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Author Topic: Tip: Video previewing without using PN or Fullscreen  (Read 1105 times)

Zarius

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Tip: Video previewing without using PN or Fullscreen
« on: January 15, 2004, 07:51:30 pm »

Just discovered a cool feature of MC that I didn't know about and wanted to share it with others.

I've been cataloging my Anime Music Videos with MC for a bit now, and the hardest part was previewing the video whilst still being able to edit all the video files.  I could do this in the playing now playlist, but this didn't suit my needs (I wanted to still listen to my music! :))... I've seen others wanting to preview videos whilst not in the playing now as well, well now you can! :)

Power up your favorite video player (I like BSPlayer, it has independent volume control, so I can keep it quiet whilst playing music) and put it in "Always on top" mode (ctrl-a with BSPlayer, ctrl-t with Zoomplayer and I couldn't find any for Windows Media Player, though I have a small program called Nail.exe that'll nail any window to the top of the screen) and position/size it to your liking then simply drag a file from whatever view you are in and drop it on top of your video... voila, instant preview mode! :)

I'm currently using MC10.0.35, so I don't know what previous versions do this successfully.

On the assumption this works for other programs I 'nail'ed notepad to the screen and dropped a video in it... luckily it bought up a 'file not saved' dialog from my previous file, otherwise it would have opened a 65meg video :)  

I also tried explorer, using drag/drop and holding down the ctrl key allows you to copy the file to whereever you drop it.. but be careful, drag/drop without the ctrl key will move the file (if within the same partition), otherwise it's a copy) and not update MC (so MC will report the file as lost) then you'd have to move it back to where it came from or do a 'find and replace' on the filename field to update the location itself. I feel this is fine the way it is, otherwise when one accidently 'moves' a file using drag-drop and the database updated, you'd lose the info on where the file actually was.

JRiver: Maybe the standard 'drop' on explorer could be curtailed and only 'move' when the shift key is held down? (though I suspect this is explorer's domain and can't be changed).
Also, I can't find this in the help file (it mentions drag & drop -into- MC, not out of), will this be documented.. or stay undocumented because of the dangers of moving files around? I hope this feature stays, because it's so cool to quickly preview my videos in a window I can put whereever I like whilst still playing my music :)

PS: On further inspection - all my players have independent volume control :) (winamp, wmp, bsplayer, zoomplayer) except MC (edit: I must apologise, MC does have it... it's just a little hidden in the icon just to the left of the volume control :) "Internal Volume")  Plus, it's fun having all four players open and preview four different videos whilst listening to music with MC, though not a lot of desktop space left :)

PPS: I still prefer BSPlayer... :)  Zoomplayer has more functions, but bsplayer is move easily moved (by dragging any part of the playing picture) and resized (with the mouse wheel - zoomplayer can too, but doesn't feel as good) - both of which are important when previewing files if you want to quickly move the player around. (although BSPlayer still needs some work... haven't found the perfect player yet :()

PPPS: Cool... it works with smart/playlists too :)
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Monkeyboy

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Re:Tip: Video previewing without using PN or Fullscreen
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2004, 08:02:48 pm »

bsplayer is move easily moved (by dragging any part of the playing picture) ...
goto options, settings, mouse toggles Media Mode left click and set it to move window.
I know which I prefer  ;)
Rich
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Zarius

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Re:Tip: Video previewing without using PN or Fullscreen
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2004, 08:07:58 pm »

Quote
goto options, settings, mouse toggles Media Mode left click and set it to move window.

True... I forgot about that... but the main thing I didn't like was resizing with the mouse... it's too... jittery.  Other than that, I quite like zoomplayer and bounce between the two... though I resize the window quite often to shift it around the screen, so bsplay has a bit of a lead.  Still yet to find the perfect video player... but that's a whole different conversation :)

PS: I still think MC is excellent, in case anyone was wondering... this just makes it more excellent :)
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