Re: WMP10 & updating album info

From: Mike Williams [MVP] (mikew_at_Nospam.mvps.org)
Date: 02/08/05 

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 19:33:08 +1100
To: Cory Hug <drwho54@mchsi.nospam.com>

Cory Hug wrote:
> I'm new the whole ripping CD's and just started doing this. I've
> tried out several digital music managers (WMP, iTunes, MusicMatch,
> etc.) and like WMP pretty well and have decided to use it. I'm using
> WMP 10 (current release) on Win XP SP2.
>
> I've ripped about 350 CD's so far and most of them have been just
> fine. The album info and art pulls just fine for almost all of them.
> On occasion I've had to edit the track names or reorder the track
> names, but that's to be expected.
>
> One thing that is REALLY annoying, I have the option for WMP to
> automatically update album info turned off, because it has screwed up
> some albums by redownload incorrect info for some I had to correct
> initially. BUT, with that option turned, it also won't let me right
> click on an album and do Find Album Info manually. That's just plain
> stupid. I ought to still be able to update info manually even if I
> have the option for WMP to update automatically turned off.

"Ought" and "can" are miles apart for a lot of library functions. There
ought to be undo and logging, but they're not available.

> But what I've got now is a CD that's a later release of 2 original
> albums. Specifically, ZZ Top's Six Pack Disc 1 (haven't even gotten
> to the other two discs until I figure this one out. This disc has the
> contents of two other original albums combined onto a single CD.
> After ripping, I want to split the tracks out and edit the tag info to
> have them reflect the original albums.
>
> I rip the combined CD using WMP 10. Then I close WMP10 and go to file
> explorer. I manually create the two separate directories for each of
> the original CD's and copy the appropriate tracks into each, and
> delete the original directory of the combined CD. In file explorer, I
> select all the tracks in the directory for each separate CD,
> right-click on them and go into properties and change the Album name
> from the newer combined CD to the older original CDs. My intention
> then is to use WMP to re-update the rest of the album info for those
> tracks to fill in the remainder of the info (release date of the
> original CD, label, etc., and album art). I start WMP 10 back up and
> go to File/Add to Library/By Searching Computer and specify my two new
> directories. It adds the two original albums just like I want. BUT,
> to update album info, even manually, I have to turn on the automatic
> update. One of two things happens.
>
> If WMP beats me to it, it re-downloads the initial combined CD info
> and automatically combines all the tracks back into the combined CD
> with that album's info. How does WMP even know at that point that
> these tracks originally came from that combined CD?

> If I'm quick enough and beat WMP to the punch, I can select one of my
> newly created separate albums and do Find Album Info and find the old
> original album info. But when I click "Finish" for it to update the
> album info, it updates BOTH albums with the same info!!!!
>
> What's going on here? Why won't WMP 10 treat these as separate albums
> after I split them up? I've even tried using a 3rd party tag editor
> to completely change the tags and then reimport the tracks back into
> WMP and the same crap happens.
>
> One key here is that this is all by the same artist (ZZ Top) so the
> same artist info is in both Album Artist and Contributing Artist on
> all tracks.

If your Album Artist and Album Title are the same, then WMP uses that to
define the unique album. If you want to separate tracks, then you'll
have to distinguish either or both of those fields. Calling one Album
Disk 1 and the other Album Disk 2 is the usual method for dual-CD sets.

However once WMP has an opportunity to download information from the
net, it can and will do whatever it likes. So your only safe bet is a
full backup.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Windows Media Player 10 Album info
    ... Not trying to arguing the crap that is Album Info in WMP, ... > just think Microsoft has become so engrossed in it's "rights management" ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player)
  • Re: Finding AAC (.m4a) files in Windows Media Center
    ... They just aren't being seen by WMP or WMC. ... Album Artist is not the same thing as Artist. ... different artists, the most common example being collection CDs (e.g. "Now ... between iTunes and Windows Media Player. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Fixed!
    ... not rip that the "Find Album Info" no longer updates the Tag information. ... Anyway, as I was saying, I need to know if you used WMP or some other ... song and find album info. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia)
  • RE: Fixed!
    ... not rip that the "Find Album Info" no longer updates the Tag information. ... Anyway, as I was saying, I need to know if you used WMP or some other ... song and find album info. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia)
  • Re: How to Flush WMP10 Databases?
    ... See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info. ... unknown album. ... again and sometimes it changes all the artists' names to "Various ... individual tracks into different folders ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia)