OT: Windows Media Player tip

I'm in the process of digitizing a whole mess of Christmas albums that my wife had growing up. This involves hooking up a turntable to my laptop (I'm using a new Audio-Technica AT-PL50 that I picked up for just $99, which includes a built-in preamp so you don't need a receiver or mixer to record from it), and using the Analog Recorder tool from Plus! Digital Media Edition to record the audio, split it into tracks, name the album/tracks, and filter out pops and hissing. The Analog Recorder creates WMA files at whatever bitrate you choose.

Once the files are in WMA format, you can use Windows Media Player to burn them to an audio CD. But that's not the tip yet...

In order to keep as much info as possible from the original albums, I decided to use my Nikon Coolpix 4500 to take photos of the front and back covers, then use those for the CD inserts. The only thing missing at this point is having the album art show up in Windows Media Player. For some albums, it's possible to find the album info online, which automatically downloads the album art for you. But for more obscure albums, like the ones I'm currently digitizing, you probably won't find them online. Instead, you can simply copy the image you wish to use (JPG format) to the folder containing the audio tracks, and rename it to AlbumArtSmall.jpg. Your image will now show up in Windows Media Player when you are playing tracks from that album. If you want the same image to show up as the folder image in Thumbnail view, simply make a copy of the file, and rename it to Folder.jpg (this is not specific to WMP).

Note that all of the above is specific to Windows XP, and may not work on any other OS. YMMV. :-)

5 Comments

  • do you know where I can find album art

  • For CDs, if the album art isn't retrieved when you insert the CD (assuming you are connected to the Internet), the album art may not be available online. If that's the case, you can photograph the album cover, as I describe above, or if you're dealing with CD art, you could also use a scanner.



    If you don't have the original album, then you're probably out of luck.

  • i'm trying to produce my own album, got the art and everything, i even have a company to manufacture the cd's for me, but none of the songs titles or artist show up, not even on the original, what do i have to do when you are producing your own original?

  • I have no idea, other than that the titles need to conform to the specs for CD Audio (red book or orange book, I think). I would discuss the issue with the company manufacturing the CDs for you. They'd have a lot more information about this than I would. :-)

  • thank you very much Mr. Duthie, good idea =P

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