BTV Enhancer for WMP9/10

[IGx89]

BTV Enhancer for Windows Media Player 9 (also tested with WMP10 Technical Beta) adds three new features to WMP9: a bookmark feature, which saves and restores your position in video and/or audio clips; an auto-fullscreen feature, which allows you to make WMP9 go to fullscreen mode as soon as the first video clip starts playing; and a chapter skipping feature, which works in conjunction with BeyondTV3 to automatically skip commercials when watching a recorded show using WMP9 (works over a LAN too). All those features can be enabled or disabled at will, and have different settings to choose from using the plug-in's Properties dialog.

Download it from wmplugins.com

Changes since last public release (v0.7, old thread):
v1.0
-Renamed from "BTV Chapter Reader" to "BTV Enhancer for WMP9"
-Now saves all settings (including bookmark locations) in user-specific registry keys; now all the users on a computer can have their own settings and bookmarks
-If in auto-skip mode, you can manually, temporarily disable skipping in a cutlist section by quickly entering it twice (using the seekbar). This is fairly intuitive and works quite well
-Clipboard now works when the plugin is active
-Tweaked the options dialog

v0.8 (private release)
-Added auto-fullscreen feature (WMP goes to fullscreen the first time a video clip starts to play)


Also, this plug-in is open-source, so source code is available upon request

[HideOut]

Oh this should be stickied for now...

[HeatherA]

This is awesome thanks! I don't know why WMP hasn't had a bookmark feature in all of it's releases. I'm using the new beta and this plugin works great!

[vogelap]

Anyone tested this on the release of WMP10?

Once I hear that it works, I'm upgrading to WMP10.

[silverscorp83]

Yep, it works with WMP10 also, just tested it out a couple minutes ago. Automatically goes to full screen and skips over the commercial segments too.

[vogelap]

Thanks for the reply. Upgrade, here I come!

[vogelap]

ARGH! I just did the upgrade to WMP10. I also re-installed the latest version (as of today's date) of BTV Enhancer.

The plugin is enabled in WMP10 with all the options set. However, it isn't 'bookmarking' recordings the way it used to, nor is it automagically popping to fullscreen or skipping commercials... I'm going to reboot and see if that helps.

Any ideas?

[vogelap]

Reboot changed nothing. Also, I cannot seem to uninstall WMP10 to go back to WMP9. Dammit.

EDIT: If I launch WMP10 and select a video to play back from WMP10's File->Open dialog, BTV Enhancer works -- skips commercials, pops to full screen, bookmarks -- everything. If I click "PLAY" on the file from within BTV's WebUI, BTV Enhancer doesn't work. I've gone into WMP10's Options->File Types dialog and clicked "Select All" so everything is associated with WMP10. Same results. I hope this information sheds some light on the issue.

[silverscorp83]

strange. now i'm noticing this too. seemed to work before. Also noticed that if it's not full screen and you hit stop, then play, it makes it full screen (of course that defeats the purpose of the "automatic" full screen).

[IGx89]

Thanks for the reports, guys! I had tested it out with the Technical Preview and it seemed to work great, but the final version appears to have broken some things. I'm going to look into it ASAP, and will get back to you as soon as I have it fixed.

[vogelap]

Thanks for the update... Anxious to get the new version that works 100% with WMP10!

[vogelap]

Some good news... I was able to 'roll back' to WMP9, so my problems with WMP10 are out of the picture now. Not only was I unhappy that WMP10 wasn't compatible with BTV Enhancer, I didn't like that it took a lot longer to launch a show with WMP10 than it did with WMP9.

To roll back to WMP9 from WMP10 in Windows XP SP2, go into Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs, and CHECK "Show updates" near the top of the window. Then, under the "Windows Updates" heading, you'll see the entry for Windows Media Player 10. Select it and click on "Change/Remove" and it will roll back to WMP9 (or whatever version you previously had installed, I assume).

Once I get confirmation that BTV Enhancer works with WMP10, I will reconsider upgrading to it. Until then, I'm quite happy with WMP9!

[IGx89]

Unfortunately, no progress so far . They're aware of the problem, but since I don't have a MSDN account I can't get any more info.

In the meantime, the plugin does partially work (chapter skipping and auto-fullscreen) with WMP10 final: when playing something, press pause/stop and then play, and it'll skip chapters properly then.

[vogelap]

Any updates on this tool with WMP10?

[BankZ]

Originally Posted by IGx89

Unfortunately, no progress so far . They're aware of the problem, but since I don't have a MSDN account I can't get any more info.

In the meantime, the plugin does partially work (chapter skipping and auto-fullscreen) with WMP10 final: when playing something, press pause/stop and then play, and it'll skip chapters properly then.

Any chance of releasing the source and maybe someone else can figure out the problems? This seems like it could be a great plugin.