InstaPlay - instant sound player

[justice]

so to clarify:

The entire point of InstaPlay is for you to associate your music files to it so that when you double click the music file in your normal windows explorer, you get a quick preview of the sound.

If you don't know for sure that this is what you want, then you probably don't want InstaPlay -- it's something that will be specifically useful to only a certain group of people, and could be confusing to others.

But if you want a stand alone gui for browsing and previewing sound files, which doesn't require file association changes, check out Justice's other program, Bard.

-mouser (November 11, 2010, 05:28 PM)

As a hobbyist music producer, I have a lot of samples of sounds. As I have decided to start organising these, I needed a quick way to fire off samples in wav and mp3 format through Windows Explorer.

So I created InstaPlay. This is a simple sound player. To install it simply unzip it in a directory that’s in the path, and then associate wav and mp3 files (and whatever else you want to use) with it.  It also has a few features:

Just double click or run a soundfile to hear it play.
Nice speaker icon in system tray while a sound is playing. Double click it to quit InstaPlay and stop playback.
Run  another sound file to switch playback to that instead.

This program will help you categorize more efficiently as you can move the sound that’s being played without pesky ‘file in use’ prompts.

Download
Download Info + link

bard related info

Possible future version:

[mouser]

clever idea.

the mockup of a gui version also seems like a good idea.  i might put the sample list on the left and full height, since it seems like it would be the think you would use most often.

[justice]

bard related

Thanks for the feedback mouser, it might not be something that's popular for the donationcoder crowd but with several thousand audio files it will be handy for some. its currently looking like this:

[mouser]

yeah thats nice..
can you easily SWITCH to those target folders too? that would be nice, or else maybe just a separate list of recent folders to quickly switch between.
you could do that if you made the top area where you have [...] D:\Samples into one long drop down combobox edit, that kept track of recent folders.

[justice]

bard related info

Ah clever that's just the refinements i'm looking for. You can't at the moment but yes that would be useful, hey this could make a nice NANY app.  

[mouser]

yes it would make a great NANY entry!

[Darwin]

Hmm... looks interesting, justice. Instead of "Instaplay Asset Organizer" how about "Instaplay Media Organizer" or "Instaplay Music Organizer"?

[BillB]

Hi Justice, this looks interesting.  I downloaded the ZIP from the link above, unzipped but wasn't sure what you meant by placing it "in the path".  I tried C: root but the EXE wouldn't run.  I am wondering why it needs to be anywhere in particular (most of my applications are installed onto E:) and why it is necessary to associate it with WAV/MP3?  If it can be run directly from the EXE, then I could navigate to my WAV etc folders and preview samples.  Also, a single-click on listed files would mean 50% less RSI!

Thanks

[justice]

Billb,
Instaplay can be put in any folder, but you have to add the folder to the path. Although I can't remember why this is necessary. lol

Have a look at the following link to add a folder to the path:
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/environment.htm

You have to associate wave/mp3 files to it, so that you can navigate to a folder full of them and then double click a file to play it, that's how the program is useful - it loads faster than alternatives.

[justice]

Hmm... looks interesting, justice. Instead of "Instaplay Asset Organizer" how about "Instaplay Media Organizer" or "Instaplay Music Organizer"?

-Darwin (October 23, 2010, 12:54 PM)

Darwin, the development into a sound organiser has resulted in a name change to Bard (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=24357.0)

[mouser]

With InstaPlay it made complete sense to have to associate it with music files (and maybe put it in path which sounds like just an association misstep), but this shouldnt be nescesary to get the benefit of the Bard program.

[justice]

should I remove all the bard related information from my posts?
edit: i have put all unrelated info into a spoiler.

[mouser]

so to clarify:

The entire point of InstaPlay is for you to associate your music files to it so that when you double click the music file in your normal windows explorer, you get a quick preview of the sound.

If you don't know for sure that this is what you want, then you probably don't want InstaPlay -- it's something that will be specifically useful to only a certain group of people, and could be confusing to others.

But if you want a stand alone gui for browsing and previewing sound files, which doesn't require file association changes, check out Justice's other program, Bard.

[justice]

When will I ever learn my naming lessons