Windows Media Player 10 Song Cleanup - Great Idea, Poor Implementation

[Jason Dunn]

The image below is from Windows Media Player 10. I was using it to listen to some music, and had the player pointed at a network folder which contained my new music - CDs I had recently ripped and tracks I had purchased through Puretracks. First, the "folder monitoring" is completely and totally dysfunctional. To me, when an application claims it does folder monitoring, that means it's constantly polling that folder for changes. With WMP 9 and now WMP 10, it seems to more or less ignore the folder beyond the initial scan, which results in broken file links in the library. While I think the whole implementation is badly broken, one of the helpful features Microsoft added was a service that will scan your library for bad songs/links and remove them. When running, it looks like this:

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/not-working-songs.gif

Great idea, right? Yes, but the problem is that I can't find any way to trigger it manually. You need to suffer through a few dozen broken library links before it will kick in. Not exactly ideal. Maybe I'm missing something, and maybe this is something they'll expose the UI for come final WMP 10 release, but I somehow doubt it. :?

[David Prahl]

Gross! I wonder just how much of MS's time goes into product testing and research instead of coding and promotion.

Another Third Day fan! :way to go:

[Jason Dunn]

Gross! I wonder just how much of MS's time goes into product testing and research instead of coding and promotion.

I know that they do a lot of testing, but it seems as though the scenarios are very limited. I don't think I'm unusual in terms of storing all my music on a server, but the way WMP behaves, you'd think it was a "crazy" scenario. :roll:

[Ed Hansberry]

With WMP 9 and now WMP 10, it seems to more or less ignore the folder beyond the initial scan, which results in broken file links in the library.
Must be your links to network files. WMP9 on my 3 PCs always picks up changes to monitored folders, but they are local folders to each machine.

[Jason Dunn]

picks up changes to monitored folders, but they are local folders to each machine.

Local folders, as in drive mapping? I haven't tried that, but it seems rather extreme to me. They're just shared folders...

[Ed Hansberry]

picks up changes to monitored folders, but they are local folders to each machine.

Local folders, as in drive mapping? I haven't tried that, but it seems rather extreme to me. They're just shared folders...
No, I mean local folders as in, they exist on the HD on that machine.

[David Horn]

I drive map all my network folders, but Windows Media Player never seems to pick up changes, even on local folders. It's a pain in the arse, but iTunes is no better.

[klinux]

Not that this helps but FWIW iTunes have similar problem as well if you choose to manipulate the files directly instead through the program's GUI.

[Tim Williamson]

I like how Winamp does folder monitoring, you can tell it to scan on startup then also scan every X number of minutes. Or you can manually start a scan.

[Jason Dunn]

I drive map all my network folders, but Windows Media Player never seems to pick up changes, even on local folders. It's a pain in the arse, but iTunes is no better.

8O Who programs this stuff? Do they all have ONE computer and a 1 TB hard drive? :roll:

[Jason Dunn]

No, I mean local folders as in, they exist on the HD on that machine.

But you said "local folders to each machine" - you mean you have mulitple copies of all your music stored on each computer? 8O

[Ed Hansberry]

No, I mean local folders as in, they exist on the HD on that machine.

But you said "local folders to each machine" - you mean you have mulitple copies of all your music stored on each computer? 8O
Yeah. I have to have it on my laptop or it does me no good. My wife has her PC with her music. The MCE downstairs is for both of us and it has to have my music on it because my laptop may not be available to it, and for hers, I just copied it downstairs. So, all of our music is in two places really, which serves as a handy backup rather than having to re-rip it if something were to happen to a HD or we got a new machine.

It also means WMP's file/folder monitoring works, which is a nice side effect of my storage practice. I didn't do it this way to make monitoring work. :D

[Jason Dunn]

So, all of our music is in two places really, which serves as a handy backup rather than having to re-rip it if something were to happen to a HD or we got a new machine.

Well, you're fortunate to be able to do that, but with 65 GB of music, that's not a feasable option for me. :? You'd better hope that hard drive technology scales faster than your music collection, or you'll be in trouble. ;-)

[Ed Hansberry]

65GB?!?!

Yeah, a bit more than mine. ~1,500 files at 3GB for my personal collection. My wife adds another GB or so.

[dundee50]

I do not see a problem with that,I have 210 GB on one and 55GB
another drive it works fine other than that it is slow