One of the reasons I love using MJ/MC is the ability (albeit limited) to use Winamp input plugins to expand supported file formats. This way I can use MJ/MC to play, organise and catalogue all my media files no matter how old or just plain weird they are.
There are many file formats out there besides MP3, windows media etc that contain their own metadata in tags which aren't recognisable by MC (or the vast majority of players, for that matter). I know it would be ridiculously time consuming to implement native support for recognition of all these file types, but it's equally time consuming to add all this data manually into the MC database.
Why not exploit the countless input plugins out there that can read this data? Most winamp input plugins for specific file types are able to recognise tag data and often send this info to the winamp player directly (displaying a plugin-defined title, track length etc). This sort of adaptibility is what makes winamp so popular and widely used.
So I was wondering, considering MC already has partial support for winamp input plugins and is able to play such files, would it be that difficult to extend this functionality and implement a "read tag info from plugin" or at least a "display tag info from plugin" option like in winamp? (I'm mainly talking about winamp plugins here) Even if such functionality couldn't import tag fields directly into the MC database (I imagine this would be quite difficult to implement), surely it wouldn't be too hard to view the tag data in MC through the plugin (like the "view file info" option in winamp). This way all of this 'hidden' tag information could be accessed from MC rather than using winamp or external programs to display/edit tag data for less common media files.
In addition, some older & unconventional formats display incorrect track lengths or just "Live" in the track length field in Media Center (despite having constrained track lengths). In Winamp, the player is able to read the track length from the plugin (rather than from the file itself). Similarly, for files which aren't natively supported by MC, would it be possible to retrieve track length data from input plugins (instead of MC trying to read from a file it doesn't understand)?
It just makes sense to me exploit these plugins -- this way MC can:
1. accurately display the information for plugin supported file types and
2. expand its organisational capabilities (by viewing tags through input plugins).
So what do you guys think? Is this possible?
Before anyone brings it up, I know MC can add its own tags to files but these tags 1) may not be attached to all file types 2) are only recognisable by MC.
I'm currently using Media Center 10.0.117 on Windows XP
(Sorry for long post
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Topic: Possibility of extending metadata support (Read 6153 times)