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Easiest way to manage and play a very large music collection through WMC 7

post #1 of 24
9/30/09 at 7:26am
Thread Starter 
I have Win 7 ultimate 64 bit and like using WMC. I have movies and tv series working correctly for the most part but the music aspect is rather clumsy. My issue is that I just have too many albums and therefore too many folders and its very difficult to manage even using list view within the folders themselves. I have tried media portal and just the defualt player but they dont display enough folders on the screen at once to actually make any sense of my music collection. It would be dozens of button presses just to get through the numbers let alone actually getting to the letter A in my collection. I was wondering if anyone else has any experience managing such a large collection and what worked best for them? I think I saw a plugin that worked with a folder view and I think would probably work the best.

Any advice is appreciated.
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post #2 of 24
10/1/09 at 7:56am
I have the same problem - would love to hear some suggestions.
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post #3 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:03am
Thread Starter 
I should try that plugin I saw on here the other day which adds a folder view in WMC. I wonder if that would work? At least it would be like navigating the files right now.
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post #4 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:23am
I use this:

http://musicbrowser.free.fr/
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post #5 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:31am
i gave up with it and prefer the zune software now. my wife has grown to love i plus the newest one has a nice smartdj thing that works very well.
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post #6 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:49am
Thread Starter 
Mikey is there any way to move that out from the extras section and remove the dvd section and music sections and replace them with media browser and music browser? Not sure if that makes sense but ditch the stock menu items with those 2 and then make them usable with the remote.
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post #7 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Mikey is there any way to move that out from the extras section and remove the dvd section and music sections and replace them with media browser and music browser? Not sure if that makes sense but ditch the stock menu items with those 2 and then make them usable with the remote.

you can edit the WMC menu with this:

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/creat...er-studio.html
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post #8 of 24
10/1/09 at 10:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mike_311 View Post

you can edit the WMC menu with this:

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/creat...er-studio.html

Yeah that should be able to do what you want. Hide the old music row, and create a custom one that has musicbrowser + other stuff that you want. My Video row has mediaBrowser, Hulu, Youtube then my music row has musicBrowser, shoutcast, etc.
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post #9 of 24
10/1/09 at 2:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey-Z View Post

I use this:

http://musicbrowser.free.fr/

Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Mikey is there any way to move that out from the extras section and remove the dvd section and music sections and replace them with media browser and music browser? Not sure if that makes sense but ditch the stock menu items with those 2 and then make them usable with the remote.

Forgive me...I'm failing to see how this is better for large libraries compared with the built in Music listing. Is it just that you can pick the artist by folder?
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post #10 of 24
10/1/09 at 4:19pm
J. River Media Center will manage several hundred thousand files without working up a sweat.
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post #11 of 24
10/1/09 at 6:52pm
Thread Starter 
WMC seems to get the albums all wrong. It doesnt even make sense how it is putting them in order. I have them alphabetized and prefer that.

I remember seeing Jriver before but its not free. I guess thats one issue.
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post #12 of 24
10/1/09 at 8:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jriver View Post

J. River Media Center will manage several hundred thousand files without working up a sweat.

Would love to see a Win7MC plugin for JRMC. Much like the Arcsoft TMT3 plugin....
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post #13 of 24
10/1/09 at 11:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tsanga View Post

Forgive me...I'm failing to see how this is better for large libraries compared with the built in Music listing. Is it just that you can pick the artist by folder?

Its not really better, but that was the Op's request:

Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

I think I saw a plugin that worked with a folder view and I think would probably work the best.

It works for a lot of people who prefer navigating their music by folder/directory. If I ever get my crap tagged properly one of these days how I want it I would probably switch to a different plugin (or use the default music function).
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post #14 of 24
10/2/09 at 5:48am
Thread Starter 
Tagging it is out of the question. Its hard enough sorting it out into genres and trying to keep each folder to a managable size. Some are already tagged and that is the problem I suppose.
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post #15 of 24
10/2/09 at 8:32am
Ah, I see. Guess all my 60k+ tracks are tagged. Scrolling through them with a remote by artist is cumbersome - only the search function is reasonable to use. Also, Media Center seems to want to rescan my folders every time I restart, which bogs down the system.
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post #16 of 24
10/2/09 at 9:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Tagging it is out of the question. Its hard enough sorting it out into genres and trying to keep each folder to a managable size. Some are already tagged and that is the problem I suppose.

Tagging is the only way. I feel your pain as I am still going through and fixing tags on my collection. The benefit is that, once it's done, it will be done forever (/fingers crossed)

You are not going to find a good solution with 7MC with improperly tagged files.

However, I'm confused why it takes you so many button clicks. Don't you have a MCE remote? To get past the numbers into the A's, you should have to push exactly ONE button on the remote... tap to type is one of the biggest reasons I use 7MC and what (imo) makes it superior to every other music program I've used (MediaPortal, XBMC, etc). The speed of navigation without a keyboard is unmatched.

But once again, you need to have your files tagged. Garbage in, garbage out.
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post #17 of 24
10/2/09 at 9:24am
Ah I forgot about triple tap. I use it in search....
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post #18 of 24
10/2/09 at 10:49am
Thread Starter 
I have not had much time to play around with it. I will check it out more and see how it works.
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post #19 of 24
10/2/09 at 10:49am
Media Monkey is more of a music management system. I would highly recommend it for large libraries.

I am not aware of any plugins available for MC at the moment though...

http://www.mediamonkey.com
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post #20 of 24
10/2/09 at 11:22am
I agree with the previous post about fixing your tags. Spend the time to do it right, and it will be worth it in the long run. MediaMonkey is great for tending to the tags, and once you get a good workflow going it wont take too long. I also use it to embed album art in the tags, and to organize the folder structure.

Once I got all the tags cleaned up, then I move it over to my Music share on the server. I keep album art and rating embedded in the tag. Since iTunes won't read the ratings from the tag, I have to sync rating to iTunes from WMP. Why iTunes doesn't store the ratings in the tag, I'll never know. Probably the same reason they can't do simple folder monitoring.
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post #21 of 24
10/2/09 at 11:49am
Just use iTunes. I've got around 80gig of music and iTunes handles it wonderfully. Just make sure that all your descriptor fields are filled in. I particularly like sorting by genre or by year...helps me find what I'm looking for pretty fast. Also, rate all of your tracks (1-5 stars) and sort that way. Best thing ever, if you have time for it.
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post #22 of 24
10/2/09 at 12:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey-Z View Post

I use this:

http://musicbrowser.free.fr/

+1, it works well.
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post #23 of 24
10/2/09 at 2:25pm
Does Windows 7/Media Center still insist on resampling CD audio to 48kHz? Does it do that with extenders?
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post #24 of 24
10/2/09 at 3:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Goff View Post

Does Windows 7/Media Center still insist on resampling CD audio to 48kHz? Does it do that with extenders?

All audio is resampled to the default rate you set up in the audio settings. I wish WMC7 would allow a 'direct' mode like they do for DD sound.
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