Most music players, including both Windows Media Player and Apple iTunes, pay no attention to the filenames of your music files, but rather read the information (called tags) that are embedded therein. Most audio formats support tags for the artist, track, album, year, genre, and about a hundred other things. To get your music player to display and organize your music properly, the tags in your music files must be correct, and unless all your music came from the same source, some tag cleaning is often in order.
Most music library programs allow you to edit the tags of your music files. Windows Media Player (via the Advanced Tag Editor feature) as well as iTunes (discussed earlier in this chapter) even let you modify the tags of several files at once. You can even edit tags for individual files right in Windows Explorer (see Chapter 2), or multiple files if you install the AudioShell extension (http://softpointer.com/).
But what if you have a lot of music files without any tags at all? Try to import those files into a program like iTunes, and you’ll just end up with countless tracks labeled “Unknown Artist.” The solution is to use the filenames to generate the tags, and for this, you can use Ultra Tag Editor (http://www.atelio.com/):
Open Ultra Tag Editor, use the tree to navigate to the folder containing your files, and place checkmarks next to the specific files you want to fix.
Below, choose the Ultra Tagger tab, and then, from the Action listbox, select Generate Tag from Filename (Figure 4-13).
Now, Ultra Tag Editor needs you to tell it where in your songs’ filenames to find the artist name, track title, track number, album name, and so on, so you’ll need to examine the filename of a typical music file on your hard disk, which might look something like Artist–Album–Title.mp3.
Figure 4-13. Use the Ultra Tag Editor to generate MP3 tags from filenames
Although programs like Ultra Tag Editor are flexible, they do require that your filenames be uniform (i.e., all using the “Artist–Track.mp3” format, for instance). Since you likely have a mish-mash of different filenames, you’ll need a program like Power Rename (part of Creative Element Power Tools, http://www.creativelement.com/powertools/) to fix up your filenames with ease, without resorting to manually renaming individual files.
First, determine the delimiter used to separate the information in your filenames (a hyphen,–, in this case), and type it into the Delimiters field.Next, type %1into the field containing the first piece of information (e.g., Artist),%2into the field containing the second (e.g., Album),%3for the third (e.g., Title), and so on. (Imagine your files look like%1-%2-%3-%4....mp3).
When you’re done, click the Generate button to preview the new tags, and click Write Tags to commit your changes.
Ultra Tag Editor can also go the other direction—that is, to generate filenames based on tags. Better yet, both Windows Media Player and Apple iTunes can organize your music into folders (e.g., \Music\Artist\Album) based on the embedded tag information.
To Microsoft’s credit, Vista’s built-in support for photos is much better than XP’s, and it’s about time. It would be even better if it all worked properly.
For instance, Windows Explorer has a nifty thumbnail display, along with the handy Views pull-down that lets you quickly scale the thumbnails or switch to the Details view (Figure 4-14). Now, Explorer is supposed to choose the default view for each folder based on its contents, but the chimpanzee who wrote the code should’ve been better trained. It’s not unusual to see a folder full of Microsoft Access .mdb files shown as thumbnails, while a folder full of photos is shown in the Details view!
Figure 4-14. Vista has a much-improved thumbnail display but has trouble remembering when to use it
When Explorer gets it wrong, it’s easy enough to click the Views button to cycle through the various display modes (or click the arrow to choose a view from the list), but it’s more effective to change Windows Explorer’s perception of the folder. Right-click the folder, choose the Customize tab (Figure 4-15), and from the Use this folder type as a template list, choose one of the five available templates.
Figure 4-15. Use the Customize tab to choose a display template for the selected folder, but don’t forget to customize the template
Here’s where it gets a little confusing. First, a template is a collection of folder display settings that includes the view (e.g., Large Icons, Details, etc.), the sorting method, and the columns displayed. But you can’t change any of these settings here. Nor can you add or remove templates or change the rules Windows uses when it picks a template automatically (hence the problems just outlined).
Next, the templates themselves don’t make a whole lot of sense:
All Items
Basically the default view, Explorer uses this template when there’s no specific reason to use one of the others. The columns shown by default are Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size.
Documents
Used for the Documents folder and all of its subfolders, this template is identical to the All Items template, except for the addition of the Tags column.
Pictures and Videos
A thumbnail display by default, this template is shown for folders containing photo and video files. The columns shown are predominantly for photos, though: Name, Date Taken, Tags, Size, and Rating. (If you want columns useful for video files, such as Duration and Frame rate, you’ll have to add them yourself.)
Music Details
Shown by default for music files (e.g., MP3 and WMA files), this shows files in Details view, making Explorer look somewhat like iTunes’ music library listing. The default columns are Name, Artists, Album, #, Genre, and Rating. (Most of the columns get their information from the tags embedded in the music files, as described in “Fix Music Tags,” earlier in this chapter.)
Music Icons
This is exactly the same as Music Details, except the files are shown as thumbnails (Large Icons) by default. Why Microsoft felt the need to have two different music templates, yet only a single template for both photos and video files, is anybody’s guess.
So, how do you put these to use? The key is to not accept Vista’s defaults, but rather to customize each template so that the view Explorer shows you is more likely to be the one you’ll want. Here’s how you do it:
Find a folder with files that are uniquely representative of a certain kind of content, like a bunch of photos or a collection of music files, and open it in a new window.
Right-click the folder in the tree to your left, select Properties, and then choose the Customize tab.
Choose a template that most closely matches the contents of the selected folder (i.e., Pictures and Videos for a folder containing .jpg files).
The Also apply this template to all subfolders option here is particularly handy in that it allows you to customize an entire branch of folders. For instance, you might store all your digital photos in various subfolders of the Pictures folder, but this option ensures that they’re all shown as thumbnails while preserving the more useful Details view for other types of content.
Click OK to close the Properties window.
Use the Views drop-down to set a view you find suitable for the files in this folder (e.g., Large Icons for photos).
Right-click the column headers in the right pane, select More, and then place checkmarks next to all the columns you’d like shown. When you’re done, click OK, and then use your mouse to rearrange and resize the columns to taste.
Sort the listing by clicking the appropriate column; click a second time to reverse the sort order.
When the folder looks the way you want all folders of this kind to look, click Organize and then select Folder and Search Options.
Choose the View tab, click Apply to Folders, answer Yes, and then click OK.
This will save your changes to the active template so that the next folder you view with similar content (at least in theory) will be displayed with the same view settings. This change won’t affect any other templates.
Aside from templates, Windows Explorer can remember the view settings for the 30 or so most recently viewed folders. In Explorer, click Organize and then select Folder and Search Options. Choose the View tab, turn on the Remember each folder’s view settings option, and then click OK. Of course, if you want to make sure your templates are always used, then turn off this option.
Although Vista is very good about remembering your customizations to each of its templates, it’s not very good about remembering which template to use for a given folder, nor will it reliably choose the appropriate template based on the contents. There are two ways around this.
First, if you don’t foresee the need for thumbnails or special columns for music or other media, then you may just as well customize each of the five templates exactly the same way. That is, repeat the nine steps earlier in this section for each template, choosing the same view, sort, and column settings each time. That way, no matter which template Windows picks, you’ll get the view you want every single time.
The other way you can help Windows choose templates appropriately is to be diligent about where you store your media files. For instance, if you put all your digital photos in the Pictures folder—or, designate the folder where your pictures are stored as the official Pictures folder, as described in the next section—then Windows Explorer will be more likely to use the correct template. Of course, it isn’t foolproof, but in Windows Vista, what is?
One way Windows helps you organize your files is to direct different kinds of content to different locations. There’s a Music folder, a Videos folder, a Saved Games folder, and a Pictures folder. Put all your digital pictures in your Pictures folder, for example, and that’s where most photo applications will prompt you to open and save your files. And as explained in the previous section, Windows Explorer will be more likely to display your pictures as thumbnails if they’re in the Pictures folder (or a subfolder thereof). But what if you don’t want to put your pictures there?
Since years of digital photos can take up gobs of hard disk space, many people have started storing their pictures (as well as their music) on second hard disks, and it can be a pain to have to manually switch to the new location each time you need to open or save a file.
The solution is to tell Windows where your Pictures folder ought to be, a task that requires a quick Registry modification:
Open the Registry Editor (described in Chapter 3).
Expand the branches toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders.
Also in the Explorer branch of the Registry is theShell Folderskey. According to Microsoft, the key is no longer used in Vista, although you may want to update it as well for good measure. (You never know which applications may still be reading from it.)
Double-click theMy Picturesvalue in the right pane, and type (or paste) the full path of the folder you want to use (e.g.,d:\Photos). (The default here is%USERPROFILE%\Pictures, which is an expandable string value that points to the Pictures subfolder of your personal profile folder.)
Click OK and then close the Registry Editor when you’re done.
Next, open Windows Explorer, open your profile folder (the one matching your user name at the top of the tree), and select the Pictures folder inside.
Right-click the desktop.ini file and select Copy. (This file is hidden; see Chapter 2 for details on setting up Windows Explorer to show hidden files.)
Navigate to your new pictures folder (e.g.,d:\Photos), right-click an empty area of the folder, and select Paste.
The change should take effect immediately, but you may have to restart any open applications before they’ll recognize the new location. (Strictly speaking, the copying of desktop.ini in steps 5–7 is optional, but it does help Windows Explorer display the folders properly.) To test the change, open Microsoft Paint (mspaint.exe), and select File ➝ Open. If the folder that appears is the folder you chose, then you’re all done.
You can change the locations of other “special” folders with the same technique. For instance, put the location of your MP3 collection into theMy Musicvalue. Or, put the location of your Media Center recordings into theMy Videovalue.
Of course, sometimes you’ll have to make a few other changes, depending on the applications you have installed. A classic example is Apple’s iTunes software. Now, to Apple’s credit, you can change the location of your music folder easily by going to Edit ➝ Preferences ➝ Advanced tab, but iTunes will continue to store your music library files in your official Music folder. To convince it to put everything in your preferred location, open up the Registry Editor, expand the branches toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Computer, Inc.\iTunes, double-click theWin2KMyMusicFoldervalue, and type (or paste) the full path to your new music folder. See Chapter 3 for a way to quickly search the Registry for other occurrences of%USERPROFILE%\Music that might be present, in order to completely commit Windows to the new location.
Windows understands a bunch of common image and movie formats out of the box, and can produce thumbnails for your files in Medium, Large, and Extra Large Icons views. To get Windows to recognize a new format, though, you need to install the appropriate Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codec.
Once you’ve set up your digital SLR camera to produce “RAW” images (as opposed to the lesser JPEG or TIFF formats), you can install one of these codecs to get Windows to display thumbnails for your files:
Sony SRF http://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/www/cyber- shot/download/raw_driver_e/
If your camera isn’t supported, or if the appropriate codec doesn’t work, try the free ArcSoft RAW Thumbnail Viewer, available at http://www.arcsoft.com/ products/rawviewer/. It adds thumbnail support to Vista for RAW formats from Canon, Hasselblad, Kodak, Leica, Mamiya, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Ricoh, Samsung, Sigma, and Sony, and even works with Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) files.
The alternative is to use a separate picture viewer with its own thumbnail display, like Google’s free Picasa manager (http://picasa.google.com/), or commercial products like Adobe Photoshop Elements (http://www.adobe.com/) and DxO Optics Pro (http://dxo.com/).
To add thumbnail support for new video formats, just install the latest video codecs, covered later in this chapter, and Vista will do the rest.
Please check back next week for the conclusion to this article.
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