Windows Vista : Working with Digital Media - Easy Listening in Windows Media Player 11

Windows Media Player (WMP) is your computer’s one-stop media shop, with support for playing digital music, audio CDs, digital videos, DVD movies, Internet radio, and recorded TV shows; ripping music from CDs; burning files to disc; synchronizing with external audio devices; and much more. Vista ships with a new version of this popular program—Windows Media Player 11—that offers a few nice improvements over WMP 10.

The first thing you notice when you launch WMP 11 is that the overall interface is a bit simpler than previous versions (see Figure 1). There are still a few too many small, undecipherable icons scattered around the window, but these are small blemishes on an otherwise clean look.

Figure 1. Windows Media Player 11 offers a simpler, cleaner interface than its predecessors.

Navigating the Library

One of the things that makes the WMP 11 interface so much simpler than older versions is that you see only one category at a time in the Library. By default, WMP displays the Music category at startup. However, you can change to a different category (Music, Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, or Other Media) using either of the following techniques:

• Click the Select a Category list  and then click the category you want.

• Drop down the Library tab list (see Figure 2) and then click the category you want.

Figure 2. You navigate to a different category using either the Select a Category list or the Library list.

The path information beside the Select a Category list tells you the name of the current category, folder, and view, as pointed out in Figure 7.12.

Album Art and the WMP Interface

Another thing you’ll notice about the WMP 11 interface is that it features graphics much more predominantly than in older versions of the program. If you’ve downloaded or scanned album art, it appears throughout the WMP 11 interface. For example, if you select the Artist view, the artist stacks use album art images, as shown in Figure 3. Even if you switch to a less specific view, such as Genre, WMP uses album art as part of the stack icons.

Figure 3. Album art appears through the Windows Media Player interface, such as the Artist view shown here.

Grouping and Stacking Media

By default, WMP opens in the Music category’s Songs view, which groups songs according to the values in the Album Artist property and then by the values in the Album property. WMP also offers several other Music views based on media metadata:

• Artist— Stacks the albums using the values in the Album Artist property 

• Album— Groups the albums alphabetically using the values in the Album property

• Genre— Stacks the albums using the values in the Genre property (see Figure 4)

• Year— Groups the albums by decade using the values in the Date Released property

• Rating— Stacks the albums using the values in the Rating property

  Figure 4. The Library’s Genre folder stacks your albums according to the values in the Genre property.

  

Of course, you get a different set of views for each category. For example, you can view items in the Video category by actors, genre, and rating, and you can view items in the Recorded TV category by series, genre, actors, and rating. In each category, you can see even more views by clicking the Library folder (or by pulling down the Library list in the path data), as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Click the current category’s Library folder to see a complete list of the available views.

Media Metadata and Tagging

Metadata in Windows Media Player is best dealt with by downloading the relevant information from the Internet. However, most WMP metadata is editable, and you can make whatever changes you need by right-clicking the metadata and then clicking Edit.

A new innovation in WMP 11 is the Advanced Tag Editor, which gives you a front-end for much of the metadata available for a particular media file. Right-click the file you want to tag and then click Advanced Tag Editor to display the dialog box shown in Figure 6. You can add metadata related to the track and to the artist, and you can also add websites, lyrics (even lyrics synchronized to the music), pictures, and comments.

Instant Search

You won’t be surprised to learn that WMP 11 comes with an integrated Instant Search box that supports as-you-type searches. After you type your text in the Instant Search box, WMP searches filenames and metadata for matching media files, and then shows the results in the WMP window. Figure 7 shows an example.

Figure 7. Windows Media Player supports as-you-type searches on filenames and metadata properties.

Syncing with Media Devices

Syncing items from the Library to a media device is a bit easier in WMP 11. When you insert a WMP-compatible media device, WMP recognizes it and automatically displays the device, its total capacity, and its available space in the Sync tab’s List pane, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. When you insert a media device, information about the device appears in the Sync tab’s List pane.

To create a list of items to add to the device, display the album, song, or whatever in the Contents pane; click and drag the item; and then drop it inside the Sync List. WMP automatically updates the available storage space in the device as you drop items in the Sync List. When you’re ready to add the item, click Start Sync. WMP switches to the device’s Sync Status folder to display the progress of the sync.

WMP 11 supports two-way synchronizing, which means that not only can you sync files from your PC to a media device, but you also can sync files from a media device to your PC. This is handy if you’ve purchased music directly to the device or uploaded media to the device using a different application.

To sync from a media device to your PC, you open a view on the media device, find the files you want to sync, and then click and drag them to the Sync List. Alternatively, just click Start Sync to synchronize everything on the device with WMP.

Media Sharing

It can take quite a while to set up and customize your WMP Library just the way you like it. When you do, however, WMP is a pleasure to use—so much so that you’ll probably be tempted to duplicate your efforts on other computers in your home. Unfortunately, previous versions of WMP gave you no easy way to do that. Basically, you had to copy the media files from your original PC to the second PC, and then build your Library from scratch on the second machine.

WMP 11 changes all that by introducing a welcome new feature called Media Sharing. This feature enables you to share your WMP Library with other network users or devices, just as you’d share a folder or a printer.

To get started with Media Sharing, WMP gives you two choices:

• Pull down any tab menu and select More Options; display the Library tab; and then click Configure Media Sharing.

• Right-click the Library folder in any category, and then click Media Sharing.

Either way, you see the Library Sharing dialog box onscreen. Activate the Share My Library check box, click OK, and then enter your credentials when prompted.

When computers or devices connect to your network, Media Player recognizes them and displays the fly-out message shown in Figure 9. Click the message and then click either Allow (if you want the computer or device to share your media) or Deny (if you don’t).

Figure 9. Media Player displays this message when it detects a new computer or device connected to your network.

To control media sharing, display the Media Sharing dialog box again. This time, you see the configuration shown in Figure 10. The large box in the middle lists the network computers and devices that Media Player has detected. In each case, click an icon and then click either Allow or Deny. If you allow an item, you can also click Customize to specify exactly what you want to share based on three criteria: media types, star ratings, and parental ratings. You can also just use the default sharing settings, which you configure by clicking the Settings button in the Media Sharing dialog box.

Figure 10. Use the Media Sharing dialog box to allow or deny other network devices access to your Media Player library.