nohitter151 wrote:I have Windows 7 and WMP 12. In win 7 (probably XP as well) you can right click an mp3 file > Properties > Details tab. You can change mp3 tags there.
Re: viewing tracks in WMP... what exactly do you mean 'worst'? Bomb rating? of course that shows as unrated in WMP, it doesn't have any equivalent for 'Bomb' to display.
PS: You're right that WMP doesn't save ID tags for ratings by default. But that's because you have to enable it in the options. Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
Even more: see the mp3tag website which clearly states WMP uses POPM tag:
http://help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html
I am following up now since I have just switched from Windows XP to Windows 7 and could not verify the claims of nohitter151 previously.
This is my experience.
System:
Windows 7 Home Premium, SP1 6/25/2011
Windows Media Player (WMP) (wmplayer.exe) version 12.0.7601.17514
EXPERIMENT
I have the latest Windows Media Player (WMP), with option enabled:
Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
In Windows File Explorer, I right-click on an unrated mp3 file, choosing to view Properties.
I assigned it a 5 star rating, in the properties dialog, click Apply, then OK to exit the dialog.
I open the mp3 file in UltraEdit-32 text editor and these are the bytes that are found.
-- Frame Header (10 bytes)
50 4F 50 4D 00 00 00 1F 00 00
Frame ID (4 bytes)
50 4F 50 4D
P O P M
Size (4 bytes)
00 00 00 1F
'1F' hexadecimal to decimal: 16+15 = 31 bytes POPM frame payload after this 10 byte header
Flags (2 bytes)
= 00 00
(no flags set)
-- Frame Content (31 bytes) (i.e., payload)
Email + ONE termination byte (31 bytes)
W i n d o w s M e d i a P l a y e r 9 S e r i e s . (termination byte)
57 69 6e 64 6f 77 73 20 4d 65 64 69 61 20 50 6c 61 79 65 72 20 39 20 53 65 72 69 65 73 2e 00
NOTE: no further POPM data is found, no rating has been written to the mp3 file.
-- EXPERIMENT
I have the latest Windows Media Player (WMP), with option enabled:
Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
In Windows Media Player, I open the same mp3 file, which I previously rated in Explorer.
This file is in the library and displays as 'unrated' (no stars).
I assigned it a 5 star rating, in the properties dialog and quit WMP.
I again re-open the mp3 file in UltraEdit-32 text editor and there has been NO change to the bytes and, in particular, no POPM rating has been written to the mp3 file.
-- CONCLUSION
Despite claims to the contrary, I cannot find any evidence that WMP or Windows 7 Explorer write any rating data to the mp3 files, not in the POPM or any other id3v2 fields.
Therefore, the claim that the non-standard behavior of MM is related to non-standard Windows 7 behavior is questionable.
I would also suspect that the WMP option 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files' does not refer to mp3 files - it probably refers to internal settings files used by WMP.
I should also mention that this is not a problem with write permission to the mp3 file in my test since I am running as Administrator and have verified that the file is not set to read only.
[quote="nohitter151"]I have Windows 7 and WMP 12. In win 7 (probably XP as well) you can right click an mp3 file > Properties > Details tab. You can change mp3 tags there.
Re: viewing tracks in WMP... what exactly do you mean 'worst'? Bomb rating? of course that shows as unrated in WMP, it doesn't have any equivalent for 'Bomb' to display.
PS: You're right that WMP doesn't save ID tags for ratings by default. But that's because you have to enable it in the options. Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
Even more: see the mp3tag website which clearly states WMP uses POPM tag:
http://help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html[/quote]
I am following up now since I have just switched from Windows XP to Windows 7 and could not verify the claims of nohitter151 previously.
This is my experience.
System:
Windows 7 Home Premium, SP1 6/25/2011
Windows Media Player (WMP) (wmplayer.exe) version 12.0.7601.17514
EXPERIMENT
I have the latest Windows Media Player (WMP), with option enabled:
Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
In Windows File Explorer, I right-click on an unrated mp3 file, choosing to view Properties.
I assigned it a 5 star rating, in the properties dialog, click Apply, then OK to exit the dialog.
I open the mp3 file in UltraEdit-32 text editor and these are the bytes that are found.
-- Frame Header (10 bytes)
50 4F 50 4D 00 00 00 1F 00 00
Frame ID (4 bytes)
50 4F 50 4D
P O P M
Size (4 bytes)
00 00 00 1F
'1F' hexadecimal to decimal: 16+15 = 31 bytes POPM frame payload after this 10 byte header
Flags (2 bytes)
= 00 00
(no flags set)
-- Frame Content (31 bytes) (i.e., payload)
Email + ONE termination byte (31 bytes)
W i n d o w s M e d i a P l a y e r 9 S e r i e s . (termination byte)
57 69 6e 64 6f 77 73 20 4d 65 64 69 61 20 50 6c 61 79 65 72 20 39 20 53 65 72 69 65 73 2e 00
NOTE: no further POPM data is found, no rating has been written to the mp3 file.
-- EXPERIMENT
I have the latest Windows Media Player (WMP), with option enabled:
Tools > Options > Library tab, 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files'
In Windows Media Player, I open the same mp3 file, which I previously rated in Explorer.
This file is in the library and displays as 'unrated' (no stars).
I assigned it a 5 star rating, in the properties dialog and quit WMP.
I again re-open the mp3 file in UltraEdit-32 text editor and there has been NO change to the bytes and, in particular, no POPM rating has been written to the mp3 file.
-- CONCLUSION
Despite claims to the contrary, I cannot find any evidence that WMP or Windows 7 Explorer write any rating data to the mp3 files, not in the POPM or any other id3v2 fields.
Therefore, the claim that the non-standard behavior of MM is related to non-standard Windows 7 behavior is questionable.
I would also suspect that the WMP option 'Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files' does not refer to mp3 files - it probably refers to internal settings files used by WMP.
I should also mention that this is not a problem with write permission to the mp3 file in my test since I am running as Administrator and have verified that the file is not set to read only.