Display album art on desktop with CD Art Display (freeware)

CD Art Display is a skinnable gadget that appears on your desktop and shows the CD cover of the currently playing song. It reads cover from player’s database, local folder or ID3v2 tag and can also search for covers online if they are not found locally. The software offers a slick interface with transparency and alpha shading and playback controls to pause or skip to the next track in the playlist. Other features include lyrics display, lyrics editing, cover display in tray icon and more. CD Art Display currently supports AlbumPlayer, Helium Music Manager, iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, MediaMonkey and partially supports foobar2000 (with Winamp API Emulator plugin), MP3Toys, qmp and musikCube.

CD Art Display is a freeware.

Download CD Art Display here

Download skins for CD Art Display here

How to Capture Screenshots from Windows Media Player

Yesterday I tried to use the extremely useful screen capture by ‘Print Screen Key’ to try to capture a wmv running file on my Windows media player 11. But whenever I tried to use the print screen, a blank image was captured from the windows media player. So grabing a screenshot from Window Media Player is not so easy as it seems.

Then I thought maybe the running video was posing a problem with capturing a frame. So I paused the movie and tried the print screen technique. But still got a blank screen.

Then I tried to capture paused and running movies in full screen (Full screen shortcut – using Alt+Enter). But again no luck.

So I decided to tweak some advanced options of Window media player.

So here is the free and simple way to capture Images from Windows Media Player

• Open Window Media Player
• Then go to Tools | Options
• In Options, select the Performance Tab
• Way below you click on the Advanced Button
• Uncheck “Use Overlays’
• Click Ok
• And you are ready.

Now run your movie in any size or screen resolution. Use the standard ‘Print Screen Key’ Method and you have captured a snapshot from your favourite movie on windows media player without using any special multimedia software. Enjoy!

Help With Playlists

If you don’t want to create your own playlists, the free MusicIP Mixer application analyzes your library and builds playlists for you by matching songs that have similar acoustic characteristics. Import your music (click Library > Add Songs or select Sync with iTunes), and then choose Library > Start Analysis. When the program finishes, select the song you’ll base your playlist on, and then click Mix.

To tweak the way the program builds its playlists, select File, Preferences and adjust the Mix Settings. The mixes the program created for me didn’t always make sense on screen, yet when I listened to them, they flowed nicely. If you don’t like one of its choices, just right-click it and select Replace.

This is what happens when…

Just stumbled upon this! Has it ever happened to you?

He just goes crazy when his computer doesn’t work as fast as he want it to be.

Oh God! Just watch it out! (I guess he is trying to play some game!)

Camtasia Studio 4 – The Best You can get

Capturing on screen activity to create a movie is so much easier these days with more powerful computers and software — and it is also a more helpful way of explaining how a task can be done. Such a concept works great if you want to create tutorial movies, and TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio is most certainly among the best products for this type of work.

About Camtasia Studio 4

Camtasia Studio is from TechSmith, a company based in Okemos, Michigan, USA. TechSmith also creates SnagIt, a screen capture tool with built-in editing and cataloging capabilities. You can learn more about the products from their site…

• Camtasia Studio includes a PowerPoint add-in that allows you to create movie captures from presentations right inside PowerPoint.
• Camtasia Studio works great for capture of PowerPoint presentations since it allows wider distribution of the presentation content in a file format that cannot be edited.
• Recorded presentations can be output to various file formats like Flash, WindowsMedia, Quicktime, Real, etc.
• Camtasia Studio 4 allows you to create movies suitable for playback on Apple iPods or any portable media player.
• You can post your movies as screencasts with accompanying files online at TechSmith’s new Screencast.com site.

In addition, you can also edit the captured video along with movie clips from other sources within Camtasia Studio’s project window.

Conclusion

No other product in its class comes as close in capabilities or ease-of-use as Camtasia Studio — the new version works even better and has many new abilities up its sleeve. The product is priced right, and the support is amazing.

One Media Player To Rule Them All

Are you sick of finding and downloading codecs everytime you play a different kind of media file? Try this. GOM Media Player.

GOM Player is a free multimedia player with popular video and audio codecs built-in. GOM Player supports file formats such as AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF and more. Users don’t have to install codecs separately. GOM Player is capable of playing incomplete or damaged AVI files by skipping the damaged frames. It can also play locked or partially downloaded files. Its other features include drag-and-drop support, HTTP streaming, editable skins, subtitling, overlay mixer, key remapping, enhanced filter rendering, real-time index rebuilding for AVI files and unicode support among others.

And best of all, its completely free.

Download GOM Player here