Can't seem to download the zip file, is it still available?
 

Please try the download again. There was a server problem with my Internet Service Provider. It took them a couple days to find the problem but the downloads are working again.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Rather than just backing up a database, I wanted to build a single Windows Media Player 11 setup on a USB disk which can be run on both a laptop and a PC, one running XP Home, the other XP professional. The ripped files do not appear to be a problem, but there doesn't appear to be any way of getting XP to access the \Microsoft\Media Player\CurrentDatabase_nnn.wmdb from the USB rather than a Windows dictated location? My guess is that this is to do with DRM constraints on Microsoft's part, but is there any way of circumventing this?

Barrington
 

This post has been removed by the author.
 

Anonymous, for information on changing the location of the database, search the Windows Media Player newsgroups for the term LibraryDatabasePath. You will find a registry hack that you can use to set the path for the database. Just put a .reg file on your thumb drive to set the path before starting WMP.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Rick, I suggest the MSDN newsgroups at msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups for your question. The C# newsgroup is very active and you'll get an answer much sooner than I would be able to look at your code and help you.
 

Larry, I am removing your post because comments are added automatically and I have no way to edit out your email address as you requested. I will email you directions to send me an example of the file you're having trouble with but there is no way to know if we can reproduce the problem by using the file versus what we might see on your own PC.
 

Hi,
I have tried using your Media Player Metadata but when it is going through my music I get an error of:

'.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character

What does this mean?
I am in XP and installed v3 .net framework. I also got this error from v2 .Net framework.
 

Hi,

In regard to my error above, you can ignore it. I tested it on another computer and worked fine. I think my system is just messed up and in need of a reinstall!
 

Hello, firstly thank you Mr Preston for this much needed program to backup the WMP database.

I also encountered the same error:

"'.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character"

Ant suggestion as to what causes it or how to workaround it?

Regards

eric
 

Do you happen to know if Media Center on Vista uses a different library than WPM11? If so, can I purge it too? I have a weird situation where MC is showing different art than WMP.
 

I just solved the issue with Media Center having different art than WPM: delete the files in C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ehome\Art Cache
 

Hi Dale, I am having a problem with the Metadata Backup. Unfortunately it is gibberish to me. Error message is .NET Unhandled Exception quote: '.',hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid charcater. I had a look at the track where it had hung and could not see any stray '.'
 

Unfortunately, I do not yet have a solution to the invalid character problem. I do not see that in my library but I suspect that it is a null separator between genres or other fields. I am working on a new release in which I will try to catch those nulls and encode them so that they can be written to the XML.

Thanks for your continued patience.

Dale
 

Thanks for your advice. I had a corrupted database and after two hours on the phone with Dell their conclusion was to reinstall Vista. I didn't really need your program, I just renamed the corrupted database file and WMP rebuilt the database, my data was still intact. I could not have done this without you telling me where to look for the database. Thank you.
 

Well, let me add my own name to the list of those who have just lost their library for no apparent reason. While I have created tools to help protect users from such losses, I have not - before now - experienced the loss myself. I just turned on Windows Media Player 11 and was informed that my library was corrupt and would be deleted and WMP shut down. The message said that when I restart WMP a new library would be created.

Good thing that I have the tools to backup my library - sort of. This was on my development machine anyway so it isn't the PC that I use normally for listening to music so there was no real pain in losing the data anyway. The point is that I have not had any system crashes or WMP crashes. Every time I shut down my system it works normally. Every time I shut down WMP it closes normally. So how did my library get corrupted? Because it is UNRELIABLE by design (even if not by intent).

Dale
 

hi dale. Thanks for your help with the library. stuff for WM 11 on the newsgroup site. These were your suggestions:

1. Make sure that the files are not read-only.
2. Check permissions to make sure you can read and write to the folder the
files are in and to the files themselves.
3. Check the box to add previously deleted files.
4. Try dragging the missing files to your media library and dropping them
on the library list.
5. If all else fails, try rebuilding your library by following the
instructions at
http://www.dalepreston.com/Blog/2007/03/windows-media-player-metadata-backup.html#rebuilding.

1 - 3 I'd already tried. Unfortunately I have no idea how you do 4 and i didn't really get the rebuilding stuff you wrote. It assumes a little too much knowledge on my part.

Thanks for your help though - I really appreciate it.

Namasikho
 

Dale,

Your tool would be incredibly useful to me! Thanks so much for spending the time with it!

I am having the same trouble as the others. ('.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character.)

I hope you find the problem with it, it would mean SO much to me. Please let me know if I can be of any help, perhaps I can provide you with sample file(s) that cause this error or give you more details about my machine. Please let me know!

Again, I can't thank you enough for working on this tool. It would be a very great thing indeed if I could use it.

I really hope you'll fix this bug. Please let me know if I can help. Maybe I can offer a modest financial incentive, too.

Dan
 

Dan,

I appreciate the offer to help. Email me at dalepres and then the at symbol and then msn and then dot com.

I suspect the problem is related to some fields with multiple values separating those values with a null byte. XML does not like null bytes. As soon as I can, I'll just change the code to test for null bytes and encode them into the XML and I'll need someone who is having the problem to test that version.

Thanks,

Dale
 

Poking my head in here after a few days. I sent you some email, hope you'll get a chance to look at it soon. :)

Dan
 

I like your program Metadata Backup.
- To test it, I applied it to a small WMP 9 library with 4 WAV-songs.
- The 4 WAV songs are present in WMPMetadata.xml, so the backup function works ok.
- But when I restore this backup, after clearing 3 fields (Title, Artist, Album) in WMP 9, an error message occurs: (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)).
- When I look in the WMP again: 1 song was restored, the other 3 songs were not.
- Dale, do you have an explanation or a solution for this behaviour?

Greetings,

Dirk
 

Dale,

Hate to be annoying, but I hope you're still interested in this project -- it's truly a wonderful thing. Just a few seemingly small issues left. Inches from the finish line! :)

Dan
 

Thanks for the continued interest and patience, Dan.

I just haven't been able to give this any time for the last few weeks. One week was my daughter-in-law's college graduation; the next week my daughter's wedding, and the last week a dead laptop.

So, I am reloaded and have a long weekend to boot. Hopefully we will make some progress this weekend.
 

For all of you that have been having problems with the null character, that problem has been resolved thanks to the help of Dan and Larry, a couple Metadata Backup users who worked with me.

Their effort just shows that Windows Media Player users really do think that their data has value.

You can read more about the problem and solution at http://dalepreston.com/Blog/2007/05/updated-metadatabackup.html or just download the latest version using the links on this page.

Dale
 

I emphatically second Dale's statement: "Their effort just shows that Windows Media Player users really do think that their data has value."

Were more people to seek out this project, more would realize its value.
 

Seeing that this exists is fabulous news. I have to be a jerk and ask for more, though . . .
MS recently released software to support the Zune. It's clearly a pointless fork from WMP 11's code, and uses .wmdb files in Local Settings. The differences are completely unremarkable except for one thing - it plays AAC files (i.e. DRM free iTunes Plus).

I really hoped that it would automatically import the existing WMP 11 metadata database, but it didn't. Then I really hoped that I could copy the file from the Media Player directory to the Zune directory, and that it would pick it up, but its not that easy. Then I was hoping I could replace the existing zune .wmdb files with Media Player's .wmdb files, and that doesn't work either.

Do you think you could figure out how to make the backup work as an export from Media Player and import into Zune? I'm hoping it's easy for you with your existing code base. For all I know they changed the format, too, but I hope not.
 

On May 22, 2007 I reported an error message (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)) for the combination
(WMP 9, MetaData Backup 1.0.0.0). This error didn't not occur any more after I migrated to (WMP 11, MetaData Backup 1.1.0.0).

Greetings,

Dirk
 

I was pretty excited to see this application when I moved to my new Vista PC. In particular I was hoping it would migrate all the track information I had added to my ripped .wav files. Since the info can't be stored in the .wav files I assumed it was stored in the wmdb database. But, after doing a backup on the old machine, and a restore on the new, none of the info for the .wav files seems to be moved. Am I missing something, or is this not possible?

Thanks
 

Try opening the XML file created by the backup using Microsoft's XML Notepad 2007 (Search at Microsoft.com for it) and see if the XML file has all of the information about your library.

Email me at dalepres then the at symbol and then msn dot com and let me know how it looks.
 

Dale, would it be possible to post the source code? I would like to enhance the tool to actually be able to sync computers, I usually use 3 computers, my laptop, my home machine and work machine. It would be nice to be able to sync the 3 machines with some sort of service that I would write to do so.
 

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your work. I downloaded Metadata Backup for my Vista system (where WMP corrupts its library every day or two :-( ).

Unfortunately, the Restore doesn't recreate my library, despite thinking and apparently working for quite a while. When I load up WMP, there's nothing there.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Brion Emde
 

Metadata Backup only restores the metadata for existing items in your library. It doesn't backup or restore the library itself.

Use WMP to scan your media files and add them to the library. Then use Metadata Backup to restore any missing or custom metadata that you have added to your library.

Most of the metadata is stored in the file anyway and will be recovered when WMP adds the items to your library. It is the custom information or other metadata that is stored by WMP in the library rather than in the file that Metadata Backup will help you with.

If you don't want to go through the trouble of scanning your library over and over again, just use Windows Explorer or your favorite Windows file backup program to backup the WMDB files.

Dale
 

Thanks, Dale, I misunderstood the intent. It takes about 4 hours to rescan my library and I thought your program took care of that. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
 

Hi Dale,

Sorry my poor enghish.
I don't know why I can't download the MetadataBackup.zip and ID3TagBackup.zip. I think it is a temporary problem.
I also want to know if there is a tool that migrates WMP data to ID3, so I can manage my files in WMP, send data to ID3 tag, and send my files with my organization to my friends, so they can use in any player and any folder structure. In this case, the star rating is not relevant.
Thanks!!!
 

Hi Dale. I have a problem with the Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista. Maybe you can help me.

I have added some songs that they haven't got an album information associated, but when I search and select the right album, press on top of the album, it doesn't update the file with the album information. It's weird because I used to do that and it worked fine, now I can't.

I think maybe the Windows Media Player is corrupt.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you very much

JC
 

Hi, Dale,

I was trying out your software on WMP11 under Vista Ultimate and I'm getting this error message when trying a backup.

Any thoughts?

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Interop.WMPLib, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
File name: 'Interop.WMPLib, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'
at Preston.Media.MediaPlayer..ctor()
at Preston.Media.MetaDataBackupForm.btnBackup_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].



************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
MetaDataBackup
Assembly Version: 1.1.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.1.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/ProgramData/Microsoft/Windows/Start%20Menu/Programs/MetaDataBackup.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.
 

Great stuff!!
Thanks.
 

Can it backup and restore the album cover image?
 

In its current form, it will not backup images. I have another version of the application I use at home that backs up ID3 tags, which would include embedded images but I have not had time to prepare it for public consumption.

In general, true backup means copying to another external source such as tape or a portable hard drive and then occasionally rotating that portable drive off site such as a family member's house. That's really how you should backup your images.

In fact, if you don't do a file system backup, the metadata backup created by my app won't do you any good either should the file not be there when you need it.

I recommend using Cobian 7 backup from http://www.cobian.se. I don't personally like Cobian 8. I use Cobian to copy files to a portable drive and then I swap the drive around with one I keep away from the house. That way if the house burns down, I still have a backup.
 

Lynn,

Your problem is most likely caused by not extracting all the files from the zip folder into a common location. If you double-click the executable in Windows Explorer in the compressed folder, you'd get the same results.

Extract all the files to a common folder so that the WMPLIB.DLL file is available to the executable program.

Dale
 

Hi Dale,

just wanted to say THANK YOU for this brilliant piece of software. It is the first time I manage to migrate my Window Media Player meta data in such an easy way, including my dear play count! This all without creating anoying duplicates. It took me less than 30 minutes to transfer everything from one PC to another.

Good job!
 

Here is another big "thank you!", Dale. I got a couple of white space errors on the way trying, but every time I got that I qlicked continue (it doesent make the prog go on, but you do get to scroll the list for processed files) so when removing those few files that caused the program to stop, everything worked like a charm. Thanks again, youre the best! Best regards from Pelle in Sweden.
 

It looks like this is exactly what I would like to do - I have been searching all over for information on how to do this programmatically from c# - but no success:-(

Any chance you can point me to a place where to continue my search (afterall you succeeded bigtime here)?

When I run the MetadataBackup it displays all my media in the listbox - but the XML file is left with only two lines (xml header and a line explaining from where the backup was initiated)
 

Will this work if I'm moving from an XP computer with WMP10 to a vista computer with WMP11. I'm taking the same hard drive out of my old computer and putting in my new one, but it loses all my information, but if I plug it back into my old computer its all there still.
I tried copying the WMPDB but 10 and 11 have differentones so it my library just went blank.
Any input or help would be great, I've looked for a long time for a solution and this seems like its the closet thing. Thanks a lot.
 

It worked for me in my tests from WMP 10 on XP to WMP 11 on Vista.

But then, simply adding the files using the tools in WMP 11 will probably work as well. Just watch out for any custom album art.
 

Hi Dale, I want to say "THANK YOU!!!" I had a problem deleting files from WMP's libary that i had removed before. i tried to deleting them in WMP but i'd didnt worked out. i followed your instructions to find the metafile,(in the map local settings/microsoft/mediaplayer) i deleted it and Voila my WMP libary was clean again :D

Best of it all, because of this problem i finded your website and get aware of backup metadata :D

BIG THANK YOU again for all the hard work!
Delano, the Netherlands
 

When I tried to run metadata on my old XP computer it goes through 1500 of my songs and then gives me an error message. in quotes a 'sqaure', hexadecimal value 0x12 is an invalid charcter.
I installed the .net framework and tried all the different versions of it, cause i thought that might be the problem. Do you have nay ideas? Thanks and heres the details of the error

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application.

The writer is closed or in error state.


DETAILS:

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.InvalidOperationException: The Writer is closed or in error state.
at System.Xml.XmlWellFormedWriter.AdvanceState(Token token)
at System.Xml.XmlWellFormedWriter.WriteEndElement()
at Preston.Media.MetaDataBackupForm.backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted(Object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.OnRunWorkerCompleted(RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.AsyncOperationCompleted(Object arg)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
MetaDataBackup
Assembly Version: 1.1.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.1.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Tyler/Desktop/MetaDataBackup.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
Interop.WMPLib
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Tyler/Desktop/Interop.WMPLib.DLL
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

configuration
system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" /
/configuration

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.
 

I don't know if this comes under matadata backup, but I want to "export" the DETAILS of my Windows Mediaplayer 11 Library to an access database so I can add a lot more fields than are available in the media player. Will your backup file allow this?

Is there any other way I can do this?

Ian
 

Hi Dale,
thanks a lot for your detailed information about WMP.
According to what Ian wrote last time, I'm also interested in working much more with the WMP library and an extern database.
My problem is:
I have a lot of records with (classical) media information in my Access mdb, and I'm a bit familiar with VB programming.
Until now the following procedure seems to work:
Write my media information manually with a tagging programm in (compressed) media files - update the WMP library - getting most of the results in WMP (or Vista mediacenter).
I can't believe that this is state-of-the-art in data transfer today.

What I would like to get:
1. my own media information in VMP
2. no need of compressed mediafiles or any proprietary file- or tagformats
3. get an "easy to do" ability to deal with the multiple discussed instable database from WMP

What's your idea, do you see a chance to deal with a task like this?

Kind regards
Rudi (from southern Germany)
 

Dale,
many thanks. I spent many hours recording my old vinyl onto disk. It's now burnt to CD as well as sitting on disk and it gets listened to again.

Skipping the long and sad tale, the metadata had become read only somewhere along the line (new pc, then add a Vista partition). After spending a great deal of time wrestling with file permissions I came upon your program and I have been able to rebuild my wmdb file. About 100 entries have needed some post rescue assistance but compared with some 1,000s that's nothing.
Thanks again,
John Holden
England
 

Thanks for saving me nights of headaches try to move my music library and restore settings.
 

When I point it to the root of a remote share I get
"Directory x could not be located." If I go down one folder on that share it works fine on that subtree. Any ideas?
 

Hello Dale,
Thanks for your work and all this precious information. I was wondering if you could - if it's technically feasible and not too much time-consuming - add an alternate version of your program that would dump ALL information contained in the wmdb in a user-friendly format, or at least all information about extracted CD's. Let me explain why I would need this. I spent dozens of hours extracting my CD's (about a thousand), in high-quality mp3 format. The hard part of this work was to correct all inaccurate informations gathered by Media Player on distant databases (eg misspelled track names, confusions between CD-versions, dates, etc) and to manually add all missing information. Now that I can afford a larger hard-drive, I would like to extract again all my CD's in a loss-less format. However, when I try to re-extract a CD, all modifications I made on track titles, CD name, genre, etc. immediately before the first extraction are not taken in account. Media Player is able to know that all tracks are already in the Library, but the attributes automatically assigned to the CD are the same as when I inserted it for the first time, even when Media Player is not connected to internet. Of course, this means that (1) all informations gathered the first time the CD was inserted are still in the wmdb, and (2) the modifications I made were not reflected on the CD entry in the wmdb.
 

My music library is on a disk that came from a now dead system, so I could not run your backup program on the old system.

Is WMP supposed to pick up the metadata tags in the MP3 or WMA files when it scans for new content? Mine does NOT. It's surprising, because WMP on my Windows Mobile 6 smart phone does this.

If I double click on a file name in explorer, WMP plays the song and displays the album, artist and title data correctly (on the Now Playing tab).

But when I import the files by using F3, or dragging them from file explorer, all the tag data is lost.

I thought your backup program would read the tag data from the music files, but it does not. Do you have a program that can read the tag data in the files, and place it in an XML file to be Restored via your backup program?
 

Dale,
I have lots of music and I have it all added to my windows media player. I like to keep a good count of music and find it by artist. I currently have 152658 songs listed but I have more than that it does not list. Does windows media hit a max number it tracks or is my database corrupt.

Thanks
 

Dale, not sure if you're still checking postings. This is a great piece of software you have developed. Especially for those of us who rip their cds in WAV format. Quick question for you. While your software allows you to transfer your ripped cd library from computer to computer and re-organize it in windows media, I haven't found that your software will also "reattach" the coverart to each of the albums. This means for those of us with wav libraries, we must manually reattach all of the coverart in WMP (WMP doesn't automatically download the coverart on its own for wav files). Do you happen to know of a solution for this?

Many thanks, Blake
 

Thanks for the tool but it seems to do nothing!

I am trying to backup one user's database and restore to another user so that the "Date Added" info is the same for both users.

I have ensured that the "backup or restore" folder is the same for both back and restore and both users have libraries built from that location.

However, the "date added" is not the same between users!

Any ideas why?

Thanks!
 

Dale,

I'm been using MetaDataBackup for backup my WMP library metadata information.
I found it very useful, a remarkable utility for anyone who spend too much time organizing the media library data with WMP.

During the testes I made to move my entirely library to an external drive, I found an issue related to the multi-value fields like 'Contributing Artist'.

Windows Media Player uses ';' to separate the several values in the same field.
I also update some of the fields with complementary information using the ; as separator.

When I use MetaDataBackup to backup the library only the first value is stored in the XML output file.
The restoring process works well but it ignores the values beyond the first ';'.

Do you have a solution or a recommendation for this?

Thanks in advance and many many thanks for your great job.

Regards,

Carlos Magno
 

I have downloaded metadatabackup twice and after unzipping it and running the exe file all I get is the old MS box that this program has encountered a problem and needs to close. I downloaded and installed .net3 and tried again, but still no go.
 

I guess I should have added that I am running XPSP2 with 2GB ram on a 3.2ghz intel processor. I am not a blogger so I have no user account to use. Just call me Casadiego
 

Does your WMP Metadata Backup support WMP11?
 

This utility is absolutely essential and is something I have been wanting for a very long time. Thank you, very, very much! I can't tell you how much I appreciate this!

However, there is a bug I found that was previously commented on. WMP uses a semicolon to separate individuals in the composer and contributing artist fields (and possibly other fields as well).

For example, the song "Layla" in my WMP library correctly lists the composer as "Eric Clapton; Jim Gordon", but after backing up and restoring the metadata using the utility, the composer is listed as "Eric Clapton" (Jim Gordon is dropped off). The existence of multiple individuals in the composer field is actually quite common, so there is potential for a not insignificant amount of data loss here.

Since the goal of this project is to retain the metadata that many of us have spent many hours meticulously gathering, it is more than a little disheartening to find this bug.

I do hope you take the time to fix this as I absolutely love this utility and want to make use of it on a regular basis. However, this data loss is unacceptable to me so it is with much regret that I "rolled back" to my bloated and buggy WMP library prior to optimizing it with your utility.

Best of luck and keep up the great work! I'll anxiously await word of an update (keeping fingers crossed here!)
 

Hi Dale, I hope you get to read this. Thanks for the app, it restored my "Play Count" figures brilliantly (before this and after buying a new computer, I actually spent a year re-listening to all tracks in my library!).

However, your app did not restore "Date Last Played" information at all. I like to listen to tracks I haven't heard in a while and have an auto-playlist set at >6 months. Is it possible to restore the Date Last Played metadata too?

Thanks.
tinstar