I really have little right to complain about Windows Media Player as I'm only in the beginning stages of trying to understand it. Jon and Heather gave me a great gift recently: a 40G mp3 player which I plan to integrate into our stereo system as an N-disk CD changer, where N is a very large number. How lazy can you get? But I know I will take much better advantage of our large CD collection when I don't have to go to all the bother of actually replacing the CD in the player. This gift was a delightful surprise, not only because it's something I've been thinking about for a long time but hadn't done anything about, but especially because I didn't have to do the shopping. :)
To my even greater delight, Jon altered the firmware so that I can see the device on my computer directly through Windows Explorer (which, to show my age, I occasionally call "File Manager") instead of through the mediation of Windows Media Player. But I like WMP for playing CD's, so I decided to try to figure out how to use its Library feature.
I haven't tried hard enough to give up yet. But I'm allowing myself to indulge in a grumble: Why does it have to be so non-intuitive? I know I've been spoiled. One used to need to read the manual thoroughly before being able to use software; now the interface is usually so accommodating it takes special effort even to find a manual. I've been able to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft applications pretty much out of the box, so I was expecting more of Media Player.
What I can't get my head around is how it is organized, and how it works. It scans my computer for audio files automatically, thereby picking up all sorts of files I don't want in the Library, but won't allow me to add a specific file manually. If I drag a file from Explorer into WMP, I can't add it directly to the library—it just plays. Somehow the act of playing automatically adds things to the Library, but what a strange way to accomplish a simple task. When I change data from within WMP it seems to change the file sometimes, but not others. I changed the name of an album in WMP, but that change did not affect the name I saw in Explorer, and vice versa. I tried deleting the album from the Library, then adding it again, hoping it would pick up the right name, but that only worked if I checked the option, "Add files previously deleted from Library"—and that picked up the old file name, not the new. And there are other identifiers, such as "genre," which are somehow associated with the file itself—if I copy it manually to the mp3 player, not using the WMP Sync function, the data is there—but I haven't yet figured a way to access (and change) it from Explorer. I think I'd rather use WMP—it has some nice editing features—but don't want to spend a lot of time making changes only to see them undone when I rearrange my files, which is what happened once already.
Oh well, I'm not asking for answers here; I'm going to stumble along in my usual way—though I've already found out that the Help file answers questions I don't have more than questions I do, such as "How can you make something that should be as simple as changing a file and make it so complicated?" No doubt once I'm familiar with the system I'll laugh at my baby steps, but right now it's rather like the first stages of learning Japanese, when I could hardly distinguish one sound from another. I need a "Press 1 for English" button.
Another gripe: Where are the files stored? When working with other databases into which I have put an enormous amount of work, I like to make frequent backups of the data in case I mess something up. My RootsMagic genealogy software does this at the touch of a button; my Book Collector program makes it clear where the data is stores, and allows me to save the database at will to a different name. WMP does neither, as far as I can tell. It must be possible, but it sure isn't intuitive. I've already made some mistakes I wish I could undo....
I'm getting better. I can in many ways make it work, though I still don't understand it. Somehow WMP manages to change certain information (like genre) in my mp3 files -- Janet showed me how to see it in Explorer, though it's still frustrating because I can't change it withExplorer.
We managed to hook the mp3 player up to our home stereo system, too, and it works. (It's replacing the tape deck, which gave out long ago.) Now begins the long process of organizing files and ripping CD's....
I've got to put in a plug for my preferred audio library software, MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/). In my experience it makes reorganizing files and tags a lot easier.
I might be explaining something you already know, but the info such as track title and artist name are in "tags," encoded in the file itself, but not necessarily the same thing as the filename. I could name a file 04223532.ogg if I wanted, and it could still store the correct track info. Those tags, of course, are what you're trying to edit. Though I also like to have my filenames not be 4432145, but the track title (arranged in folders by album and artist). In MediaMonkey I can do this: there's a command to rename a batch of files at a time, and sort them into folders, based on the tags. And of course to do the reverse.
As for backing up, the tag info is part of the file, so if you back up your entire My Music folder (or wherever else you keep them) you should be safe.
Well, that does help. I do back up my My Music folder. Seems a lot to back up just to make sure I can undo my mistakes. You really don't know how paranoid I am. When I was working with my Book Collector software I was making backups very frequently -- after having once lost a lot of data because of not doing so. :( Of course, it's a lot easier to back up one file than all of My Music....
Thanks for the recommendation. I'm not likely to change anytime soon, now that I've invested a lot of effort in this, but I'll keep it in mind.
I'm making good progress, and WMP no longer seems like the alien landscape it once was. Well, actually there's still a lot that's foreign, and it does seem to have a lot of stuff that I find useless while lacking what seems to me to be of obvious interest. For example, I can do a lot to change the look of things, but have yet to find a way to print out a list of my music, or even get statistics on the database. Thus I can't tell you how many albums I've entered so far, only that they represent about 270 hours' worth of music. That's almost crazy. Wait, I take that back -- it's not all music; some of those hours are language CD's, and others recorded lectures. But there's still enough music there to keep us listening for a LONG time -- and I still have a whole bunch left to rip. I'm really looking forward to hearing some CD's I haven't heard in a long time. It just may take a while for them to come up in the shuffle!
I forget what the state of your PC is. I believe an upgrade to media player will make your device start working in explorer. I guess you should search around on the internet to see what is possible with your device.
I didn't install any drivers on my pc, other than media player, and I can access my device from explorer, so all file renaming, copying, etc. works fine. The playlists are xml files, so can be edited, although I haven't played with that yet.
Actually, it works just as I expected with Explorer -- I can see the files just as if it were an external hard drive, thanks to the firmware change you made in Connecticut. And I did figure out how to change some of the more hidden properties with Explorer, though so far only by individual song, not for an entire album.
But it doesn't matter. I've made my peace for the most part with WMP -- it has some nifty features that make it much better than Explorer for organizing music.
So far I'm very pleased with the mp3 player. How do you like yours?
I am just getting used to playing from WMP on my computer to my stereo directly using a small FM broadcast unit. Then all the music is on my hard drive and backed up regularly. It also means I have full control while sitting in my easy chair and writing envelopes for prayer letters.
We haven't used it much - I have been working so much I haven't been home all that often. At work, I use winamp, and it has a volume compression thingy that makes the songs generally the same volume, but the Zen doesn't, and so I find myself going to the volume knob often. I probably should re-record the mp3s with the normalization factor turned on. I only discovered that setting partway through making the mp3s years ago.
Using the FM broadcast thing from your computer is an interesting idea. I haven't liked the quality so much in the past - ie. I couldn't find a channel that wouldn't give me static problems from time to time.
Thanks, sealcoach, whoever you are :) for your comment. I'd never heard of the FM broadcast option. It sounds like a good idea, except not very portable.
Jon - I know the volume problem. WMP has an option to normalize during playback that I wish the Zen had. For the most part -- commercial CD's -- it's okay, but some of the ones I made myself (or were made by others) have me running for the volume control.
I really, really like the Zen, though. Being able to have most of my music so readily available is wonderful. I'm learning better about how to use it, and if my computer were working I'd be changing some of the data. For example, WMP has a "composer" field in addition to "contributing artist," but the Zen only shows the artist, so if I want to know the composer (which I do much more often than the artist), I need to put the composer in the artist field.
