Media Control

Damien Bain-Thouverez

Windows 7 and Vista supported (32 & 64 bits)

Media Control is a plugin for Microsoft Media Center that adds lacking features such as : fast forward/rewind for any video format, resume video, switch between audio/subtitles streams, sets brightness/contrast, improves picture quality...

The plugin is built on the top of an open source decoder : FFDShow Tryouts.

FFDShow is able to decode multiple audio (mp3,aac,vorbis,ac3,dts,Dolby TrueHD...) and video formats (MPEG4 divx xvid h264, MPEG1 & 2, RealVideo...) and most of all is able to improve quality (this is called postprocessing).

 

Media Control is now Open Source

First goal is to give other developers the techniques I used to get all the features of Media Control to work
Second goal is to give the opportunity to make a better integration of Media Control with other plugins around Media Center and to bring a better interface (for MCML coders)

You can check out the sources from Sourceforge at the following URL. And if you want to participate to the project just contact me through the forum.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediacontrolmce

 

New version of Media Control : version 6.0.3 (6.0.3.1 on 32 bits, there was a compilation bug)

This version fixes some bugs : keys/remote not responding in some cases, and the new context menu has been fixed on both Vista & 7

FFDShow revision 3127 or greater is required

Don't forget to donate through Paypal if you enjoy the plugin : it will encourage future improvements, considering the time spent on it

Introduction

You can contact me either through the forum (user DamienBT), or through the FFDShow-Tryout forum (user albain).This plugin is free, but if you think that it is great and wish to encourage improvments, you can make a donation with Paypal :

Requirements :

Features :

Switch audio and subtitles streams Works with AVI, OGM, MKV (splitter needed such as Haali)
Switch external subtitle files (.SRT, .SUB,.SSA)  
Switching between FFDShow presets (audio & video)  
Real fastforward (and rewind) with 3 different speeds  
Set contrast, brightness, image size, noise reduction... while watching a video with the remote control Invoke the Media Control menu (blue button) or use direct commands (see below)
On screen display menu Commands can be invoked from the Media Control Menu or directly through a yellow menu displayed on the top of the video.Invoke the menu (red button) and then Up/Down/Left/Right to navigate through the menu and change values
Configuration program provided to define the remote control mapping

Default mapping (works in full screen while watching a video)

Blue button : launch the Media Control interface
Red button : raise the on screen display menu
Green button : raises the context menu (new in version 6.0)
Yellow button : macros activator (used to call the macros set in the configuration program)
Live post-processing for Live/Recorded TV, DVDs FFDShow can be added into the process to improve the picture quality
Can remove black borders of video Launch the Media Control interface or the on screen display menu and sets the horizontal & vertical cropping
Resume When starting a video, a balloon tip asks if you want to resume the video its last position (except in Windows 7 that has the feature built-in)
Set bookmarks Set bookmarks of your videos from Media Control menu. Bookmarks are then visible with a capture of the corresponding video frame
Macros support

A macro is a set of commands that you define with the configuration program.

Macros are accessibe with the macro activator + a button. With a macro you can raise keyboard shortcuts, launch external programs, and more... For example with a macro you can change of audio device, raise a shortcut (to change display profile) and then restart Media Center

 


B

Download Media Control 6.0.3.1
 (FFDShow revision 3127 or greater required)

for Windows Vista and Windows 7 32 bits

(~ 3 MB)

Download FFDShow from this site

Download the latest version of FFDShow from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout

Download Media Control 6.0.3 x64
(FFDShow revision 3127 or greater required)

Download FFDShow from this site
(This is a Russian site that makes daily builds of FFDShow, especially 64 bits builds which are more complicated to make)

for Windows Vista and Windows 7 64 bits

Downloaded times

There were visits since the creation of the website (01/2007)

Date of last modification : 07/11/2009