete set (freedb uses a hash based on file lengths and some other mystic gunk).

Is there a maximum length for any of the strings?

Also, what does the flags field mean?

Some mouse drivers have support of changing the focus to the application over which the mouse pointer is currently hovering when starting scrolling. Intellipoint does, I think.

That's actually natively supported since... Win95, I think. You can use TweakUI to configure it - look for "XMouse" settings.

You can control XMPlay via DDE. Details are on the support site.

I think you can also use Winamp-style interfaces, but I don't know about those.

As a rule of thumb, I find that ogg quality 6 tends to give 160kbps to 190kbps for CD music with the reference encoder. -1 (yes, that is negative) can go as low as 30kbps-ish, 10 will happily encode at over 300kbps. Better encoders will in theory give the same perceived quality with a lower bitrate. It's a completely different system to MP3, so if you're new to OGGs I suggest you try a few different levels and pick the lowest that you like.

For tagging files, I recommend mp3tag (understands wma, mp3, ogg and ape tags). Yes it's another program, but it's got very good bulk tagging and can speak to freedb and similar. It'll even get tags from freedb based on the mp3/ogg files, without needing the original CD.

Ok, I've taken a random short MP3 and added all the WWW- tags Mp3tag had to it (contains both ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags). The file is uploaded as "The Crystal Maze.mp3"

Tags:

TITLE = The Crystal Maze
WWW = Field 1
WWWARTIST = Field 2
WWWAUDIOFILE = Field 3
WWWAUDIOSOURCE = Field 4
WWWCOMMERCIALINFO = Field 5
WWWCOPYRIGHT = Field 6
WWWPAYMENT = Field 7
WWWPUBLISHER = Field 8
WWWRADIOPAGE = Field 9

A quick search didn't find this, so:

Could you add the various WWW tags (specifically from ID3v2, though other systems probably have equivalents) to the Message view for MP3 files? I can send a sample file containing those tags if needed.

A possible workaround would be to put the dialog resources in the translation DLLs as well. That way, languages which need a larger dialog or even a different layout (e.g. RTL) can include a custom template.

When did they do that?

That might mean I've finally found a replacement for my old copy of WS_FTP LE (highly recommended, if you want a FTP client that is a) actually usable and b) doesn't pack the kitchen sink).

Flatline, as it fits perfectly on the titlebar of a maximised window.

1) Just last night I recorded the full (Uncompressed) movie. It has about 30mins.
First I tried MPlayer Classic to do this, but it stutters after a few minutes. Not good.

Not that suprising, uncompressed video has a stupidly high bitrate. If you want a somewhat more sane source file, capture to either a fast lossless codec like Huffyuv or a *fast* lossy codec like one of the MJPEG variants - those two are designed to be very fast at compression, unlike most other codecs.

Then I tried VirtualDub, but after a few minutes, it messes up the sound (it starts to sound weird)

Now this is suprising. What codec, if any, did you use for the audio, and how does it sound weird?

...The problem is: when the file reached ~4GB, it started another file. So now, for an uncompressed 30 mins movie, I have one file of 3.9GB and one of 2.73GB.

This is a limitation of FAT32 and/or old capture programs. If your drive is NTFS and you're using an intelligent capture program, then the upper limit on file size is on the order of terabytes.
The other limitation is that the original version of AVI can't go beyond 2GB. Fortuantly, most programs use a more recent version of the spec (known as OpenDML) that can create much larger files.

I tried to merge them with VirtualDub, but it says they have different sampling rates (the first has 25.00456 samples/sec, and the second 25.00106). Doh...

This sounds like a mixture of timing issues between the files, and a slight desynchronisation when capturing (not unexpected when the audio and video inputs are on separate devices). I'd just bash both to 25fps, as the error is something like 0.02% (to put that in everyday values, less than a second out in the hour). Note that you may find the resulting audio/video desynchronisation is a problem, in which case I'd do what Dotpitch suggested.

Can anyone suggest a program that I can use to make a movie that takes more then 4GB??

Virtualdub, as long as your hard disk is formatted as NTFS. If not, then nothing can create files greater than 4GB (it's a limitation of FAT32), but Virtualdub can also create multipart AVI files, and is a bit more intelligent than most about it.

2) I already tried 2-pass encoding with Xdiv and also with MS Windows Media 9. But when I try to view the finished movie, BSPlay gives me an error ("The file is corrupted. Seeking will be very slow"). After clicking OK, there isn't any image in that movie...just sound. Did I do something wrong?

As Dotpitch said, 2-pass encoding requries two passes. First time through, in the encoder options select "2-pass: first pass" or similar and give it somewhere to save a temporary file. For the second pass, select "2-pass: second pass", "2-pass: final pass" or similar and give it the temporary file it created in the first pass (this is not the same as the output AVI file).
During the first pass, all the encoder does is note information about the complexity of each frame. In the second pass this information is then used to make better decisions about how to allocate bits.


Something that's not been mentioned here is audio. Unfortuantly you can't easily include Ogg Vorbis in an AVI file, but there's a handful of codecs that can be used. I'd suggest using either uncompressed audio (since it'll often be smaller than the compressed video), Microsoft ADPCM (it's fast, and reasonably good quality) or MP3 depending on your preference. Don't use MP3 when doing the initial capture for the same reason as not using XviD - it's not designed to be a realtime codec. ADPCM is usually fast enough to be useed when capturing. 'course, this depends on how beefy your computer is.

There's various ways to get to it, but here's one:

Run mplayer2.exe (comes with Windows), and open a movie that uses DivX. Go to File, Properties, Advanced tab. Pick "DivX Decoder Filter", and click Properties. On the Quality Settings tab select Disable Logo.

You should be able to disable the logo in DivX in the codec options.

The Indeo codecs are quite old (I think they date from before Windows 95) and don't give much compression, but they are fast on modern computers which can be handy at times.

On a similar note, since people here seem to know this sort of thing:

Anyone know a) ahat sample rates is a Creative SB PCI128 actually capable of playing back at, or b) where/how to find this out? I don't remember the manual being at all useful.

12kHz, 24kHz & 48kHz Natively

...interesting. 44.1kHz does seem to be rather unsupported on modern cards, which is a suprise considering what sample rate CDs are.

Somewhat more off-topic: given a choice between the SP PCI128, and the onboard AC'97 codec (exact variant unknown - the motherboard is an Epox 8KTA(2?) with VIA KT133(A?) northbridge and 686B southbridge), what would people recommend? "Bin both" is, unfortuantly, not much of an option

On a similar note, since people here seem to know this sort of thing:

Anyone know a) ahat sample rates is a Creative SB PCI128 actually capable of playing back at, or b) where/how to find this out? I don't remember the manual being at all useful.

As I said, I've never used the ULead software, so bear that in mind. It may be suprisingly good, or it may be the suckiest software in existence.

I've used VirtualDub several times to transcode or otherwise fiddle with video, and once or twice for outright capturing. It's not the easiest of programs, but from what I've read and seen it's a lot better than most.

Out of curosity, what capture card are you using?

Ulead seems to be a bit hit-and-miss - their current graphics software is on a par with Photoshop and Corel Draw, but some of their older stuff is pants. Never used any of their video software though.

I'd still recomment VirtualDub, but feel free to give the Ulead stuff a go.