Problem with WMP11

[asktomysis]

Hi everyone. Before i went holyday i have put some music on my sony. At least 20 albums. Everything was fine! Great! I have also add all the album covers to all the music. It is a long work but it is cool. Today i connected my sony to my pc becouse i wanted to charge the battery. In the meanwhile i listen to some music with wmp11. Now i want go to bed and there is only 3 albums in my Sony. Where are the others? What happened? Why WMP11 delate music without my permission? Why WMP11 synchronize the music in "music" folder automatically? I dont want all the music in my pc! damn! i want choose it! It doesnt make any sense!! Plus...now i cant add the images of the albums to some of the music. Ok maybe i am stupid but sometimes i really think my mp3 player needs a good exorcist

[CrowdAds]

[skip252]

Wmp sucks. Syncing with WMP sucks doubly. But you should be able to make WMP stop deleting your files at least.

First in WMP create a playlist. Syncing only works properly if a playlist is present, You don't have to have anything in the playlist but it must exist. Don't ask me why but if that playlist doesn't exist none of the rest of this works properly.

With no player connected open the Sync tab. Under "More Options..." be sure to uncheck "When deleting playlist from devices also remove also remove their contents". Close The Sync Tab.

Connect your player and open the Sync tab again. The player's name should be visible, select that. In the Set Up Sync... dialog box name the device if you care to and click Finish.

Open the Sync tab again, now you should see a checkbox that says, Sync this device automatically. Be sure it's unchecked.

That should (remember it's WMP!) stop any involuntary deletions. After that all you should need to do to sync files or playlists will be to drag them into the Sync pane and start the sync.

WMP is actually a fairly capable syncing program. The problem is non-intuitive setups like that one and the unfortunate fact that every once in a while it simply loses it's settings. Then the mystery file deletions start again. I know a little about setting it up because I have an older family member that refuses to use anything else. The others that do sync rather that drag and drop use MediaMonkey.

If you're going to sync or even drag and drop I'd consider MM. It's setup is much more open and intuitive. The free version is a decent media manager. It a lacks few features from the paid version but nothing that stops you from doing anything truly important. The time limited mp3 encoder is easily replaced and it just does most other likes like ripping and encoding slower.

I've had several people I know install it and even the most technically challenged among them get MediaMonkey up and going with minimal or no help. Give it a shot.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by asktomysis

... sometimes i really think my mp3 player needs a good exorcist

Don't blame the mp3 player for what WMP did, check the settings in WMP as it's most likely set to auto sync, can't help more than that as I don't use WMP. Once you get sick of it, check out mediamonkey or winamp, nice management software you can get for free ...

[asktomysis]

Originally Posted by skip252

Wmp sucks. Syncing with WMP sucks doubly. But you should be able to make WMP stop deleting your files at least.

First in WMP create a playlist. Syncing only works properly if a playlist is present, You don't have to have anything in the playlist but it must exist. Don't ask me why but if that playlist doesn't exist none of the rest of this works properly.

With no player connected open the Sync tab. Under "More Options..." be sure to uncheck "When deleting playlist from devices also remove also remove their contents". Close The Sync Tab.

Connect your player and open the Sync tab again. The player's name should be visible, select that. In the Set Up Sync... dialog box name the device if you care to and click Finish.

Open the Sync tab again, now you should see a checkbox that says, Sync this device automatically. Be sure it's unchecked.

That should (remember it's WMP!) stop any involuntary deletions. After that all you should need to do to sync files or playlists will be to drag them into the Sync pane and start the sync.

WMP is actually a fairly capable syncing program. The problem is non-intuitive setups like that one and the unfortunate fact that every once in a while it simply loses it's settings. Then the mystery file deletions start again. I know a little about setting it up because I have an older family member that refuses to use anything else. The others that do sync rather that drag and drop use MediaMonkey.

If you're going to sync or even drag and drop I'd consider MM. It's setup is much more open and intuitive. The free version is a decent media manager. It a lacks few features from the paid version but nothing that stops you from doing anything truly important. The time limited mp3 encoder is easily replaced and it just does most other likes like ripping and encoding slower.

I've had several people I know install it and even the most technically challenged among them get MediaMonkey up and going with minimal or no help. Give it a shot.

Why with some (not all) music i cant add the cover image? Sony support jpg?

Thank you mate. Good answer. Greetings from Italy

[lestatar]

Yup...walkgood and skip252 nailed it. Abandon WMP immediately or at the very least disable any syncing functions to see if that helps with the missing music...

Album art: The Sony E fully supports embedded jpg cover art, at least up to 600x600dpi and at least up to 100kb filesize.

Check to make sure you are not using non-standard jpg, stuff like Progressive/interlaced jpgs. This could be your problem...

From Wikipedia:
"There is also an interlaced "Progressive JPEG" format, in which data is compressed in multiple passes of progressively higher detail. This is ideal for large images that will be displayed while downloading over a slow connection, allowing a reasonable preview after receiving only a portion of the data. However, progressive JPEGs are not as widely supported, and even some software which does support them (such as some versions of Internet Explorer) only displays the image once it has been completely downloaded."

Tip: Consider Winamp to manage your Sony E. I do every day since I got my E345 back in November 2009 and it works perfectly for me. MediaMonkey that skip252 is also quite a great program, but I simply prefer the way Winamp displays the contents of my Sony E.

cheers and good luck,
-les

[skip252]

Originally Posted by asktomysis

Why with some (not all) music i cant add the cover image? Sony support jpg?

That's one of the parts of WMP I've never seriously investigated and doubt I ever will. It ain't worth it. There's too many other ways to reliably embed and display AA. MediaMonkey does it very easily and reliably. It's Auto-Tag from the Web function is set up to do it as the default. Once you add your music library to MM it will categorize the files but it will not make any changes you do not specifically request.

In the Files To Edit branch of the tree you'll see all the files that are missing AA. When you right click that file one of the options is Auto-Tag from the Web. Follow the prompts and in a few seconds it will fetch you all the needed info from the web and tag your files so that AA displays properly wherever its played.

Do your self a favor and stop trying to beat WMP into submission. You may win that battle but IMO you could spend that time more profitably working to get a worthwhile media library software working properly.

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by skip252

That's one of the parts of WMP I've never seriously investigated and doubt I ever will. It ain't worth it. There's too many other ways to reliably embed and display AA. MediaMonkey does it very easily and reliably. It's Auto-Tag from the Web function is set up to do it as the default. Once you add your music library to MM it will categorize the files but it will not make any changes you do not specifically request.

In the Files To Edit branch of the tree you'll see all the files that are missing AA. When you right click that file one of the options is Auto-Tag from the Web. Follow the prompts and in a few seconds it will fetch you all the needed info from the web and tag your files so that AA displays properly wherever its played.

Do your self a favor and stop trying to beat WMP into submission. You may win that battle but IMO you could spend that time more profitably working to get a worthwhile media library software working properly.

Like others, I've had a great deal of success with MediaMonkey when working with my music collection. My experience with album art (AA) when using Windows Media Player is the reason I sought out another program to manage the music on my player.

To add to previous comments on album art, in addition to embedding the AA in the ID3 tag, one thing I also do is ensure that the AA's image type is marked as "Cover (front)". I've found that having it marked as something else (such as "Leaflet Page" or "Not specified") may cause it not to display on my player. I also ensure that multiple covers are not embedded in the ID3 tag for the same reason, I only embed the one image that I want to display on my player.

[asktomysis]

Thank you. You guys are greats. sorry for my english i didnt improve it since long time. I've tried winamp and mediamonkey with no good results. I have the first 6 Van Halen albums (my fave band) i want transfer on my mp3. I've already did it before wmp11 deleted everything. I've added covers to the sony and everything was fine! Now i have the same files (mp3) with the same covers (front) but i cant see nothing on the player. So i've opened google image and try a looots of images with no results. I did it with winamp with media monkey and with wmp11. I see the propriety of the mp3 and "only read" is not marked. Then i pushed reset, formatted and restored the player to. I surrender. I can ear music, that's enough

[skip252]

Please don't apologize for your English. One of our moderators, Habhome, has in his signature, "If you are good enough at English to apologize, then there is no need to.". It definitely applies in your case. You get your point across clearly and that's what matters.

I believe what's hurting your efforts to get your player set the way you want is impatience. Unless you're the worlds greatest software setup wizard I don't believe you've had time to properly setup Winamp and MediaMonkey since they were suggested to you. It takes a bit of time and thinking about it to set either of them to do exactly what you want each time. I would pick one, do what's needed to make sure it delivers what you expect and stick with it. If that takes a few day or even weeks so what? You only have to do it once and then you'll have a set of tools that will let you quickly and reliably manage your music exactly the way you wish.

It took me several days to set MediaMonkey the way I wanted. It was a bit frustrating learning the ins and outs of a new software but at least when I made a change I could see what was going on. Unlike WMP it doesn't hide your changes from you.

You say you tried to add the artwork with multiple softwares. That may be the problem. As CDMP3PlayerFan says if you confuse the player with multiple tags it may not show anything. MediaMonkey is capable of rewriting them cleanly but you need to have the patience to learn how to set it to do that.

I don't use MM much anymore. I only use it to reliably transfer music to the one player I still use in MTP mode. But I still consider the time I spent setting it up time well spent. When I do load it I get a consistent, expected result each time. There are several people here that use it all the time and are very generous with sharing their experience. If you decide to use it and need some help with setup a post here should get you some very good responses.

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

skip252 wrote as part of a post:

Originally Posted by skip252

It took me several days to set MediaMonkey the way I wanted. It was a bit frustrating learning the ins and outs of a new software but at least when I made a change I could see what was going on. Unlike WMP it doesn't hide your changes from you.

You say you tried to add the artwork with multiple softwares. That may be the problem. As CDMP3PlayerFan says if you confuse the player with multiple tags it may not show anything. MediaMonkey is capable of rewriting them cleanly but you need to have the patience to learn how to set it to do that.

I agree that one of the best things about MediaMonkey (MM) is that it doesn't hide things from you, and you can configure it to work exactly the way that you want. One of the things I dislike about Windows Media Player is the way that it handles album art: it stores it as two hidden system files in the same folder where the album is located. This can make it difficult to correct album art. MM can store it as as regular jpeg in the album folder. In the same way, if you go into a song's properties you can see exactly what album art is stored for the song and delete the unneeded album art.

Something that can cause you problems is if you use multiple programs with the same group of audio files. Some of my audio files have been used by iTunes, Windows Media Player, Media Go, and MM. Due to this, I ended up with a large number of unneeded tags in my audio files (some had more than 20 unneeded tags). To clean them out I ended up using MM to rewrite my tags, removing all of the unneeded tags and rewriting them in one version (Version 2.3) of the ID3 tag.

[meetooman]

Originally Posted by CDMP3PlayerFan

Some of my audio files have been used by iTunes, Windows Media Player, Media Go, and MM. Due to this, I ended up with a large number of unneeded tags in my audio files (some had more than 20 unneeded tags). To clean them out I ended up using MM to rewrite my tags, removing all of the unneeded tags and rewriting them in one version (Version 2.3) of the ID3 tag.

Some people use read only directories or shares for their library to protect their files from media managers. Does this prevents you from using WMP11 or iTunes for example?

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by meetooman

Some people use read only directories or shares for their library to protect their files from media managers. Does this prevents you from using WMP11 or iTunes for example?

What I do is give each program its own music folder, and allow each program access its own music folder, and only its own music folder. If I want to use music with a specific program, I put the music in its folder.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by meetooman

Some people use read only directories or shares for their library to protect their files from media managers. Does this prevents you from using WMP11 or iTunes for example?

Originally Posted by CDMP3PlayerFan

What I do is give each program its own music folder, and allow each program access its own music folder, and only its own music folder. If I want to use music with a specific program, I put the music in its folder.

This is what I am going to try when I add iTunes to my computer....making a duplicate of my "MP3" folder just for iTunes' use....that way, if it does change anything, I'll have the other directory still unmolested for use with my Rockboxed Sansas.

[meetooman]

This is ridiculous that we must deploy so extreme solutions to keep the control of our files.
I create my mp3, ogg, flac files, put them in external hard drives I hope safe from PC failure. But having a music library seems so complicated that I ended having only backup files and no main library... Maybe that's the reason why neither I drag and drop nor I sync. I admire your courage.

[lestatar]

^ agreed. But we all have our processes that work best for us I too admire CDMP3PlayerFan's discipline!

My entire library is like yours meetooman. And only split/sorted in folders like 0-9, A-C, etc...under a root MP3 folder. Nothing fancy at all.

But all my files are set as read-only to make sure no app messes with my tags, etc...

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by lestatar

^ agreed. But we all have our processes that work best for us I too admire CDMP3PlayerFan's discipline!

My entire library is like yours meetooman. And only split/sorted in folders like 0-9, A-C, etc...under a root MP3 folder. Nothing fancy at all.

But all my files are set as read-only to make sure no app messes with my tags, etc...

It's not a matter of discipline, rather it's born of experience. Many of the techniques I use (such as using ratings to control what is loaded on my player) are the result of finding the easiest way to to manage the music on my player and on my computer.

I don't have a problem with an app modifying my tags, as long as it's one that I allow to do so. I give MediaMonkey a free hand when it comes to tagging my files and arranging the files on my hard drive, but it is the only program I allow to do so.

[me1900]

OMG! WMP11 is such a poor program to handle mp3 tags with album art. Ive noticed it duplicating tracks because it confuses itself! you have to remove from your library (not from computer) the tracks. then re add them. then update them again with proper art. then resync them to sony. please do remove all the files that it messed up from the sony pls!!!