78 Windows Media Player Skins
Hanne Rylaarsdam
Legal Report Trademark Abuse
VideoLAN, VLC, VLC media player and x264 are trademarks internationally registered by the VideoLAN non-profit organization.
VideoLAN software is licensed under various open-source licenses: use and distribution are defined by each software license.
Microsoft Windows Media Player provides functionality to change the overall appearance of the player itself through the use of ?skins?. Skins are custom overlays that consist of collections of one or more files of computer art, organized by an XML file. The XML file tells Windows Media Player how to use these files to display a skin as the user interface. In this manner, the user can choose from a variety of standard skins, each one providing an additional visual experience. Windows Media Player comes with several skins to choose from, but it is relatively easy to create and distribute custom skins.
Many media players today are embedded into web pages, and are most commonly developed for Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-ins. Tools are readily available for developing in these environments, and as a result many developers have created custom video players or "skins". Unfortunately many of these players do not include support for closed captions, but a few do. Two of the most popular Flash video players that support closed captions are JW FLV Player from LongTail Video and ccPlayer from the National Center on Accessible Media. Each of these players includes a "CC" button on the controller bar for toggling captions on and off. In early versions of the JW FLV Player (prior to version 4.0) the closed caption button was labeled with a "T" for "text". In all versions of the JW FLV Player, this button is only shown if captions are available, and only if the web developer chooses to include it.
In standalone media player software applications such as Apple iTunes, Microsoft Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and Real Player, captions and (if supported) audio description are typically activated by selecting relevant options in the application menu. The precise wording and location of these options varies across products and versions. Below are a few examples:
To learn how to provide captions on videos, see the Knowledge Base article What types of closed caption files do video players support?. For more a more general overview of multimedia accessibility, see the Knowledge Base article How do I make multimedia accessible?
Almost all Windows users use Windows Media Player as their default music player for playing audio and video files. However, do you know how to change the skin on Windows Media player or how to add skins to Windows Media Player?
Besides local playback of audio and video content stored on your drive, the player also features integration with the OS Libraries, metadata, ratings and album art management and can handle Internet streams with multicast. It can play media with fast forward, reverse, file markers (if present) and variable playback speed. WMP can also be used to sync content on devices which support Media Transfer Protocol, legally rip audio CDs, or burn a disc. It has a graphic equalizer, subtitle and caption support, plugins which support DSP effects, crossfading and auto volume leveling, auto-playlists and remote control features. Full keyboard-based operation is possible in the player. For video formats, WMP includes universal brightness, contrast, saturation and hue adjustments and pixel aspect ratio control. DVD playback was supported in Windows 7's version of WMP but removed later.
Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) took another swing at RealNetworks ( www.realnetworks.com) in the seemingly never-ending battle of the codecs. The attack comes on two fronts, with the release of a new study, and a marketing push of a "bonus pack" which offers enticing goodies for the Windows Media Player 7.The study, conducted by Millward Brown and commissioned by Microsoft, found that 76 percent of the consumers surveyed, preferred Windows Media Player 7 to RealPlayer 8 and RealJukebox 8. Users primarily cited Windows Media Player 7's greater ease of use and showed that participants did not feel sound quality was a differentiating factor. According to Millward Brown, the participants were relatively new to digital media, did not use any player regularly, but were interested in digital media activities. The study was based on one-on-one interviews conducted with 100 people from Los Angeles, Baltimore and Chicago.The study showed Window Media Player 7 was preferred over RealPlayer 8 in all major player tasks, except listening to the radio. While Windows Media Player combines the functionality of a player and jukebox into one application, Real keeps those functions separate. Although the results do not differentiate between the RealPlayer and RealJukebox, a spokesperson for Millward Brown said that both the RealPlayer and RealJukebox were used in the study.Lisa Amore, spokesperson for RealNetworks said, "We should recognize that consumers vote with usage." Amore cited a Media Metrix Soft Usage report that indicated that Real has a significant lead in home usage: 30.5 percent for RealPlayer and 5.5 percent for RealJukebox, while Windows Media was under 1 percent.In addition to the release of the survey, Microsoft announced a free "bonus pack" for Microsoft Windows Media Player 7 that includes an MP3 converter, new skins and visualizations. In an attempt to spread usage of its own audio format, Microsoft released a tool to convert MP3 files into Windows Media Audio format (WMA). Microsoft claims that consumers can double their storage capacity by converting to WMA from MP3.A utility to convert Winamp skins into Windows Media skins, was also released. This allows Windows Media users access to the thousands of skins developed by the Winamp community. The converter was developed in-house at Microsoft without the consultation of Winamp.Winamp, which is owned by America Online, was unable to comment at press time.
(*) MAGpie2 can export TimedText caption files for JW FLV Player but its video player does not support the FLV file type. It is therefore necessary to use an intermediary video file type, such as AVI, in order to create the captions.