J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

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J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

2003-10-09 01:51:52

J.River MEDIA CENTER 9.1 Released

Features:

Organize and experience all your media

Music, photos, and video YOUR way -- all from a single software program! Connect your PC to your home entertainment hardware and control it all with a remote! Load your music on your iPod while you watch TV! All with one easy-to-use program -- MEDIA CENTER!

MEDIA CENTER 9.1 has a new layout that includes new skins, better controls, and a graphical Action Window.

New in 9.1 -- Action Window
A graphical way to select commonly used actions like burning or tagging or transferring to a handheld. Just select an icon, then drag and drop your files to it.

New in 9.1 -- Pane View and Tag Mode
Pane View is a simple way to find and play any media. Allows multi-select so, for example, you can select genres rock and classical at the same time.

Tag Mode allows you to select images, then select multiple tag attributes that apply to them. A family vacation could be tagged with the place, the people, and the year in one operation.

More Features and to see some screenshots go to http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/features.html

Download it here: http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/download.html

Ps: This is only a news submission read it if you want, if you don't like the program or don't like the ideia of a paid software don't make any flamewars.

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #1 – 2003-10-09 11:26:33

Having used J. River's Media Center 9.1 for 5 days now, I came ever so close to switching from Winamp, which I've been using for a while now. So, here is my own review of Media Center 9.1...

Where It Shines

This version of Media Center is beautiful, but it eats more resources accordingly. For reference, during playback, foobar2000 uses about 4-6% of my CPU, Winamp uses 8-12%, and Media Center 9.1 used ~15%. Not a big deal for me, since I rarely "hit the ceiling" on my PC anyway. Just something to consider for someone with fairly limited system resources.

Media Center (AFAIK) is built on the Windows Media Player engine, which will be apparent when you use it. But it doesn't seem to have the annoyances of WMP, such as (among other things) automatic re-tagging of your media files and built-in DRM-related functions (at least none that are apparent, otherwise they're well hidden).

It's organizational capabilites, IMO, are it's very best feature. It's standard plug-ins can handle an impressive variety of audio (MP3, MP4, MPC, Vorbis, RA, CD Audio, WAV, APE, SHN, WMA, MIDI, ...), images (JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, ...) and video (DIVX, AVI, MOV, WMV, RV, MP2/MPG, ...). There are additional plug-ins available, as well. You can organize your media pretty much any way you could imagine, with customizable sort criteria and view schemes.

If DSP options are important to you, the standard DSP features are very nice, IMO. It has a virtual subwoofer, surround field and environment settings, as well as an equalizer (range and frequencies identical to Winamp's standard EQ). If you try it, be sure to try the virtual subwoofer...I set it to 15", and though I had to crank down the pre-gain about 65%, volume was still sufficient and the low frequency enhancement was very effective IMO. Not muddy or distorted, at least that I could hear. That's the extreme though, and most users, if they use the DSP effects at all, will more likely use an intermediate setting of 10" or 12" for the VS. My personal preference was 15" virtual subwoofer, 'widest' surround field, no environment preset, about 75% negative gain (for proper headroom), and light equalization just for headphone listening. Availability of other DSP plug-ins are limited, though (but weren't necessary for me, anyway).

The EQ supports user presets, also. However, I found a minor bug when trying to save an EQ preset. It would save a duplicate of the preset if you give it the same name to overwrite an old preset. But if you try to delete the dup, it deletes both from the list. The secret is to save your preset, switch to DSP settings view, then back to the EQ view, and check your preset list. It should be OK. If you check the list right after saving a preset, that's when you may get the problem.

Media Center 9.1 works with ReplayGain, and you can specify output bit depth, channels and sample rate (or leave them set to "source"). Another nice touch is that it shows you peak output level (as a percent of unity, 1.0) so you can see clipping and adjust accordingly to prevent it. Right next to the peak level display is the "Overflow Handling" toggle, where you can specify either "clipping prevention" (by automatic output level limiting) or "none (overflows flat line)".

Oh, and it's skinnable (though the stock skins looked/worked just fine for me).

I can't testify to it's video and image management abilities, because I didn't go into much detail with those media types. My attitude was that it would have to pass my "music player" criteria before I could consider it for anything else.

Where It Fades

There aren't many issues I had with Media Center 9.1. Only two significant faults that I could find with this otherwise great product...

#1 : I could not find a configurable hot-key plug-in for Media Center to match what I have for Winamp (gen_wkc4.dll). Interface counts. Once you've lived with complete hotkey access to your media player, you'll never go back.

#2 : This is not freeware. The copy you can download is a (thankfully) full-featured, thirty-day trial. If you want to keep it, prepare to shell out $39.98. So the big question is, "Does Media Center give me a better media manager/player experience enough to spend 40 bucks, considering there are many free solutions out there (foobar2000, Winamp, Quintessential Player, etc.)?"

Conclusion

If you really like Windows Media Player except you want it to do much more, if you don't need configurable hotkey control, and if you don't mind paying $39.98, then J. River's Media Center 9.1 is probably your silver bullet media machine.

My own decision...well, right now Winamp 5.0 is playing a Liz Phair album I just bought. For what it's worth, I've never come so close to shelling out dinero for a media manager/player as I did for Media Center 9.1.

My own answer to question #2 above was "Verrrrry close. But no cigar."

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #2 – 2003-10-09 14:01:05

I've been an avid user and beta-tester of J. River's Media Jukebox 8 for quite some time (my name is even mentioned in the credits screen !). However, I've switched over too foobar2000, partly because of some annoyances of MJ/MC. I think it may be useful to some if I post them here:

It took a loooooong time (it seemed like ages) before MJ finally supported APE 2.0 tags with MPC files. Even though the list of formats MJ/MC supports is impressive (especially when you compare it with other all-in-one multimedia apps like MusicMatch or RealOne), it really lags behind compared with Winamp or foobar2000. For example, AFAIK it still has no support for FLAC or AAC (somebody correct me if I'm wrong).

When I used the "convert format" feature (to convert my APE files to lossy formats), every now and then tags were missing from the resulting file. This seemed to happen mostly when converting to MPC, but I've had it happen with a few Ogg Vorbis files as well. After repeatedly reporting this problem, providing sample files (that could reproduce the bug) and bumping my threads, I finally got one of the developers (Nikolay) to confirm the bug, but he admitted that he had "no idea" what caused this problem. Then, he assured me that they "were looking into it", but that was it. Months and months passed, newer versions were released, other people reported this bug (but were always ignored, from what I could see at the forum), but the bug was never fixed. Last time I checked it (long after the final MC 9 was released), this bug was still present.

Another thing with the "convert format" feature: last time I checked, there was still no proper way of using "various artists" albums when you enter a destination folder. You could select "create artist/album directory here" for the destination directory, but it would create a directory for every single artist that's featured on a various artists album. I did ask on the forum to make this feature "album artist aware" (like e.g. the view schemes are), but this was never implemented.

About replaygain: Despite the fact that I (and others too) have asked it several times, album gain was never implemented. I always got the impression the developers couldn't care less about it. Maybe they always listen to individual songs instead of full albums (like I do), and therefor were satisfied with radio gain only. Also, instead of the default replaygain tags (that are used by CLI replaygain tools and players like Winamp and FB2K) MJ/MC used custom tags, therefor making those tags incompatible with other players and tools.

Playback of non-replaygained files was also a problem: there was no gain setting for non-replaygained files (like e.g. foobar2000 now has). This is also something I requested on the forum, but the developers didn't want to implement it. Instead, they mentioned how non-replaygained files would automatically get the average gain of the replaygained files on the playlist (nevermind that you usually don't mix replaygained and non-replaygained files in a single playlist). Of course, since MJ/MC uses 83db for replaygain, the volume difference between replaygained and non-replaygained files was HUGE.

Those issues (especially the convert format and replaygain issues) were getting frustating for me. My requests, while they were always ignored, were apparently not that strange or demanding, since foobar2000 implements these things perfectly, exactly how I want it:
- Convert format: I can use "$if(%album artist%,%album artist%,%artist%)" in the output filename formatting, and FB2K will create the correct directories for various artists albums.
- Album gain: fully supported (and even the default replaygain setting) in FB2K.
- Non-replaygained files: a preamp slider for such files is available in the playback settings.

Not to be overly negative, I have to admit that MJ/MC is miles ahead of other all-in-one applications, and as ScorLibran already mentioned, its organizing features really shine (user-defined ordering schemes, smartlists, ...). I also like the "party mode" that's included.

I still think MJ/MC is an excellent choice for most people looking for a fully featured multimedia application, that has an easy and intuitive user interface (I can imagine lots of people are put off by all the TAGZ stuff in foobar2000). However, for me personally, other applications implement the various features better than MJ/MC (I also use EAC for ripping, Case's tag for tagging, etc...).

Whew, that's probably one of my longest posts here. I sure hope anybody reads it.

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #3 – 2003-10-09 14:13:24

i did thanks for you interesting post. i noticed some of the issues you mentioned when testing older versions, too. i agree, that mc is still the best all-in-one app available, but prefer individual apps.

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #4 – 2003-10-09 14:22:40

Quote

Another thing with the "convert format" feature: last time I checked, there was still no proper way of using "various artists" albums when you enter a destination folder. You could select "create artist/album directory here" for the destination directory, but it would create a directory for every single artist that's featured on a various artists album. I did ask on the forum to make this feature "album artist aware" (like e.g. the view schemes are), but this was never implemented.
Quote

Dan,
This was changed in 9.1. It still may not be what you would like.

Our support for MPC hasn't been the best. It would help if someone took it on as a mission. Trelane did for a while and it really was helpful.

Thanks for the thoughtful criticism.

Jim

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #5 – 2003-10-09 14:46:01

Quote

I've been an avid user and beta-tester of J. River's Media Jukebox 8 for quite some time (my name is even mentioned in the credits screen !).

I figured somebody here has beta'ed other versions of this thing, and could give a more involved impression than just my "5-day trial".

A couple more things that I wanted to add. Last Saturday afternoon, I was preparing for a friend's get-together where I was going to supply the music and video entertainment.

Media Center 9.1 has some interesting and pretty cool visualizations. Most important to me in this area, as a completely-amatuer-n00b-semi-DJ, are...

#1 Picture Quality and Framerate. My PC can process some decently hefty video. When using Winamp, I use Milkdrop 1.04 set to 100fps max, x4 multi-sampling (anti-aliasing control), and I get real figures up to about 70fps during playback with acceptably smooth edges. When 100 people are dancing and digging the visuals on an 80" monitor, the images had better be damn smooth. After as much tweaking as I had time to try, Media Center 9.1 still seemed a little choppy. My real rates were in the 25fps neighborhood, and images were a little jagged. I don't know if it was limited by capabilties of the plug-in or a config problem, and frame processing wasn't painfully slow, just not as "polished" if you're used to seeing visuals smooth and upwards of 40fps regularly. More time playing with the MC 9.1 visualization settings might have solved this problem, though.

#2 Variety. I was pretty impressed with the number of different visual presets in Media Center, but again, it couldn't quite compare to Milkdrop. If I have a playlist of ~7:30:00 of music for a party, I want enough variety in the visualizations that people aren't watching the same images cycling past every minute or so. It seemed that the duration of visuals when set to "Cycle All Visualizations" was pretty short. Milkdrop, by comparison, has a vast preset collection, and varies each one enough that you never see anything close to the same images repeated (thought you can still recognize a base preset).

I guess I've been spoiled by Milkdrop. Oh well...the bar has been raised, so be it.

Then I ran into an odd problem (with about two hours before I had to leave for the party). Media Center 9.1 refused to import my latest "party mix" playlist. I checked the format over and over...standard M3U...just a list of paths and filenames. No special characters, no different formatting than other playlists it imported successfully. Anyway, after trying for about 15 minutes, I ended up re-creating the playlist manually in Media Center, then exporting to M3U format. *sigh* I made the party with about 10 minutes to spare.

Though these are specific negative experiences, I still recommend that people try Media Center 9.1. The download is 14.2MB. Import your collection...don't worry, it won't move or re-tag anything...though similar in functionality, it doesn't do evil things like WiMP. See if it's worth it to you. I still say it's a great app.

P.S...sorry to hi-jack this thread so much...But I've just spent the last five days playing with this thing extensively, and thought I'd share my experiences.

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #6 – 2003-10-09 15:06:23

Scorlibran,
Which build are you using?

Which visualization? 3d?

I believe I've heard that Mikdrop was written in assembler, so it may be less of a load on your CPU.

The download is large right now because distributing Windows Media components is the only way MC can play the new protected files that are coming from places like Buymusic or MusicMatch. We'll add a 9MB upgrade file when we get a chance.

Jim

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #7 – 2003-10-09 15:34:07

Quote

Scorlibran,
Which build are you using?

Which visualization? 3d?

I believe I've heard that Mikdrop was written in assembler, so it may be less of a load on your CPU.

The download is large right now because distributing Windows Media components is the only way MC can play the new protected files that are coming from places like Buymusic or MusicMatch. We'll add a 9MB upgrade file when we get a chance.

Jim

Hi Jim. I'm using build 267, which I downloaded last Saturday (October 4th).

The visualizations I spent the most time with were the non-3D visualizations. The 3D-visuals were very nice, just not quite as much variety and no "cycle all" option. People still gave a lot of favorable comments when I could sit down and manually cycle the 3D visuals, though.

The download size is no problem, IMO. 14MB is reasonable considering the capabilites of the application. And it defintiely beats having to go and manually get and install Win Media components to make things work. Personally, I'd much rather have a larger download and end-up with a "turn-key" install, than a smaller download with pieces missing.

Anyway, thanks for creating such a great media manager! It'll satisfy the needs of a lot of people, I'm sure.

BTW...any word on a configurable system hot-key plug-in for Media Player 9.1? If there was one, it would probably be enough by itself to push me over the edge into buying MC 9.1.

J.River Media Center 9.1 Released

Reply #8 – 2003-10-09 16:50:57

Quote

BTW...any word on a configurable system hot-key plug-in for Media Player 9.1? If there was one, it would probably be enough by itself to push me over the edge into buying MC 9.1.

There is no hot-key plug-in yet, but if you asked on the "third party plug-ins board here

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.c...d=Other_Plugins

someone might take it up as their cause. It could probably be done by using the Interface SDK available here:

http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/developers.html

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