WMP Album Art - Viewing and Correcting local files
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 7th
and 8th 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?