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Topic: More questions from a potential winamp defector (Read 3280 times) previous topic - next topic
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More questions from a potential winamp defector

Hi all,

Hope you dont mind another post about potentially going from winamp to foobar.  I tried searching for this and couldn't find what I wanted, hope its not all a big dupe.

Anyway,  my questions:

1) The one thing I love about winamp, despite some of it's flaws, is the really thin dock bar.  I've found some posts re/ foobar that it can't create a dock bar like that.  Okay, perhaps I can deal with that loss of functionality - but can it be skinned to a "mini-mode" like view, like winamp even if it can't be "docked"?


2) Can it be configured to have optinoal (gloabl hotkey if possible) fast forward / rewind inside a track? I like a 5 sec and 30 sec ffwd button when listening to podcasts.  Winamp only has 5 sec skip with no way to configure.  This would be a bonus on foobar if this can be done.


3) Can I write play counts, last played, and ratings into the tag files?  I hate losing all this information when I switch players or computers.  I found a lot of references to a foo_playcounts but I can't seem to find it. I even found a good webpage that describes it but it has no download links... is this still supported?  (I'm talking about this link:  http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...(foo_playcount)  ).... am i missing something? How do you actually get it?

4) Finally, the podcast support in winamp is really whats turning me off it -- its real immature and featureless.  I played a bit with foo_podcatcher and honestly its not that great either.  In podcasting support I'm comparing this to media monkey or itunes.  I dont like them that much as players, but they are definitly better with podcasts.  So with that said, for those of you that use foobar -> how do you capture /download your podcasts? do you use foo_podcatcher? Do you use a 3rd party rss reader and then just import into foobar? If so which one?


Thanks to all that take the time to try and help!

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #1 –
Welcome!

Quote from: vaterp on
2) Can it be configured to have optinoal (gloabl hotkey if possible) fast forward / rewind inside a track? I like a 5 sec and 30 sec ffwd button when listening to podcasts.  Winamp only has 5 sec skip with no way to configure.  This would be a bonus on foobar if this can be done.
There may be other ways to do this, but one method I remember reading about is to use foo_seek.

Quote
3) Can I write play counts, last played, and ratings into the tag files?  I hate losing all this information when I switch players or computers.  I found a lot of references to a foo_playcounts but I can't seem to find it. I even found a good webpage that describes it but it has no download links... is this still supported?  (I'm talking about this link:  http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...(foo_playcount)  ).... am i missing something? How do you actually get it?
http://www.foobar2000.org/components (kinda the first place to look!)

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #2 –
2) There are already actions built into the player, but hidden from the main menu. Seek back/ahead by (1/5/10/30 seconds, or 1/2/5/10 minutes). The keyboard shortcut dialog does have a handy search feature.

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #3 –
1)You could try foo_title or CD art display (a seperate program that works with several players)
4) What are you missing in foo_podcatcher?

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #4 –
Quote from: q-stankovic on
1)You could try foo_title or CD art display (a seperate program that works with several players)
4) What are you missing in foo_podcatcher?


Thanks for the tip on foo_title i will check it out. I love me the window shade / dock mode - if this can do that i'm likely a convert.

the problem with foo_podcatcher to me at least (and admittedly i'm a newbie - so maybe I'm just using it wrong) but it didnt seem very automatic.  It seemed like i had to select update per podcast and I'm used to a much more automated system. Winamp podcasting leaves alot to be desired, mainly that you can't "delete" heard podcasts from the view, its not obvious at all if it downloaded something new to a particular stream at a global, at a glance view, and you can't configure the screen at all, nor can you configure the default TAGS of a podcast... for instance there is no way to automate the setting of GENRE tag to PODCAST, which surprisingly many podcasts dont do.  With all those negatives, at least its fairly automatic to get new podcasts without me having to pay attention....  So does foo_podcatcher have an answer for all these issues and I just need to put more time in, or was my initial assumption correct?


I've also recently noticed something that is driving me nuts about winamp - doesnt look like it recognzes the GROUPING tag , which I've used to tag most of my music with specific sources (IE: emusic, amazon) and years. For some reason that really helps me think about the music im looking for.  I just noticed i cant seem to use that field in winamp - which is a major push in foobar directions as i know it wouldn't limit me there.....


Thanks for the discussion (to all who replied) ! I really appreciate it!
 

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #5 –
Just generally - foobar is the most configurable players out there bar none. What you however have to do is research on your own, and check the hosted foobar2000 forum regularly.

I.e. I just installed a component from a japanese site (follow the pictures) that lets you open up a window within foobar using foo_run to display a list of you tube videos relating to the song, which you then can play in that window or even go full screen. There are also at least two deskband controls, a podcatcher, streaming service for internet radio etc.

Foobar has so many components to it that you can customize it in ways that leaves all other players in the dust.

But it does not come easy - as no good thing should do. You got to work for it.
I have been using foobar2000 for almost two years now, after abandoning anything from winamp to windows media player to media monkey to vl player to whatever else is out there free or even some payed for players.

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #6 –
Yeah thats pretty much what brought me to this forum to begin with... I know its the most configurable one, and I find winamp to be a very good music player (with some features even foobar can't match - like dock bar)  -- but i get frustrated so much with winamp , thinking - "why can't I do that?" that it leaves me itching for more.

I guess in a nutshell i'm just looking for best practices on automatically getting podcasts ... if i can get that working as well as I want, i'll switch for sure, and i'm sure i'll get better and better at figuring all the other stuff out.

I'm not afraid of the difficulty/learning curve (I'm a computer geek by nature and drawn to android for just this reason).... I just wanted to feel like there was a good podcast solution BEFORE i sink all this time in....

Thx!

More questions from a potential winamp defector

Reply #7 –
Quote from: vaterp on
I guess in a nutshell i'm just looking for best practices on automatically getting podcasts ... if i can get that working as well as I want, i'll switch for sure, and i'm sure i'll get better and better at figuring all the other stuff out.


Go to the components preferences menu (CTL-p or File -> Preferences) and look for the podcatcher submenu under "Tools" and set it as desired. There are quite a few options available... including how often to check for new podcasts, the path to place downloaded podcasts, how far back to go, etc.

I have podcatcher set to check each hour and use up to 3 simultaneous downloads.

I get one podcast that omits a lot of useful tags so I use the "retag downloaded podcasts" and "set downloaded podcast genre tags to 'podcast'" options.

Actually, now that I've looked at my configuration... I see that I have every option checked. :-)