And jeez what happened to it anyways? It actually used to be pretty decent back in the 98/XP/7 days :(

  • Tin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    Windows Sound Recorder used to open literally anything - text documents, pdfs, images, executables, DLLs, and attempt to play them as audio. Photoshop files make especially interesting noises through it. I used to use it for samples. Got some great noisy stuff that way.

    • Whateley@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      7 days ago

      I used to write dark ambient and noise records as a hobby. I got some of my best samples from that method.

    • Irelephant@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 days ago

      I cant remember the command now, but there was one on linux which let you play anything, I remember /usr/bin/ls sounded nice.

    • ShunkW@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 days ago

      I used to do this with audacity. It’s fun to open an image, and apply some audio filters to it, then export it. Makes for some interesting photo fuckery results.

      • Tin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        7 days ago

        Oh, I didn’t know audacity would do it. Well I know how I’m wasting time at work the rest of this week…

      • Tin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        8 days ago

        I have the album I made with them! Some of the tracks are solely composed of Sound Recorder playing non-audio files, but every track contains samples created that way. The quality isn’t the best, this is a CD rip because I’ve long since lost the original files, but since it’s experimental industrial noise, the audio quality doesn’t hurt much I guess.

        https://soundcloud.com/themachinal/sets/the-machinal-disturbance

    • portuga@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      7 days ago

      First time I hear of someone having problems opening whatever format in vlc. I mean if there’s a program that reads each an everyone of them it’s VLC

    • cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      7 days ago

      Are you on linux and are describing this issue where VLC cannot be reopened after exiting without logging out and logging back in?

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        Windows. And nah it’s more like while playing any given video file there will be moments where it looks as if the video is corrupted or something. Strange video artifacts that affect the entire viewport. The issue isn’t actually in the file, as the spots are random upon playback. These were all h.264 mkv files I had trouble with so maybe the issue was with that codec but at the same time that’s the most common codec used for encoding entertainment media for playback. Moving those files over to an iPhone and playing them with infuse worked flawlessly.

  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 days ago

    Had to install VLC last week because the Windows player didn’t have the codec to play a video someone sent me from their smartphone. Seems like a pretty common use case to not have figured out…

  • rtxn@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    aplay: “Hey kid… wanna listen to the sound the Linux kernel makes when you push it through the sound card?”

  • coaxil@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 days ago

    You can rawdog the libavcodec far more robustly via ffplay, vlc def struggles on a decent amount of media still.

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    9 days ago

    wmp still exists, but microsoft has neglected it for years–pushing the ‘app’ shit instead.

    on win11, you should find ‘windows media player legacy’ hiding in ‘windows tools’.

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    7 days ago

    Everything is a .wav, you just lack the frequency hearing range.

    Back when /dev/dsp existed, you could pipe any data to it, and it’d preat it like PCM data. Wav files sounded like they were supposed to. Everything else sounded like… well, like they’re supposed to, i guess.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 days ago

    mpv: those files have some exotic image format, they’re not videos. Here is your dia show with your custom upscaling shaders.

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    To watch this new type of hvec media you need this free codec.

    Wait did we say free i mean

    There is a paid version next to the free one.

    You can pay here, that other one is for retail and industry please dont use it, only use the paid one.

    Your hardware doesn’t support the free codec according to the error message we gave it. Hand over your money to install this identical approved one please.

  • Mr. Zeus@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    9 days ago

    who the hell still uses windows media player? I use windows and everyone else I know who uses windows never opens WMP. We all have VLC for videos, but for the movies that we all totally pay for we use Kodi/XBMC or jellyfin

    • slampisko@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      Media Player Classic enjoyer here 👌

      (Though for some very specific use cases I still have VLC installed and sometimes use it)

    • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      7 days ago

      Mpc is significantly better than VLC. Occasionally I need VLC to play a file but we’re now talking every 1-2 years. VLCs UI is baaad.

      • Mr. Zeus@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        7 days ago

        VLC’s UI on windows hasn’t changed much in over 10 years now. It definitely would benefit from a search function to quickly find certain settings to fine tune your expirience with it. But I sandbox all of my software, so no cache files or data it writes onto the drive I make it write to ever sticks around for very long.

        Any time I need to open a link from a friend I copypaste the link into a sandboxed browser that doesn’t have access to any of the shit going on in the other sandboxes instead of opening it rawdog into that same sandbox.

        • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          5 days ago

          Mpc is literally designed to look like the media player from windows 98…just with actual functionality.

          VLC doesn’t need to be new it needs to be good. How about a nice forward=next in folder backward=back in folder? How about a nice click-anywhere-to-pause. How about being able to move the video player around without grabbing exactly the right piece of chrome? What about sane fucking volume normalization instead of letting you accidentally crank the volume to 200%? These are all things mpc does right.

          Given your description I’m assuming Linux. Mpc is one of the things I find impossible to replace on Linux because all of the options are VLC or yet-another-half-baked-mpv-wrapper authored by lickmydragonballz93 on GitHub. On the other hand VLC has the strong half-baked UI vibes that Linux is known for, so maybe you’re used to it?

      • Mr. Zeus@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        9 days ago

        They re-named it “Kodi” but a lot of the stuff in it doesn’t work very well anymore