Thin Ice

I reviewed my WMP option settings, which still say "Only add *missing* information" - not "Crap all over existing information". My theory is that album art is not properly included under the umbrella of "information" in WMP. The current state of documentation for WMP's album updates is this brief help file chapter:

When you rip tracks from audio CDs or when you copy other types of music files to your library, the Player automatically obtains related media information, if the option to update the music files by retrieving missing media information from the Internet is selected and your computer is connected to the Internet.

You can also manually add and edit media information.

Media information is stored in both the files and the Library database.

When the Player automatically retrieves media information, it may make the following changes to your files:

By default, missing media information is appended to any existing media information in your audio files. Media information is added to the files in the form of tags. For example, the Player may add the following tag to an audio file: artist name=Beethoven.

Album art is added to files and music folders in your My Music folder.

The date modified is changed when media information is edited or obtained.

In addition, if the option to rename music using media information is selected, changes to media information in your files may cause the files to be moved to another location in your library; if the option to rearrange music using media information is selected, changes to media information in your files may cause the files to be moved to another location in the folder to which the files were copied.

This really does not suffice. It's a problem compounded by the wobbly terminology that permeates the entire WMP UI: references to "files" that really mean "some files", the ever-hazy Artist/Album-Artist/Contributing-Artist/Performer/Composer/Author jumble.

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I noticed that a couple of other Beethoven symphonic albums had been updated with identical & incorrect album art: album art for a budget label recording of the 9th (id={A4AD7803-D8FD-4CDA-AC22-22B7F6CB9B40}) had been affixed to a folder with a BPO/Karajan recording of same on Deutsche Grammophon, as well as a folder with multi-CD set of Beethoven symphonies recorded by Harnoncourt.

I did an album search and found that it correctly identified the Karajan set (although AMG insisted Beethoven himself was the performer, despite being dead for over 150yrs prior to this recording) . I corrected the details and OK'd the wizard. The correct album art {EE1E86D2-D9B3-4897-8114-234AC79E2882} was downloaded as several AlbumArt files, and overwrote folder.jpg. For some reason the old {A4AD7803-D8FD-4CDA-AC22-22B7F6CB9B40} AlbumArt files have been left behind. At what point would these be cleaned up? I deleted them manually.

I had a closer look at the folder with the Harnoncourt set of symphonies. It had 4 distinct sets of AlbumArt files, 3 sets of which seem to correspond to different sets of Harnoncourt CDs in this set, plus our friend {A4AD7803-D8FD-4CDA-AC22-22B7F6CB9B40} which also got to be folder.jpg and AlbumArtSmall.jpg. I deleted the spurious items and made a copy of one of the other files to use as a new folder.jpg .... let's see how long these ones last!

Periodically I attempt to update my ripped music’s album art using various online music sources. I’ve lived with some albums so long that I can identify them from a glimpse of the cover art, much faster than I can read off the album names. Unfortunately there isn’t any way to simply grab this single item from the Windowsmedia.com servers: that’s an all-or-nothing process.

Let’s walk through one such case. I have an album of Beethoven’s 7^th and 8^th Symphonies recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Claudio Abbado on the Deutsche Grammophon label. At some point WMP has downloaded its own album art for these tracks, unfortunately it’s some for some garish-covered recording of “Beethoven with Ocean Sounds”, which apparently has the Ode to Joy and Moonlight Sonata. I don’t know what it is with Windowsmedia, but they seem to love associating albums of massage music with classical artists.

Now it seems that with WMP10, not only are AlbumArt files hidden/system files, but they are now protected operating system files. So in order to see them in your music folder, you’ll have to go to Explorer's Tools menu, then

Folder Options > View >
[ ] Hide protected operating system files,

and uncheck it. Now you’ll get to see about 6 new files in the folder: desktop.ini, thumbs.db, folder.jpg and 3 AlbumArt jpg files of different resolutions. I delete all of these and will now replace folder.jpg with a new, correct piece of Album Art. ( That’s all Windows needs to have present in a folder to override its choice of thumbnail for the folder. You can also right-click on the folder background, choose Customize Folder… and make another choice, without having to use a local image or having to rename a file.)

Interestingly, if I view Album Info for this album now it shows the correct artwork, but unfortunately all of the track data is missing (this is AMGClassical, not user-uploaded data). So if I were to follow the Album wizard through to completion, I would lose all of my local track data. There’s also no easy way for me to transfer the local data to the Album wizard – I would have to individually cut and paste 8 tracks x 3 fields = 24 items just for this one CD. Oh, and because the Album Wizard doesn’t properly handle other fields I have locally, like Release Date, Label etc, I would have to retain all that information and re-enter it manually. It would also reset any user ratings and the album acquired data etc etc. Not friendly at all, and most of it not suspected.

Now I can’t just right-click the Album art shown in the Album Wizard and save it locally. I’m going to try clicking the Buy CDs link, in the hope that it will take me to a webpage with an accessible album thumbnail…. Well it does take me to a Windowsmedia.com page, but it’s essentially a blank template page, with field labels and no data. I click F5, and get another page with is a Server Error 500. Clicking F5 just continues to toggle me between these two states. OK no joy, so I’m going to on over to Amazon. There I find the album, and copy the album art to my folder as folder.jpg. If you want to bypass the File Save As dialog, you can drag the image from the webpage into your folder and then simply rename it.

Couldn’t this have been easier?

Also noted several more posts on the microsoft.public.windowsmedia.* newsgroups in recent weeks where users see their metadata overwritten by incorrect downloaded data despite having the relevant library settings turned off.