winamp 5.04

August 10, 2004 7:45 PM

New WinampSo the design guys over there quitely release this update and down played its coolest feature. Perhaps the coolest feature ever for any program. A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind. Sons are censored but there are well over 2000 videos with the promise of more to come.
posted by sourbrew (42 comments total)

What... what happened to winamp 4?
posted by whoshotwho at 7:56 PM on August 10, 2004

Winamp 5 = Winamp 2 + 3. They took the core from 2 and some features from 3 to make 5. So I've read.
posted by LukeyBoy at 7:58 PM on August 10, 2004

Very cool. I never noticed the video section (saw the song section interestingly enough.)

I don't see why any band wouldn't want their videos easy to access. They're commercials, for crying out loud.
posted by ALongDecember at 8:00 PM on August 10, 2004

yes i think it is largely a ploy by time warner to develop winamp into a media distribution system. I want to start paying a subscription fee now..... not 6 years from now
posted by sourbrew at 8:01 PM on August 10, 2004

iTunes also provides access to music videos (and movie trailers), but I only see 194 videos listed right now. . .
posted by ajr at 8:02 PM on August 10, 2004

also songs not sons... although i believe time warner does censor the bastard sons over at nullsoft.
posted by sourbrew at 8:02 PM on August 10, 2004

Gee this sounds like a viral marketting commercial
Gee, I just tasted New C2 Coke, And I rox! Honest!!!!
posted by Elim at 8:14 PM on August 10, 2004

A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind.

Could someone translate this into English? Thanks.
posted by reklaw at 8:23 PM on August 10, 2004

Just the other day I decided to check on a new (and improved) version of Winamp and lo and behold there it was and it does indeed rock. Of course, there are dozens of similar, smaller, lighter, faster and simply better options available these days. But, something about listening to mp3s with Winamp just feels right. Brand loyalty, I suppose. I'm a sucker for the llama.
posted by shoepal at 8:35 PM on August 10, 2004

So should I upgrade or not?
posted by bobo123 at 8:36 PM on August 10, 2004

I've been using Winamp 5 for a while now - I love it. The Media Library works great and the streaming radio & music is incredible. Music videos and songs? Well - that doesn't do much for me personally, but its a fine feature that in no way bloats the program. Very slick.
posted by wfrgms at 8:49 PM on August 10, 2004

Oh, also I recommend Tag&Rename - it helps keep your mp3 library in tip-top shape by making it really easy for you to edit your ID tags for each file. It also has FreeDB support (as well as allmusic.com support - which may or may not work currently) so you seldom have to hand type ID tags.
posted by wfrgms at 8:53 PM on August 10, 2004

reklaw

A database of searchable music videos and song offering on demand and fastforwarding and rewind.

Could someone translate this into English? Thanks.


I was excited and google searches made it seem like i was the first to notice this feature sue me. On a side note, way to not actually contribute anything but ad-hominem my hats off to you.

Elim

Gee this sounds like a viral marketing commercial
Gee, I just tasted New C2 Coke, And I rox! Honest!!!!


and microsoft is evil, and corporate america is trying to own your soul..... i am a bot i swear it... also see above.

Winamp rocks, plain and simple.
posted by sourbrew at 9:02 PM on August 10, 2004

I've been using WA5 for over a month, and I didn't notice this feature until now. Thanks sourbrew.
posted by spazzm at 9:40 PM on August 10, 2004

QCD is still better.
posted by rushmc at 10:04 PM on August 10, 2004

Metafilter is soooo different at night.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 10:13 PM on August 10, 2004

The best part of winamp is the ml ipod plugin, which allows a user to configure and sync an ipod without Apple's bloated crashware.
posted by trharlan at 10:17 PM on August 10, 2004

Of course, there are dozens of similar, smaller, lighter, faster and simply better options available these days.

I'd love to see a few links to some examples. Especially "faster loading on an old computer." (Help save this thread from being total Winamp Blue!)
posted by straight at 10:33 PM on August 10, 2004

I second the recommendation for Winamp with mlipod.
posted by muckster at 10:51 PM on August 10, 2004

Yeah, the llama has my loyalty, dangit. I won't look at another media player. WinAmp and WinZip are the first two apps I install on a system reinstall (which I do six months or so because I'm obsessive-compulsive, not necessarily because I need to).

Is it just me, though, or is anyone else still not satisfied with WinAmp 5 in the same sense in which WinAmp 4 was unsatisfactory? 5 is a big improvement over 4, which I wouldn't use. But still. I guess my problem is that I don't like the media center or whatever it's called. I'm a luddite, I guess.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:21 PM on August 10, 2004

Er, I meant "3" when I wrote "4".
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:22 PM on August 10, 2004

Free (as opposed to Tag and Rename's price) MP3 tag editor: The Godfather
posted by milnak at 11:27 PM on August 10, 2004

I sure would like to find a tag editor with all the functionality of the early Helium release. I bought that damn program, only to have the product be sold to some other publisher and a new version released only a couple months later, which they wouldn't upgrade. Pissed me off. But I digress. That first Helium product did a lot of stuff, but all of it was stuff I needed to do. So far, I've not found anything that compares. Tag and Rename comes close, but doesn't do everything. Anyone have any other suggestions?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:37 PM on August 10, 2004

I used foobar2000 for a few years, mainly because I liked having a plain white playlist listing everything I needed right there, with no bs graphics to distract. I got bored with the plainness eventually and returned to Winamp, and have been using 5.04 for a few weeks now. Listening to songs encoded at 64kbps or watching music videos on a computer does not interest me though.
posted by Onanist at 11:42 PM on August 10, 2004

Hey, one more thing I've found really useful is this thread that links to this Exact Audio Copy guide for creating great mp3s... I've been using EAC with --alt-preset standard for a while now and the quality of my rips are incredible. There's a noticible difference between my new EAC rips and my previous 192k and 256k - so now I'm in the process of re-ripping my cds.
posted by wfrgms at 12:42 AM on August 11, 2004

Seeing as you are all here and interested it doesn't seem worth starting an askmefi thread.

My internet library is empty and a search for u2 beck etc is returning nothing. What do I need to do, to fix it?
posted by kenaman at 1:55 AM on August 11, 2004

thanks for that, i've just installed it, having stuck with winamp v2. i love the streaming tv and radio, although the chinese tv is too surreal for my mornings.
posted by quarsan at 2:35 AM on August 11, 2004

Since

quarsan

mentioned that he/she enjoyed the streaming tv, i suggest that if you are interested in watching the olympics without the nbc filtering try checking the internet tv feeds.

The european cup as well as the superbowl had good coverage on those channels.
posted by sourbrew at 2:45 AM on August 11, 2004

"Perhaps the coolest feature ever for any program."

Must . . . not . . . make . . . snarky . . . flame.
posted by D.C. at 3:08 AM on August 11, 2004

These here Winamp.com rock and roll videos go mighty well with beer. The llama's ass is cherry red.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:32 AM on August 11, 2004

I tried 5 and playback was glitchy when using the "modern" skin; overall I couldn't see any tangible benefits of 5, so I reverted to 2.x.

Recently tried Foobar2000 while trying to get an Audioscrobbler plugin to work (the one for Winamp requires a DLL that's not found on my work NT machine, doh) but abandoned it when I realised it doesn't have a volume slider!?!?! That seemed a very odd design decision.

I've found EZ-Playlist (freeware) to be pretty good for editing ID3 tags. The other apps/plugins mentioned so far look a bit busy.

One drawback of EZ-Playlist is that the GUI locks up while it's writing tag changes, & it's not particularly easy to navigate without using the mouse. Some kind of modeless or Excel-style editor would be cool.

A feature I've not found on any hardware or software player is "shuffle album" (ie pick an album at random, play all its tracks in order, then pick a different album & repeat). Anyone seen one? I tried an "album list" plugin for Winamp, but it didn't update itself very well (or at all).
posted by infravires at 3:36 AM on August 11, 2004

I'm a little lost -- I've got Winamp 5.04 pro, but I still can't find the feature(s) this post is talking about. How does one access this magical feature?
posted by dryad at 5:13 AM on August 11, 2004

Media Library.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:41 AM on August 11, 2004

I third the recommendation for ml_ipod. (latest version is 1.11 rc5)

For those of you who are wondering why you haven't seen this feature before, it is new with the latest version, 5.04, that was just released a couple of weeks ago. as with a lot of features, you can choose to not install it if you don't want it, on installation. Winamp tries to be as lightweight as possible, so you don't ever have to feel like your downloading or installing bloat. There are a number of items you can opt out of, however useful they may be. Also, there is a lite version which has minimal functionality (i.e. no winamp.com videos), but does the job with a quickness.

I wrote an article on Winamp withi a quick lookover on the new features of 5.04, including the Streaming Media section: Winamp 5.04 - As Good As It Gets. Also, my site, Winamp Unlimited does a decent amount of coverage on the application. I suppose that's enough site-whoring for one post.

kenaman: I can't really answer your question, but the guys in the Winamp Technical Support forum might.

dryad: The feature is in the media library (alt+l), under Streaming Media. there you'll see winamp.com videos and music, in addition to internet radio and the dozens of free internet tv stations. Here is a picture of how to get to it.
posted by lotsofno at 5:47 AM on August 11, 2004

oh, and from what i've been told the web team is working on getting Winamp's movie trailers in the video streaming section soon, hopefully.
posted by lotsofno at 5:50 AM on August 11, 2004

lotsofno: Nice! Thanks for the assistance. :)
posted by dryad at 6:20 AM on August 11, 2004

It doesn't rock on a 1999 desktop with a pentium III, 500 mhz, and the integrated graphics chip. The screen update is sluggish, and the songlists update slowly. So I switched to Foobar 2000.
posted by mecran01 at 9:09 AM on August 11, 2004

I love when Mefi threads result in someone declaring "By the way, I run a site about X topic you've all been discussing." Thanks for sharing, lotsofno. Very cool (and informative) site!
posted by shoepal at 9:15 AM on August 11, 2004

Hey, they have Sonic Youth videos. Delightful!
posted by Outlawyr at 9:37 AM on August 11, 2004

I'm not a fan of the way they've got every 2.9 winamp copy I've got, asking me to upgrade to 5.04 every time I start it. I like the 2.x branch, less clutter, and 2.9 has the media-library. Most importantly, all my plugins for generating html-pages of what I've been listening to, and logging in to remote-control winamp via shell, still work.
posted by nomisxid at 10:00 AM on August 11, 2004

If you haven't yet, please check out the soundtracks section of Winamp.com Videos, and watch Will Ferrel's "Afternoon Delight." I don't watch many music videos, but this one I really enjoyed. Mandy Moore's "God Only Knows" also made me want to see the movie that the video was advertising.

nomixisid: I could be wrong with this, but try disabling that by going to the preferences (ctrl+p), selecting General Preferences in the left pane, and unchecking "Check for new versions of Winamp at startup." I'm not a technical expert on the application, so I couldn't guarantee that that would end the update alerts.

That said, Winamp 5 is Winamp 2, with a few more features and bug-fixes. As I mentioned earlier, most of the features can be "unchecked" when installing. You don't really need to deal with Modern Skins, video support, and/or anything you consider "clutter," but you can still benefit from some of Winamp 5's other awesomeness. Your old plug-ins should all still work. I wrote a mini-article on this a while back called Adapt or Die.

If you want tips on maximizing your Winamp performance, I've heard that this guide I threw down a while back is decent.
posted by lotsofno at 10:55 AM on August 11, 2004

Why do I need video in my mp3 player? Especially for boring music videos. I hate when folks can't leave well-enough alone.
posted by HTuttle at 4:52 PM on August 11, 2004