Using Media Library Media Player 12
Using Media Library Media Player 12
Explorer Media Player 12 Guide
(Very useful tips to use the windows media player 12)
Using Media Player Library
The entire point of a program like Windows Media Player 12 is to build and manage a library of digital media. That includes music, pictures, video, and recorded TV (even though we’re focusing on music).
To see and manage your Media Player library, open Media Player in Library mode. If Media Player is currently running in Now Playing mode, click the Switch to Library button.
Navigating the library:
There is almost no limit to the ways in which you can view, organize, and change things in the library. You can view media by artist, album, genre, playlist, and other ways. If you want to add other properties to your Navigation pane, click Organize O Customize Navigation Pane to show the Customize Navigation Pane dialog box.
- Rating: Shows songs organized by rating (one to five stars). The songs are separated into those you have rated and those that are rated automatically based on your listening habits. Songs that are unrated appear under the Unrated category.
- Contributing Artist: Shows songs organized by contributing artists, if any.
- Composer: Shows songs organized by composer.
- Parental Rating: Shows songs organized by parental rating.
- Online Stores: Shows songs based on the store from which it was obtained.
- Folder: Shows songs organized by the folder in which they are stored.
You’ll be better able to appreciate the library if you have at least 30 or 40 songs in your library before reading this section. Or better yet, several hundred songs. As you explore your library, keep in mind that you can right-click any icon, stack, category name, or whatever to view, edit, or play items.
Use the View Options button to choose how you want to view things. Depending on where you are at the moment, some View options will be disabled (dimmed) because they’re not applicable to the current way of looking at things. But in general, you can choose from the following views:
- Tile: Similar to the icon view, but with some additional information about each item or stack to the right.
- Expanded Tile: Shows the album cover and a list of songs on each album. Available in the Recently Added and Songs categories only.
- Details: Shows detailed textual information about each item in a tabular format.
Of course, there’s no right way or wrong way to view icons. Just choose whichever view works best at the moment. Feel free to try things out. You can’t do any harm by checking out different ways to view things. And nothing you choose is set in stone. You can change your view at any time.
How you use a view depends on what you’re viewing. For example, if you’re viewing Genres, you’ll see an icon or stack for each genre in your library. Double-clicking an icon or stack shows you all the songs in that genre. Double-clicking an icon that represents a single album displays songs on that album. To play all the items that an icon represents, right-click the icon and choose Play. Again, doing some exploring on your own is your best bet. You’re not permanently changing anything as you explore, so there’s no need to be worried.
Choosing columns for Media Library:
In addition to choosing how you want media information to look, you can choose exactly which information you do and don’t want to see. The exact options available to you depend on what you’re viewing and how you’re viewing it at the moment. To see the full set of options, click Music in the Navigation pane, then choose Details from the View Options button. You’ll see detailed information about each song organized into rows and columns.
To choose which columns you want to view, right-click a column heading, such as Title or Length, and click Choose Columns on the menu. The Choose Columns dialog box.
In the Choose Columns dialog box, select (check) the columns you want to see. Clear (uncheck) columns you don’t want to see. You can also control the order of columns, either in the dialog box, or after you exit the dialog box. To control the order of columns while you’re in the dialog box, click any selected column name, and then click the Move Up or Move Down button to move it up or down. The higher a column name is in the dialog box, the farther to the left it is in the Details view.
After you’ve chosen the columns you want to view, click OK. Most likely you won’t be able to see all the columns at the same time. But you can use the horizontal scroll bar under the columns to scroll left and right through columns.
Sizing Columns:
To adjust the width of any column, get the mouse pointer to the right side of the column heading. You’ll know the mouse pointer is in the right place when it turns to a two-headed arrow. Then, just drag the column to the width you want.
Moving columns
To move a column left or right, first put the mouse pointer right on the column heading, for example, the word Title, Length, Album, or Album Artist. Then hold down the left mouse button and drag the column left or right. Release the mouse pointer when the column is where you want it to be.
Sorting songs
When you’re in a Details view you can also sort items by any column. For example, you can sort them by Title, Length, Album, Album Artist, or any other column heading. The first time you click, items will be sorted into ascending order (alphabetically, or smallest to largest). The second time you click, items will be sorted into descending order (reverse alphabetical, or largest to smallest).
Getting missing media information automatically:
Recall that media information refers to things like song titles, artist name, and so forth. That information might be missing from some of your songs for a couple of reasons. One reason might be that the information isn’t available from the Internet. In that case, you may have to fill in the missing information manually, using techniques described.
A second reason why you might be missing media information is that you weren’t online when you copied some CDs. If that’s the case, it’s not too late to retrieve that information. It’s quicker and easier to retrieve the information automatically. So before you start manually changing media information, use the technique described in this section to see how much of that information you can get automatically.
First you need to check your options for updating media information automatically. Click the Organize button and choose Options. The Library tab in Media Player’s Options dialog box appears.
Under the Automatic Media Information Updates for Files heading, choose (check) Retrieve Additional Information from the Internet.
- If you’ve already added some media information manually and don’t want the new information to replace that, choose Only Add Missing Information.
- Otherwise, choose Overwrite All Media Information if you want information you’ve added yourself to be replaced with information from the Internet.
When you’ve finished making your selection, click OK in the dialog box. Then click the Organize button and choose Apply Media Information Changes.
There’s no guarantee that all missing information will be filled in. You may have songs for which there is no online media information. You’ll still have to edit those manually. To change the title of a single song, right-click the current title (Track1, Track2, or whatever), choose Edit, and type the correct song title.
Information other than the title is likely to be the same for all the songs on a given album. It’s not necessary to change that information one song at a time. You can select multiple songs to which you want to make a change. The change you make is then applied to all the selected songs. We’ll get to that in a moment. First let’s look at how you can add songs that you have elsewhere on your computer to your Media Player library.
Choosing what files to include in your library:
If you set up multiple user accounts on your computer, each user gets to have his or her own media library. Parents don’t have to dig through the kids’ songs and vice versa. But you’re not stuck with only those songs. Each user also has the option to share songs, and each user has the option to choose or reject songs shared by others. To choose which songs display in your own media library:
- Click Organize in the taskbar and choose Manage Libraries O Music to open the Music Library Locations dialog box.
- Click the Add button. The Include Folder in Music dialog box opens.
- To add a new folder to the list of monitored folders, so the songs show up in your library, click the Add button. Then browse to the drive and folder that you want to include and click OK. You can repeat this step to monitor as many folders as you wish.
- To prevent songs from a folder from being added to your library, click the folder you want to exclude and click the Remove button.
- Click OK after making your selections to have Media Player search any newly added folders.
Media Player will update your library according to the selections you made.