Windoze Media Plunker

[VBAHole22]

Has anyone got a clue how the WMP find album info thing works. I can fetch album info on some tracks but not others. If I copy a cd to my hard drive that has a bunch of mixed tracks that I burned it tries to fetch album info for the first one and assign all of the track names from that album to my mixed tracks. Seems like it treats albums different than plain old tracks. Also what is up with the 'track 1 of 5' thing in the upper right corner. I only want to find the name of the track that is playing yet it comes up with a list of 5? And does the album info get incorporated into the file itself, so that it comes up in win explorer? And if so, how long does that take? :ph34r:

[Scarthy © ® ™]

Hi VBAHole22,

Although it is a good tool to use, it can sometimes mess up. (wrong album found etc). I am using WMP 9.00.00.2980, you didn't say what your version is?

If you create an album of your own, then you can manually edit the tracks in media player. Choose "Find Album Info" and click the "edit" button. You can then rename tracks from here. Trial and error really - give it a go!

Also what is up with the 'track 1 of 5' thing in the upper right corner

If you mean the drop down menu with 4 star/ 5 star ratings etc, then this is a way of playing only certain tracks that you like/ dislike (a filter if you like). You can affix a star rating to all your music from 1 to 5 (just goto media library and select an album, then click a star 1 to 5 for each track on the album in the right hand pane. (all ripped music is automatically given 3 stars, each time you play it it goes up 1. I select all my favourite music with 5 stars and all the rest with 1. I could then select "Favourites - 4 and 5 stars" from the top right drop down menu and it will only play those tracks I like. If I then selected shuffle it would mix them up to give a varied selection.

And does the album info get incorporated into the file itself, so that it comes up in win explorer?

Once you click on "Finish", when getting album details, the files in media library are updated automatically. The album art (if any) is also stored. I have my WMP set up to only add missing info...(see pic). There are several settings you can choose from in options...

Hope this helps...

;)

[VBAHole22]

I am using 9 something as well.

Let me clarify what i meant on my first point with an example. Say you are a big 'Fat Boys' fan. You download (legally) a bunch of Fat Boys mp3's (human beatbox, in jail, can you feel it, etc.) and then you burn a disc with all of them. Or someone just hands you this disc. So you slap it in and have at it. Well wmp sees this as an album and treats it differently than a bunch of tracks. When you go to find album info and you select the album that your first track is on say. wmp goes ahead and fills in all of the info for the tracks 'that would be on that album' if you had the purchased album. But you don't, you have a hodgepodge of tracks. so wmp overwrites these with info from the real album. I understand what you mean about being able to edit the track list. but if i am editing the track list how is that 'find album info'? It isn't. It's fill in all the info on your own. This all wouldn't be so bad if you could just take each 'track' and find info on it, like you would a normal downloaded mp3. but you can't, as far as i can tell

Let me clarify what I meant on my second point with an example. Let's say you download an mp3 (legally, of course) and you start to play it in WMP. You then click on the Find Album Info link that is above the album art that is probably missing. The screen goes white then you get the searching icon and then voila! you are presented with WMP's best guess at your tracks identity. Now on this screen, at times, if you look in the upper right hand corner you will see something that says 'Track 1 of 5' and arrows to go to the next and previous. I have found that usually when wmp guesses wrong you can scroll through this 'track x of x' list and the wmp guesses change and there is a chance that the right one will come up. If the right one does come up and you click the album art you do not go right back to the normal wmp screen, instead you have to click on the 'x' by the 'track of'. I don't understand what is going on with this?

On my last point I was wondering if windows explorer used that info as opposed to wmp.

I'm not trying to come off as angry, please don't get that idea. I appreciate your help.

[Scarthy © ® ™]

Find album details does just that, finds the information about a certain album. (artist/art/writers etc etc)

If you create an album with all the tracks off the original (got seperately through Kazaa for example) you can then update the info for the album with "Find album info". It may have to be done track by track in some cases but as a rule if you find one of the tracks you can update them all. (else search for the artist/ album name).

If you create an album with different tracks from the same/ different artists, the you have to update all the tracks individually. This is because your compilation isn't an album as such, but the tracks are probobally taken off certain albums that do exist.

Example (see pic)...I have a folder in WMP called "unknown". It is where I added (f3 and locate folder) some mp3's from a file in "My Music" called "MP3's". Media Player added it to the media library in a file called "unknown" (see pic top left). In the top right pane you can see a list of all the tracks in the file, below is the details of the first track that WMP found when I asked it to "Find Album Info". WMP then gave me a list of examples to choose from in the bottom right pane. ( if the actual track isn't there in the list, I can scroll to the bottom of the list and select either "Refine Search" or "Edit Track Information". Refine search speaks for itself, and edit track information allows you to manually alter the information for the track. ("save and next" when done).

When I have done the track, I click the next arrow (top right pane) and move onto track 2. It takes a while, but worth it really. Alternatively you can alter the album details by right clicking a music file (in My Music) and selecting Properties > Summary > (Advanced Tab). This is tedious though and irritating.(copy and pasting alot with album name etc).

Point 2...It might say track 1 of 5 because there are 5 tracks in the album (folder) you have asked it to search for. You have to alter them individually.

Hope this helps alittle. It is complicated trying to get yourself across in a thread. No offence taken ;)