MediaPlayer Controller - a Windows Media Player Plugin

I have lots of songs of songs on my computer, and I don't really want to go through the songs to filter out the majority that I don't like. And it's annoying to bring the MediaPlayer to front, select the song, and delete it every time a song that I don't like is playing. So, I wrote the MediaPlayerController program that would delete the currently playing song, with minimal distraction to what I'm working on. Other features include play/pause, next/previous song, volume up/down, and fast forward operations, which are useful especially if you don't have media shortcut keys on your keyboard.

• Download and run mediaplayercontroller.exe. The self extractable file will automatically register the plugin. If automatic registration of the plugin fails, you can manually install the plugin by running the following command:

C:\Program Files\MediaPlayerController> regsvr32 MediaPlayerController.dll

• Enable the plugin. After plugin registration, you have to turn on the plugin in Windows Media Player menu. Either select Tools→Plugins→MediaPlayerController Plugin or from Tools→Options→Plug-ins page, enable MediaPlayerController Plugin in the Background c

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• MediaPlayerController saves its data (songs and log file) under C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application Data\MediaPlayerController\ directory, referred here as {DataDirectory}

• † The deleted songs are actually moved to {DataDirectory}\DELETED_SONGS\ directory. And a log file of deleted songs is kept in {DataDirectory}\YourComputerName_mediaPlayerController.log file. Prefixing log file with the computer name was done to ease synchronization across computers you use. The final removal of these songs from DELETED_SONGS directory is left up to you. If you accidentally deleted a song, you will have to manually move it from the DELETED_SONGS directory back to its original place; and also remove the corresponding line in the log-file if you plan to re-play the log-file later.

• ‡ Log-based deleting is useful if you are using the plugin on multiple computers (say, computers ComputerA and ComputerB) and want to delete on ComputerB, the songs you have already deleted on ComputerA. In order to do this, copy the log file {DataDirectory}\ComputerA_mediaPlayerController.log in computer A into the {DataDirectory} directory of ComputerB. On ComputerB, open Windows Media Player and move all your library items to your currently running playlist. When you hit Windows+Alt+Delete keys, the plugin will search for *_mediaPlayerController.log files and attempt to delete the files listed in these logs. Which will effectively delete songs in ComputerB using the logs generated on ComputerA.

MediaPlayer Controller was modified from the wmpkeys, a global hot keys plugin for WMP.

• Adding the ability to change the hotkeys is the most requested feature. I hope to add this feature after I'm done with my PhD :).

~~DISCUSSION~~