CompulsiveCode - ManyMediaPlayer

Many Media Player



	Many Media Player is a program for viewing multiple videos, images, cameras, and webpages in a configurable grid. The program supports searching and filtering files, as well as playlist files and multiple queues with a simple drag-and-drop interface. This program can play files with long names (260+ characters) that other players like VLC fail on. A surprising amount of work went into making this program compatible with long file names wherever possibe, including drag-and-drop, as well as media playback. This program is portable (no installation required). There are no limitations on the number of tiles for media playback. Some other programs limit you to 16 tiles. VLC and some other players fail on file names longer than 260 characters. This program does not. Simple controls let you control a single media player or all of them. Videos (MP4, AVI, MKV, FLV, WEBM), animated images (GIF, WEBP) static images (JPG, PNG, BMP), and even web pages are all supported. The 'Skim Through Video' function can display a video as a series of 5-10 second clips. This program could also be useful for viewing camera feeds like security cameras or traffic cameras. Additional media formats will be added in the future. The file browser and filters make it easy to find the files that you are looking for. Files can be copied, moved, renamed, deleted, etc. Oh, and the program can record GIFs.

History:

Future improvements: Load files / folders asynchronously. 2024-05-08: Added more drag-and-drop support, for dragging the media player itself. Added 'Control All Players' menu for all menus. Fixed window state not returning to Maximized from FullScreen. Fixed media controls not hiding. Fixed mouse cursor not hiding. 2024-05-05: Added some casting support for video files. 2024-04-26: Removed all of the old DirectShow Camera code. 2024-04-25: Implemented all mouse and keyboard events for new MediaCapture object. 2024-04-23: Working on changing the camera code to use new Windows 10+ MediaCapture functions. 2024-04-20: The program now saves and restores window position and size, as well as tile and splitter dimensions. 2024-04-18: UI fixes. Published Version 1.1 2024-04-16: Added error handlers for disconnected camera/video source. The progress bar and volume bar now adjust during mousebutton-down and mouse-move instead of just on mousebutton-release. 2024-04-14: Implemented proper drag-and-drop on the media player control, instead of the hacky method I was using before. 2024-04-12: Camera view now properly supports Pause and Full-Screen. Added options for choosing Camera Resolution. 2024-04-10: Camera view now properly supports scaling to Fill or Fit, Zooming, Panning, Drag-Drop. 2024-04-07: Added some support for webcams and video sources. 2024-03-20: Added basic panning support (Ctrl+Drag) for all media types. 2024-03-17: Added support for keyboard volume buttons. More fixes for scaling to different screen DPIs. 2024-03-17: Added support for keyboard volume buttons. Added keyboard commands for controlling all players. 2024-03-15: Additional fixes for full-screen videos. 2024-03-13: Fixed an issue that would prevent deleting video files if the file name length was greater than 260 characters because the file-stream was still open. 2024-03-12: Fixed some issues with right-clicking on a splitter bar while in full-screen mode. Cleaned up the border on the volume bar. 2024-03-08: Added more keyboard shortcuts. Documented none of them. 2024-03-08: Many adjustments to handle mixed DPIs. 2024-02-27: Fixed an issue with pausing the web browser, where the picturebox was not being resized and repositioned first. 2024-02-26: Zooming now adjusts the center-position of the media based on the cursor position. 2024-02-24: Zoom works on all media types now with Ctrl+MouseWheel. 2024-02-21: The media controls will now hide after 5 seconds if the mouse hasn't moved. Fixed some webbrowser bugs with URLs. 2024-02-20: Added an optional caption to display file names. 2024-02-19: More improvements to dark-mode. 2024-02-18: Added Dark Mode. Modified UI to accommodate dark-mode. Added a setting to auto-check for updates. If this box is checked, the program will check for new updates while it is loading. At most, once per day. 2024-02-17: Added drag-and-drop support to web object. Added drag-and-drop support to image object. Added drag-and-drop support to the video object. Fixed right-click menu in player not displaying when no media was playing. 2024-02-16: Added menu item for individual player to 'Mark Favorite'. Added menu item for individual player to 'Browse For Files'. Added menu item for individual player to 'Browse For Folder'. Fixed right-click menu on player displaying even when no media was loaded / playing. Fixed right-click menu on player not unpausing animations when closing the menu while displaying media in the web browser object. The program will now alert the user if their version of windows does not meet the minimum requirements. (minimum is Windows x64 version 10.0.18362.0) Added support for animated PNGs. Added support for AVIF images. 2024-02-15: Fixed GIF recorder stuck in Grayscale mode. Re-wrote part of the GIF recorder to maintain a GIF stream in memory, instead of holding all frames in memory as images. This should reduce memory consumption while recording, but may increase CPU usage. Fixed full screen window displaying behind the main window. Fixed full screen window not closing when main window is closed. 2024-02-14: Fixed full-screen toggle not working with image files (JPGs, PNGs, etc). Fixed Pause not working for animated images being displayed in the Web Browser object. Pausing the animation is faked. Instead, we grab the frame and display it over the animation until unpaused. 2024-02-13: Removed unnecessary config settings. Added settings for recording GIFs, to control the FPS and whether to record in Color or GrayScale. Added a RECORD button and the ability to record the grid and save as animated GIF. 2024-02-12: Fixed some new issues with drag-and-drop. Issues that I recently created. Media control panel now properly disappears when no items are in the queue. 2024-02-11: Added buttons for controlling all media. Previous control required the right-click menu. Fixed some issues with the file list not updating. 2024-02-05: Fixed menu item 'Play In New Window' not working. Fixed an issue that would clear an entire list when deleting a single file, causing it to look like multiple files were deleted. 2024-02-03: Reduced file operations a lot more. Much faster loading of directories and queues. 2024-01-31: Wrote a GIF library. Could use this to create GIFs, extract frames, etc. 2024-01-25: Reduced file operations when reading directories and filtering. Fixed an issue with loading video files into a new window. 2024-01-24: The Control Panel is now centered. This should improve the experience when browsing web pages, and be more like Windows Media Player. Minor UI fixes. 2024-01-23: Better handling of right-click and mouse movement when displaying an image using the web browser object. Fixed issue with displaying an image using the web browser object in full-screen mode. 2024-01-22: Added full-screen functionality by double-clicking on an image/video while it is playing. All tiles in the grid will pause. Fixed some issues with playing the queue when only one video file was present. 2024-01-21: Reduced the number of file operations when loading the queues. 2024-01-20: Fixed new stream functions not working with network paths. Fixed web browser object not adjusting scale until the next image was displayed. 2024-01-19: Reduced border/margins. Added Full-screen functionality. F11 to toggle Full-Screen. F11 or Esc to exit Full-Screen. Or just double-click on a video/image while it is playing. Added more supported file extensions. All of the playlist functions have been rewritten to support long file names for the playlist file names, and the media file names. Videos that are shorter than the image skip-time will now repeat to fill out the time. 2024-01-18: Better handling of files that are incomplete. Just move on to next file instead of showing an error or freezing on one frame until time expires. The program no longer requires temporary LNK files to load UTF8 filenames into the web browser. The program no longer requires any temp files for playing media, regardless of file name length or UTF8 characters. These obstacles with file names have been my focus for weeks. Now they are all figured out. 2024-01-17: Replaced most of the underlying video player with a different MS object, allowing for streams as sources. This allows long filename work-arounds. This new object does not allow for animated GIFs, so they need to use the WebBrowser object for now. Modified the GIF_GetDuration code to allow for long file names (again by using a stream created from an hFile). The only scenario that requires a temporary file now is when a long file name needs to be opened in the web browser object. So GIF files and WEBP files with long names. 2024-01-16: Fixed some menu items not working when right-clicking on the media controls panel. Fixed temp file not being deleted when switching from media player to web browser. 2024-01-14: Added "File Properties" item in right-click menu. 2024-01-12: Implemented a new method for playing files with long names, and files with special characters. 2024-01-11: Timer optimizations. Fixed files with non-ASCII characters not displaying in web browser object. 2024-01-11: When using the 'SKIM THROUGH' option, the video will start at a random point between 0% and 10% into the video. This should add some variation to the video skimming. 2024-01-10: Fixed issue with filenames containing certain characters were not displaying in web browser object due to lack of escaping. Changed CSS in HTML to inline CSS. 2024-01-09: Added functionality to skim through videos. This will advance through the video by a set percentage after a specified number of seconds. Fixed unnecessary margin around media displayed in the web browser object. 2024-01-08: Fixed slow retrieval of files after applying a sort to the list. Fixed an error that could occur when trying to play a very long file name that no longer exists. 2024-01-07: Implemented proper mute instead of just volume zero. WebBrowsers can be muted. Added Mute button to controls. Fixed Ctrl+A not always working. Fixed some highlighting issues in the queue lists. 2024-01-06: Improvements to how splitters handle resizing the window. GIFs are currently considered Videos and not Images. 2024-01-05: More fixes, minor improvements. 2024-01-04: Fixed webp/webm files with very long names not loading. Added a menu item to Clear the file list. 2024-01-03: Added menu items to play a large selection across all players. Added menu items for Select All. Added shortcut key info to menus. Fixed media not resizing when hiding the queue. Fixed issue with pausing GIFs. 2024-01-01: More adjustments for very long file names. Pressing F2 now triggers the label edit for renaming a file. 2023-12-31: More support for working with long file names of 260+ characters. Fixed issues with muting. 2023-12-30: File names with long paths can now be played. 2023-12-28: Almost added support for file names longer than 260 characters. 2023-12-28: Disabled file-name cleansing for now, to avoid confusion with renaming files. The app now prevents sleep/suspend and prevents screensavers while running. The app now pauses all players when minimizing, and restores playstate when the window is un-minimized. 2023-12-27: Added support for renaming files through the file lists. Better synchronizing of lists as changes are made. Added support for keyboard commands Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Delete. The main file list now shows file date/time and file size with sortable columns. 2023-12-26: Removed all WMP dependencies. Now using the Windows 10 built in Media Player. Added new media controls. GIFs now use Media Player. The Queue can now be hidden on all players. Fit / Fill option now works for all media types. 2023-12-23: Fixed an issue with removing items when there were duplicate items in the list. 2023-12-22: Added a menu item to copy the current media frame to the clipboard. Image files displayed through a browser object (.Webp files) now use HTML to scale the image to fit the tile. Replaced the right-click menu for the WMP object with the right-click menu used for images. Added a setting to control whether images Zoom to Fit, or Zoom To Fill. Again, less wasted screen space. HTML for .webp files will now specify a black background. The program displays 'clean' file names, with title-casing applied extraneous periods removed, etc., and other adjustments to make file names more readable. 2023-12-21: Added right-click menu for images. Right-clicking an image pauses the video (or image, if animated) and pauses the queue. Adjustments to pause control. Videos now auto-zoom to fit the tile. Fixed Ctrl-A not working on all lists. .Webp images can now be displayed (internally using a web browser object). Added code to synchronize when a file is deleted from one queue so it will be removed from all queues. Added .webm file extension for video files. These display in the media player object (not the web browser). WMP may ask to confirm the first time a .webm file is played. Alternative, the program could be changed to use the web browser for many file formats. 2023-12-20: Added a button to check online for newer versions of this program. Fixed drag-and-drop allowing the drop to occur on the source list that the items were dragged from. Adjusted drag formats, so dragging to Explorer includes only files, while dragging within the app includes files and URLs. 2023-12-18: Added better handling for removing all items from a queue. Changed the image display to use a PictureBox instead of the web browser control. This allows for auto-zooming the image to the maximum size that will fit the window. Less wasted screen space. Added global media controls. Added the ability to pause animated GIFs. Added Mute/Unmute for media and webpages. 2023-12-17: Double-clicking an item in any of the lists will now add it to a different player tile (#1, then #2, etc) and start playing the selected media. Fixed image timer always waiting 15 seconds to advance. 2023-12-16: Added highlighting for the currently playing item in each player window. Double-clicking an item in any of the lists will add it to player #1 and start playing the selected media. 2023-12-15: Holding Shift while deleting files now permanently deletes the file. Added initial support for renaming files. 2023-12-14: Added checkboxes for Video and Image extensions. UI adjustments. Cleaned up menus, etc. First real version of ManyMediaPlayer ready to test. 2023-12-13: Added support for image files. The program displays each image in the queue for a specified amount of time. Saving a playlist now adds that playlist to the list of recent playlists. 2023-12-12: Switched from IE webbrowser to Edge webbrowser object. Added support for writing playlist files. The program can write .M3U8 for now. 2023-12-11: Added support for reading playlist files. The program can read .ASX, .M3U, .M3U8, .PLS, .WPL, and .XSPF. Added auto-sizing to column headers and splitters. A list of Recent Playlists is now saved just like Recent Files and Recent Folders. 2023-12-07: Added a webbrowser object to the player. Added support for copying and cutting files. Files can now be dragged out of the app into Windows Explorer as a file Copy. 2023-12-06: Added numerous configuration settings, and code to save/restore settings. The program can now save and restore all queues. Added support for deleting files. 2023-12-04: Added right-click menus and more drag-and-drop support. Files can be dragged into the program from Windows Explorer, and dragged from list to list within the app. 2023-12-03: Dynamic grid creation works. Basic UI layout complete. 2023-12-01: Started writing a split/grid based multi-viewer.

Screen Shots:

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