More Stuff to Fix in Windows Media Player
A while ago I ranted about the major headaches of Windows Media Player 11 and how it fails at being a good desktop media player. There are plenty of things to add to the list, but Jason from Digital Home Thoughts appended my list with some more problem areas.
There is a list of 8 dealing with performance issues and such, but two stand out that are particularly interesting to me: embedded album art and WMP’s obsessive need to sync every possible storage device you plug in.
Embedded Album Art: If WMP read embedded album art it would make things so much cleaner and less cumbersome. As it is now WMP sprays your music folders with hidden and cryptic jpegs for album art. Now your music files are not portable- you cannot simply transfer one song by dragging and dropping to a different folder and expect the art to go with it. This haphazard way of dealing with album art also occasionally causes problems with transferring music from Windows Home Server giving me permission errors when it tried to copy thumbs.db over. Music and music only should be in that folder.
From what I was told, that WMP doesn’t embed album art because of copy right issues, IP, blah bla… Im not sure how much I believe that. Doesn’t iTunes embed the art?
Sync Anything!: Jason complains about WMP trying to sync a ReadyBoost device. While this is an obnoxious problem since the ReadyBoost is always plugged in, it is just as obnoxious when you insert your flash card from your camera, cell phone, or thumb drive. There is a way to turn this off, but this should not be on by default.
There are plenty of other little items to fix, I hope the WMP will clean them up for version 12.
Comments
Maribel Perez on March 1, 2008 10:26 AM
Buen día
Tal vez me puedan ayudar le compre a mi hija un mp3 de niños mix max high school pero dejo perdido el cd de instalacion y por error le borraron el software del mp3 como hago para conseguirlo y que pueda escuchar.
gracias
MV on March 1, 2008 4:30 PM
M$ should add to WMP the ability to read cd-text and add it when you burn a cd, such as in Nero.
dead7ree on March 1, 2008 6:30 PM
I really agree with on that Sync issue. WHY IS THIS THING ON DEFAULT?
Dave on March 1, 2008 9:03 PM
I want to know why it wants to rip a cd everytime I put a disc in? And it is set to not rip in options.
Jared on March 1, 2008 9:12 PM
WMP 11 *does* embed album art if you've told it to. all you have to do to prove it is delete the hidden .jpgs and switch the view (in vista) in that folder to "medium icons" and you'll see thumbnails of the art on all the music files.
Also, in portable devices like the Creative zen vision:m, album art that was embedded and transfered with WMP 11 *is* displayed, even though this device relies on embedded art.
EnzoTen (Grahm) on March 2, 2008 12:14 AM
@Jarad
There is some kind of disconnect then with album art since is is not always portable with devices and when moved. But as Jason says in his article. Why is this external... its like external EXIF data for JPEGS
RiceBandit on March 2, 2008 4:59 AM
The best way for MS to to improve on their current version of Windows Media Player is to strip it back down to a manageable, LIGHT-WEIGHT application. I don't think there's a bigger example of bloatware than WMP.
Sometimes, it's good idea to start from a clean slate than to continually build off of a pre-existing, outdated structure.
JohnHolliday on March 2, 2008 7:54 PM
Album art has always been a sore spot for WMP. Though while you can embed album art using WMP, I use iTunes because it is much cleaner. When I've embedded art using WMP I have had visual and playback issues. Never with iTunes. However, I use WMP to play and manage my music.
Personally, I think that when WMP searches your music folder and finds a "folder.jpg" file it should LEAVE IT ALONE and USE IT! Currently, as stated in the article, it will create a "folder.jpg" of 200x200 size and an "albumartsmall.jpg" that is even smaller! I can't believe that none of the beta testers for WMP haven't complained about this senselss behavior.
I am doing my best to use WMP but it is just not filling the bill. If MS doesn't fix it, I'll be using iTunes exclusively.
Taynna on March 3, 2008 10:12 PM
Album art seems to baffle M$ in other apps as well - I recently purchased a zune and when it synced my music to the player it shuffled all the album art. Personally, I don't care about album art - I think it's useless and a waste of space, but it is incredibly odd to be listening to AC/DC and see the album art from a Sarah McLachlan album...
Steve on March 4, 2008 11:46 AM
I strongly agree about the general problems with album art. What is needed is a single and consistent way of dealing with album art, a way that works regardless of which player you are using. Also, all digital audio players need to have an option not to show album art at all.
I think putting a "folder.jpg" file in the album's folder as the album art for all of the songs in the folder is a simple and reliable way to do it, whether it is done manually by the user, or automatically by the player. The player, in turn, uses that file as the source for the album art (without changing the original file) and uses it to generate the other album art files. Replace the "folder.jpg" with new album art and the player automatically updates all of the other album art files.
kugel. on March 8, 2008 10:42 PM
WMP does read embedded album art! You just cannot create such ones afaik. However, if you take another app like MP3Tag to embed the covers, you can delete all hidden album art files, and wmp will still read them (but I think it will recreate the hidden album art files). I used to do that for a long time, since I was using the WMP for about 2 years.
Kamen on May 11, 2008 3:23 PM
Hmmm! Windows XP N, WMP 11. Dragging a picture over an album "Drag here" will embed the art in the file and will display it on YP-T10 just fine...
Jay on May 15, 2008 8:34 PM
I can't believe some people think WMP is bloatware. Considering the most used software is iTunes and now the Zune Marketplace, I'd have to say WMP is awesome. Memory usage with WMP on my machine is about 1/2 as much if not less than any mainstream commercial software. Either way I still prefer to play back my music with foobar2000 and I've found my way around using any of these other programs. Avoiding them all is the best solution.