Winamp Now Playing to File

This is a plugin for Winamp that saves text information and album art for the currently playing song to files on your computer. You can customize where the files are saved, as well as the format of the text.

• Problem
• Solution
• Installation
• Configuration
  • Text
    • Placeholder fields
    • Helpers
    • Formatting
  • Album art
    • Fallback artwork
• Integration
  • OBS
• Uninstallation

Problem

I was broadcasting video game streams on my Twitch.tv channel, in which I also play music in the background. I wanted viewers to be able to tell which song I was playing at any given time in case they liked it and wanted to find it for themselves. I started using the Advanced mIRC Integration Plug-In (AMIP), which is generally used for showing your Now Playing status in IRC using mIRC. It also lets you save the status to a text file, which I added as a Text Source in OBS.

Unfortunately, AMIP only supports encoding the text using ANSI, OEM (DOS), FIDO, or KOI8 character encodings, none of which are UTF-8, which OBS requires. For example, Jävla Sladdar was being shown in the video stream as J�vla Sladdar, because even though AMIP was saving ä using ANSI (0xe4), OBS was decoding the file with UTF-8, so the character was not properly decoded. In UTF-8, ä is supposed to be encoded as 0xc3 0xa4 because 0xe4 is greater than 0x7f (i.e. 0x34 requires more than 7 bits to represent), so it spills over into a second code unit (it's a multibyte character).

Solution

I wrote my own Winamp plugin to save information about the currently playing song to a UTF-8 text file, and the song's album art to an image file.

Installation

1. Ensure you have Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 Runtime or later installed. This is included in Windows 10 version 1803 and later.
2. Exit Winamp if it's already running.
3. Download WinampNowPlayingToFile.zip from the latest release (not the source code ZIP file).
4. Extract the archive to your Winamp installation directory.

   📁 C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp
   ├── 📁 plugins
   │   └── 📄 gen_WinampNowPlayingToFile.dll
   ├── 📄 WinampNowPlayingToFile.dll
   ├── 📄 Daniel15.Sharpamp.dll
   ├── 📄 mustache-sharp.dll
   └── 📄 taglib-sharp.dll
   

Configuration

Configuration of this plugin is performed in Winamp.

1. Start Winamp.
2. Go to Options › Preferences › Plug-ins › General Purpose.
3. Configure the Now Playing to File plugin.

Changes are saved to the registry in HKCU\Software\WinampNowPlayingToFile.

Text

By default, this plugin saves textual information about the currently playing song to winamp_now_playing.txt in your user's temporary directory (%TEMP%). The file contains the track's Artist, Title, and Album (if applicable), for example

U2 – Exit – The Joshua Tree

To customize the text file location and contents, go to the plugin preferences in Winamp.

1. You can change the file contents by editing the Text template and inserting placeholders inside {{ }}, either with the Insert button or by typing them manually. See Placeholder fields below for all the fields you can use in a placeholder. For example, a simple template that could render the above example text is

   {{Artist}} – {{Title}} – {{Album}}

2. As you fill in the template, the Text preview will be updated to show how the currently playing song would be rendered, or an example song if no song is available.
3. You can change where the file is written in your filesystem by selecting a different path for Save text as.

When Winamp is not playing a song, this text file will be truncated to 0 bytes.

Placeholder fields

Placeholder values that are missing or empty will be rendered as the empty string.

Field name	Type	Examples	Notes
Album	string	The Joshua Tree
AlbumArtist	string	U2
Artist	string	U2
Bitrate	int	320
BPM	int	123	Beats per minute
Category	string	Rock
Comment	string
Composer	string	U2
Conductor	string
Director	string		Most commonly used for video files
Disc	int	1	If it can't be parsed as an int (like 1/2) it will be a string
Elapsed	TimeSpan	00:00:28.5080000	Updated 1hz, millisecond resolution. See formatting for m:ss and other formats.
Family	string	MPEG Layer 3 Audio File	Codec or container format
FileBasename	string	Exit.mp3	Filename without path
FileBasenameWithoutExtension	string	Exit	Filename without path or extension
Filename	string	C:\Users\Ben\Music\Exit.mp3	Absolute path to file, or a stream URL
Gain	string	+0.92 dB
Genre	string	Rock
ISRC	string	GBUM70709782	12-character International Standard Recording Code for the track
Key	string	E minor
Length	TimeSpan	00:04:11.4220000	See formatting for m:ss and other formats
Lossless	bool	false	true for lossless compression, false for lossy
Lyricist	string	Bono
Media	string	LP
Producer	string	Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois
Publisher	string	Island Records
Rating	int	2	In the range [1, 5]
ReplayGain_Album_Gain	string	-3.03 dB
ReplayGain_Album_Peak	double	1.022630334
ReplayGain_Track_Gain	string	-0.77 dB
ReplayGain_Track_Peak	double	1.006227493
Stereo	bool	true	true for stereo, false for mono
Subtitle	string
Title	string	Exit
Tool	string	iTunes 10.5.1	From the ENCODEDBY ID3v2 tag
Track	int	1	If it can't be parsed as an int (like 1/5) it will be a string
Type	string	audio	audio or video
VBR	bool	false	true for variable bitrate, false for constant bitrate
Year	int	1987	If it can't be parsed as an int (like 1987-01-01) it will be a string

Any other values you use in a placeholder will be requested directly from Winamp as file metadata, and the response will be output as-is. If you can find other fields that Winamp handles for audio files, please file an enhancement issue so it can be added to this program and documentation.

Helpers

Template logic can be added using Handlebars expressions, including the built-in helpers like {{#if expr}}, {{#elif expr}}, {{#else}}, and {{/if}}. To output a line break (CRLF), use {{#newline}}.

For example, you can conditionally include artist and album only if those fields exist on your song and are nonempty.

{{#if Artist}}{{Artist}} – {{/if}}{{Title}}{{#if Album}} – {{Album}}{{/if}}

You can also render strings depending on a boolean value.

{{#if Lossless}}lossless{{#else}}lossy{{/if}}

Formatting

Metadata values may optionally be formatted using the .NET string formatting syntax.

Topic	Example Input	Output	Notes
Timespan	{{Length:m\:ss}}	4:33	See standard and custom TimeSpan format strings
Timespan	{{Length:hh\:mm\:ss}}	00:04:33	See standard and custom TimeSpan format strings
Digit grouping	{{Bitrate:N0}}kbps	1,226kbps	See standard numeric format strings
Floating point precision	{{ReplayGain_Album_Peak:F6}}	0.986115	See standard numeric format strings
Zero padding	#{{Track:00}}	#06	See custom numeric format strings
Space padding	{{Track,3}}.	1.	See spacing

Album art

This plugin also copies the currently playing song's album art from the song metadata or from an image in the song's folder. By default, it is copied to %TEMP%\winamp_now_playing.png.

Note that the file extension is always the one you specify in the preferences, even if the album art has a different file type, to make it easier to refer to this file from other programs like OBS without having to deal with multiple possible file extensions. This means that this file may be created as a JPEG with the .png file extension, for example. Most programs, including OBS, can handle this case just fine, but the mismatch is a little silly. Feel free to change the file extension using the preferences.

You can customize the album art filename and path using Save album art as in the same plugin configuration dialog as the text file above.

Fallback artwork

When there is no album art, the copied files will be deleted. However, this may be undesirable because it can leave dependent interfaces in a weird-looking state (like an OBS layout with a big transparent gap where the album art would normally be), and it will also trigger the Missing Files warning dialog box each time you launch OBS.

To resolve this, you can specify custom image files that will be copied instead when there is no album art. Here are some sample black and transparent images to get started, or you can use your own. There are no requirements for the format or dimensions of these images besides what your downstream consumer like OBS accepts.

Missing artwork

When Winamp is playing a song with no album art, the image file will be deleted. To override this, save your desired image file as emptyAlbumArt.png in the Winamp installation directory.

Playback stopped

When Winamp is paused, stopped, or closed, the image file will be deleted. To override this, save your desired image file as stoppedAlbumArt.png in the Winamp installation directory.

Integration

OBS

1. Start playing a song in Winamp.
2. Create a new Text (GDI+) source in your OBS scene.
3. In the Properties for your text source, enable Read From File.
4. Select the text file created by this plugin (by default, %TEMP%\winamp_now_playing.txt).
5. Create a new Image source in your scene.
6. In the Properties for your image source, select the image file created by this plugin (by default, %TEMP%\winamp_now_playing.png).

Uninstallation

1. In Winamp's Preferences, go to Plug-ins › General Purpose.
2. Select the Now Playing to File plugin, then click the Uninstall Selected Plug-In button.
3. Exit Winamp.
4. Delete all the files you extracted to the Winamp installation directory when installing this plugin.

   📁 C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp
   ├── 📁 plugins
   │   └── 📄 gen_WinampNowPlayingToFile.dll
   ├── 📄 WinampNowPlayingToFile.dll
   ├── 📄 Daniel15.Sharpamp.dll
   ├── 📄 mustache-sharp.dll
   └── 📄 taglib-sharp.dll
   

5. Delete the song information files (by default, winamp_now_playing.txt and winamp_now_playing.png in %TEMP%).
6. Delete the plugin settings registry key HKCU\Software\WinampNowPlayingToFile.