Hacking Windows7 MediaCenter

For whatever reason Microsoft still hasn’t mastered the art of the MP3 tag. Past versions of Windows Media Player contained an “Advanced Tag Editor” that would allow you to edit the mp3 details contained in the ID3 tag. This time around it’s part of Windows Explorer, a change that can be somewhat confusing for those used to WMP 11. Neither solution is optimal, however.

This is where we will turn to a free little program called Mp3Tag. Mp3Tag will allow us to really get into the details of our mp3 files and will even automatically retrieve details and album art from the web. Being able to pull all the album information from a source like Amazon.com is a sure time saver. Once the program has been downloaded and installed getting tag information couldn’t be much simpler.

Start out by going to the File menu and selecting “Add Directory” to bring up a dialog to choose your music folder. Mp3Tag will then go about loading your music collection and displaying any details about your music it can find. Once it’s finished that select the songs or album you want to change the album art (or other details) for on the right.

Notice the missing album art in the screenshot above, this is what we’re looking to fix. To do this open the “Tag Sources” menu at the top and select a location for Mp3Tag to retrieve the new album cover and details from. Choosing Amazon.com will generally return good results. You will need to tell the program what search term to use while finding the album then select the correct one from the next dialog that comes up.

If the correct album isn’t listed in the results go back and try a different search term or a different source from the menu. Once you have found the correct album another dialog will appear showing the details retrieved. Here you are able to edit the information before it’s applied to the files. By default track numbers will not be altered but check to make sure the songs listed on the left are the same ones listed on the right. The order of the songs listed won’t make a difference.

Once the information is all correct and the album cover is shown in the right hand box press OK to save the information to the files. If you would like to store a folder.jpg of the album cover locally there is an option to do so under the “Utils” button on the bottom left. Once you’ve returned to the main window you should see the results of the edit displayed on the left.

Once all your files have been tagged, restart Media Player and the new album information should be displayed. If it doesn’t appear immediately you can try restarting the system or removing and re-adding the folders to the music library. Sometimes the library will still persist despite everything and you may need to follow the directions in Fixing a Corrupt Windows Media Player Database to solve the problem.

Once you’re Music Library is setup try using Media Center to automatically Play Your Favorite Music!

Written by MHealy | 2 comments

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Tagged As: music library, programs, windows 7