A nice feature of the highly customizable music player foobar2000 is to generate autoplaylists. Autoplaylists are filtered lists of music that automatically update.Then I encountered Windows Media Player 12 on Windows 7. Sometimes when I think about installing software, I know that it's going to change my registry. · Windows Explorer Explained: Changing the Layout. some ways to change the layout of Windows Explorer--including. with Windows Media Player). · Windows 10 - cannot change keyboard layout - windows doesnt show options. windows media player nicht mehr aufzufinden: windows media player nicht mehr aufzufinden. ![]() How To: Change Windows 7 Media Center's Look. Are you tired of the same Windows Media Center look and feel? Today we’ll show you how change the background and apply themes to WMC. Media Center Studio allows you to create your own custom themes for Windows Media Center, allowing you to create a cooler, more customized WMC look more akin to what you’d expect from popular media center. Changing the Basic Color Scheme in WMCThere are a couple of very basic color scheme options built in to Windows 7 Media Center. From the WMC Start Menu, select Settings on the Tasks strip and then select General. On the General settings screen select Visual and Sound Effects. Under Color scheme you’ll find options for Windows Media Center standard, High contrast white, and High contrast black. Simply select a color scheme and click Save before exiting. If you have used Media Center before you are familiar with the standard blue default theme. There is also the high contrast white. And, the high contrast black. Changing the Background Image with Media Center Studio. Themes and custom backgrounds need to be added with the third- party software, Media Center Studio. You can find the download link at the end of this article. You can use your own high resolution photo, or download one from the Internet. For best results, you’ll want to find an image that meets or exceeds the resolution of your monitor. Also, using a darker colored background image is ideal as it should contrast better with the lighter colored text of the start menu. Once you’ve downloaded and installed Media Center Studio (link below), open the application select the Home tab on the ribbon and make sure you are on the Themes tab below. Click New. Select Biography from the left pane and type in a name for your new theme. Next, click on the triangle next to Images to expand the list below. You’ll want to browse to Images > Common > Background. You should see a list of PNG image files located below Background. We will want to swap out the COMMON. ANIMATED. BACKGROUND. PNG and the COMMON. BACKGROUND. PNG images. Select COMMON. ANIMATED. BACKGROUND. PNG and click on the Browse button on the right. Browse for your photo and click Open. Your selected image will appear on the left pane. Now, do the same for the COMMON. BACKGROUND. PNG. When finished, select the Home tab on the ribbon at the top and click Save. Now switch to the Themes tab on the ribbon and the Themes tab below. There are two Themes tabs which can be a bit confusing). Select your theme on the right pane and click Apply. Note: You won’t see the image backgrounds displayed. Your theme will be applied to Media Center. Close out of Media Center Studio and open Windows Media Center to check out your new background. You can load multiple backgrounds images and switch them periodically as your mood changes. You might like to find a nice background featuring your favorite movie or TV show. Perhaps you can even find a background of your favorite sports team. Installing Themes with Media Center Studio. Theme. 7MC has made available a small group of Media Center Studio Theme packs that are simple to download and install. You can find the download link below. Note: Before installing a theme, turn off any extenders and close Windows Media Center. Download any (or all) of the Theme. MC theme packages to your Media Center PC. Open Media Center Studio, select the Themes tab (the one at the top) and click Import Theme. Browse for the theme you wish to import and click Open. Select your theme from the themes pane and click Apply. Media Center Studio will proceed to apply your theme. You should then see your new theme appear under Current theme on the left theme pane. Close out of Media Center Studio. Open Media Center and enjoy your new theme. Conclusion. Media Center Studio runs on Windows 7 or Vista and gives users a solution for personalizing their Media Center backgrounds. It is a Beta application, however, so it still has a few bugs. Currently, there are only a handful of themes available at Themes. MC, but what they have is pretty slick. Downloads. Media Center Studio. Theme. 7MCDrained. Rescue My Music from Windows Media Player WMA to MP3? Dear Lifehacker, Windows Media Player hijacked my MP3 files and converted them all to WMA. I want to change them back easily in one sweep—but am not the most savvy user. Help? Signed, Gimme My Beats Back Original photo by Mark Kobayashi- Hillary. Dear Gimme, Microsoft has made some, ahem, interesting decisions over the years regarding the Windows Media Player user experience (and Apple is no saint in this regard, either). First, we'll take a look at how you can keep this from happening in the first place, and then we'll explain how you can fix the problem as cheaply and easily as possible. Friends Don't Let Friends Use Default Settings Open Windows Media Player. Click the Library tab at the top, then click on the Layout Options drop- down menu and select Show Classic Menus. Now click Tools > Options.. The first Options tab to note is Player. You might want to deselect "Add media files to library when played" — it will save you disk space (and format headaches) in the long run. Click the Apply button to save your changes. Rip Music is the most important tab. Under Rip settings, the default format is WMA, which is how our reader got messed up in the first place. At least you can select mp. WMA was supported. Even more insidious is that Copy protect music is also checked by default. Why someone would want to add DRM to music they already own on a CD is beyond me, especially since it means that the files won't play back on non- approved devices and any machine you copy the files to will have to be online to download permissions. Switching to mp. 3 will automatically turn this off. Finally, to get Windows Media Player out of your life, go to the File Types tab. De- select everything except for Windows Media File (ASF), Windows Media Audio file (WMA) and Windows Media Video file (WMV). That way double- clicking an MP3 file won't automatically open in Windows Media Player (which, if you didn't turn off the add media to library option, would also create a duplicate copy on your hard drive). What's frustrating about this is that in writing this post, I turned off the file type associations once in the initial Windows Media Player setup wizard. But when I opened Options to make the above changes, all the file types had been re- selected — because unless you've installed another program to handle those file types (such as i. Tunes or Winamp), the Windows operating system will restore the defaults to Windows Media Player. Format Conversion is Your Library's Salvation Now at least you can use Windows Media Player to rip CDs without having to worry about your library being trapped in Windows Media Audio format with DRM. But your existing library is still trapped. What do to? If your WMA files aren't copy protected, i. Tunes will allow you to import your Windows Media Player library. However, by default it will convert them into Apple's proprietary AAC format. So after installing i. Tunes, don't choose to convert your existing library during the setup wizard. Instead, go to Edit > Preferences. On the General tab, click the Import Settings button. Now select MP3 as your preferred format. To import your Windows Media Player library, to to File > Library > Import Folder. Select the My Documents > My Music folder, and click OK. If you have a large library, this could take a while. Open source music player Songbird will also import and convert your non- DRM Windows Media Player library into MP3 files. Or you can batch convert files with Win. FF, a graphical interface for open source conversion tool FFMPEG — Jake Ludington has a guide, with video, on using Win. FF. Once i. Tunes, Songbird or Win. FF has converted your library, you can play, copy and share files any way you like — even with Windows Media Player Ding, Dong, DRM is Dead If your WMA files did end up with DRM thanks to the Windows Media Player defaults, try not to spend too much time cursing the powers that be at Microsoft. The folks at un. DRM. For Windows Soundtaxi, Tunebite (recommended by Lifehacker readers) and free. Tunes all offer free demonstration downloads with full versions under $3. If you have a small library, or there are a few files that just refuse to cooperate with the above DRM- removal and format conversion tools, you could burn the tracks to CD and then re- rip as MP3s. Or try Analog. Whole — it's slow because it basically plays back the protected file, records the output, and then converts that to MP3. But it's free and it will defeat DRM on anything that plays back in Windows Media Player. You'll lose a little bit of quality in the conversion, but you'll gain back the freedom to play your music when, where and how you like. The most important thing to remember is that you're not alone. Any readers out there care to commiserate in the comments and share some experiences and tips? In the meantime, we hope this helps. Love, hugs, and MP3s, Lifehacker.
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