Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Eric — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 18:54:33 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:48:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:50:00 GMT

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!

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:28:00 GMT

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?

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:02:00 GMT

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

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:40:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:26:00 GMT

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

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:23:00 GMT

If you move (as opposed to copying) the file anywhere on your local system, WMP will track it automatically and nothing is lost.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:03:00 GMT

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.

Duplicates content found on drives created by Subst

Mike — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 21:27:00 GMT

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

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 12:46:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 15:18:00 GMT

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!

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:55:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:36:00 GMT

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

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:55:00 GMT

Probably overwritten by WMP using information from online database.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:43:00 GMT

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

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:19:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:09:00 GMT

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.

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 11:00:00 GMT

paypal paymetn for anyone who can send a solution to thjese problems to thamc@blueyonder.co.uk ..i am desparate!

re: Windows Media Player Library Bugs and Irritations

Mike — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 16:40:00 GMT

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.