New preview engine in v. 16.10.0200

[GantzGraf]

Hello

I really don't like how the preview now seems to use a mini version of Windows Media Player. It's a player I never normally use on my system. With an MP3 selected it now takes a long time for the mini player to even appear. It has no volume control either. It's awful. Is there any way to revert to the old preview feature or would that be a case of reverting to the previous version of XYplorer?

Many thanks.

[admin]

The changes only affect Office files. For all other files types the preview was not changed but extended.

So, e.g. MP3 files still preview in the native XYplorer in Info Panel just like before. In the Floating Preview they are now shown in the WMP interface. In earlier versions they were not previewed here at all.

So, I cannot really understand the problem.

[TheQwerty]

Gentle reminder, if no other third-party codecs are installed then previewing MP3s with ID3v2.4 tags is likely to end up falling back to the preview handler/WMP (at least on Windows 7).

This wouldn't explain the case of the same MP3 working before Preview 2.0 and not after, but if there's any chance that you are comparing the behavior with different MP3s or possibly the same MP3 with different tag versions then it is a possible explanation.


There's a bit more information over in this thread but not much in regards to previewing. Also, since my last post in that thread I have installed KLite and those files now use XY's native MP3 preview just fine.

[jdev21]

Any chance we will be able to change the default player for the previews to something else like VLC? I really hate WMP

[TheQwerty]

I don't think VLC has any shell extensions so you probably won't be able to use that.

However, you can install any 32-bit preview handler you want and configure XY to use that by adding the extensions which the handler is registered to preview to the Office Files category of the Previewed Formats.

If you are unable to find a worthwhile preview handler then another option would be to use a 32-bit ActiveX Internet Explorer extension, in which case the extension should be in the Web Files category instead.

[GantzGraf]

Well, as you can see, I'm not talking about a floating preview, just the standard info panel preview. I checked the ID tags and, within a folder of MP3s which are all ID3v2.3, some preview like this and some (most) preview the old way!

I used to have K-Lite installed but do not now and haven't for some time. I use Foobar for music and KMPlayer for video.

Clipboard-2.jpg (287.81 KiB) Viewed 3222 times

[highend]

I would be glad when I get the standard XY interface back for MP3 files with IDv2.4 (instead of the media player preview). Time to support that?

[admin]

There is no getting back. IDv2.4 never worked in XYplorer's native interface (unless you installed KLITE).

Code: Select all

========================================================================
                      without KLITE                   with KLITE
------------------------------------------------------------------------                      
Before Preview 2.0    IDv2.4 FAIL                     IDv2.4 native preview  
After  Preview 2.0    IDv2.4 works (preview handler)  IDv2.4 native preview  
========================================================================

So: it only got better, nothing was lost.

[highend]

It was more about supporting v2.4 natively inside XY and not about me thinking anything was lost during the conversion to the new preview engine, so that:

IDv2.4 FAIL (without KLITE)

turns into

IDv2.4 native preview (without KLITE)

[admin]

Well, the so-called "native" support is not that native. It uses the system-native "DirectShow" interface. XY can only show what DirectShow can show. KLITE (and similar stuff) can pimp DirectShow.

[highend]

Ok, fair enough

[GantzGraf]

So...my original question?

[admin]

Hmm, I tried to explaim that the question makes no sense. You seem to think that the behavior changed but it did not. It was just expanded.

[GantzGraf]

Well, I hadn't updated for a while but, when I did this behaviour had changed. All my .mp3, .m4a files previewed like this prior to the update. So the question very much makes sense to me.

Your release notes for v. 16.10 state:
"Preview. Completely revised the preview engine. Now you can preview Office, Audio, and Video files using the available preview handlers. A huge improvement over previous versions, notably for Office files and document formats like RTF, PDF, and XPS."

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[admin]

You can easily verify that I'm right ( ) by testing your theory with an older version from the back catalog: http://www.xyplorer.com/freezer.php

I don't think you will find an MP3 file that was previewed in an older version but not in the current version.