This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2023) |
Developer(s) | JRiver, Inc. |
---|---|
Initial release | 1998 |
Stable release | 29.0.47 (February 8, 2022 [1] ) [±] |
Written in | C++ |
Operating system | Windows, Linux, and macOS |
Available in | 15 languages |
Type | Media player |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www |
JRiver Media Center is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows, macOS, or Linux operating systems. Developed by JRiver, Inc., it is offered as shareware.
JRiver Media Center is a "jukebox"-style media player, like iTunes, which usually uses most of the screen to display a potentially very large library of files. Features include the ability to rip and burn CDs, static and dynamic playlists, and plugins such as Audioscrobbler and G-Force visualization. Regular (usually daily beta) builds are posted on the Media Center Interact forum implementing requested features and fixing reported bugs. The forum has an active member community, with more than 56,000 members [2] as of 2021.
JRiver Media Center was created by J. River, Inc., a Minneapolis-based company founded in 1982 by James "Jim" Hillegass [3] that developed networking and internet software for Windows, DOS and Unix. [4] Originally the software was known as Media Jukebox and had both free and premium versions. [5] [6] [7]
The company announced in 2001 that it planned to launch a subscription service for Media Jukebox to compete with Napster. [8]
The software was rebranded to JRiver Media Center for version 9 in 2003.
In November 2007, J. River released Media Jukebox 12, a stripped-down version of JRiver Media Center 12, which is available to download for free, compared to JRiver Media Center's price of $49.98. JRiver Media Jukebox includes most of the audio features of Media Center; the image and video functions are removed. The last version of JRiver Media Jukebox was version 14.0.166. However, the version 14 removed several features previously available for free (specifically CD and cover art lookup) and now only available in the Media Center product. As such many still use the older free version of JRiver Media Jukebox 12.0.534[ citation needed ]
Of late with the advent of newer media server's such as Spotify and Tik Tok, Media Center has been downgraded, resulting in many millions of customers losing their prior data and media. It seems that the BIG BOY's have taken over, like YouTube.
JRiver Media Center organizes files using Media Libraries; these are effective databases. Media Center can support multiple libraries.
Information relating to media is imported into the library, including meta data for media files and the path to the media files. The media files themselves are not contained in the database, but cataloged within the libraries.
Version 12 of JRiver Media Center added support for auto-importing of media, whereby JRiver Media Center continually watches designated directories for changes in media. If a new file is dropped into the directory, JRiver Media Center will add the file to its library. Each library can contain any type of media, video, audio, images etc.
View Schemes are the main way to browse through files in Media Center. Views can be created which help users see different parts of their library; these are effectively the same as database views. They are based on using metadata as criterion for creating a filtered list of files.
The view system is very powerful and fully customizable. For example, a view could be made which shows only audio files in MP3 format which are longer than 3 minutes, or images taken in Africa in the year 2006.
For ease of use, several default views exist which show files of a specified type only, including: audio, images, or video.
Various view items, or panes, can be aligned to the top, left, right, or moved in drop-down menus, that can be used to further filter results. For example, one of the default views, artist/album, allows selecting a specific artist or album, or both, and shows files from that album or artist only.
Once a view is created, it is automatically saved in the library and can be opened in the various user interfaces and searched using a real-time search box. The searches are customizable and possible on any field or tag in the library.
JRiver Media Center allows the creation of playlists. It also can export playlists as M3U, M3U8, ASX, MPL, CSV.
Smartlists are similar to playlists except that rather than selecting a list of songs, the list is governed by a set of rules. For example, a smartlist might take every video file which was produced in 1994. Smartlists can be based on Playlists. They are defined using an expression language. Media Center provides a wizard style dialogue box to simplify creating these.
An added benefit of a smartlist over a basic playlist is that a smartlist is dynamic; it will update itself whenever new files that meet its criteria are added to the library. For example, one could create a smartlist to show all tracks with the genre tagged Indie Rock. If a new album were added to Media Center's library that had the Indie Rock genre tag, Media Center would automatically add those files to the smartlist.
JRiver Media Center provides four different user interfaces for use in different situations. Each user interface is skinnable.
Through the default Media Center UI for desktop environment the user is exposed to all of the core multimedia features, such as:
Standard view occupies a large amount of screen space, can be viewed in either full screen or as a window mode, and it consists of the following components:
While the Standard and Mini views are designed to be used in front of a desktop or laptop computers, Media Center includes an additional 10-foot user interface called the "Theater view".
This is made to work on a large screen, such as a television, projector or large computer screen. The interface is made to work in a 10-foot mode, i.e. from a living room sofa using remote controls, rather than the conventional mouse and keyboard.
As of JRiver Media Center 12, Theatre view relies on Microsoft's DirectX graphics engine. With this, Media Center uses 3D and 2D Animation to create a more visually appealing interface, which more nearly resembles that of a digital recording box, or DVD player.
The Theater view doesn't provide the editing interfaces of Standard view, but instead provides much more accessible access to the different views of the library. All the buttons in Theater view are large, and tend to move to different pages to display different information.
Theater view also provides access to the weather, news websites and RSS feeds.
Mini view is similar to that of Winamp. It's designed to take up minimal screen space while still providing access to basic controls. Mini view skins are different from the other UI skins seen in Media Center in that they can employ JavaScript to make them more dynamic. Mini views are far more flexible than the other types of skins, allowing Media Center to take various shapes and forms using transparency effects.
JRiver Media Center provides network access to its libraries using different server plugins.
JRiver Media Center uses COM support to provide access to its SDK library. This allows plugins to be written in a wide variety of languages including:
A variety of plugins can be developed for specific components and purposes:
It is also possible to create "Track Info" visualizations that are created in HTML to display information about the currently playing Media. These can be extended further using the various web languages around such as JavaScript.
A full list of available plugins can be found in the Accessories section on the official website. [9]
JRiver Media Center supports a wide range file formats among audio files, video files, photos and documents. A full lists of supported formats can be found on the JRiver Media Center wiki; (supported audio formats, supported video formats, and supported image formats). DirectShow is supported, allowing the playing of any video or audio format for which a DirectShow Filter is available, and installed.
Major version | Latest version | Initial Release | Significant changes |
---|---|---|---|
5.0 | 2000 | ||
6.0 [10] | 2000 |
| |
7.0 [11] | May 2001 |
| |
8.0 | 2002 | ||
9.0 [12] | May 5, 2003 |
| |
10.0 | Apr 9, 2004 |
| |
11.0 [14] | Jul 18, 2005 |
| |
12.0.151 [15] | 12.0.534 | Jan 23, 2007 |
|
13.0.113 [15] | 13.0.172 | Jan 28, 2009 |
|
14.0.46 [15] | 14.0.161 | Aug 7, 2009 |
|
15.0.35 [15] | 15.0.174 | May 5, 2010 | |
16.0.75 [15] | 16.0.176 | Apr 28, 2011 | |
17.0.22 [15] | 17.0.189 | Apr 10, 2012 |
|
18.0.78 [15] | 18.0.212 | Nov 27, 2012 |
|
19.0.32 [15] | 19.0.163 | Aug 30, 2013 |
|
20.0.10 | 20.0.132 | Aug 28, 2014 |
|
21.0.5 | 21.0.90 | Sep 11, 2015 |
|
22.0.15 | 22.0.97 | Aug 5, 2016 |
|
23.0.7 | 23.0.102 | Summer 2017 |
|
24.0.2 | 24.0.77 | May 2018 |
|
25.0.1 | 25.0.115 | January 2019 | New Features in MC25 [31] |
26.0.1 | 26.0.107 | November 2019 | New Features in MC26 [32] |
27.0.1 | 27.0.85 | August 2020 | New Features in MC27 [33] |
28.0.1 | 27.0.63 | April 2021 | New Features in MC28 [34] |
Windows Media Player, is the first media player and media library application that Microsoft developed to play audio and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Solaris, but has since discontinued them.
FL Studio is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by the Belgian company Image-Line. It features a graphical user interface with a pattern-based music sequencer. It is available in four different editions for Microsoft Windows and macOS.
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software. Thousands of plugins exist, both commercial and freeware, and many audio applications support VST under license from its creator, Steinberg.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.
Kodi is a free and open-source media player and technology convergence software application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media, or TV gateway viewer.
The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
Amarok is a free and open-source music player, available for Unix-like, Windows, and macOS systems. Although Amarok is part of the KDE project, it is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle. Amarok is released under the terms of the GPL-2.0-or-later.
M3U is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.
Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a free and open source music player server. It plays audio files, organizes playlists and maintains a music database. In order to interact with it, a client program is needed. The MPD distribution includes mpc, a simple command line client.
MediaMonkey is a digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems. MediaMonkey for Windows includes various management tools, and is extensible using plugins, while MediaMonkey for Android is an adjunct for sharing the library with Android devices. MediaMonkey is commonly displayed/marketed as a solution for managing large libraries of music.
Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music Engine, was a freeware music player released by Yahoo! in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market. Developed side-by-side with MusicMatch Jukebox, another music player acquired by Yahoo! in 2004, it was designed to be the main client for Yahoo's array of music services, which were centered around Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a paid music streaming service and digital music store; in addition to being a music management software. In early 2008 Yahoo! sold off its music assets, including Yahoo! Music Jukebox to RealNetworks' Rhapsody and replaced it with a web-based music player.
GB-PVR was a PVR application, running on Microsoft Windows, whose main function was scheduling TV recordings and playing back live TV. GB-PVR is no longer under active development and has been superseded by NextPVR, also known as nPVR.
The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.
MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows, built using the BASS audio library.
Nightingale is a discontinued free, open source audio player based on the Songbird media player source code. As such, Nightingale's engine is based on the Mozilla XULRunner with libraries such as the GStreamer media framework and libtag providing media tagging and playback support, amongst others.
GNOME Videos, formerly known as Totem, is a media player for the GNOME computer desktop environment. GNOME Videos uses the Clutter and GTK+ toolkits. It is officially included in GNOME starting from version 2.10, but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments. Totem utilizes the GStreamer framework for playback, though until version 2.27.1, it could alternatively be configured to use the Xine libraries instead of GStreamer.
Quod Libet is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best; the software is therefore built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions and boolean logic. Quod Libet is based on GTK and written in Python, and uses the Mutagen tagging library.
AIMP is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov. It supports a variety of audio codecs, and includes tools to convert audio files and edit their metadata. It also has the capability of installing user-made skins and plugins.
mpv is free and open-source media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg. It runs on several operating systems, including Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows, along with having an Android port called mpv-android. It is cross-platform, running on ARM, PowerPC, x86/IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS architecture.
BubbleUPnP is a DLNA-compliant UPnP media controller, server and renderer, designed to allow streaming of audio or video from and to an Android device with various external devices and software. Alongside the Android client, it also has a server middleware application that can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux computers or network storage devices, providing remote access through a web interface. BubbleUPnP also utilises ffmpeg and ffprobe for transcoding.