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Windows Forum / Windows Media / Player / August 2008Don't trust WMP11 !!!!!
I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, found a nice cover art image and dropped it in and all is good. I get up this morning and find around half my albums have changed to this new cover image! That is both embedded in the files and in folder.jpg etc. Wow! I now have hours upon hours of work to fix up the mess caused by this dumbed down, stupid, buggy piece of typical micro$oft crap. I see I'm not the only one that this has happened to. Usual care factor zero from Microsoft. I've spent months and months learning how to work round various problems with this software because I do want it to work but this the final straw. If you value your music collection, find another media player, because maybe not today, maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! >I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all > tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your > music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! OUCH. That does suck. I am trying like hell to find a replacement for WMP that is more robust (not hard) but has at least the same capabilities and can play even more formats... Any suggestions are welcome - especially for any freeware that is less than obvious (VLC is ok, but has glitches too and no library support per se, etc) Arghhhh!!!! Just discovered that it's also stripped the year date out of the same albums where it's stuffed the art. That was important to me... Also once loaded with a few thousand albums, WMP11 is so slow on display updates, scrolling etc. I think the art problems are caused by the fact it seems to cache updated art and only updates the actual files / folders sometime later. This can be anywhere from instantaneous to a couple of days later! Geez! We see the same old problems over and over again in this group and yet not a sniff of an update from MS. Not even any acknowledgement of these problems! I now unplug my 250gig USB drive before opening media player because I'm sh.t scared of what it might do to my music / art on there. I really, really would like to use WMP11 but I'm just fed up of spending a whole weekend fixing things up after WMP has had one of its occasional rampages through my files. I'm presently evaluating Foobar as a media player. It's a little technical with a bit of a learning curve but it's capabilities are awesome. It also seems far better suited to large libraries with no slow downs or stalls. I'll let you know how I get on. Baz >>I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all >> tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > for any freeware that is less than obvious (VLC is ok, but has glitches > too and no library support per se, etc) Are you storing a bunch of files from different albums in one common directory?  SignatureSpeaking for myself only. See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. -- >I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all > tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your > music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! No, I keep all my music carefully stored as My Music \ Artist \ Album \ files.mp3. A pretty standard arrangement, I would have thought. This way I can navigate my music easily using Windows Explorer as well as WMP. What I have noticed is if you update files using "Find Album Info", it seems to update most tags immediately but can take up to a couple of days to update the album art - if at all! Obviously, this art is being cached somewhere and being applied sometime later. I'm pretty sure it also takes longer as your library grows larger. Anyway, it's fairly inconsistent - today it seems to be applying changes immediately..... Due to this inconsistency, sometimes I grow impatient and drag a drop a cover art image. This method always applies the art straight away. I am wondering if maybe this gets things out of sync. i.e., Maybe sometime later it tries applying the cached art and ties itself in knots because I have dragged a dropped an image in the meantime. Just guessing really..... Cheers Baz > Are you storing a bunch of files from different albums in one common > directory? [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] >> maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your >> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! Yeah this has happened to me on numerous occasions. I have 1500 albums and yes it's right pain when it happens. I've also had trouble with editing song info that WMP has got wrong, switching to another window then finding that WMP has reverted to it's old, incorrect song info which I just changed. This one annoys me even more. Especially now they've changed the web base album info service for the worst. > I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all > tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! > I know exactly what you're talking about. I go into "Find Album Info", and accept the data - my files appear to be updated. Then I might make some small change to the info - correcting a misspelling maybe. Five minutes later and it's reverted to the originally suggested info! How annoying.... The workaround I found is to make any changes within the "Find Album Info" series of dialogues before you accept it, then it will apply the found info, along with your changes and it will "stick". Again, I suspect WMP is caching info and applying it sometime later instead of straightaway. Baz > Yeah this has happened to me on numerous occasions. I have 1500 albums > and [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] >> maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your >> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! Yes, it's by design that it doesn't write information straightaway, since that causes a performance spike on every write. Instead it writes on a background thread so you can continue playing around in the player. You can use Apply Media Information to immediately apply all outstanding writes. SignatureSpeaking for myself only. See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. -- >I know exactly what you're talking about. > I go into "Find Album Info", and accept the data - my files appear to be [quoted text clipped - 42 lines] >>> maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your >>> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! And what happens if you edit the data before WMP writes the cached info? Bear in mind that this can take up to 48 hours with a large library.... I really don't like this way of working. When I ask a program to perform an action, I want it doing immediately. That way, I know it's being done and I can examine the results. I really don't mind a small delay and if it's going to take a long time, then show me a progress bar. That way I can have a cup of tea or whatever, but at least I know that what I requested is being done. Most programs I use work this way. I really don't like issuing a command and then just trusting the program to do the job whenever with no progress indication or acknowledgement of when the job is done. "Apply Media Information" seems to write the tags immediately but does not always update the art straight away. And what does "Update Album Info" do exactly? Cheers Baz > Yes, it's by design that it doesn't write information straightaway, since > that causes a performance spike on every write. Instead it writes on a [quoted text clipped - 50 lines] >>>> your >>>> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! Yeah, I agree with this. I much prefer to know that the action I have requested has been performed. Like you say - trusting the application to do it later just doesn't cut it for me. And yeah - what does 'Update Album Info' do? > And what happens if you edit the data before WMP writes the cached info? > Bear in mind that this can take up to 48 hours with a large library.... [quoted text clipped - 68 lines] > >>>> your > >>>> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! > And what happens if you edit the data before WMP writes the cached info? Depends upon how you edit it. WMP has a smart queue. Operation at Time 1 before Time 3, so forth. External operation at Time 2 would mean that WMP's writes at Time 1 would be dropped. I don't recall if that would invalidate the Time 3 change. > I really don't like this way of working. When I ask a program to perform > an action, I want it doing immediately. That way, I know it's being done [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > whenever with no progress indication or acknowledgement of when the job is > done. Yes, this is a complex world and there a number of desires to balance out here. Pretty smart people came up with the current compromise. I'm sure they will revisit the fundamentals of the design to ensure that the best thing happens. =) SignatureSpeaking for myself only. See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. I too have a music file deterioration problem. It may not be exactly the same one you have been discussing here, but is perhaps close enough that I might be able to learn something from other subscribers. My Windows Explorer (WEx) program -- the internal file management system, not the browser -- seems to have some kind (?) of Default setting. Individual files typically open with only a few columns (fields): Name / Size / Type / Date Created / Date Modified. This is usually enough for most files. What I need to catalog my music collection (which is much more modest than those described here!) are several more columns: Artist / Album / Year / Track / Bit Rate / Duration, in addition to the 5 listed above. I can happily spend an evening researching all the info on an album or two, entering it all in the proper columns. Then I can check the Read Only and Archive boxes, tidy up, and switch off. But the next time I open that file -- anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week later -- only the original 5 columns might remain. The new columns I so carefully laid out are all gone, and so are the effort and the pleasure I put into them. Sometimes, too, the check mark has disappeared from the Read Only box, replaced with a bilious green wash. Aarrgghh! So I ask: the experts here: is there a Default File Configuration spec hidden away in some corner of the WEx program and, if not, is there another way to specify a custom configuration for my (modest) music collection. TIA / MEA >I know exactly what you're talking about. > I go into "Find Album Info", and accept the data - my files appear to [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Baz This is utterly unrelated to the player issue being discussed here. I believe there's some Explorer custom display settings in the Options for Explorer, but that would be a subject for outside of the player newsgroups. =) SignatureSpeaking for myself only. See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. -- > I too have a music file deterioration problem. It may not be exactly the > same one you have been discussing here, but is perhaps close enough that I [quoted text clipped - 38 lines] >> >> Baz From reading this post and the subsequent replies, I think some of the problems stated might stem from the use of the "Update Album Info" feature. For the longest time, I had problems such as have been described here. I finally got fed up and turned off all features that automatically searched for, and updated, album information, and started adding all album info myself ... including album art. My current mode of operation is to rip tunes from a CD using the free version of WAVEPAD from NCH SwiftSound (www.nch.com.au/wavepad). I then use the free version of STAMP (www.nch.com.au/stamp) to edit all ID tags. For the album art, I go to the Album section of the WMP11 Library tab, and copy-n-paste album art there. I get all my album art by searching amazon.com and copying the larger album art directly from there. Another problem I have been able to diagnose, is that if you have albums that have the same name (i.e., Greatest Hits, Ultimate Collection, Anthology, Super Hits, etc.) WMP11 will assign the exact same album art to all those music files. You need to make sure that you differentiate between those album titles ... in other words, change album titles that just say "Greatest Hits" or "Ultimate Collection" to something like "Elton John's Greatest Hits" or "Billy Preston: Ultimate Collection." I'm 50 years old, and have been collecting music all my life ... even from back in the days of vinyl records. I've only been collecting, playing, and storing music on my computer for the past five years now, using WMP10 and WMP11. I have not had any problems since I have gone to the mode of operation described above. Bottomline: DO NOT use the search/update album info feature in WMP. Turn all automatic search/update features OFF. To do this in WMP11, go to TOOLS > OPTIONS > LIBRARY and remove all check marks from the boxes in the sections titled "Update library by monitoring folders" and "Automatic media information updates for files." Also, you need to be aware that music downloaded from a music service, such as Napster or Rhapsody, already have ID Tag/Album Art info pre-loaded. This could also cause problems in WMP due to a possible incompatibility. If you are cataloging tunes downloaded from these services, I'd suggest deleting and manually re-entering all ID tag info associated with those files. > I meticulously maintain my music library of around 2000 albums keeping all > tags and album art perfectly up to date. Last night I added 1 new album, [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! > > From reading this post and the subsequent replies, I think some of the > problems stated might stem from the use of the "Update Album Info" feature. [quoted text clipped - 52 lines] >> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! >> I've been pretty happy with WinAmp. I also have WMP11 installed and haven't run into the problems reported here when I use WMP11. Of course I have a much smaller music collection. Bill What specific problems have you had with the Update Album Info feature? I don't feel like anybody so far has provided me enough specific information to understand any potential issue here other than "sometimes album art shows up for other files" and "sometimes album art does not show up immediately". Is there something else I'm missing? The more concrete and exact my understanding of the perceived issue here, the easier it is to see if it's possible to do something for the future. SignatureSpeaking for myself only. See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. -- > From reading this post and the subsequent replies, I think some of the > problems stated might stem from the use of the "Update Album Info" [quoted text clipped - 70 lines] >> maybe not this year but believe me, eventually Microsoft will shaft your >> music collection. Don't say you weren't warned. Screw you Microsoft! I just had a problem that brought me here looking for answers. I am running WMP ver 11.0.5721.5145 under WinXP-SP3 fully updated with everything Michrosoft Update has offered so far. I just received a new CD I ordered online. I put it in my CD drive and allowed WMP to start playing it. At first all the correct info appeared about title, author, track titles, etc. I had the option checked for WMP to automatically update itself from the internet, so I suppose it immediately went looking for album art to use. Within 5 minutes I looked over to see that everything about the album had been replaced with incorrect info. After reading other posts and replies, I started manually correcting all info. I had to do this twice because it changed everything a second time. Two hours later I can move the CD between my two CD drives and all the corrected info is reappearing. I tried scanning the the correct album art and dragging it to the incorrect icon displayed, but only get a denial symbol displayed. Hopefully WMP will someday get an undo button for incorrect changes it makes. Meanwhile I guess I'm stuck with incorrect art. > What specific problems have you had with the Update Album Info feature? > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > The more concrete and exact my understanding of the perceived issue here, > the easier it is to see if it's possible to do something for the future. |
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