MMP: Minimalist Media Player

NEW & ENHANCED FEATURES

• a subtle prettification of the playlist background (example from the audio player):

• the shred-delete function has been optimized for modern SSDs and is now significantly faster: 66.67% faster in fact

New in the Main Media Window

• when listening to videos through an external audio device, the audio can sometimes lag behind the video picture. New controls Ctrl-[\] and Ctrl-[/] now let you adjust the audio/video sync to bring forward the audio [relative to the video] in order to remove the lag
• in addition to all the many [Tab] and [T]abbing controls for tabbing/skipping/advancing/rewinding forwards and backwards through an audio or video, you can now Shift-Left-Arrow and Shift-Right-Arrow to skip backwards/forwards by a set number of seconds which you can specify in the “skipSeconds=” setting in the MinimalistMediaPlayer.conf file. MMP will default to 5

• when you delete the current audio or video file ([Del]), you can also opt to cleanup, at the same time, any remaining Audio & Video Timeline Editor files in the current folder. These two operation frequently go hand-in-hand when editing audio/video files so combining them adds additional convenience for the user; Shift-[DEL] will carry out a combined [DEL] and Ctrl-Shift-[C]
• the Confirm Delete Dialog will notify that this will occur and will require you to check the “Are you sure?” box

New in the Image & Thumbnail Browser

• a new audio/video panel was added to the status bar in v5.4.0 which lights up to alert you when the current folder also contains audio and/or video files. As of v6.0.0, if you click this panel you will exit out to the Main Media Window where the current image will be displayed. You can then view the playlist ([P]) to see which audio/files are in the current folder. Unless you play any of these files, Ctrl-[I] will re-show the image back in the Image & Thumbnail Browser or [T] will re-open the browser in [T]humbnail mode. Alternatively, if you do play one of the audio/video files in the playlist, [Y] will immediately re-open the Image & Thumbnail Browser, albeit in [T]humbnail mode
• clicking the audio/video panel is the equivalent of the existing functionality of using Ctrl-[X] to eXit the Image & Thumbnail Browser and drop back to the Main Media Window, or by clicking the window's X in the top right corner to do the same
• in previous versions, if you made adjustments to an image (Brightness, Contrast, Rotation, etc.) the right/left arrow key navigation controls would be disabled so that you didn't lose your adjustments by accidentally hitting an arrow key and moving to another image. Now, your adjustments are applied to every image you navigate to until you cancel some or all of the adjustments. Consequently, moving to another image and back again, whether accidentally or not, will not lose your adjustments, so the arrow keys are no longer disabled
• all the [F1]-[F12] function keys are reserved for user-defined folders meaning that the [F10], [F11] and [F12] keys to launch external applications have until now only been available from the Main Media Window. By dexterous use of a [Ctrl] key in combination with [F10], [F11] or [F12], external applications can now also be launched from the Image & Thumbnail Browser, with the full path to the displayed image file passed as a parameter to said application
• Ctrl-[Z] has been added as an alias for Ctrl-[U]ndo, to undo the previous move/save
• [T] will now switch between [T]humbnail mode and viewing the current image full size. Previously, you could only exit [T]humbnail mode by clicking on a thumbnail to view the full size image

New Full Help Dialog

• v6.0.0 introduces a brand new Full Help dialog (Ctrl-Shift-[H]) to assist you in understanding everything that MMP can do and to assist with learning the many controls, so that you can get the best use of MMP. MMP provides around 200 mouse and keyboard functions for playing, viewing and managing your entire library of audio, video and image files, and for carrying out fast (_really fast!_), lossless editing of audio and video files, without the time-consuming need to re-encode them. It has been a concern for some time now that it can be a little overwhelming for new users to get a grip on just how much functionality is actually built into MMP * the minimalist design obviously bears some responsibility for this. The new Full Help dialog is in addition to the current “Quick Help” summary help panels (Ctrl-[H])
• All of the MMP controls can continue to be used while this new help dialog is open

• the new fully-integrated Full Help panel includes a previous-next, history navigation mechanism and the ability to jump directly to related sections of the Help Dialog, the Config Dialog and the official Ctrl-[W] Wiki
• both the Full Help Dialog and the Config Dialog can be open at the same time. You can close each one in turn using [Escape]

New in the Config Dialog

• a new tab has been added for setting keyframes permanently on. The Config Dialog as a whole aims to be instructional and informative about how to use the features of MMP, rather than just provide a series of obscure check boxes, and the new tab follows in this vein:

• the Config Dialog has been enhanced to make navigating the various tabs easier and now uses the same approach as the new Full Help panel with the topics also listed on the left in addition to tab captions
• the topics are listed in alphabetical order on the left, and the tabs are arranged in order of typical frequency of use
• the explanation of the Playlist Filter options in the Config Dialog has been brought up-to-date

New in the Audio & Video Timeline Editor

• the color palette for the Timeline and the Segments & Streams Panel has been softened and some color added to make it all easier on the eyes rather than the previous rather stark monochrome color palette
• when editing audio files, album cover art is now included as a stream and can be included or excluded from the exported file just like any other stream
• a right-click on a segment will toggle whether that segment will be included or excluded from the final edit. As this doesn't alter which segment is currently selected in the Timeline, this is more convenient than having to left-click a segment to firstly select it, and _then_ having to press [X] or [R] to e[X]clude a segment or to [R]estore a previously e[X]cluded segment
• the correlation between MediaInfo's stream indexes/indices and FFmpeg's has been greatly improved. The editor now lists streams according to the indexes that FFmpeg will assign them. This makes exports more robust, especially for non-standard video containers, and helps when examining the .log file after exporting your edited media file
• you can now create chapters in your exported file from your exported segments. They can be given titles
  • previously, chapter titles were initially loaded from the media file but then discarded
  • chapter titles are now saved to the .mmp file containing your segment definitions
  • double-clicking a segment in the Timeline Editor or in the Segments & Streams Panel pops up a dialog for you to edit the segment/chapter title
  • if you wish, you can display chapter titles for editing purposes but not have the chapters created in the exported file
  • depending on where FFmpeg is able to determine where to make a cut to start a segment, FFmpeg can sometimes also include content just prior to where you actually wanted the segment to start
  • MMP takes this into account and creates the chapters based on the _actual_ length of the exported .segnn. segment files, not on their _desired_ length in the Timeline Editor
  • this makes jumping between chapters with [F8] and [F9] (previous/next) more accurate
  • because not all audio/video formats support chapters, MMP will create either an audio or video MKV container file, as appropriate
  • consequently, MMP now treats an MKV container with no video stream as an audio file
  • creating chapters in the exported media file adds no more than a couple of seconds to the export process, if it's even noticeable at all
  • creating chapters results in a new .chp file type being created during the export process
    • these will be cleaned-up in the normal Ctrl-Shift-[C]leanup operation
    • if you want their correct file type to be displayed in your File Explorer software, just rerun the mmp-install.bat file that ships with MMP
• Shift-[E] to play the [E]xported, [E]dited version of a media file now works regardless of whether the Timeline Editor is open or not
  • this of course assumes that you haven't renamed the exported file
• if you [C]ut an included segment, it will split into two included segments; if you [C]ut an excluded segment, it will be split into two excluded segments. [C] was made partly redundant by the introduction of [I]n and [O]ut points, so this change gives [C]ut unique functionality. It also allows you to go through an audio or video file and set chapter markers when you want to retain the entire media file and just export to one with chapters. Note though that with videos you will likely get some overlap (repeated frames) at the segment join points if there are no gaps at all between your exported segments
• a new options panel has been added to the Segments & Streams panel to make the Editor-related options from the Shift-[\] Config Dialog more accessible when editing:

FIXED

• fixed the issue of keyframes being turned on for audio editing when the new keyframes=yes setting was used
• FFmpeg can apparently sometimes have problems copying .m4v video files to new .m4v containers. The auto-copy facility in the Audio & Video Timeline Editor will therefore copy a .m4v file to a .mp4 file
• file paths which are passed to external apps as parameters are now enclosed in double quotes to cater for “long” file names and folders containing spaces
• after exporting an edited media file, if you had “Play Edited” set, the window playing the edited file could end up behind the current instance of MMP instead of in front of it
• fixed an issue where Ctrl-[9] to auto-arrange multiple MMP windows might not have done anything, although this has never been reported, so this fix might be a pre-emptive strike
• resolved the discrepancy between the physical, FFmpeg order of streams in a media file and MediaInfo's per-stream-type indexing<br />

• when moving the current image to a user-folder, the browser navigated to the “next” image when in fact the next image had already become the current image in the internal image playlist, so no explicit “next” operation was required
• re[L]oad playlist sometimes didn't get actioned
• when first opening the Browser to display a full-size image, its initial window height was based on the maximum number of thumbnails that would fit vertically (as it does in Thumbnail Mode), when it should just be the maximum height of the workable desktop area, or the height of the user-adjusted Main Media Window
• going straight into Thumbnail Mode from a centered Main Media Window, the Browser window is now correctly centered
• when exiting MMP straight from the Browser, prevent a blank Main Media Window from showing briefly

« release_5_4_0 | release_6_0_1 »

KNOWN ISSUES

There are currently no known issues. If you experience one, please create a New Issue at https://github.com/BazzaCuda/MinimalistMediaPlayerX/issues and it will be investigated immediately

A Note About MPV Playback
MMP: Minimalist Media Player uses MPV as a library (aka the libmpv-2.dll file) to perform all the playback of audio and video files and to display images.
If you have any playback issues, especially with video files, it may help to download a different copy of libmpv-2.dll from https://github.com/shinchiro/mpv-winbuild-cmake/releases/.
You should download any mpv-dev-x86_64-v3……7z file. -dev- is the keyword to look for in the file name.
If you have a particularly old processor then ignore the v3 files and download any other mpv-dev-x86_64……7z file instead.

Keyframes

• The wiki article on keyframes is now available at Video Keyframes
• There is also an example editing session at Video Editing Example showing how to use the new keyframes functionality to achieve clean edits, with video clips showing the difference that using keyframes can make
• Ctrl-[W] in MMP will quickly take you to the wiki

Quick Install
The quickest way to get up and running with MMP is to

• unzip the .zip file to any folder, e.g. C:\MMP\
• run the mmp-install.bat file which will register all the file extensions that MMP supports*
• double-click any media file (audio, video, image) in your File Explorer software

* mmp-uninstall.bat unregisters them

Any issues, please let me know Issues

Wiki site
The fully-detailed wiki at minimalistmediaplayer.com continues to grow. The Wiki greatly expands on the brevity of the Ctrl [H] help panels by providing comprehensive info to help you get the most out of using all of MMP's many controls and configurable options

If there is a particular aspect of MMP that you would like more information about, let me know and I will add a topic to the Wiki or enhance an existing topic

Feedback
All feedback, issues and suggestions should be raised in Issues or Discussions

Asset files
The “…full.zip” release file below contains everything you need to run MMP: Minimalist Media Player:

N.B. Only MinimalistMediaPlayer.exe will be updated automatically. If the zip file contains newer versions of the other files, you should update and test these for yourself to ensure they will run on your Windows system. MMP will not make that assumption and overwrite your working versions. You are advised to make a copy of the older versions in case you need to revert to them.