Re: Media Center 2005 MP3 Music Catalog Trouble
- From: "Wilkes" <w3wilkes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 00:01:38 -0600
FYI- I've solved my problem! It had nothing to do with the directory / file
structure I had chosen. The problem was with the "tagging" of my MP3 files.
One of the main things I've learned is there sure are a lot of fields in ID3
tags. For this particular problem I found that for whatever reason Microsoft
has chosen a little known obscure ID3 tag field called "Album Artist" or in
some software called "Band". This field "Album Artist" is the field that
needs to be populated for MCE's My Music to properly display the Artist /
Album relationships in My Music. Luckily all my other tagging info was
complete so all I had to do was figure out how to get what I currently have
in the "Artist" tag field to the "Artist Album" tag field. With about 9,000
MP3's I sure didn't want to manually populate this tag field. I find it
interesting that this field is not accessible from Windows Explorer,
shouldn't Microsoft be consistent? If they provide a OS front end like MCE,
shouldn't OS utilities be able to access fields that this front end is
reliant on? So much for consistency across the platform! The only tools I
could find in the Windows platform that can access this tag field are MCE
and Windows Media Player. Either of these tools would require a huge manual
effort to do the work I needed done.
I found a "tag editor" that was able to mass populate the "Album Artist" tag
field from the "Artist" tag field. It's called "Tag & Rename" by SoftPointer
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm. I'm not sure That the way I did this is
supported, but it worked. First I had Tag & Rename do a search of the main
directory I keep my music in with the search sub-folder option enabled. Once
this search was done I used the "Select All" option to select all my MP3
files. I then used the "Edit All Selected TagFields" button which brings up
a dialog box. In the dialog box I selected the "Additional" tab at the top
of the box. I put a check mark in the "Album Artist" and typed "%1" (I did
find a listing of the variables and %1 is the "Artist" tag field) in the
fill in box and clicked Save. This took a few minutes and when it was done
The tags all shows %1 in this field. I then did this all again and cleared
the "%1" I had typed in the box next to the check mark on the "Album Artist"
field and hit Save. Again it ran for a few minutes, but low and behold...
When it was done the "Album Artist" field in the tag listing now showed the
same as the "Artist" field! I the selected the "Save Tags" button and waited
while it updated all my files, again a few minutes. Once I figured this all
out it ended up taking about 1 1/2 hours to update all the tags and then
have Windows Media Player do a full update of its database.
Another thing I've found from reading other folks stuff is that MCE is
terrible at doing the cataloging of music files. I've shut off the MCE
folders to update from. If you do all your Music Library management stuff
from Windows Media Player you'll be much better off. It does a much better
job of finding the music files than MCE could ever hope for! Again, what's
up with that Microsoft??
Hopefully this write-up will help some of the folks that are having trouble
getting there music library to properly catalog in MCE. The one thing that
this reminds me of is the IMPORTANCE of properly tagging your music. If I
hadn't done this originally it would have been a monumental effort to get
this all done.
Later,
Wilkes
PS- If someone from Microsoft reads this, PLEASE pass on to the MCE
development groups that their ability to find and catalog music is really
non-functional. Pass on to the Windows development folks that Explorer
should have the ability to update the "Album Artist" ID3 tag field since the
MCE folks chose it. And lastly... Since you've chosen this non-standard ID3
tag field someone at Microsoft should provide us poor folks a utility to
bulk copy the STANDARD "Artist" ID3 tag field to the non-Standard "Album
Artist" tag field for those of us that really have made a effort to "do our
tagging".
"Wilkes Walker" <w3wilkes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%2399a0FhVGHA.5592@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a large music collection, all MP3, and I don't understand how MCE
catalogs it. I have it on a dedicated HD with one major directory called
MP3 Music (D:\MP3 Music). Under this directory I have a separate directory
for each Artist and under each Artist I have a directory for each Album, ie
D:
|_MP3 Music
|_The Beatles
| |_Rubber Soul
| |_Revolver
|_The Hooters
|_Nervous Night
|_One Way Home
I have all my MP3 ID3 tags populated with Artist / Album / Song / etc. In
MCE when I select My Music and then select Artists and pick "The Beatles"
the "View Albums" doesn't list the Albums, it says "Select the View Songs
button to see songs by The Beatles." If I go to My Music and select Albums
it lists al my Albums, but shows the Artist as "Unknown Artist" at the top
of the screen. If I go to Search and search on Revolver it finds the Album
fine and lists all the songs on the Album. If I hover the mouse over a
song on the Album it sees the Artist fine.
I would have thought it would list all the Albums by a Artist and when
listing Albums I would have thought that it would list the Artist rather
than Unknown. What am I missing? This all works fine with Windows Media
Player 10 and with Creative MediaSource.
Very confused,
Wilkes
.
- References:
- Media Center 2005 MP3 Music Catalog Trouble
- From: Wilkes Walker
- Media Center 2005 MP3 Music Catalog Trouble
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