Organize Your Media Files in the Windows Media Player 10 Library
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You can do a lot more with Windows Media Player 10 than just play audio and video files. The Player has lots of new features that expand your entertainment options. You can go from searching for digital media to buying music from online stores to burning custom CDs to loading your portable audio player or Portable Media Center with your favorite songs or videos for the day. This is the first time a Windows Media Player has made it possible to sync high-quality music, video, and photos to the latest portable devices.
When you begin accumulating media files, you'll need the Library, an important Player tool, to help organize all your media files. The Library is a database, packed with information about your media files wherever they may reside. In Windows Media terminology, the Library contains “media information.” Another common term you may hear among digital media enthusiasts is metadata, which means "information about information."
In terms of a real world library, think of the player library as the catalog card, which contains not the actual book, but data about the nature and location of a book. Computers can store tens of thousands of items of digital audio and video, which don't have to be centrally located on your hard disk. The Library is the database that stores references to where all that media content is located. It also stores information that lets you catalogue, sort, and search your media content.
In this column, I'll describe the Library and uncover some of its powerful features. I'll describe how to sort information, how to add new content to the Library, and how to edit metadata. And when retrieving information from the Internet, I'll explain how to set important privacy options.
Check Out the Library
The Library has three panes—the Contents pane on the left, the Details pane in the center, and the List pane on the right. To open the Library:
| • | Click Start, point to All Programs, click Windows Media Player, and then click the Library tab, as shown in the figure below.  Figure 1. Note the three-pane view of the Library. |
The Contents pane organizes your media files at the highest level. It breaks media into general categories such as Music, Videos, TV Programs, and playlists, which are user-defined collections of media. These categories have subcategories such as Artist, Album, Composer, and Genre. Windows Media Player 10 introduces new subcategories such as Purchased Music and Contributing Artist, as well as the new TV category. (Users with Media Center PC or other software can record and store TV programs in the Windows Media Library.)
The All Pictures category is another new addition to the Contents pane. Here you can sync photos to devices that support playback such as Portable Media Centers. The All Pictures category does not show in the pane unless you connect a device that supports photos or manually go to Tools, Options, and on the Player tab, click Enable picture support for devices.
When you connect a device that can display pictures in .jpg format to your computer, the Player inspects the device capabilities and creates an All Pictures category with subcategories in your library. You can then use the Player search features to add the pictures on your computer to your library. (If the All Pictures category doesn't show up in your library after turning on support, see the Readme for Windows Media Player 10 for help.)
The Library analyzes information for each piece of content it has references for and automatically generates these views. You navigate through the categories by clicking the plus and minus signs in the tree view.
Figure 2. The Contents pane shows categories and subcategories of media information.
The Details pane provides a view of the lowest level of data for an item selected in the Contents pane. If you have a large audio, video, or picture collection in your library, finding items may prove difficult when you scroll through the categories. You may want to sort the content in a different way or display more or fewer columns. For more information about this, see Change How You Sort Files in Your Library. Choose which columns you want to display or sort by (not applicable to the Title column), follow these steps:
1. | Click the Library Options button above the Details pane. |
2. | Click Choose Columns, as shown in the figure below.  Figure 3. Choosing columns for the detailed view. |
3. | Click the column header to sort by any column. Click again to sort in the reverse order. |
Figure 4. The Details pane displays the items that are in the category selected in the Contents pane.
A lot of power lurks under the right-click button in the Details pane. Try right-clicking an item and explore the commands listed in the menu. For example, the information source for Find Album Info is a metadata database instead of an online music store database that's searched when you click the More Info button in the Player.
Add New Content to the Library
You have to add content to the library before performing other Player tasks, such as burning, creating playlists, or synchronizing files to portable music players. When you add it to the library, your content is automatically organized into categories, which makes it easy to find and play. You can also have the library search your hard disk and catalogue previously unknown content. To add content to your library by searching your computer:
1. | On the File menu, point to Add to Library, and then click By Searching Computer, as shown in the figure below.  Figure 5. Adding content to your library. |
2. | In the Add to Library by Searching Computer dialog box, in the Search on list, click the drive you want to search. |
3. | To search one folder on the drive rather than the entire drive, in Look in, click Browse to enter the folder. |
4. | Select your preferences for updating media information, as shown in the figure below, and then click Search. |
Figure 6. Preparing for a one-time search.
You can also have the Player monitor specific folders and automatically add any content to the library that it finds added to these folders. The default locations for digital media are already in the monitor list, but you can add your own folders if you use non-standard locations to store your content. Note that the monitoring folders feature is only available on drives formatted with NTFS. To automatically add digital media files from folders that you want the Player to monitor:
1. | On the File menu, point to Add to Library, and then click By Monitoring Folders. |
2. | In the Monitor Folders dialog box (shown in the figure below), click Add to select the folders that you want the Player to monitor. Then click OK. |
Figure 7. Setting up folder monitoring.
Retrieve Information from the Internet
Another useful feature in the library is the ability to gather additional information about an item or album from the Internet. This includes purchasing songs or albums directly from within Windows Media Player. To try out this feature:
Click a subcategory or item in the Contents pane, and then click More Info.
The information is displayed in the Details pane and varies according to the information available for the selected item. After you've made purchases or otherwise used the information displayed, click More Info again to remove the display.
Explore the Advanced Tag Editor
Power users can't live without the feature that lets them edit metadata. You edit the information in individual columns in two ways, first by using the simpler Edit command:
| • | Click Library, and find the item you want to edit. |
| • | Right-click the item, and then click Edit. |
| • | Edit the information that you want, and then press Enter to save your changes. |
Clicking Edit lets you manually edit any single item of media information for any digital media content that is displayed in your library. Using the Advanced Tag Editor gives you access to all media information fields within a single dialog box for any given piece of content.
To open the Advanced Tag Editor:
| • | In the Details pane, right-click the item or items that you want to edit, and then click Advanced Tag Editor, shown in the figure below. |
Figure 8. The Advanced Tag Editor.
The five tabs of the Advanced Tag Editor help you work with additional album information, cover art, lyrics, captions, and information about related Web sites. Edit anything you want and then click OK. Your changes have an immediate effect if they pertained to any of the organized views of your Library. For example, changing the Genre will immediately remove the item out of the old genre subcategory in the Contents pane and put it into the new subcategory.
Ready for some real power? You can make global changes here:
| • | Select several items in the Details pane and then click Advanced Tag Editor. You're presented with the same data as before, only now you can select which attributes you want to globally change on all selected items. Select the check boxes for the values you want to change, and then enter the new values. |
| • | When you've made your changes, click Apply to make the changes and keep the dialog box open. Or click OK to make the changes and close the dialog box. |
Be careful to make only changes that make sense, because you have to manually restore each value for each item to its previous state. As before, the changes you make will immediately reflect how the selected items are displayed in the various views and categories. Want to see the physical files behind the metadata? Just right-click on an item in the Details pane and then click Open Containing Folder.
In the Windows Media Player 10 Privacy Statement, Microsoft describes the Player features that communicate with the Internet. It also discusses data collection and how the Player interacts with online stores.
To set your privacy options on the Privacy tab:
| • | On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Privacy tab. |
To set options for the Library, click the Library tab, as shown in the figure below.
Figure 9. The Library options
Review the options to make sure they are set according to how you typically use the Player. In particular, review the Retrieve additional information from the Internet option. Some people appreciate information about content being retrieved for them automatically from the Internet. Others prefer to forgo the additional information because they don't want any programs using the Internet without their knowledge. Set these according to your preferences and click OK.
Galan Bridgman is a developer, architect, and enthusiast for digital media technologies. He co-developed QuickTime for Windows for Apple Computer. At Starlight Networks he developed innovative client and backend technologies using ActiveMovie® and NetShow® Server, the precursors to Windows Media Technology. After hours he enjoys showing others how to make the most of Microsoft's latest Windows Media applications. Check Galan's Web site for more information about him.
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