Kill me now, love me later..... I like WMP 11 Beta 2!

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:03 am

Yes, MM is THE best SW for organizing you collections. Basically, WMP sux big time here, BIG BIG time. The options are limited and you can't always get it to do what you want them to do...

BUT, when your collection IS organized, what then?

I fint WMP more "pleasing" to the eye and it's easier to find music. I just "cuise" for something to curb my lust for music (like cruising for prostitues hehe.....I guess).

My main gripe with MM is :

1) No Album Art native support
2) The "Three"

I have all my records/cd's in each it's own folder and when searching under "Folder", this happens...

It's just to many steps to get back to the starting point when searching for music, if you understand what I mean?

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:13 pm

Album art is supported, so that's taken care off. It just misses integrated album art browser, but there is a script that can do it.

As for the tree you can still use it by typing the location you want to go to. Other option is using the search, which works the best for me on a large library. You also have the LibraryPanes script which provides similar browsing to what iTunes offers.

Hooah · Post by **Hooah** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:19 pm

Lowlander wrote:Album art is supported, so that's taken care off. It just misses integrated album art browser, but there is a script that can do it.

As for the tree you can still use it by typing the location you want to go to. Other option is using the search, which works the best for me on a large library. You also have the LibraryPanes script which provides similar browsing to what iTunes offers.

But it doesn't pick the "folder.jpg" in each folder, it instead chooses "cover.jpg".

And it doesn't have just an album art view natively like WMP 11 or iTunes7 Cover Flow. But I am very interested in what MM is going to do for there next version. Bet it will be great!

ReverendEntity · Post by **ReverendEntity** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 4:06 am

Hooah wrote: Album Art is the other part of the album that digital music has neglected for years. Finally people are starting to tag their music with high quality covers. I can scan my collection quicker via album art. When you are dealing with thousands of albums, it becomes exhausting reading all the text. It is so much better to scroll through looking at art.

I won this MP3 jukebox device that is designed to be connected to your primary home audio system and operated via a GUI that displays on your television. I didn't really care that much about album art before I got this thing, and now it's an obsession (because you get sick of looking at the default no art icon all the time). Out of everything I have used, MediaMonkey has the best interface for adding Album Art, especially the ability to batch-tag a group of files with the same cover.

As for WMP11...I sniffed around it, but I haven't tried it yet. (I'm actually using WMP10 right now, but that's really only because I wanted it to get caught up with all the changes I've made to my on-disk library.) I've never been much of a sort by album art person (especially since most of my collection is 12" records which makes it harder to find the label art), but it seems like a cool idea.

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 5:27 am

The EDITING is better i MM:

* The batch editing is better
* The way you can open one file/id3 and then skip to the next (in WMP11 you need to close the file and open the next one...)

* Basically no restrictions in MM
* AND MM doesn't edit stuff on it's own that you don't want it to

BUT the result of n edited id3 is better viewed in WMP11.

Hooah · Post by **Hooah** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:01 am

Sebastian78 wrote:The EDITING is better i MM:

* The batch editing is better
* The way you can open one file/id3 and then skip to the next (in WMP11 you need to close the file and open the next one...)

* Basically no restrictions in MM
* AND MM doesn't edit stuff on it's own that you don't want it to

BUT the result of n edited id3 is better viewed in WMP11.

That is the one thing that scares me about WMP and iTunes is the stuff it does to your library behind your back.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:18 am

You might want to read this slashdot article and see if WMP 11 will still be your favorite..

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/09/21/1329208.shtml

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 2:53 am

Hmmm, I also read this one (which is a bit more detailed) : http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523

YES - DRM is a virus infecting you MP3 player/song
YES - We hate it
BUT - I understand WHY (artist make songs to SELL THEM.....)
BUT - I want to CHOOSE what to do with MY music, period...
DRM - Is the wrong way to go and they haven't figured out what to do
SO - I'm NOT buying music with DRM, ever....If I can help it.....

(I feel like I'm being bullied by the industy here after the initial shock of "Napsterism" hit. They should do everything to makes us love them, instead they make us hate them......)

BUT I still like the look, the navigation and the function of WMP11..... I didn't say it wasn't raping me behind my back.....)

abrazor · Post by **abrazor** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:20 am

I have been using MM for about 2 years now but i decided to download the new mediaplayer to check it out.

I find that MM with the Album Art script scrolls through art work much faster than Media Player. Loading takes longer than MP and also MP has a nicer "finish", but scrolling through art work I find MM much better. With Browse By Album Art and also the Library Panes script I can easily find what I want. But as mentioned above, it is much faster to use the search function.

fncll · Post by **fncll** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:45 am

I'm unclear on this Cover.jpg thing-- I have all my album art saved as Folder.jpg in the folder that contains that album and it displays fine everywhere as far as I can tell? I must be missing something...

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:24 pm

I'm not sure what your problem is?

WMP saves images as folder.jpg with the property set to hidden. MediaMonkey can't read these files so they're not recognized. You will need to unhide these folder.jpg files before MediaMonkey sees them.

fncll · Post by **fncll** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 11:17 pm

And you can do this from the command line with something like this:
attrib -H c:\mysongs\ /S

where c:\mysongs\ is the path to your library (no reason to have hidden files right?)

Hooah · Post by **Hooah** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:07 am

But say in a folder I have the cover image saved as "folder.jpg" and maybe the insert image saved as "cd-insert.jpg" it will sometimes display this image instead. It is just frustrating...

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:42 am

Lowlander wrote:I'm not sure what your problem is?

WMP saves images as folder.jpg with the property set to hidden. MediaMonkey can't read these files so they're not recognized. You will need to unhide these folder.jpg files before MediaMonkey sees them.

Lowlander : I have all album art saved in 500x500 as albumname.jpg which I then use to add to the ID3 tag in every song.

Is this not a good way to do it?

What is the "standard" way of using album art with mp3 files?

Post by **Lowlander** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:24 am

I myself prefer to embed album art in the tags. This so far works with all applications I use and doesn't generate any of the headaches others seem to have with external album art. It also prevents problems when moving files around. The big drawback is that each song will increase in size by the size of the album art.

Others choose external art. The common practice is to have a folder per album and store the album art in this folder. It seems that the standard Windows practice would be to call the album art folder.jpg, but any naming convention should work with MediaMonkey. If you name album art folder.jpg you run the risk that Windows Media Player sets the properties to hidden (if you use WMP), I think that MediaMonkey should fix this issue by allowing album art set to be hidden. The question is what other applications do for naming convention of external album art.

I don't know which way would be best, it might depend on your personal needs and preferences.