Windows Media Player 12 Sucks Eggs

OK to anyone who seems to like WIMP 12 so much, exactly how do I get it to stop rewriting correct album art with Black art. I have deleted album cache and overwritten all black art with correctly named correct art and WIMP just replaces it all with black art. meanwhile my I-tunes Cover Flow looks awesome with 100% correct album art and 0% Black album art with little to no effort. As for anything they added to WIMP 12 I have 2 real nice TVs and a blu-ray so tthe 15" laptop really isn't what I want for video media. Too bad the WIMP team couldn't have done better on their music display. Again (for 2years by the end of this month) I am still wanting to know how to get rid of black album art in WIMP. I want this because I like the mixed display of Media Center but it continues to show all the art that WIMP makes.

maybe this will help...

Update Metadata and Cover Art in Windows Media Player 12 - How-To Geek

@schae23 You must uncheck "Overwrite all media information."
There is a bug in WMP 11/12 where all unknown albums might get their artwork replaced by one of your albums that happens to have black artwork.

This is because the albums that are unknown to the Microsoft media server are assigned a null globally unique identifier (GUID), and somehow, instead of leaving them alone, WMP will sometimes (always?) create artwork files such as "AlbumArt_{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}_Large.jpg" and populate them with an existing artwork from your library, or with some other random artwork that the media server returned. Note the "00000" GUID.

You can list all potentially affected albums with the command:
dir /ahs /b /s AlbumArt_{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}_Large.jpg
Open the Command Prompt, type "cd /d c:\" without the quotes and Enter.
Then type the above command. Replace "c:" with your audio drive letter if not C:.

Ok windows cannot find either of the entry you listed. I also no longer allow WIMP 12 to obtain info from internet as I can provide it all locally much more accurately.Furthermore I can ID all affected files within WIMP 12 or Media Center. I can not however "unaffect" these files. I have deleted the album cache located at C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache.
After that had no affect I then deleted the entire Media Player Folder within Microsoft. That also had no affect.
I then deleted the 4 Black images from the folder specifically containing the affected files of each affected album and subsequently added the preferred art as Folder.jpg. WIMP 12 then replaced the preferred art with 4 new generic black images.
I then replaced each of the 4 generic black images each with an image of the preferred art, changing all file names to match as written by WIMP 12. WIMP 12 then rewrites all generic black images to replace all PREFERRED art when "Update Album Info" is used to display the preferred art in WIMP 12.
I then copied the preferred .jpg image and selected "Paste Album Art from the context menu on the Black art displayed in WIMP 12. This has resulted in WIMP 12 writing the 4 preferred art images to the folder containing the affected files. It seems to have solved the display within WIMP 12 as long as I limit the use of which WIMP 12 controls are used.
However the goal was to use WIMP 12 to correct the affected files to display properly in Media Center as Media Center (oh so Intelligently) has NO apparent means of affecting metadata manually. Media Center still displays Generic Black art.
I still do not know how I can permanently change the album art to display correctly as I do not understand by what process microsoft is writing garbage images. If I could find how step by step to specifically interrupt that very process by which WIMP 12 and/or Media Center produce the before mentioned garbage images I would be very impressed.
I would like to note that Itunes only required: right click file with missing art. Click "get Info". Copy and paste art to art tab, or to art square for multiple files. Done.

ok I have now discovered that Media center needs to have all 4 image files located in the folder containing the affected files. What a hassle that WIMP 12 couldn't write the Required file automatically. I have to painstakingly make the files.
Microshit is roughly ten times more hassle than any Apple product that I have had experience with. Way to go advertising for Apple. Just keep up the good work microshit and I'll be able to justify the price when I purchase my Macbook.

"Paste Album Art" usually creates all the files and library database entries required, but yeah, the Microsoft GUID design and library is totally flawed.
They are supposed to be Globally Unique IDs, i.e. unique across the whole planet Earth, yet I have several albums that have been assigned the same null ID.

There are also no utility to access and repair or export/import the library database, which I believe also contains the artwork, that's why deleting artwork files or the art cache does not affect matters.

And there is no way I can see that my corrected album information can be pushed back to the Microsoft album information servers. Many albums outside mainstream pop and rock have incorrect information, typos in the song names, classical music frequently does not have any track name or have track names written in Japanese, etc. I fix all this in my library, but if I copy the files to another computer without copying the WMP library database, the wrong information comes back from the Microsoft servers.
I spent dozens of hours entering proper album information, too bad I can't share this work with others, or benefit from similar proper information from others.

I understand that designing a library system is not simple, and that media players are free products, but I would expect better from Microsoft. My artwork specs for a media player would be to be able to see high resolution artwork (in just one file, not 4 dupes), and be able to display it all during playback, like front and back covers, the booklet page by page, or even better, a booklet designed for digital music, like having the full song information, musician names, lyrics displayed in sync, etc. I can wish... ^-^

In your case, I suspect there is one album in your library that has this black artwork. Try to identify and fix it, but in my experience, this does not fix the problem (unless the option to retrieve information from the Internet is disabled), it will just propagate the artwork from a random album to the albums with no artwork and similar null IDs. You won't have black artwork anymore, but you'll have artwork from a different albums instead. When I first installed Windows 7, dozens of albums had their artwork replaced with the one from Jimmy Smith's Back at the Chicken Shack album. When I reinstalled Windows 7 because Service Pack 1 broke it, the same albums that I fixed earlier got their artwork replaced, this time with one of my Barbara's albums artwork until I restored my WMP library.

I have several playlists I can't remove from WMP, because I made the mistake of deleting the playlist file in Windows Explorer instead of in WMP. So they point to files that don't exist, but WMP is too stupid to notice and let me delete them.

Chimel said:

There are also no utility to access and repair or export/import the library database, which I believe also contains the artwork, that's why deleting artwork files or the art cache does not affect matters.

That's not entirely true - the library doesn't contain any actual artwork data, this is only stored in the separate JPG files or embedded into the music files themselves. Only the link to the JPG files (the GUID in their filename) is stored in the library.

And there is no way I can see that my corrected album information can be pushed back to the Microsoft album information servers. Many albums outside mainstream pop and rock have incorrect information, typos in the song names, classical music frequently does not have any track name or have track names written in Japanese, etc.

Did you enter the corrections in the library itself? If you enter them through the Find Album Info wizard, then they should be used to correct the database in the future, see WMP FAQ: A trouble-shooting guide for Windows Media Player problems.:

Q: WMP is showing the wrong content information about my CD. How do I fix this? A: WMP7 (or newer) recognizes tracks via a unique ID on the compact disc associated to metadata that AMG (All Music Guide) maintains. When you update this information via the "Get Names"/"Find Album Info" option in the CD Audio (or Copy From CD) pane, that information will be used to correct the database in the future. AMG says here that it takes about six weeks or so for information to be added. If you are an artist or producer, they take direct submissions via an e-mail address on that page (or this page), so go send them mail. :)
(And yes, this stuff does get used - I've verified the addition to the database of about ~200 CDs I put metadata in for.)

I fix all this in my library, but if I copy the files to another computer without copying the WMP library database, the wrong information comes back from the Microsoft servers.

What audio format are your music files in? If they are in MP3 or WMA format, then copying them to another computer should preserve all your corrections, as they are stored in the files' metadata.

I have several playlists I can't remove from WMP, because I made the mistake of deleting the playlist file in Windows Explorer instead of in WMP. So they point to files that don't exist, but WMP is too stupid to notice and let me delete them.

Resetting WMP's library should get rid of the orphaned playlists, see my answer in this thread for full instructions.

Tim De Baets said:

Chimel said:

There are also no utility to access and repair or export/import the library database, which I believe also contains the artwork, that's why deleting artwork files or the art cache does not affect matters.

That's not entirely true - the library doesn't contain any actual artwork data, this is only stored in the separate JPG files or embedded into the music files themselves. Only the link to the JPG files (the GUID in their filename) is stored in the library.

Possibly, but it amounts to the same effect, if not the jpg itself, the GUID in the library database will restore the wrong artwork as soon as you connect the library to Internet. I couldn't find any documentation about the WMP library internals, so I'm left to guesswork...

And there is no way I can see that my corrected album information can be pushed back to the Microsoft album information servers. Many albums outside mainstream pop and rock have incorrect information, typos in the song names, classical music frequently does not have any track name or have track names written in Japanese, etc.

Did you enter the corrections in the library itself? If you enter them through the Find Album Info wizard, then they should be used to correct the database in the future, see WMP FAQ: A trouble-shooting guide for Windows Media Player problems.

The wizard is really not usable when you rip dozens of CDs in one session. I frequently need to fix the artwork, album and artist information too, so I enter all the corrections in one place, directly in the library. Well, 2 places since I also frequently need to rename the track file names in Windows Explorer because WMP stupidly does not rename files if only the case is changed.
There are multiple methods of entering music metadata, like in the file properties from Windows Explorer, so obviously you can't elect a single method like the wizard, it's the library itself that should detect any change and push them back to the servers.

Nobody is running the whole wizard when they notice a track name has a typo in it, they just fix the typo in the track name that's displayed, and nobody is aware that the information is sent back only from the wizard.
Why would anybody use the wizard anyway? Either the album information was already found, or it wasn't and you need to enter it all, which the wizard can't do.

I have several playlists I can't remove from WMP, because I made the mistake of deleting the playlist file in Windows Explorer instead of in WMP. So they point to files that don't exist, but WMP is too stupid to notice and let me delete them.

Resetting WMP's library should get rid of the orphaned playlists, see my answer in this thread for full instructions.

This is not an option, I spent many man-days over many years fine-tuning my library, and the library contains metadata that's not in the audio files or folders and is used by other apps such as LastFM.
I'd rather have WMP be smarter and delete playlists that don't exist on his own. That's really the basics and can't be difficult. If you can create playlists by copying playlist files to the music library folder in Windows Explorer, it stands to reason that you should be able to delete the file in Windows Explorer as well.

Chimel said:

Nobody is running the whole wizard when they notice a track name has a typo in it, they just fix the typo in the track name that's displayed, and nobody is aware that the information is sent back only from the wizard.
Why would anybody use the wizard anyway? Either the album information was already found, or it wasn't and you need to enter it all, which the wizard can't do.

It's really not that hard to make corrections through the wizard. Just right-click one of the tracks, select Find Album Info, click Edit under Existing Information, enter your corrections and click Done. But agreed that ideally, corrections made in the library itself should also be submitted to the database.

This is not an option, I spent many man-days over many years fine-tuning my library, and the library contains metadata that's not in the audio files or folders and is used by other apps such as LastFM.

Do you mean metadata like ratings and play counts? These can be backed up and restored with the Metadata Backup tool.

I'd rather have WMP be smarter and delete playlists that don't exist on his own. That's really the basics and can't be difficult.

Under normal circumstances, this is exactly what would happen. However, for some users playlists don't get automatically deleted like they should, which might be related to some library database corruption. Hence my suggestion to rebuild the library.

Here's my situation, and I'm hoping you guys might be able to help.

I've turned Media Center and WMP12 on and off several times in the control panel so that I've essentially reinstalled each two or three times, at least. I've deleted the database for WMP12 many more times than that.

Even without any media folders specified, Windows troubleshooter indicates that my library is corrupted and my configuration settings are incorrect.

I stumbled upon the information in troubleshooter while trying to resolve an issue where the spinning circle cursor would constantly spin after launching WMP12. Scrolling would be jerky, at best, often pausing several seconds before WMP12 would become responsive again. At times, no audio would play either, although the timing bar would move and all other signs indicated that a track was playing.

Does anyone have any suggestions beyond what I've done already?

I've converted my ID3 tags to v2.2, v2.3, and v2.4 to test if that was the issue (after backing everything up). It doesn't seem to have helped, but I do think WMP12 has a difficult time with 2.3 and above.

Anyway, thanks for any help you can offer.