Audio Video Mix Master is a jukebox application showing you two players and allowing you to DJ like a professional. It can also completely autoplay on its own. A short introduction is written below.
Download the application here before you go on.
| Latest version: 2.0.6 |
How does it work?
1. Start the application (Start / All Programs / AV Mix Master)
AV Mix Master will start Auto Play if you start it for the first time. This is what's happening:
- AV Mix Master will randomly pick a number of songs that follows these criteria:
- Media Items from the Genre "All Music" (or whatever genre you have selected)
- Media Items that are rated 3 stars at least (or whatever rating you prefer) - It then fills the Now Playing track list (the top right part of the window)
- Then the first player (the top left) is filled with the topmost track from the Now Playing list
- The second player (the bottom left) is filled with the second track from the Now Playing list
- AV Mix Master starts player 1 and you will hear music
So what now?
You can read this part further or go a bit deeper into the players.
Depending on your needs and wants, you can find music and fill the queue with your own music or try a little bit of mixing. Let's start with searching first.
Searching
If you want to search for something, just enter it in the "Search for" box. In this case the search is for 'filur'. Press ENTER of click "Find" to start your search. The search gives three items.
Playing and Queuing files
The first item in the searchlist is the one we want to play. First click the media item you want to play and click:
- "As Next", which will put the media track in the inactive player (i.e. the player that is not currently playing). As soon as the currently playing player is finished, your media track will be played
- "Play Now", which will put the media track in the inactive player but now the active player will immediately fade to your media track
- "Queue As Next", which will put your file on top of the Now playing list. It will play when both players have played their currently loaded songs
- "Queue", will put your file at the end of the Now Playing list.
You could also drag the media item to the location where you want. Dragging the item to the now playing list, will put that item in that list at the location you drop the file. But you can also drag the item to one of the players. For example, if you drag to the active player (the one that is now playing and showing the spinning CD) the item will play immediately (the same as in clicking "Play Now").
NOTE: If the Now Playing list was filled with AutoFill then the AutoFill list will be emptied if you put in your own tracks. This is by design and you can keep the entries by clicking the "Keep Playlist" button.
More searching
So let's do some more searching. You would like to hear that old Madonna album "Like a virgin" (mind you, this is just an example ;-), so you enter "like a virgin" (you could also enter "a virgin" or "like a", but that would probably give you more results.
Notice that this search also found a video with a title that contains Like A Virgin. Video files are always put on top and show "Video" in green to distinguish them from audio files. Although the time shows "00:00", this is certainly not the case and we will play that file as well by simply double-clicking it (double clicking a file in the search window will simply queue it up).
Don't know what you want to listen to? Suggest!
Your mind is cracking for other favorite tracks, but they don't seem to pop-up? No problem, you can try "Suggest". Click the "Suggest" button and AV Mix Master will give you a random music selection based on the Genre and the Rating.
In this case we want tracks that have a rating of minimally 4 stars and from the genre "All Music". You can click Suggest as much as you like, until you find that track you want to hear.
TIP: Right-clicking the Suggest button will also give you the option to suggest videos.
NOTE: The Find button takes no regard to the Genre and rating settings, it will search anything! Only Suggest and AutoFill will take these settings into account.
Ratings, what do those stars mean?
We have mentioned ratings several times and you may have noticed those stars next to the track's details. What are they? Well these are the ratings a media item has been given by either you, the user, or AV Mix Master.
Well, ratings give you and the system a means of distinguishing media you like or don't like. All Media Items begin with a rating of three stars and these stars show up in blue. The color blue means that the item is automatically rated by AV Mix Master or Windows Media Player. If a media track is played once, the rating will automatically be set to 4 stars and if the track is played many times, the rating will eventually get 5 stars. In this case the track is played at least once, so you probably liked it enough to not skip it:
However, you can also give your personal rating to a media file. Simply click at the star that represents the rating you want to give a file and that file will always be rated that way. To distinguish user ratings from automatic ratings, the rating will become gold colored, like this:
A user rating (the gold colored ones) will never be changed automatically, so it sort of sticks. So ratings can really help you and the system to find the music you really like. Let's use this table to provide more details:
| 1 Star | You don't want to hear this song ever again! |
| 2 Stars | You really don't like it to much, but not enough that you want to hear it automatically |
| 3 Stars | All new songs are rated 3 stars, but you can also give a song 3 stars to prevent it from automatically becoming 4 stars |
| 4 Stars | You like this song and don't mind if it is played again |
| 5 Stars | You really like this song and want to hear it over and over again! |
AV Mix Master uses the star ratings amongst others to suggest music to you and to auto fill the playlist if necessary.
Cue, Pause, Play and Skip
In the left middle of the screen, you will find these buttons. The red one labeled "Cue" will stop the active player and sets its starting point at the beginning of the track. A small black dot will blink indicating that the player is 'cued'. Clicking the green "Play/Pause" button will start playback again.
The green pause/play button will either pause the active player if it was playing or start the player if it was paused. Pausing a player will simply stop playback, but it will not jump back to the beginning of the track like "Cue" does. Again, a blinking black dot will show you the player is paused.
The yellow "Next" button will allow you to skip to the next song. In other words, it will start the inactive player, fades it in and fades-out the active player. During the fading progress a black blinking dot appears indicating that the players are fading. If you want to speed-up the fading progress, you can click the "Next" button again. This will immediately skip to the next player (skipping the fade process altogether).
The Players
There are two players and although both can play at the same time, there is only one called the "Active Player" (thus making the other player "Inactive").
In between the players you see the active/inactive indicator, so you know for sure which one is active.
So the player below is the active one:
NOTE: There is a main difference between the AV Mix Master players and regular CD players. The players in AV Mix Master will only play one file at a time and when it's finished playing that file, it will start the other player, so that the player can retrieve a new track from the Now Playing list.
The player shows you a number of information items, such as the Artist and Song, album art (if any), album title, track title, genre, release year and play statistics. In the right-top corner you see the countdown timer. If it turns red, it means that this player is about to finish and that fading-out is imminent.
Clicking one of the media information items will search for that media item. Clicking:
| Album Title | Will search for that album and shows you the album's tracks in the right order |
| Track Title | Will search for that track title (minus the extra information, such as [Single Mix]) to see if other tracks like this exist. Ideal if you want to find that particular remix of a song that is now playing |
| Artist | Will search for that artist |
| Genre | Will give you a suggestion from that genre (it uses Suggest technology, so it takes the minimal rating into account!) |
So, that's it?
We have just covered basic play. There are too many features in AV Mix Master to explain in a short overview, so we suggest you experiment a little. Right-clicking an item will show you a menu of things to do. Explore the media library, the history, etc.
Prerequisites
- .Net Framework 1.1
- Windows Media Player 9 or higher (WMP 10 is preferred)
- For DVD playback a valid DVD-decoder is required (if Windows Media Player plays DVD, so will AV Mix Master)
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