Stomping on the cracks...
Esta muy bien maestro
I have just sent my Notebook on a holiday to NZ (it lives in the UK) and all the info is back. Thank you, this the best bit of advice I have seen in a long time.
-Prevents editing of some tags thrugh the advance tag editer After the apply and OK options are selected, the changes are not saved. -Does not allow to deleted an item from a database. That happens sometimes when the item (a track or a whole albom) is deleted thrugh the explorer, and sometimes when I try to delete it in the WMP. I could not detect any consistent behavor depending on the options in the option->library forlder
Sorry to be annoying, but how do i change the locale setting? i feel like i've looked everywhere.
Control Panel > Regional and Language Settings. It's the very first parameter. You can also look up Locale in Windows XP's help off the Start Menu.
Good one, mate, it worked. I spent hours looking for a solution. Thanks!
Deleting files from the playlist is often buggy, sometimes the track is not removed, and carries on playing even though it has been deleted. Still have to wait for option box to decide whether to delete from computer or just library - why can't we have direct menu options for this? Can no longer access album information from windowsmedia.com, instead directed to msn music, which always returns 'various artist' based information - quite sick of looking at this same page. Often when returning to the library page the music node is selected rather than the last viewed node. WMP10 seems to me to have lost more than its gained.
Thanks for that, been trying to solve this for ages.......
Thank You from Canada! I had tried changing my country location (with no results) to get rid of the new lousy Napster album information. Now with my Input Locale setting set to English(Belize) I once again get the familiar album data from windowsmedia.com!
thanx alot, I switched the input locale (to Luxembourgh, which is quite the same as the german one) and got the wonderful AMG info back. The dude who decided to force people to see the darn useless shops (wanna buy same music one more time? I don't) deserves his balls ripped off.
When playing mp3's how in the world do you get the playlist to also show Artist? I only see Title info when I have the right side of the window showing the playlist and the left side showing the Album Art. Is there a way to control what is shown in the Playlist box? sk
These questions are best addressed to a newsgroup like microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player - or even search the Google archives there as this has been asked before. About the best you can do to show more details in the Now Playing Pane, is to drag the central window divider as far to the left as you can. This allows WMP to show the Title, Contributing Artist and Time fields.
What I would like to know is how you can manually link album art to the album. What if you original music and original art? Windowsmediaservices is not going to find it in the first place. I have several tracks that just show the default WMP art. I have the album art and have placed it in the folder named Folder.jpg. Well the folder art in XP comes up just fine, but in WMP10 the Album art for the Media Information is still the default WMP10 art. And on another issue I want my tracks to work in Energy Bliss, which also shows the album art in its visualization. Any one know just where these settings are kept so they can be manually edited or changed?
Questions are best directed to the microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player newsgroup You can't manually link art to an album. You can link it to individual tracks. You can use the Advanced Tag Editor to add the art directly to the media file. Selecting all tracks in an album before invoking the ATE allows you to bulk-update tracks. This appears to override any external image files. You will probably find that WMP won't update its display of the file after album-art changes until you restart it or force it to reload the files. This is true even after using the WMP album lookup features.
Yes I have browsed that newsgroup. There is not much on what I was looking for mainly break/fix issues or burn/rip issues. Be nice to know how the AlbumArt_Large.jpg and AlbumArt_Small.jpg are created and how they get associated to a track in WMP. Embedding the art in the tag may solve some issues but I want the album art to show in Energy Bliss also and embedding it in the tag doesnt work. You need the _Large and _Small.jpg files. Just putting them in the folder doesnt work either. They need to be associated to work. Grrrr! Would be nice to know what they plan to do about fixing or updating album art issues in the next revision of WMP.
My point was to *ask* questions there so more people can read the issues. There have been a good few album art posts on the windowsmedia newsgroups. AlbumArt_Large and Small are an artefact of earlier versions of WMP. Now they incorporate a unique ID in the file name, such as I talk about in the follow-up posts to this one. That ID is for the Widnowsmedia database only, so creating your own won't do anyone much good. The library issues have gotten worse rather than better in this version of WMP10 so it's anybody's guess what mischief will be shipped next time. In Windows Longhorn, there is a good chance the library will be built into the Windows shell, which could mean an almighty ****-up for all concerned. over and out.
To be honest this is the best resource I have found so far. And I got the link to here from the NG. And I posted a guide of sorts on what I have encountered in my dealings with WMP10 and how it handles album art for the lurkers out there. Like you said earlier...Couldn't they have made this easier? As for the Windowsmedia database, there is no money to be made there for MS so why invest resources in what has become a sore spot, and generates Zero revenue?
According to Zach's FAQ (http://nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html): "The WMP10 Energy Bliss visualization shows Album Art (http://www.zachd.com/pss/pss.html#albumart) only if the art is in a separate file and only if it is assigned the name "Folder.jpg" or "AlbumArtSmall.jpg". It will also display album art assigned filename "AlbumArt_WMID_Large.jpg" or "AlbumArt_WMID_Small.jpg", but since the average user doesn't understand how to get the WMID, we'll ignore that. You'll get WMID Album Art for the file if you use "Find Album Info" on the track within the library." >As for the Windowsmedia database, there is no money to be made there for MS so why invest resources in what has become a sore spot, and generates Zero revenue? It could probably generate income if handled properly, or they could choose to have an open protocol that allows attachment to other databases like CDDB. The real issue for Microsoft is investing in the Windows platform to keep it relevant to consumers and partners. As other platform options nibble into the food-chain it gets easier for users to say "I really don't need Windows". So, Windowsmedia: 1) provides Windows components and services to reinforce the core revenues.; and 2) provides an entry point to the living-rooms of the world via personal media devices, Windows Media Center Edition boxes etc to generate new revenue streams. As a "line of pleasure" (you can quote me) service, WM database needs to keep going at least until it can find another way to demo the benefits of Windows in this space. If your Windows machine is going to be the intelligent nexus of a bunch of devices passing around poorly tagged media files, then it needs to keep on top of the data resource. That's not something that Microsoft has shown itself to be good at historically, despite increasing demands *within* the company for well-managed sources of real-world data (the GEO unit being an exception). No group wants to fund a cost-centre like that, although many of them seem to happy to carry on in crisis mode spending $$$ making the same mistakes again and again.
Don't know if anyone has noticed, but sometimes (almost everytime) I sort a view of the library (e.g. a search or auto playlist), some of the lines disappear from view or appear to be covered in white. I have to manually "select" them to read those lines, and it's very annoying. The sort command is still performed ok. Mysteriously the white goes away and everything is normal if I add or remove a column from the view. Anyone else who has this problem?
This has been asked and answered on the above mentioned newsgroup. Go to the Library Options button (next to Quick Search box) and disable "Group by Sorted Field".
Hi, When I installed WMP 10 on my computer I never got nineMSN music. I only get MSN music... I live in Australia and my computer is in an office in sydney. I don't have administrator privelages to my computer and our IT staff are unsure of how to give us nineMSN music instead of MSN (they don't fully support it yet). Do you know how to fix this problem? Regrads, Sam.
It's ok... i worked it out... it was in my regional setting. (I had English(US) instead of English(australia)).
How can i have wmp10 not to collapse the library sub-trees (especially the album for audio and atrist for video) when wmp is restarted?
Many thanks... Finally got rid of that stupid useless shopping rubbish.
Does anyone know why WMP10 won't allow you to "Find Album Info" for certain albums?? And it's not some totally unheard of album. It's Outkast - Aquemini, but when I right-click on any of the titles it doesn't allow me to look up album info. Solutions??
The online database has had this problem throughout its history. It seems to have gotten worse lately, and I suspect that's due to some merging of multiple data sources (including some from Japan and Korea) and many albums have been "lost" or English-language data has been replaced with Japanese or Korean-language data. I've also tracked a few albums that I've uploaded over the last year. None of them have made it through to the "final" stage of being available for re-download. Either there's no trce, or the album data is missing all the track information (which I had uploaded).
I think I may have determind the cause of my problem, can someone confirm? I believe that WMP can only "Find Album Info" if there is enough remaining disk space in the Temporary Internet Files folder. For instance, I increased it from 1192 MB to 1292 MB, and that seemed to do the trick for a little while. But I've since added more albums to my collection and am again trying to find the album info for those new albums. I just placed an Eminem album into WMP and the first 19 tracks allow me to look up the album info. Track #20, however, does not allow me that option. I wonder if that 19th track put me right up against the 1292 MB mark. If this is the case, what is a suggested amount of disk space to allocate for the Temp. Internet Files folder?? Anyone??
Interesting theory. It may be a contributing factor, although my IE cache usage is small (as I use Firefox which has a separate cache). When the album lookup fails for me, it'll be something like track 2 and track 8, but all the others work.
Shoo - I thought I was losing my mind. Thanks for the helpful explanation.
After being converted to iTunes, I still can't figure out why Microsoft won't let me sort my music by GENRE-ARTIST-ALBUM. If you're like me, you have a collection of at least 25,000 tracks. That can make it rather difficult to choose something when searching for music to listen to. I find that the GENRE item in the Media Library is useless -- "wow, so I click on Rock and WMP displays 8,000 songs all in one window... :/" -- Now, if I could click on GENRE and then have another subitem under it called ARTIST I would be happy. And imagine if they even added another sub-category that further separated my tracks... let's say, uh, ALBUM... Anyway, what I just typed probably won't make sense to anybody but myself... Just believe me, it made sense in my head!
The type of view you asked for has been suggested for a long time, but the overall library design seems to be very entrenched as the only beta feedback taken seems to have been to fix some minor string bugs. The WMP library has so many left-over bugs from v9, I doubt that much attention has been paid to making improvements for the iPod generation. Apart from adding the Composer tree and Album Artist trees (but ignoring a bunch of related items) everything in v10 has been a step down from v9.
paypal paymetn for anyone who can send a solution to thjese problems to thamc@blueyonder.co.uk ..i am desparate!
Mike Williams explains the mysteries of Windows Media Player Artist fields: WMP gives you three primary fields to work with for musical artists: Album Artist, Contributing Artist, and Composer. While functionally different, successive versions of WMP have hopelessly complicated how these are presented to the user. In v10, the Library has a tree associated with each, whereas v9 only exposed a [Contributing] Artist tree. I had figured out some of this stuff during the writing of Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition (when WMP10 was still in beta), but this post taught me several really interesting things I didn't know. If you use WMP and you have a large media library, this is a must-read. I discovered Mike's blog thanks to Matt's wiki. Isn't the Web a wonderful thing?...
microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player "The WMP10 Energy Bliss visualization shows Album Art only if the art is in a separate file and only if it is assigned the name "Folder.jpg" or "AlbumArtSmall.jpg". This is not true. Folder.jpg does not work. :(
True. Noted as such in my Dec 14 post: http://msmvps.com/thinice/archive/2004/12/14/23824.aspx
I just came into an iPod. Can I use WMP to transfer songs to my iPod if it's windows formatted; if not, is it better to sell my iPod and get a different mp3 player that does? My biggest concern with this is that I have to download iTunes and move all of my mp3s into iTunes and in turn lose all of the album info that I was able to gather through WMP.
If you search through the newsgroup archives you'll find answers to these sorts of questions. iPod/iTunes does not support WMA and Apple won't let anyone else use their file format, so you can make your own decisions based on that. There is an iPod plugin for WMP at www.wmplugins.com - again all this info is on the newsgroups.
anyone know why in wmp 10 after you have created a new genre such as wcs (west coast swing) it will after months revert to the oringinal genre such as blues or rock?? It leaves some songs with the new genre, but randomly changes back others.....help!! thanx
Probably overwritten by WMP using information from online database.
And Don't Forget the folk classic, "On Christmas, I Got Nothing" from Chuck Brodsky. My family never roasted chestnuts - on an open fire Never went around the neighborhood - singing carols with a choir Never went to Midnight Mass & sat on cold hard pews My family - we had different views I never had to be good - just for goodness sake On Christmas Eve I didn't try to keep myself awake Listening for sleigh bells - or looking for a mouse Santa always skipped over our house Jimmy got a train set with a shiny new caboose Billy, an erector set, with nuts & bolts & screws Tammy got a kit for making cheese fondues But on Christmas I got nothing - 'cause we were Jews We never put up trimmings 'cause we never had a tree I wouldn't know a mistletoe from a torpedo's knee I never sat on Santa's lap - but hey, if Jesus was a Jew... Wouldn't that make Santa be one too? I used to hate when it was cold enough for Christmas to be white Never hung a wreath of holly - or strung the yard with lights Those other houses looked so pretty - but the electricity they must've used! We lit candles - 'cause we were Jews Annie got a bright red pair of kangaroo shoes Kathy got some soaps & an assortment of shampoos Even Buffy's dingo got some brand new rawhide chews But on Christmas I got nothing - 'cause we were Jews Sometimes we ate chicken - and sometimes we ate lamb Sometimes we ate turkey - but we never had a ham I never did like eggnog - or those wine & cider brews We drank Mogen David - 'cause we were Jews Jenny got a bike she had to wait 'till Spring to use Tommy from across the street - he got his front tooth Joshua got a horn so he could learn to play the blues But I already had some...
You bloody legend. THis was driving me nuts. looks like we finally have a use for nz in this world
Actually, I wrote the auto-playlists in question as a part of one of the free Winter Fun Packs. Apologies if they had too many keywords in them- I was trying to be inclusive. :)
My point was really not about the numbers of keywords, but that you can't rely on single keywords (& substrings are worse!) like that to generate a themed playlist. I've generated search keywords for a couple of Microsoft products ( Picture It! image search, and Office Clip Art Gallery) so I've seen where you can get into trouble. There is (or was ) a cross-product review committee to help with such issues at Microsoft, especially as similar issues have driven expensive product recalls in the past. False positives would be OK if I could easily remove them from the playlist, but that isn't trivial for an end-user. You basically have to copy true positive to a static playlist to make that work.
I have written a small utility (Album/Cover Art Fixer) that will aid you in fixing album art problems. Download it from http://www.avsoft.nl/artfixer
Updated here http://msmvps.com/thinice/archive/2004/11/20/19812.aspx
Checked again today. Still not there. Uploaded for what may be 4th or 5th attempt now over the last year.
I noticed that Artist - > Album nodes show ALL SONGS for any album with that name So, if you have 2 artists that have say an album called Greatest Hits, you will go to Artist1 -> Greatest Hits and will see all the songs from Artist1 AND Artist2.. even though you are directly under the Artist1 node!! I like wmp for it's organization, but this oversight is pretty rediculous
You need to make sure that the Album Artist field is filled in so that WMP can tell the difference between the two albums. Please read my article on Artist fields.
Didn't notice this posted. Sorting by album doesn't neccesarily sort secondarily by track #. For example, I've got some albums that, when sorted by the album column, will be in track order as well, and other that will have totally randomized tracks. I, for one, like to have my albums sorted correctly. Not just by the album name, but then also by their track#s. I can't figure out why WMP10 would do this, as all my files have the same ID3 version, and all follow the same organization scheme. I also wish WMP would remember what my last screen was. By all means, start me up where I left off. Meaning, if I was listening to Akasha - Jazz Garage, in the All Music/Genre/Acid Jazz views with the Columns sorted by Album and Track....then, damnit, start right there again!
I don't have strong negative feelings about this one, personally. And the more people who have that tool running, the safer we will all be (though I guess good AV software would also be a good idea for that!)....
I'd prefer to see a link to a vendor-neutral catalog.
Does this 'hack' still work as of Mar. 7, 2005? I just get a white page with: "No Available Online Stores There are no available online stores at the moment. Please check again later." I like 'shiny, new things'- like WMP 10, but I _really_ miss the AMG Info Center View with the album/artist info. Thanks in advance!
BTW, I have WMP v10.00.00.3646 and I live in the US VS Australia (?)... so I'm not sure if the artist/album info requests are getting routed elsewhere (if at all)
i had a problem where it would search for new files upon request, but not add them. or it would add like 20 of them when i have 10,000. there was no way to fix it short of deleting the entire library, but there is no option for deleting the entire library. i had to keep messing with it until it decided the library was corrupt and it deleted it itself. i had no idea where the library file was or how to delete it and couldn't find the info online.
You'll get that message if you click on the online stores button, but if you use "View Album Info" you should see album reviews etc.
If you create a drive by using subst, WMP Library will duplicate media found even though its physically on the same local HD. For example, open a command prompt and create a drive J: using this: subst J: c:\ media player will scan "J" and start adding entries like this: J:\documents and settings\...... even though the real files are on C:\documents and settings\ and were already picked up by the WMP library there is an api call that can determine if a file/path is on a subst drive. use it. --mike
WMP cannot change the location (i.e. sourceURL) of its items. Instead it removes the item and adds it back again. This results in losing ratings and other media tags that are not (yet) residing in the file itself. Changing the location without removing them would be much more efficient.
If you move (as opposed to copying) the file anywhere on your local system, WMP will track it automatically and nothing is lost.
Ryan: the library database location is documented on Zach's WMP Mini-FAQ page, and that link has been posted *many many* times on the Windowsmedia newsgroups
I don't seem to have a "View Album Info" option but I do have a "Find Album Info" option that allows me to search metaservices.windowsmedia.com's DB for artist, title, album art metadata... but that works on both locales anyway. I did notice though if you click on the "Album Art" picture in the bottom right hand corner of the "Now Playing" page (You can enable this by checking "Show Media Information" under the "View", "Now Playing Options" menu), you get different results depending on if you have the locale (or "Standards and Formats") option set to "English (United States)" or "English (New Zealand)". - With "Standards and Formats" set to "English (New Zealand)" (it doesn't let you select a provider) you only get 2 AMG pages from the original WMP 9 "Info Center View" ("Album Information" and "Artist Profile"). - With "Standards and Formats" set to "English (United States)" (assuming that is you have MSN Music as the provider) you actually get both of the above and more. The format is slightly different but the reviews are still from AMG (except not as obviously noted) and the (AMG) bio just requires a few extra clicks to find. In addition you now have a "User Reviews" section, a "Listeners Also Liked" section and a way to listen to samples of some other tracks from that album (or artist). Agreeably, this is all just a way to get you to buy more music online, but as long as it stays non-obtrusive and provides extra value, I have nothing against it. Perhaps this is getting closer to the i-Tunes model. IMO, the new challenge for music stores is to make online music purchasing so much more easier, portable, and seamless, that it's easier than the alternative: downloading it. It's still not the "Info Center View" though, which is what I liked the most about WMP 9. I liked getting medium 'chunks' of artist + album info in the visualization area while still having the playlist accessible and not having it become a mini web browser. :) Thanks! I think I will need to re-evaluate which player I will use now.
Here's how I permenantly removed the MSN Music UK equivalent: I deleted the following key from the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Services\MSN_Music_UK FYI it contained the following values: "FriendlyName"="MSN Music UK" "Task1ButtonText"="MSN Music UK" "Task1ButtonTip"="Click here to enter MSN Music, the UK's top music download site" "Task2ButtonText"="Radio" "Task2ButtonTip"="MSN Radio" "Task3ButtonText"="" "Task3ButtonTip"="" "ImageLargeUrl"="http://img.od2.com/ServiceInfo/icons/MSN/wmp10serviceLarge.png" "ImageSmallUrl"="" "ImageMenuUrl"="http://img.od2.com/ServiceInfo/icons/MSN/wmp10service.png" "ColorPlayer"="#B4CCEB" "ColorPlayerText"="#FFFFFF" "Type"=dword:00000001 ----------------- Q-Block
It's easy to uninstall MSN Music from Add/Remove Programs, but I don't imagine deleting these registry keys is going to give you access to Windowsmedia album reviews ... or am I mistaken? You are also going to be left with all their music stores program files on your hard drive.
> It's easy to uninstall MSN Music from Add/Remove Programs It was never present on my Add/Remove Programs list otherwise I wouldn't of been so brutal. > but I don't imagine deleting these registry keys is going to give you access to Windowsmedia album reviews I never posted regarding album reviews; many forums point to this page regarding the removal of MSN Music - this is a one stop fix to cover that issue. I admit then that this posting is taking a liberty and is off topic. > ... or am I mistaken? You are probably right but then I wouldn't know - I'm not interested in that functionality. > You are also going to be left with all their music stores program files on your hard drive. An acceptable hazard as the files will become dormant, the loss of space I expect will be mediocre to the average user. One thing I did forget to mention, using this method requires the denial of access of WiMP to the Domain name go.microsoft.com else MSN Music reinstate itself. *Another bodged 'fix'* :)
I have many folders of mp3s. Each mp3 has a lovely name, usually the albums name, disc number track number and song name. When i select a folder and tell windows to add all files to a play list it usually does in a nice way. Ie it keeps my mp3 names in its list of songs. But for some unknown reason on some folders it insists on renaming all the mp3s. So you end up with "track 1", "track2". In a list of 1500 songs this is kind of freaken annoying. Is there any way to tell win play not to rename my songs at random.
Yes and No. Disabling the rename and rearrange options in the Options dialog should do this. However v9 and v10 of WMP tend to ignore these settings and rename, rearrange or remove your files on a whim. My first WMP blog entry covers some of my experiences with this. See http://msmvps.com/thinice/archive/2004/10/07/15231.aspx. To date, MS has shown no interest in investigating this problem. PS as always, please post questions to one of the Windowsmedia newsgroups e.g. microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player so it can be discussed. Better still: check those newsgroups archives for prior discussion or solution of your problems. See http://groups.google.com.au/groups?group=microsoft.public.windowsmedia
^_^,Pretty Good!
But in a way this might be good news too: it means that the stores and the AMG album info are not intertwined. It's a matter of configuration at windowsmedia.com, it's not in the Mediaplayer code. Let's ask windowsmedia.com to change the configuration of the other Input Locale's too!
^_~,pretty good!
Tears of pain and frustration poured down my face as I read that there will be no updates to WMP until Longhorn. This is insane. As and avid supporter of WMP and MCE, it is hard to believe that the issues with large databases will go unaddressed until the end of 2006. It sounds like there are some technical limitations that Longhorn will supposedly address and resolve but there must be a short term fix. I am embarrassed to show people the MY MUSIC section in MCE. It can take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes to pull up a simple song. (Sound Familiar?) More and more this is pushing me to ditch the MCE and look for another platform that will support its user base. While I applaud the MCE group for wanting to build a community around its platform, the lack of support and frankly the usability issues must be addressed. The whole purpose of a community is to listen to their comments and feedback and not give them the cookie cutter response of “We will address those issues in the next release of our software” This is bad news for M$ and the MCE community.
Maybe this is an OT, but it seems to me incredible that in WMP users can't choose the PATH where files are moved-to when automatic rearranging of library is "turned on". WMP stores by default in "..\<album artist>\<album>\" directory, but many mp3 files managed by other player only have <artist> tag instead of <album artist> I can't find a solution to this issue, even looking inside text-based configuration files of WMP. Any suggestion?
Why Microsoft WMP team doesn't plan to introduce a node grouping entries by <artist> (or <author> that is the same tag)? All others player and library software store artist information in this tag! You have to copy <artist> tag to <album artist> or <composer> to browse your files with WMP. Incredible!
And also ... Why Microsoft WMP team doesn't plan to introduce a node grouping entries by <artist> (or <author> that is the same tag)? All others player and library software store artist information in this tag! You have to copy <artist> tag to <album artist> or <composer> to browse your files with WMP. Incredible!
Dear Ink - as i have written many times above: POST QUESTIONS TO THE WINDOWSMEDIA NEWSGROUPS!! If you can't follow that then any commentary I make will be pointless. Most of your questions are already answered in articles and posts on this site anyway. OT posts will be deleted.
^_~,pretty good!csharpsseeoo
You probably have a bad song entry in your WMP database. Check this link out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/community/newsgroups/WindowsMedia/default.mspx?query=C00D32CA&lang=en&cr=US&guid=&sloc=en-us&dg=microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player&p=1&mid=f6736a2a-a1ae-46fc-9fb3-b5d4dcb21dee&tid=f8c1766b-6af6-4560-ac2d-c327cdbb3f5a
I hope they test it in conjunction with Windows Media Connect too. I have noticed inconsistencies between my WMP10 library and the search performed by my Roku Soundbridge M2000.
There is another way of getting the original info back (posted by someone here i think, sorry i don't know who). Close WMP. Block WMP access to go.microsoft.com in your firewall. Delete the registry subkeys at HKCU>Software>Microsoft>MediaPlayer>Services (IF YOU DON'T KNOW WOT I'M TALKING ABOUT DON'T DO THIS!). Hey presto!
Allchin says no WMP fixes until Longhornooeess
Late last year, I asked and answered two 'neutral' questions: What is a neutral culture? What is a neutral...
sux
I'm confused by Ink's comment. The major nodes in WMP10 are Album Artist, Artist, Album, and so forth. So that should already exist unless I'm missing something.
<i>linking of error IDs to online resources</> How so? I work pretty closely with that team. Is there anything specific here? Generally this is definitely improving over time, but it's improving from such a bad "old-fashioned" state that there's still a long way to go to make everyone happy and cover the bases in full.
Guys, I used to be a WMP devotee because everyone says wma is a superior format than mp3. Well, that gave me a headache when I was looking for a player that plays wma also. Then there is the chaging wma codec standard, makes wonder if my early adotiopn (hence the earlier format) was going to become obsolete. Then this was the biggest enlightment... I can't even tell any difference!!! I mean, for the average listener, what difference is there if mp3 is a "looser formate" as many articles writes? Still, I held on to wma for sometime because of its more robust tag feature... that is until the incarnation of ID3 v2.4. I've recently migrated all my backup files from wma to mp3 with ID3 2.1, 2.3, and 2.4. This time, I took the time to do it right, even with scanning my own art covers. ID3 2.4 even surpasses wma tag. Now I can enter all the musicians on my classical collection and the instruments each musician plays! It won't be before long that softwares and machines recognizing v2.4 becomes popular. What does this have to do with WMP and album art? Well, simply put, you no longer have to deal with another thing that Microsoft is trying to do to befuddle users into conforming to its methodology and, as demonstrated above, often annoyance. Of course, you should have a good MP3 ripper; but after that, you will be on your way to build a good, clean, library!
I can comment on the second one in the list: "*Doesn’t reliably split semicolon-delimited artist or composer string fields into separate tokens" I actually stumbled across the real cause of this pretty much accidentally. It will split the fields correctly if you list the tokens alphabetically. So for example: "Dr.Dre;Snoop Dogg" will get split correctly, but "Snoop Dogg;Dr. Dre" will not.
I can't see how this relates at all.