Hacking Windows7 MediaCenter

You probably want the best quality audio for your CD rips for playback on your Media Center setup, who wouldn’t? Ripping audio to FLAC is the preferred method for storing audio CDs without losing any of the original detail. FLAC is known as a lossless codec, meaning there is no loss in quality between the original CD and the FLAC file, unlike MP3 which can degrade the quality quite a bit.

How do we get that data off the disk and onto our drives though? Simple, a program called Exact Audio Copy. This apply named program will take the pure audio from your disk and encode it to FLAC without much hassle at all. It even includes the ability to retrieve disk information from freeDB and some fairly advanced error correction (for those less than new CDs).

Getting started is easy, just download and install Exact Audio Copy then run the program. An initial startup wizard will appear asking you to set some of the basic options. During this you should let EAC know that you’ll be encoding to FLAC not MP3. Also, entering your e-mail address is required to retrieve information about CDs from freeDB.

Once the initial setup has been completed insert a disk into the drive you setup as the default during configuration. After a few moments EAC should display a listing of al the tracks on the disk in the main window. You’ll notice that none of these tracks have any tag information and EAC will most likely want to process offset information on a first run. Go ahead and let that happen and any gap processing EAC would like to run.

Now to retrieve information for this CD automatically you can press the CD icon in the toolbar to access freeDB. As long as freeDB recognizes the disk you’ve loaded it should automatically retrieve artist, title and track information. Otherwise, you can edit basic information in the main EAC interface before ripping.

To begin ripping the CD to separate FLAC files you just need to press the MP3 button on the left. This slight confusion in the interface can cause some trouble for new users but the button will use your default compression mode, MP3 or not. There are also options available to rip the disk to a single or multiple uncompressed WAV file(s) with or without a cue file. Unfortunately, at this time WMP and Media Center do not support cue files.

During encoding you can monitor the process through a small dialog displaying the progress of the current track, the entire disk and any problems that arise in the Status box. You will also be able to monitor any error correction taking place through the small red grid box on this window. Any error processing will appear as a progress type display in the box.

Once the encode has completed that’s all there is to getting the audio from the disk to your hard drive. You’ll need to follow the guide on Playing FLAC Files in WMP and Media Center before you will have access to them in those programs. Then just sit back and enjoy your high quality lossless encoded audio!

Get more control over audio in Media Center with this guide on Using FFDShow Audio in Media Center!

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Tagged As: flac, music library, programs

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!

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Tagged As: music library, programs, windows 7

Setting up your Windows 7 Media Center is easy, making it your own can be easy too. Here are 10 simple steps you can take to make your Media Center experience more complete, more personal, more enjoyable.

1. Add ClearQAM to Your TV Listings
2. Add Custom Apps to Your Extras Library
3. Do It Better – Add Apps with Custom Icons and Details
4. Add MKVs to Your Movie Library
5. Use A Better Movie Library – Media Browser
6. Expand Your Sound from Stereo to Surround
7. Play Your Music in FLAC
8. Check Your Local Weather
9. Listen To Online Radio through Shoutcast
10. Add Boxee Streaming TV to Your Media Center

These 10 simple hacks will create a better Media Center for you and your family to enjoy. Don’t forget to check back to Hack7MC to get the latest hacks for your Windows 7 Media Center.

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Tagged As: boxee, clearqam, codec, extras library, featured, ffdshow, matroska, mkv, movie library, music library, plugins

Playing your favorite tracks from your Music Library has never been easier than with Windows 7 Media Center. Media Center can create an atomically generated playlist of your best rated, most listened to or even recently added tracks. The steps to getting this going are simple but allow for a bit of customization.

The first step to getting your favorites set are to choose how Media Center will determine which tracks to add to your favorites list.  Options include tracks rated 4 or 5 stars, tracks you’ve played the most and tracks that have recently been added to your library.  Alternatively it is possible to make a simple playlist that contains all of your favorite tracks for Media Center to play from.

Since your Music Library includes all the song data from Media Center and Media Player any changes made in one will be reflected in the other.  This allows for easy editing of song information such as rating from Windows Media Player. Doing bulk editing of the library can be much easier from the Media Player interface, especially on the initial setup. However, it is possible in Windows 7 Media Center to edit some song information from inside the Media Center interface.

Bringing up the editing window is simple. In the album view scroll down the song list to the song you want to edit details for and select it. Other views will bring up the song edit view by default once a song is selected. From this song view rating can be changed quickly, a nice feature when using ratings to determine favorites. Just select the star item and press until the appropriate rating is listed.  These same options can also be brought up with the information or right-click button menu.

Choosing the “Edit Info” selection will allow for the editing of artist name, song title as well as rating. This can be cumbersome with a remote and is another situation where using Media Player would probably be better suited.  Using the media sharing native to Media Player you can even edit details from another machine on the same network. Having a second machine on your network to edit playlists, ratings and to use the new Play To feature is certainly something that can enhance the user experience in Windows 7.

Once your done setting up your favorites and editing your music ratings, starting up a playlist of the best music in the library is as easy as pushing a single button.  Just hit the “Play Favorites” button under the Music section and your off. Media Center will pull together a playlist and get it started, perfect for a quick party mix or when there just isn’t time to make a playlist.

If you’ve got FLAC files in your music collection be sure to check out this article on getting them into your library too!

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Tagged As: music library

Warning: This hack modifies system files and may cause instability in certain Windows applications under atypical situations. It has been tested to the extent described in the article but not beyond.

When you’re done setting up FFDShow Audio check out this guide on setting up FFDShow Video as well.

Many enthusiasts prefer the ability to set their favorite codec for use in Media Center rather than the defaults. Unfortunately, this is more difficult than simply installing the chosen codec as you normally would. Windows 7 Media Center will default to the native codecs regardless of codec settings.

The fix for this situation is to install the desired codec, in this case FFDShow, then rename a system file to disable the native codec. First, download a copy of FFDShow Tryouts from the Sourceforge site right here. Follow the basic installation steps but make sure to enable FFDShow to be used for all available codecs when the option is presented. Windows 7 x64 users should download and install both the latest beta and the 64-bit SVN.

Enabling FFDShow for all audio codec types will lower the chance of instability in Windows 7 default applications such as Media Player. If you are confident in your codec setup you can most likely skip this and use your desired codecs.

Next you will need to have the “Take Ownership” registry hack we’ve used before in changing our Media Center theme. You can download the registry file to enable this menu here. Once you have the .reg file downloaded double-click to install the registry fix and permit it to change the registry when prompted.

To enable FFDShow to play your mp3 files in the music section, open Windows Explorer and navigate to “C:\Windows\system32\” and locate the file name “MP3DMOD.DLL”. Right-click to bring up the menu and choose “Take Ownership” then rename the file “MP3DMOD.DLL.bak”. Windows 7 x64 users will need to repeat this step for the C:\Windows\SysWOW64\" folder as well. This will disable the native filter and can be reversed by changing the file name back at any time.

To enable FFDShow for live television and other formats using the MPEG2 codec inside of Media Center there is also a registry entry that needs to be changed. First we need to find the CLSID for FFDShow. To do that download Radlight’s Filter Manager right here. Extract the files to any location and run the exe file inside. Inside this program expand DirectShow Filters and scroll down to FFDShow Audio Decoder. Right click the entry and select “Copy CLSID to Clipboard”.

Next, open regedit in Administrator mode: using the start menu type regedit then press ctrl-shift-enter. Then navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\MediaCenter\Decoder”. Inside there should be two strings, right-click “PreferredMPEG2AudioDecoderCLSID” and choose “Modify..”. Then enter the CLSID that you’ve copied from FilterManager in the box and press ok.

Media Center will need to be restarted before the changes will take effect but that should set your music, live television and most anything in Media Center to use FFDShow Audio instead of the native codecs included in Windows 7. The stability of this hack has not been tested outside of systems using purely Media Center as the user interface and may carry unintended consequences, perform at your own risk.

Check out this article for more detailed information on using the FFDShow codecs to tweak your sound and video settings in Media Center, including enabling surround sound for your stereo music files. Stay in touch using the Hack7MC RSS feed or follow along on Twitter!

Don't forget to check out this guide on setting up FFDShow Video in Media Center once you're done here!

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Tagged As: codec, featured, ffdshow, music library, programs