Ripping (Copying) Music CDs in Windows Media Player 12
Ripping (Copying) Music CDs in Windows Media Player 12
Explorer Media Player 12 Guide
(Very useful tips to use the windows media player 12)
Using media player 12 to Copying CDs to your PC
Microsfot introduce fantastic features in new media player 12. Now you can easily Windows Media Player not only playing CDs but you can build up a library of digital media on your pc, as well you can make custom playlists and music CDs. If you already own some music CDs, ripping a few CD swill be great way to start creating your personal media library. Though the term “rip” might sound like something bad, it’s not. It simply means to “copy,” and no harm will come to the CD when you rip songs from it to your media library.
When you rip a CD, you store a copy of each song from the CD on your hard drive. That song is in a format that’s more suitable for computers than the song that’s on the CD. You can put the original CD back in its case, and leave it there so it doesn’t get scratched up. Play the songs straight from your PC, or make your own CDs to play the songs in a stereo. Keep the original CD as a backup in case you accidentally delete some songs you’ve copied.
Ripping CDs is easy, as you’ll see. But you need to make a few decisions up front, like where you want to put the songs, how you want them titled, what format you want them stored in, and so forth. The sections that follow look at all of your options.
Options for ripping CDs
To choose options for how you want to copy CDs to your hard disk, use the Rip Music tab in Media Player’s Options dialog box. To get to those options:
- Open Windows Media Player (if it isn’t already open).
- Insert an audio CD in the drive and click the drive in the Library pane so that the Rip and Rip Settings buttons are available in the toolbar. Then, choose More Options to open the Rip Music tab of Media Player’s Options dialog box.
You’re taken to the Rip Music tab in Media Player’s Options dialog box.
Note that you don’t need to make selections from the dialog box for every CD you copy. Rather, you choose your options once. All CDs that you copy from that point forward will use whatever settings you chose.
Choose location to place songs:
By default, all songs you copy from CD will be placed in your Music folder. That’s a perfectly fine place to put them, but there’s no rule that says you have to put them there. You can store them in any folder you want. For example, you might put them in the Public Music folder if you want everyone who uses the PC to access the songs. Or, if you have multiple hard drives, you can put them in a folder on some drive other than C:.
To choose a drive and folder for storing CDs, click the Change button in the dialog box. Then navigate to the drive and folder in which you want to store the songs. For example, if you want to put the songs in your Public Music folder, expand the Computer, Local Disk (C:), Users, and Public folders, and click Public Music. Then click OK.
The path in the dialog box shows where the songs will be stored. For example, in Figure 24-9, C:\Users\jboyce\Music tells me that the songs will be stored in the personal Music folder for the user account named jboyce. (C: is the hard disk and Users is the name of the folder in which all user accounts are stored.)
Choosing how to name files:
every song you copy from a CD is stored as a file. Like all files, each song will have a filename. Windows Media Player names the files automatically, based on the track number, song title, and other media information.
You’re free to choose how you want song files named. How you name the songs is entirely up to you, and won’t affect how they play. The default filename is the CD track number followed by the song name. You might prefer to have the song name first. To make your selections, click the File Name button on the Rip Music tab of the dialog box.
Choose the elements you want to use in each song’s filename. At the very least you should choose Song Title, because that is certainly a key piece of information. Use the Separator drop-down list to choose which character will separate each portion of the name.
To change the order of items in the filename, click any selected item and use the Move Up or Move Down button to change its position in the filename. As you choose components and change their order, the generic filename under Preview gives you a sense of how each song title will look with your current settings.
Click OK after deciding how you want your filenames to look. Choosing a file format and quality
Under Rip Settings on the Rip Music tab, the Format drop-down list lets you choose a format and quality in which to store songs you copy. Basically this all boils down to a trade-off between file size and music quality. File size has to do with how much hard disk space each song consumes. Quality has to do with the depth, clarity, and richness of the music when you listen to it. Music quality is measured in kilobits per second, abbreviated Kbps. The higher the Kbps number, the better the music quality, but the more disk space each song consumes.
Options for choosing are under the Rip Settings heading in the Options dialog box. First, use the Format drop-down list to choose one of the following formats:
- Windows Media Audio: Songs are copied to Windows Media Audio (.wma) format files and compressed to conserve disk space. You can choose the amount of compression using the Audio Quality slider in the same dialog box. This is a good general-purpose format that plays on all Windows computers and many portable media devices.
- Windows Media Audio Pro: Similar to the preceding format, but includes features that make the music sound better on high-end multi-channel sound systems.
- Windows Media Audio (Variable Bit Rate): Same as the preceding format, but the amount of compression varies with the complexity of the information being stored. As a rule, you get better quality with smaller file sizes using a variable bit rate. This format is not compatible with all portable music players.
- Windows Media Audio Lossless: Same as the preceding format, but files are not compressed at all. The sound quality is excellent, but the files are huge. Still, if you’re a true audiophile, or are interested in creating High MAT CDs (High-Performance Media Access Technology), this is an excellent choice.
- MP3: MP3 is the most widely used format for digital music. It’s been around the longest. Unlike the .wma formats, you’re not limited to playing the songs on Windows-based computers. You can play MP3 songs on any MP3-compatible player.
- WAV (Lossless): Stores each song as a WAV file. These offer high quality, but create enormous files. So you probably want to stay away from this format unless you have some good reason to use it.
If you’re new to all of this, and at a complete loss as to what to choose, go with WMA or MP3. Those are common formats that almost any device can play.
If you choose anything but a lossless format, you can then use the Audio Quality slider to choose what quality setting you want. Again, the basic rule of better quality creating larger files applies. Hard disk space is cheap and plentiful, so there’s no need to settle for the lowest-quality setting. If in doubt, don’t go below 128 Kbps or your music may all end up sounding shallow or kind of ”tinny.”
As you move the Audio Quality slider to different settings, text beneath the slider tells you roughly how much disk space an entire CD will consume at that setting. To better illustrate how format and audio quality relate to disk space consumption, I ripped a 3-minute song at various sound qualities. The last column, ”Songs per GB,” gives you a sense of how many songs you can get into a single gigabyte of hard disk space at various quality settings.
Copy protect music in Windows Media Player 12:
The Copy Protect Music option on the Rip Music tab lets you decide whether or not you want to put copyright protection on the songs you copy. I think a lot of people choose that option thinking it will somehow protect them from messing up the songs. But that’s not how it works. The protection that the option offers is for the copyright holder, not for you.
If you choose the Copy Protect option, the songs you copy will play only on the computer at which you’re sitting. You’ll also put other restrictions on the songs. For example, you won’t be able to import them into Movie Maker or other programs that normally let you edit music. If you want to keep things simple and make sure you can use your copied songs freely, I suggest you leave the Copy Protect Music check box empty.
Rip CD automatically with Windows Media Player 12:
If selected, this option tells Windows Media Player to copy all the songs from a CD as soon as you insert the audio CD. Choosing this option, along with the Eject CD option described next, makes it easy to rip a whole collection of CDs in assembly-line fashion. For example, if you have a few dozen CDs you want to rip, you can just insert a CD, wait for it to be copied and ejected, and then insert the next CD.
When you’ve finished ripping your CD collection, you can then clear this option so that you have more flexibility in deciding what you want to do with each CD you insert into your hard drive.
Eject CD after ripping
If selected, this option just tells Media Player to eject the CD from the drive when it’s finished copying the CD. As mentioned, choosing this option along with the Rip CD Automatically option is a great way to copy multiple CDs in a quick, assembly-line manner.
Still more rip options
Media Player’s Options dialog box contains some additional options that affect what happens when you rip CDs. While you still have the Options dialog box open, click the Privacy tab. Then choose your options as summarized next. But remember, not all CDs have media information posted on the Internet. Therefore, even if you do select options as indicated, you may need to manually update media information for a song or album.
- Display Media Information from the Internet: Choose (check) this option to have media information, such as song titles, appear automatically when you play or copy a CD.
- Update Music Files by Retrieving Media Info from the Internet: Choose this option to have Media Player automatically fill in information from songs you’ve already copied to your computer.
When you’ve finished making all of your selections, click OK in the Options dialog box. Now you’re ready to start ripping CDs. Remember, you need not change the preceding settings every time you copy a CD. The settings you choose apply to all CDs that you copy.
Copying songs
With all the details of choosing how you want to copy CDs out of the way, you’re ready to start copying. Here are the steps:
- If your Internet account requires logging in, get online so that you’re connected to the Internet and Media Player can download media information (song titles).
- Insert the music CD you want to rip (copy) into your CD drive and close the drive door.
- If Windows Media Player doesn’t open automatically, open it yourself. (If some other program opened when you inserted the CD, close that program, then open Media Player.)
- If you chose the Rip CD Automatically option described earlier in this chapter, skip down to step 10 now.
- If the CD starts playing, click the Stop button down in the play controls.
- Wait for song titles to appear. If song titles don’t appear within 30 seconds or so, the CD might not be in the CDDB. In that case, you can go ahead and rip the CD, and then fill in the details later in your media library.
- Optionally, clear the checkmark to the left of any songs that you don’t want to copy. Media Player will only copy songs that have a checkmark.
- Click the Rip CD button in the toolbar. Media Player ripping a Led Zeppelin CD to disk.
- Wait until the Rip Status column shows Ripped to Library for all songs you’ve opted to copy. If the CD doesn’t eject automatically, go ahead and eject it.
- Put the CD back to wherever you normally keep your CDs. You won’t need it any more to play songs from your computer, or to copy files to custom audio CDs or an MP3 player.
That’s it for ripping one CD. To rip more CDs, just repeat steps 4 to 10 for each CD. If at any time you want to check your available hard disk space, open your Computer folder. If you don’t see any indication of available disk space for your hard disk (typically Local Disk C:), choose Tiles from the Views menu in that folder.
Copying songs from CDs you already own is one way to build up your Media Player music library. Any songs you don’t already own, but would like to, you can purchase online and download to your Media Player library. I discuss how that works in the next section.
Getting Music Online
In addition to ripping CDs you already own, you can download music from online stores. The exact procedure varies from one online store to the next. Some are membership sites. Some let you purchase and download songs without joining or paying a membership fee. New stores and services come online all the time, so there’s little that I can tell you specifically that applies to all of the available vendors, other than you should shop around and not necessarily sign up with the first vendor to pop up on your screen. In the bottom left of the Navigation pane, click the arrow beside the Media Guide but-ton and choose Browse All Online Stores to see other options. The button changes to Online Stores. Click the arrow and choose Media Guide if you want to view the Media Guide.