Canar

26th February 2004 06:31 UTC

AVS in foobar2000
Recently, there's been some work on a winamp vis plugin wrapper for foobar2000. Just yesterday, it started working with AVS.

Here is the link to the thread where the wrapper is being developed. The spectrum-handling code is a little weird presently, but it's being improved very rapidly.

Just thought people out there might care, because I certainly did.

Rovastar

26th February 2004 11:54 UTC

Interesting devolpment. Strange how when FooBar first started PP had no intentions of vis support and in fact disliked vises.

Although I do not see how this devolpemnt will help Nullsoft do any further devolpment to their visualizations as FooBar are a rival. The cynic in me sees this as a backwards step.

I would have liked to see the efforts go into creating a new vis project not taking already existing stuff.

Jaheckelsafar

26th February 2004 16:04 UTC

I like the idea of AVS on another player. It broadens our audience. :) Besides, since Justin resigned from Nullsoft I'm not sure there will be any more updates to AVS.

I can't say anything about MD though. that's still under development, right?

Rovastar

27th February 2004 14:42 UTC

Probably the same thing with MD as Ryan left Nullsoft 6+ months ago. So devolopment for intents and purposes has stopped.

Although Nullsoft still own the copyright too them all still.

hungryskull

27th February 2004 17:06 UTC

Decent idea. Hopefully we'll get some more AVSers out of this.

Montana

29th February 2004 15:16 UTC

yes, as soon as this is done then i will stop using winamp and just use foobar, i been thinking of switching over but the avs has kept me with winamp

Yathosho

1st March 2004 01:01 UTC

/me agrees with montana

NemoOrange

2nd March 2004 20:22 UTC

can someone explain why switch over?

Yathosho

2nd March 2004 20:45 UTC

simple: i like foobar and i don't expect much development in the winamp/avs sector anymore.

a wrapper would be very nice, though one should think of making it standalone (like r4) to work with multiple media-players. i was also wondering if a wrapper could improve the disadvantages of the current (slow) avs by including better (gfx-)hardware support.

Canar

2nd March 2004 23:42 UTC

I agree with Yathosho. I may start doing some AVS development again because of this (although my own skill level has degraded and was never close to some of you gurus... :) ).

In short, Winamp's playing catch-up with foobar in all the features I consider useful except plugin availability.

dirkdeftly

3rd March 2004 03:23 UTC

well there is the bit about how nullsoft's been sucking wind since aol took them over, which would make me want to use another (different) equally good player, as long as it wasn't made by microsoft or realnetworks - as if they'd make a media player to rival winamp anyhow.

but there's a small problem:
foobar, in plain point of fact, isn't as good as winamp. and i doubt it ever will be.

Rovastar

3rd March 2004 12:51 UTC

There are many fundamental difference in the setup up of Foobar for visualizations in general as you know Canar. The framework that underlines Foobar is wrong for visualization devolpment this is the way Peter set it up to begin with when he first started Foobar.

It honestly not a useful way for visualization devolpers if the rate is governed by Foobar teh refresh rates of the vis are all wrong and thus things like MilkDrop do not function as desired.

The more you realy on accurate spectrum and quickly updated sound data the more the Foobar solution doesn't add up.

Anyone serious about visualization will not use the wrapper for this reason. And to be honest I see use in that catagory. Traditionaly AVS hasn't had all that much linkage with the sound but in recent years many authors have made more effert to put this write and also AVS presets are not generaly designed to run at say 70fps but other visualizations may require this for quicker and better and more accurate sound responsiveness.

Canar you say (in the foobar forums) that Winamp has less structure but for avis devolper it has the best structure. I look at the other frameworks like WMP and Sonique and they from what I understand do a similar thing to Foobar and this is not what we want. The data provided by Foobar it sound is in chunks and I can only see delays in the quailty of the sound respondisness of the visualization.

This is a problem from the very begining but that is the way Peter wanted it as I suppose you get better/more effecent sound quailty/program. But for visualization that Peter didn't/doesn't care about it is wrong in the framework.