CarltonBale.com

technology.obsessed

« Netflix Class-Action Lawsuit Settlement Sucks
O.A.R. - Bloomington IU Auditorium (2006-02-20) »

FLAC Music playback in Windows Media Center

Posted by Carlton Bale on January 16th, 2006

FLACThe Lossless Audio Blog is reporting that FLAC lossless audio files can now be played in Windows Media Center 2005.  This is great news, because every music player I own now supports FLAC, the format I use to encode all of my music files.  So I can listen to my FLAC music files at my PC using dbPowerAmp or one of many players, around the house on my Sonos, in my car with my PhatNoise PhatBox, and now in my home theater with Windows Media Center Edition 2005.  If I had an iPod, the iPod Linux Project would allow my to play FLAC on my iPod as well.  I'm glad to see see such wide support for FLAC.  I won't buy any type of music player that doesn't support it from here on out.

Here is a brief summary of how the the process is supposed to work:

  • Install Illiminable Ogg Directshow Filter
  • Install WMP Tag Support Extender (version 9.9.1 or later)
  • Go to Tools -> Options -> File Types and make sure Free Lossless Audio Codec is selected
  • Double click a FLAC file in Windows Explorer and make sure it opens into Windows Media Player, if not associate it with Windows Media Player
  • Set the plug-in to "Auto-Refresh on Start" and "Auto-Refresh on Add". To do this, I started Windows Media Player, went to Tools menu -> Plug-ins -> Options, selected Background, selected WMPTagSupportExtender Plug-in, clicked Properties, and then finally checked the two auto-refresh boxes.
  • Restart Windows Media Player
  • You should see your FLAC library in Windows Media Player
  • Switch to Windows Media Center; you should see your entire music library there as well
  • If you don't see the FLAC files, try this:
  • Clear the Windows Media PLAYER library (Media Center uses the same library)
  • Manually rescan your entire music collection including the flac folders (wait, wait, wait. . .) Note: simply automatically watching the folder did not work for me.
  • You should now be able to view and play all of your FLAC music through Windows Media Center. Thanks for a great plug-in!

There is a discussion on WMPTagSupport Extender at the HydrogenAudio forum.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Home Theater, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button     Print This Post Print This Post Trackback Address for this EntryRSS Feed for Entry Comments
« Netflix Class-Action Lawsuit Settlement Sucks
O.A.R. - Bloomington IU Auditorium (2006-02-20) »

6 Responses to “FLAC Music playback in Windows Media Center”

  1. Matt Says:
    April 13th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    thank what a big help =D

  2. cpaullrun Says:
    May 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am

    Thanks! This answered all my questions and, with a few extra reboots, worked perfectly!

  3. Gunboy3 Says:
    June 7th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    That works wonderfully. Thanks

  4. miller Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    hey man…thanks a whole lot
    wish i had these kinda skills
    you guys really make life a whole lotta fun
    thanks again you all
    keep up d good work
    i will make sure and tell ppl bout dis stuff
    kool man

  5. jimmy Says:
    September 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    Worked flawless didnt have to even reboot media player i h ad it open during the installs lol and still worked on first flac file double click thanks alot!

  6. Voyceik Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 5:33 am

    Tks!!! This is all I need! :)

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

In the box below, please type the validation keycode (the white letters in black box) before submitting your comment:

pronto