Winamp

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Winamp

Winamp is a multimedia player made by Nullsoft and eventually acquired by America Online. It is skinnable, multi-format freeware / Shareware. Winamp was first released by Justin Frankel in 1997. It also now plays streamed video content, both live and recorded, authored worldwide.

Originally, MP3 playback was based on the AMP® decoding engine by Tomislav Uzelac (later PlayMedia Systems). In later versions this was replaced with Nitrane, a proprietary decoder created by Nullsoft and disputed by PlayMedia. A lawsuit was filed by PlayMedia resulting in an out-of-court settlement, licensing and confidentiality agreement. Shortly after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, the developers of the MP3 format.

Current Winamp development is credited to Stephen Tag Loomis, Taber Buhl, Ben Allison and Maksim Tyrtyshny.

Winamp has grown in the past year (2005) from 33 million monthly users to over 52 million monthly users, making it by some counts now the third most actively used media player globally.

Winamp's strength comes from a very active user community who continue to develop both new features, visualizers and skins.

Winamp has focused on four primary design tenets that drive its success: Continued focus on the size and performance of the player itself, support for the widest range of audio and video formats of the major players, unique features for the audiophile looking for the highest quality output from a digital media player, and a design architecture that allows as much community-driven extensibility as possible.

History

Winamp 1 and Winamp 2

Although Winamp 1 (first version released in May 1997) was used among early adopters of the MP1, MP2, and MP3 formats, it wasn't until Winamp 2 was released that it became widely used, and was one of the most downloaded pieces of software for Windows operating system ^*.

Winamp3

The next major Winamp release, Winamp3 (spelled condensed in this way both to include mp3 in the name, as in Winamp3 and to mark its separation from the Winamp 2 codebase), surfaced on August 9, 2002. This was a complete rewrite of version 2 and was based on the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 was developed in parallel to Winamp 2. However, many users found this version consumed too many system resources and was unstable (or even lacked some valued functionality, such as the ability to numerically and chronologically find the sum of all of the tracks in a playlist). Additionally, Winamp3's new framework did not include backward compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plugins. A big complaint was that the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported, and no Winamp3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released. As a result, many Winamp users reverted back to Winamp 2. Nullsoft listened to its user base and returned focus to the previous, more stable program. They continued Winamp 2 to include versions 2.9 and 2.91. The unreleased versions 2.92 and 2.95 showed up online shortly after with the inclusion of some later Winamp 5 functionality.

Winamp 5

The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5 — Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 — taking the best parts from both applications. Developers also joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin". Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 features (e.g. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 and its components was released as open source, and as of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released.

Winamp 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and (as of mid 2006) sells for States dollar|US$" target="_blank" >^*19.95. The Lite version has far less functionality (largely supplimentable with plugins) while still replicating most of Winamp 2's feature set in a far smaller installer. The Pro version offers a slightly richer feature set, primarily with regard to music ripping and CD burning.

Concepts

Skins

Winamp also has many skins available. Skins are revisions of the graphical user interface of Winamp. Many skins are currently available, such as the popular MMD3 (pictured) by Sven Kistner. Winamp 5.0 has brought many new options for potential skin designers, including alpha channels and docked toolbar.

Plug-ins

Winamp has a comprehensive software development kit, which allows software developers to extend Winamp's functionality through the use of plug-ins. These plug-ins are categorized into the following seven types:

Input plug-ins (for allowing playback of other formats such as RealAudio and RealVideo ^*).
Output plug-ins (for controlling the destination of the decoded audio, usually a playback device such as DirectSound output).
Visualization plug-ins (for sound activated graphics).
DSP/Effect plug-ins (for manipulating audio).
General Purpose plug-ins (for additional functionality or extensions to Winamp).
Media Library plug-ins (for additional functionality or extensions to the built in Media Library).
Device plug-ins (for Portable media player support).

Historically, one of the reasons Winamp has been popular is because of the large number of Input plug-ins available on the Internet. This provides Winamp with the ability to support many formats unsupported by regular mainstream media players. As an example, some of the plug-ins enable Winamp to play sound formats associated with console emulators, such as NSF, VGM, GBS, SID, GYM, SPC, PSF and PSF2 (see also Video game music).

Many different plug-ins can be found on the Winamp web site ^*.

Features

The following are features of Winamp 5:

MIDI, MOD, MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, Chiptunes and many other audio formats supported.
AVI support, which is played through the appropriate DirectShow filters installed on the user's system; MPEG; and NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video).
Plug-in support for additional input and output formats, sound effects (via DSP plugins), and visual effects (notably Advanced Visualization Studio, or AVS, and MilkDrop).
Support for both Winamp 2's "classic" skins and Winamp3's more flexible "modern" skins (the latter via an official plugin provided with the "Full" install).
Freely available access to many types of streaming media, including:
- Internet radio and Internet television (via the SHOUTcast technology).
- XM Satellite Radio.
- Music Tracks.
- Music Videos (not available in all territories).
- AOL Video Content.
- SHOUTcast Wire (podcasting).
Support for ripping data from audio CDs into MP3 or AAC formats, a feature further improved in Winamp Pro.
Support for burning music to CDs, a feature also further improved in Winamp Pro.
True alpha channel (per-pixel transparency).
Support for winshade mode as well as docking, which allows Winamp to operate as an always on top media bar.
Support 5.1 Surround where formats and decoders allow.
Support Gapless playback for MP3 and AAC.
Extendable Portable media player support, currently offering device plugins for:
- Apple iPod.
- Creative NOMAD Jukebox.
- Microsoft PlaysForSure.
Support Global hotkeys.
Customized install options packaged with NSIS.

Derivative work

Unagi, codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies as distributed with the AOL software or as an ActiveX download. Powers many AOL media projects (i.e video@netscape, video@aol etc).

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Winamp