Inspired by the many videos of .NETs Webforms guru Jeff Fritz the Visual Studio Media Player Extension is, at this time, an integrated Audio Player (yes, right now the 'Media' part of the name is mis-leading but is something that we aim to change over the course of the development of this extension).
Based on the awesome BASS library by Ian Luck (http://un4seen.com), it can play all major audio files and online streams too (through PLS and M3U support).
Visualization support is provided through the BASSVIS plugin, and in version 1.0 is limited to the WinAMP AVS Studio.
The 'best' AVS Studio modules are included which support Windows 7 and above without crashing. (It's taken many years to find the ones that cause AVS to crash on later version of Windows!).
The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that 'Toumas: AVS Gone Bad' has been removed due to the explicit nature of the text content. Modules can be installed by simply copying them into the Extension's 'plugins\avs' folder. Access to the WinAMP Visual Studio has NOT been restricted, so you can even create new modules, or edit existing ones!
The extension is a 'Single Use' extension, meaning that the tool window will only activate in ONE instance of Visual Studio (who in their right mind would want multiple players running at the same time?). Configuration is held outside of Visual Studio Settings and therefore SHARED (stored in your APPDATA folder) between Visual Studio versions. After the running instance is closed (Visual Studio instance is closed), when re-opened playback will resume from where it left off.
It's not perfect! There are, and will be issues, but please report issues and make requests using GitHub, here:
https://github.com/VorTechS/VSMediaPlayerExtension
v1.8 Changes
Added 'Quick Access' toolbar with configuration option defaulted to 'On' (Note: no ability to control visibility yet!)
Added 'Add Folder' button to allow ability to quickly add folder media paths
Added 'Play CD' button for each CD/DVD device to allow ability of playback via CD (enabled when CD-audio detected)
Fixed 'Stop playback on close' doesn't resume playback when adding a new media path
Fixed 'Track Title' not consuming entire space on right of 'Play' button
Fixed Unhandled exception when audio file contains invalid tag information during album-art image retrieval
v1.7 Changes
Added 'Stop playback on close' option, to stop media playback when the Media Player toolwindow closes
Fixed 'Visual Studio' layout change not disposing visualization layer when closing player control
Fixed bug 'Visual Studio Media Player may fail to appear after closing and re-opening'
Changed 'locking' process so that closing the toolwindow clears the locking file (when Stop playback on close is enabled)
v1.6 Changes
Removed plugin.ini from the VSIX, this is not meant to be included with Visualizations
Added ability for VSIX to try and create the plugins folder to allow you to persist AVS settings (requires VS is run as Admin)
Added BASSFlag.BASS_MIXER_BUFFER when adding track to a BASS mixer
Added 'Playlist Identification Method' setting so playlists built on either Lowest Folder Name, Lowest Folder Parent Name, or Album Tag
Added localization support
Fixed Live Streams shouldn't show a track length
Fixed Player throws wrong state change reasons when a playlist naturally ends
Fixed, for definite, Visualizations stop reacting to the music when a playlist naturally ends
Fixed player ALWAYS starts with Visualizations even if setting is switched off
v1.5 Changes
- Visual Studio stopped including an important file in the VSIX output, manualy added NewtonSoft JSON to fix this
- Fixed Visualizations are slow to start
- Fixed media scanner not starting playback after initial configuration
v1.4 Changes
- Re-build after preparing a new solution file (for the potential to make the project open source), was missing NewtonSoft JSON causing startup issues (again! )
v1.3 Changes
Fixed media scanner not picking up all supported files
Fixed media player not playing PLS or ASX live stream files
Playlists are now sorted alphabetically for easier access
Added media scanner 'progress' update
Added additional visualization modules
v1.2 Changes
- First time installation issues sorted! Sorry! The extension will now work properly!
v1.1 Changes
- Visualization settings fixed. Unchecking the 'Show Visualizations' will now show any album art.
- Visualization reactions potentially fixed (randomly stops reacting to music across playlist changes)
- Made the extension a little faster on startup (asynchronously scans for media)
- New playlist dropdown added (click on the playlist name to get access to the playlist dropdown)
- New tracklist dropdown added (click on the track name to get access to the tracklist dropdown)
- Playlist names now reflect the directory name they were scanned from, rather than ID3 album tag
