JRiver Media Center is a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, or

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s. JRiver Media Center is a "jukebox"-style media player, like

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...

, which usually uses most of the screen to display a potentially very large library of files. Regular (usually daily

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) builds are posted on the Media Center Interact forum implementing requested features and fixing reported bugs. The forum has an active member community, with more than 56,000 members as of 2021. Also available for JRiver Media Center are an Audioscrobbler plugin, and G-Force, a popular visualization. It can also rip and burn CDs. Media Center also supports static and dynamic

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. The term has sev ...

Library system

JRiver Media Center organizes files using Media Libraries; these are effective databases. Media Center can support multiple libraries. Information relating to media is imported into the library, including meta data for media files and the path to the media files. The media files themselves are not contained in the database, but cataloged within the libraries. Version 12 of JRiver Media Center added support for auto-importing of media, whereby JRiver Media Center continually watches designated directories for changes in media. If a new file is dropped into the directory, JRiver Media Center will add the file to its library. Each library can contain any type of media, video, audio, images etc.

View schemes

View Schemes are the main way to browse through files in Media Center. Views can be created which help users see different parts of their library; these are effectively the same as database views. They are based on using metadata as criterion for creating a filtered list of files. The view system is very powerful and fully customizable. For example, a view could be made which shows only audio files in MP3 format which are longer than 3 minutes, or images taken in Africa in the year 2006. For ease of use, several default views exist which show files of a specified type only, including: audio, images, or video. Various view items, or panes, can be aligned to the top, left, right, or moved in drop-down menus, that can be used to further filter results. For example, one of the default views, artist/album, allows selecting a specific artist or album, or both, and shows files from that album or artist only. Once a view is created, it is automatically saved in the library and can be opened in the various user interfaces and searched using a real-time search box. The searches are customizable and possible on any field or tag in the library.

Playlists

JRiver Media Center allows the creation of

s. It also can export playlists as M3U, M3U8, ASX, MPL, CSV.

Smartlists

Smartlists are similar to playlists except that rather than selecting a list of songs, the list is governed by a set of rules. For example, a smartlist might take every video file which was produced in 1994. Smartlists can be based on Playlists. They are defined using an expression language. Media Center provides a wizard style dialogue box to simplify creating these. An added benefit of a smartlist over a basic playlist is that a smartlist is dynamic; it will update itself whenever new files that meet its criteria are added to the library. For example, one could create a smartlist to show all tracks with the genre tagged Indie Rock. If a new album were added to Media Center's library that had the Indie Rock genre tag, Media Center would automatically add those files to the smartlist.

User interfaces

JRiver Media Center provides four different user interfaces for use in different situations. Each user interface is skinnable.

Standard view

Through the default Media Center UI for desktop environment the user is exposed to all of the core multimedia features, such as: * Tagging * Ripping * CD/DVD burning * Accessing portable players * Creating/editing playlists, smartlists, and views * Setting up TV stations * Accessing web media Standard view occupies a large amount of screen space, can be viewed in either full screen or as a window mode, and it consists of the following components: * Tree: allow for hierarchical navigation between different views of the Media Library * Action Window: provides quick access to common tasks, such as ripping/burning * Header: presents the playback controls and options for selected track * Playing Now: displays current playlist items * Panes/Thumbnails: aid in simple

point and click Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and cl ...

media browsing * Tagging panes: allows tagging media files

Theater view

While the Standard and Mini views are designed to be used in front of a desktop or laptop computers, Media Center includes an additional

10-foot user interface In computing, 10-foot user interface ("10-foot UI"), also known as a 3-meter user interface (especially for international marketing), is a graphical user interface designed for televisions. Compared to desktop computer and smartphone user int ...

called the "Theater view". This is made to work on a large screen, such as a television, projector or large computer screen. The interface is made to work in a 10-foot mode, i.e. from a living room sofa using remote controls, rather than the conventional mouse and keyboard. As of JRiver Media Center 12, Theatre view relies on Microsoft's

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

graphics engine. With this, Media Center uses 3D and 2D Animation to create a more visually appealing interface, which more nearly resembles that of a digital recording box, or DVD player. The Theater view doesn't provide the editing interfaces of Standard view, but instead provides much more accessible access to the different views of the library. All the buttons in Theater view are large, and tend to move to different pages to display different information. Theater view also provides access to the weather, news websites and RSS feeds.

Mini view

Mini view is similar to that of

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since ve ...

. It's designed to take up minimal screen space while still providing access to basic controls. Mini view skins are different from the other UI skins seen in Media Center in that they can employ

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

to make them more dynamic. Mini views are far more flexible than the other types of skins, allowing Media Center to take various shapes and forms using transparency effects.

Networking

JRiver Media Center provides network access to its libraries using different server plugins. ;Library server :Library server allows JRiver Media Center to share its active library with up to five client machines. This is designed for situations where a server machine with large resources is set up in one area, and clients such as laptops with smaller resources can access media elsewhere. ;TiVo server :JRiver Media Center supports TiVo's Home Media option, allowing TiVo to stream video and audio. ;

UPnP Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the n ...

and

DLNA Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...

servers

Web services integration

Audible Audible may refer to: * Audible (service), an online audiobook store * Audible (American football), a tactic used by quarterbacks * ''Audible'' (film), a short documentary film featuring a deaf high school football player * Audible finish or ru ...

Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and online music store operated by Amazon. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights ...

CD Baby CD Baby, Inc. is an online distributor of independent music. The company was described as an "anti-label" by its parent company's Chief Operating Officer Tracy Maddux. The CD Baby music store was shut down in March 2020 with a statement that " ...

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television series ...

* MediaNet *

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

Plugins

JRiver Media Center uses

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support to provide access to its SDK library. This allows plugins to be written in a wide variety of languages including: * C++ * C# *

Object Pascal Object Pascal is an extension to the programming language Pascal that provides object-oriented programming (OOP) features such as classes and methods. The language was originally developed by Apple Computer as ''Clascal'' for the Lisa Worksh ...

(

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The orac ...

) *

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic ( ...

A variety of plugins can be developed for specific components and purposes: * Theater view plugins: allows creating extensions to Theater view * Interface plugins: provide interface extensions for Standard view * DSP plugins: allows directly manipulating sound processing * Display plugins: allow creation of different visualizations * Input plugins: can be used to add new formats to Media Center, which are not supported naively It is also possible to create "Track Info" visualizations that are created in HTML to display information about the currently playing Media. These can be extended further using the various web languages around such as JavaScript. A full list of available plugins can be found in the Accessories section on the official website.

Media formats

JRiver Media Center supports a wide range file formats among audio files, video files, photos and documents. A full lists of supported formats can be found on the JRiver Media Center wiki;
supported audio formatssupported video formats
an
supported image formats
. DirectShow is supported, allowing the playing of any video or audio format for which a DirectShow Filter is available, and installed.

Supported hardware

Amazon Echo Amazon Echo, often shortened to Echo, is an American brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service '' Alexa'', which will respond when a user says "Alexa". Users ...

powered intelligent loudspeakers. * Android-based devices * iOS-based:

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...

, iPhone,

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a musi ...

Digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...

s *

Image scanner An image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting or an object and converts it to a digital image. Commonly used in offices are variations of the desktop ''flatbed scanner'' ...

s *

Removable media Expandable storage is a form of computer storage that is designed to be inserted and removed from a system. Some forms of removable media, such as optical discs, require a reader to be installed in the computer, while others, such as USB flash dr ...

Smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

s * TiVo *

Universal Plug and Play Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the ...

(UPnP) *

Digital Living Network Alliance Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...

(DLNA)

Scheduler

JRiver Media Center provides a scheduling tool which allows playing/recording of media at certain times.

Media Jukebox

JRiver Media Center's predecessor was named ''JRiver Media Jukebox'', until the

rebranding Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investo ...

to JRiver Media Center for version 9. In November 2007, J. River released Media Jukebox 12, a stripped-down version of JRiver Media Center 12, which is available to download for free, compared to JRiver Media Center's price of $49.98. JRiver Media Jukebox includes most of the audio features of Media Center; the image and video functions are removed. The last version of JRiver Media Jukebox was version 14.0.166. However, the version 14 removed several features previously available for free (specifically CD and

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper (tabloid), comic book, video game ( box art), music album ( album ...

lookup) and now only available in the Media Center product. As such many still use the older free version of JRiver Media Jukebox 12.0.534.

Version history

References

External links

*
Official JRiver Media Center Interact forum

Official JRiver Media Jukebox site

Reviews
{{Home theater PC (application software) IPod software Windows multimedia software MacOS multimedia software Windows-only software Windows CD/DVD writing software Jukebox-style media players Video recording software