Winamp 5
The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5 — Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 — taking the best parts from both applications. Developers also joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ('4 skin' being a pun on foreskin). Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 features (e.g. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 and its components was released as open source, and as of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released.
Winamp 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and (as of early 2007) sells for US$19.95. The Lite version has far less functionality (largely supplementable with plugins) while still replicating most of Winamp 2's feature set in a far smaller installer. The Full version offers a richer feature set, including music ripping and CD burning at limited speeds (6x for ripping and 2x for burning). The Pro version features unlimited speed music ripping and CD burning and MP3 encoding.
Skins
Alexandru Popa's "EVO", a "classic" winamp skin
Alexandru Popa's "EVO", a "classic" winamp skin
Mischa Klement's "Template Amp 1.1", a template created to aid winamp skinners
Mischa Klement's "Template Amp 1.1", a template created to aid winamp skinners
Skins are revisions of the graphical user interface of Winamp. Winamp has published documentation on skin creation, and invites contributors to publish skins on Winamp.com. Winamp 5.0 supports "classic" skins designed to Winamp 2 specifications, and "modern" skins per the Winamp3 specification. Modern skins support alpha channels, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the GUI, but many skin designers remain committed to the "classic" skin specification. Skin templates, such as those created by Mischa Klement and Jellby, have aided the production of increasingly sophisticated skins. Online communities of skin designers, such as 1001 Winamp Skins and deviantart, and the active forums on Winamp.com attest to the popularity of the feature and its flexibility as a medium for creative expression. As with all artistic mediums, as the number of independently produced works have increased, genre styles or categories of skins have emerged. Promoting celebrities, fashion models, films, cars, bands, brands, and other forms of entertainment remains a common staple of the medium. Artists have also created designs for their own sake: parodies of other interfaces, nostalgic emulations of old hardware and operating systems, hand drawn art, 3-dimension renderings employing transparencies, minimalist and high contrast designs, and clever implementations of vector graphics. The size of the development community has led to the inclusion of Winamp skin support in other digital media software such as Windows Media Player and XMMS.
[edit] Plug-ins
The Winamp software development kit allows software developers to extend Winamp's functionality through the use of plug-ins, which are categorized into the following seven types:
* Input plug-ins decode media data contained in specific file formats.
* Output plug-ins control the destination of decoded audio (such as the DirectSound device or direct-to-file writing).
* Visualization plug-ins provide sound activated graphics.
* DSP/Effect plug-ins manipulate audio (reverb, spacialization, equalization, compression, etc).
* General Purpose plug-ins add functionality or extensions to Winamp (alarm clock, or pause when logged out).
* Media Library plug-ins add functionality or extensions to the built in Media Library.
* Device plug-ins add interfaces to Portable media players.
Easy development of specialized Input plug-ins contributed to Winamp's versatility compared to monolithic media players. For example, popular video game music has driven development of plugins to playback game console music files, such as NSF, USF, GBS, GSF, SID, GYM, SPC, PSF and PSF2.
A wide variety of plug-ins are available on the Winamp web site.[12]
[edit] Features
The following are features of Winamp 5:
* MIDI, MOD, MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, WMA, Chiptunes and many other audio formats supported.
* AVI support, which is played through the appropriate DirectShow filters installed on the user's system; MPEG; and NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video).
* Plug-in support for additional input and output formats, sound effects (via DSP plugins), and visual effects (notably Advanced Visualization Studio, or AVS, and MilkDrop).
* Support for both Winamp 2's "classic" skins and Winamp3's more flexible "modern" skins(via official plugin provided in "Full" install).
* Freely available access to many types of streaming media, including:
o Internet radio and Internet television (via the SHOUTcast technology).
o XM Satellite Radio.
o Music Tracks.
o Music Videos (not available in all territories).
o AOL Video Content.
o In2TV classic television programs.
o SHOUTcast Wire (podcast directory and subscription functionality).
o Singingfish audio/video search engine.
* Support for ripping data from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, into MP3 or AAC formats, a feature enhanced in Winamp Pro.
* Support for burning music to CDs, a feature enhanced in Winamp Pro.
* True alpha channel (per-pixel transparency).
* Support for winshade mode as well as docking, which allows Winamp to operate as an always-on-top media bar.
* Support 5.1 Surround where formats and decoders allow.
* Support Gapless playback for MP3 and AAC.
* Replay Gain support.
* Support Unicode metadata for media files.
* Extendable Portable media player support, currently offering device plugins for:
o Apple iPod.
o Creative NOMAD Jukebox.
o Microsoft PlaysForSure.
o Mass Storage Compliant devices.
o ActiveSync devices, such as those running Windows Mobile.
* Support Global hotkeys.
* Customized install options packaged with NSIS.
* 24-bit playback.
* Format conversion (transcoding).
Winamp also integrates Predixis MusicMagic, which scans the songs in the user's library, and can generate playlists of songs with similar aesthetic to the one the user has selected.