Re: WMP 11 'Recently Added' function...
- From: .mit <.mit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 04:46:02 -0700
I can reproduce this problem perfectly. It's to do with the UK date format
not being recognised correctly by WMP 11.
Last month on 5 April my Recently Added list vanished. I tried everything
including system restore and even 'upgrading' my existing Vista to try and
reinstall WMP. No good. Then it suddenly started working again, but it
coincided with me creating a new user account so I thought that's what fixed
it.
Turns out that actually it was just a coincidence. I got the same problem
again on 6 May. This time creating a new user account did nothing.
After some experimentation I found that if I set the date back to 5 May I
suddenly get my Recently Added list back. It looks like whenever the month
and date are equal, WMP somehow gets confused and no longer shows recently
added music, even if music has been added more recently.
I can reproduce this every time. If the date is set to today, no list. If
it's set to 5 May, hey presto it's back again.
I have applied a workaround to this by changing the short date format on my
computer so that it shows month first. It's ok for me to do that because I
use WMP far more than I use things like Word.
As mentioned previously in this thread, it would be nice if there was a way
to provide this kind of feedback to the WMP team. Suddenly those apple
advertisements on tv are starting to make a lot of sense.
"Dale" wrote:
While I agree with Zach that you should answer his questions to help them.
collect data on this bug - and it can only be a bug. It isn't an intended
behavior and it isn't user error. In fact, it is my opinion that there is
hardly ever such a thing as user error. If you name your Abba album Tom
Petty in ATE, that's user error. If you do not name your Abba album Tom
Petty but you open WMP and WMP reports the name of your Abba album as Tom
Petty, that's a bug - even if there's a set of specific steps that you took,
short of typing Tom Petty in the Album Name box, triggered the bug.
There are several Microsoft product teams that do maintain websites where
you can search known bug reports, view the status of those bug reports and,
if you are accepted into the site, add new bug reports. I participate in
several of them.
Of all the major product lines within the Microsoft world, at least within
the range of products I use - and that's a lot - the Windows Media Player
product team is the only team that does not provide a method for its
customers to provide product feedback or suggestions. The Vista team does.
The Windows XP team does. The Microsoft Office team does. The Internet
Explorer team does. The Visual Studio and MSDN teams do. The SQL Server
team does.
The Windows Media Player product team does not.
It has been said that the Windows Media Player product team does not because
Windows Media Player is not as simple as all of those other products. Can
you imagine? They think that their product is actually more complicated
than Vista itself. Maybe a little customer participation would help
simplify their lives.
Anyway. Yes, answer Zach's questions. I am glad to see him begin to
participate in solving this problem rather than denying it exists.
Dale
"watercress_soup" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OTIhjT0YHHA.4000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
very interesting.
does anyone know of a website that lists known bugs with windows and its
many nooks and crannies?
it would be nice if us peasants could report real, (i.e. testable or
common) problems to somewhere in the vain knowledge that microsoft
employees may visit that site and see what problems are being had. maybe
with a list of the top 50 current bugs. (is this wishful thinking?) that
way no one has to pay $59 dolla just to say something is seriously broken.
(obviously there are many problems associated with such a site...)
I wonder how many people have to complain about a bug before it gets any
slight recognition? I think the recently added problem is quite big. but
that's my personal opinion I guess.
"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23lTcifxYHHA.2552@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This is definitely a bug.
I could quote Zach's statement about how terribly expensive a single bug
fix is and how the right thing to do when a bug is identified is not
always to fix it. And I could certainly point out some completely
amateurish bugs so laughable that you'd think the software was written in
somebody's basement that were reported in beta and still not fixed. Or I
could tell you that he has often said that the only way to report a bug
in Windows Media Player is to call product support.
What Zach has not said is that, if you do decide to do so, for the
privilege of reporting the bug you must be prepared to spend a lot of
time on the phone, and pay anywhere from 35 dollars (soon to be 59
dollars) up to several hundred dollars depending on your eligibility for
support and your support needs. Of course even then you are only
speaking to a call center employee who, as much as that person will want
to help you, he or she will have no power to communicate your problem to
the Windows Media Player product team.
Zach also never says that if you bought your copy of Windows bundled with
a new PC, you are not eligible for support from Microsoft at any price.
You cannot call Microsoft and report the bug. You can call Dell, HP,
Gateway, or whomever you bought your hardware from and tell them about
the problem. Those companies still have some limited influence at
Microsoft and, if your bug ever begins to hurt their bottom line enough
to drive them to do so, they do have the ability to get their partner
representative at Microsoft to send an email to the Windows Media Player
product team management - a group that seems to include Zach. But then,
Zach already knows about the bug. So what good would that do?
All of that said, it seems there is nothing left to try except to rebuild
your database. You can follow Zach's own instructions at
http://www.zachd.com/pss/pss.html#medialibrary to do so.
Oh, and while you're deleting your database along with all the valuable
information that you have entered or become accustomed to having,
consider this quote from Zach about the value of that database and all of
the valuable information you have entered and, assumedly, the value of
your time in having input and created that database:
[QUOTE from Zach]
The team pays tight attention to this kind of thing. It's a fascinating[ENE QUOTE from Zach]
problem - dead libraries are typically non-recoverable and since they're
reflective in nature (not containing any reallly intrinsic value),
there's
not much call to get them rolling again.
Dale
"watercress_soup" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e6GfrjwYHHA.4772@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
im not saying the problem is with id tags, i was just giving my
experience of wmp not showing recently added files and the id tags
problem with dpoweramp, until removing that program....
the last album i ripped was from the 7th march.
"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u2iCXSsYHHA.3628@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date Added is stored in the library database, not in the ID3 tags. The
ID3 tags are stored in the file. What does the date added say for the
files that do not show up in your recently added list?
Dale
"watercress_soup" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OftehEpYHHA.3848@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
i had a similar problem on xp a few weeks ago. my recently added list
was empty and wmp cpu usage hit 80% constant...
i had installed a program,dpoweramp, which added a properties page to
mp3 files for editing id tags, thus it seems, screwing up the id tags
for wmp. i read/heard/experienced that wmp isnt very good at reading
tags that arent complete or proper. (also noticed this with video
files, but that may have been a codec issue when it was getting a
thumbnail). i uninstalled the program and wmp worked fine.
i now have the same issue on vista, minus the excessive cpu usage, (on
a new machine). i moved all my music over and everything was displayed
in recently added. i have only had vista for a about 2 weeks and
suddenly nothing shows up in recently added.
i havent had any wmp updates. maybe it is something to do with the id
tags? i dont know.
steve
"zachd [MSFT]" <zachd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uYRj4QnYHHA.3256@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To clarify, I wasn't suggesting that that would possibly fix the
issue, simply that it was a really really necessary troubleshooting
step to check in order to move forward. "Date Added" is obviously
not a required attribute for this to work right, so um... yeah, duh
to Dale. By default Date Added is off in that view, guy. =)
Given that *you* can repro this and *others* cannot (where 'you' is
scoped to the people who reported this), the question is what is the
uniqueness and commonality about your systems. Knowing if the "Date
Added" field validates correctly is a basic sanity check here, and
the most interesting basic potential differential to check.
Given that it's a simple database query, it would seem to be either
that the data is invalid or that the results are wrong. You just
partially checked if the data is invalid - thank you for that.
But I actually asked a really specific question:
===
What are the values of Recently Added for tracks that you want to
show
up, versus the current date set on your PC?
===
, which wasn't answered and is maybe the key question about the data.
My earlier question is still the logical first step towards assessing
this regardless. If that pans out correctly, then again we're still
looking for system uniqueness about your systems. So what's the
current full date and time zone on your system? What changed between
the working and broken states?
The internal query for Recently Added is:
AcquisitionTime GreaterThanOrEquals (month)/(day)/(year)
(minus the 30 days).
The AutoPlaylist RecentlyAdded query would by default be:
Acquisition Is Later Than Last Month
I'm not 100% certain of how that last one maps out internally - it
may map back out to the same equation, but ... that's the face value
difference.
So, yeah - the next aspect of the question is your full system time
setting. If that checks out and it's not random library corruption, I
don't see any other very interesting areas in this problem surface
that could be looked into. I bow to the wisdom of others here,
though. Just trying to help. =)
-Z
--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
--
"George Gee" <georgegee@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23gV$akjYHHA.2320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Also for the record.
Recently Added seemed to be working fine, but is now completely
empty,
although I add stuff daily!
Have made no changes, nor have I run Windows Updates recently.
George Gee
"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e5h5%23KgYHHA.4692@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yes, it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place to imply
that you have to have Date Added showing on your library view
columns for the feature to work. You do not. Nor do you have to
have any other standard column showing for them to work.
Obviously, non-standard columns such as Custom1 or Custom2 would
have to be shown to work because it is only editable if it is
showing. That behavior does not apply to Date Added.
There are a lot of things in WMP that are shown that are not
generally useful. There are a lot of things that are either
generally useful, very useful, or just plain necessary for a media
player that are not available in Windows Media Player.
Date Added is populated for every track in my library even though I
did not have Date Added displayed in my columns.
But just for the record, Recently Added appears to be working for
me.
Dale
"OrsonJ" <OrsonJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:94BA5948-FD13-48EE-ABA4-59787BB40FAC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date added values for albums/tracks which should in theory be
showing under
'Recently Added' are all accurate, so I guess that's one simple
explanation
we can discount.
--
OrsonJ
"zachd [MSFT]" wrote:
I can't reproduce this issue. "Recently added" is "Current Day -
30"
against the "Date Added" column in the library. (You have to
turn that
explicitly on using Choose Columns, since it's not generally
useful.)
What are the values of Recently Added for tracks that you want to
show up,
versus the current date set on your PC?
--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers
no rights.
--
"OrsonJ" <OrsonJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2E1BD5DF-34DD-4DDA-87DA-106A9653C66F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Returning to this thread after a few weeks, it would seem that
many of the
experiences echo my own - the 'Recently Added' function
suddenly started
to
work (for no discernable reason) and today stopped working
again (for no
discernable reason). It seems to have a mind of its own!
Does the reporting of bugs like this via this forum get fed
into the WMP
development programme? Or should one email them somewhere else?
Given the
millions of pretty random 'error reports' that must be fired
off to
Microsoft
daily, these very specific complaints must surely be useful?
--
OrsonJ
"zachd [MSFT]" wrote:
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