Generic media player control

2005-07-07 17:42:49

I installed drivers for a multimedia keyboard that I have that has, among other things, a volume control knob, play, stop, next, previous, and so forth buttons for controlling medial players. These functions apparently aren't player specific because it worked just fine with foobar2000.

With that in mind, what is the likely interface being used to control the player? I assume some sort of standard SDK that's part of windows.

I can specify my own functionality for the keys (including running executeables). Basically, I want to write a simple app to do random play. That way I don't have to pop up foobar2000 when I come across a song I'm not in the mood for, I can just hit a key on my keyboard.

If there's some standard interface (like the one used to currently control the app), I'd prefer to go that direction instead of write a custom foobar2000 interface.

Pete

Generic media player control

Reply #1 – 2005-07-07 18:41:44

If all you want is a global hotkey to do random play, you don't have to do anything complicated:

preferences > core > keyboard shortcuts > [main] Playback/Order/Random

and assign any key you like to that, making sure you tick "Global Hotkey" (obviously not any key combinations you use for anything else...)

and then the same on

[main] Playback/Order/Default

alternatively just use one key combination to flip between playmodes, but I think you'd have to cycle through all 4(?) to do that, unless someone knows a better way.

If you want a button to skip to a random song,
assign something to

[main] Playback/Random

, but that won't put it in random mode at the same time. I think if you assign the same key to that and the first one, it'll go into random mode and skip to a random song.

Does all of that make sense, or is it not what you had in mind?