Having just spent around 9 months converting my vinyl & cassettes to mp3 format, one of the things I wished I'd had found would have been a "WMP for Dummies" or similar. I suppose that due to the fact that WMP is just an applet & not a full application, it wouldn't occupy a whole book.
Anyway, I thought I'd create this, which is a guide (not too technical) about how WMP seems to work.
Introduction
This document is based around my experiences with WMP11 using Windows Vista Home Premium (SP2 & all the latest patches). By & large it should work but with minor variations going back as far as WMP running under XP variants.
To clarify what WMP does & generally how it works is the first step. Although the Help pages have quite a lot of information in them, they fail to explain, in simple terms how to go about using WMP. There's lots of info about specific things, but unless you already know what these things are, using this info effectively can be very time consuming.
For the end user, there are two aspects to WMP.
- The media files e.g. MP3, WMA are stored where you want them to be. You have to tell WMP where they are, but you have control. Try to avoid storing them in the Windows default Music or Video folders, as there is a risk that WMP will pick up files you don't want it to. Remember to experiment so that you understand a given step(s). You can of course use these default folders & delete the samples Microsoft provide before you start loading your own files.
- WMP stores information about your media files in a library (for those with a technical bent it's actually a database). This allows searching by various means e.g by artists or genre.
- Play lists are just that, lists. They are stored in the library and are lists of media that you might like to create for special occasions e.g. Christmas or Birthdays or a collection of film or TV themes, or just a collection of tracks you really like & want to hear on a regular basis.
It's really easy to get music from CD's into WMP. It's also documented well in the help. Just one thing to say, if you want to save your files in a location other than the existing Windows Music or My Music folders, you'll need to point WMP at that folder from the settings under Tools/Options/RipMusic. At this point it may be worth spending a little time looking at the various tabs under Tools/Options & trying to understand what some of them do. You don't need to know all about every single one & the reason I mention it is that most of the settings for managing things in WMP are contained in this area. Just knowing roughly what a tab is for & some of it's options is enough. You can always come back to this if you have specific issues.
Converting Your Vinyl & Cassettes
WMP won't actually do this for you. You will need to use software such as Audacity or Magix (there many others). These & others (do a Google search for "software convert vinyl to MP3") create WAV files that can be converted to MP3 or any other compressed file types for use on portable or static media players.
As WMP is best used with a file structure of \artist name\album name\ you should put your converted discs & cassettes into this type of order. It will save hours of frustration later on, as WMP is not too good if you try & do it another way - the shame is that Microsoft don't tell you this! If you have compilation albums or albums you've "created" from singles or EP's, I'd suggest an artist name of Various Artists. These compilations then use their album name (see above) & the actual artist features in the meta data & can be entered as contributing artist in WMP. You can also add other meta data in WMP such as genre, year of publication and other stuff. The more you put in the easier it is later to organise you music or recordings. You will need to be consistent e.g. all those recordings of your favourite comedians need to be labelled either under comedy OR humour. Tamla Motown for example needs to be all R n' B, Rhythm & Blues but they all need to be the same - you'll discover these anomalies over time.
MP3 Tag Editor
WMP11 comes with a basic MP3 tag editor & an advanced editor. I'm not too sure about WMP12 under Windows7, but there are a few free tag editors on the 'net if the Windows 7 version is lacking in this area. If you have compilation albums then consider a file structure of \various artists\album name then the individual artists can be put in the "contributing artist" tag by the tag editor.
In case you've not come across this before, if converting to MP3, for the first time you'll be able to put data alongside your music. It can be done either by the software that does the conversion or by WMP11 or a 3rd party tag editor. You can also put album art in your MP3 files & almost anything can be downloaded from the internet & it doesn't take up too much room.
Oddities
WMP does have a few bugettes. The most disconcerting is that it appears to lose tracks. What this is in fact that sometimes the database of songs is not updated correctly & while the actual music files are there, they don't show up in WMP's database & don't show as being "available".
There are a number of ways around this which I will refer to & link to more detail on other sites.
The extract below is from the Microsoft Support pages & refers in detail to this process of cleaning up & recreating the WMP database.
To
resolve this problem, clear the Windows Media Player database. To do
this, follow these steps:
i. Exit Windows Media Player.
ii. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.
iii. Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder.
iv. Restart Windows Media Player.Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.If this does not resolve the problem, clear the Windows Media Player database cache files. To do this, follow these steps:
i. Exit Windows Media Player.
ii. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, and then click OK.
iii. Select the Media Player folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.
iv. Restart Windows Media Player.Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.
Refer to the article “You cannot view, add, or delete items in the library in Windows Media Player 11” http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925718
Diana
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.
i. Exit Windows Media Player.
ii. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.
iii. Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder.
iv. Restart Windows Media Player.Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.If this does not resolve the problem, clear the Windows Media Player database cache files. To do this, follow these steps:
i. Exit Windows Media Player.
ii. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, and then click OK.
iii. Select the Media Player folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.
iv. Restart Windows Media Player.Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.
Refer to the article “You cannot view, add, or delete items in the library in Windows Media Player 11” http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925718
Diana
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.
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this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as
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NB when you try either
solution stop the Windows Media Player Network Service first, or you
will not be able to delete the database because the service has got key files open. Don't forget to restart the service after you've completed the process.
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