Windows Media Center Trashed My Mp3 Collection

Hi all,

I have been using Windows 7 for a few days now will no major problems.

I particularly like Media Center as it works great with my TV Tuner. Goodbye Powercinema!

However today I noticed that Media Center has :

1) Edited most of my MP3 files so the last edit date has changed. I've no idea what changes have been made or why MC was touching them in the first place.
2) Deleted all my high res album art "folder.jpg" files and replaced them with low res versions.
3) Created a whole load of AlbumArt_{....} files.

I have spent the last 3 years carefully organising my music collection and creating high quality album art files and I don't want any application messing with it

I've got a backup so I will have restore my whole collection.

So the question is how can I stop Media Center doing this in the future?

Help!

smarteyeball said:

It appears that when you add your collection to MC library, it is taking the liberty of changing the edited date to the date it was last indexed.

Which is unnecessary and really sucks for those of us who back up our music.

As for the album art, in Media Center check:

Settings > General > Automatic Download Options and ensure the "retrieve CD album art etc" is unticked.

Won't that also knock out desirable features like Netflix and Internet TV?

You may also wish to look through Media Players settings that pertain to downloading art, info etc and disable it there as well.

IMO, the best thing to do is nuke the Music library so that Media Center and Player don't index it. Use another program for music. I have a Zune, so I use the Zune software, which in its current incarnation, works much better anyway. (Thank goodness the Zune software isn't married to the Windows 7 Library feature like WMP and WMC.) The AlbumArt stuff does not appear to be related to WMP or WMC. At least, after removing all folders from my Music library, I deleted it all a few weeks ago, and it's back now, even for music I downloaded just a day ago from Zune Marketplace.

The OP should also be embedding album art in his music files. Relying on folder.jpg is a mistake. Also, disallow all software from automatically overwriting MP3/WMA tags. However, for a couple of reasons, you have to let the Zune software add missing information, and with great reluctance, I did, and it's been OK.

The OP should also be embedding album art in his music files. Relying on folder.jpg is a mistake.

I do that as well :) That is one of the reasons I don't want any software touching my mp3s. I have tagged them to a far higher standard than any automatic software could ever manage.

If WMC changes my file dates then WMC is useless to me because I will not be able to any synchronised backups of my media collection. WMC was one of the reasons I actually paid for a copy of Windows 7. If I had known what WMC was going to do I might have reconsidered.

I can live without control of the folder.jpg, which is afterall a system file, but WMC messing with MY data is a disaster.

I think I will set my media collections (when I've repaired them!) to read only and hope that stops WMC from corrupting them.

Its a shame the options don't provide a bit more detail. I don't mind WMC downloading info about albums and artists as long as it doesn't mess with existing info in my data.

I thought this sort of stuff would have come out in the beta testing.
Someday MS will learn.If I had wanted them to ransack my mp3 collection I would have just installed iTunes!

Thanks for replies guys. Gives me confidence that I wasn't going mad and missing something obvious.