Windows media player 12 / Windows Media Center - Multiple-Cds Albums sorting in library
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 11:06 AMI have some problems to sort the music files in the library.
If there is an album with more than one disc, the sorting is like that:
1 - track 1 CD1
1 - track 1 CD2
2 - track 2 CD1
2 - track 2 CD2
etc...
I would like more logical sorting like this:
1 - track 1 CD1
2 - track 2 CD1
etc...
1 - track 1 CD2
2 - track 2 CD2
etc...
Do you see what I mean ? It seems that WMP/WMC doesn't sort using the "disc number" tag of the file (as it should be).
Is there any way to sort it fine without creating 2 different albums for a 2 disc album ?
Thank you.
All Replies
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Thursday, October 01, 2009 7:35 AMNo ideas ??
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Friday, October 02, 2009 3:55 AMModerator
Hi Darats,
I have tested the issue and found if we can add "Subtitle" to the music files, and sort it by Subtitle in Windows Media Player, it will arrange to the way you want.
To do this, please perform the steps below:
1. Right click on the music file and then click Properties. (Let's make "tack 1 CD1" as an example.)
2. On the Details tab, type CD1 in Subtitle section.
3. Click OK.
4. Open Windows Media Player, click Library -> Music -> Album and then double click the Album.
5. Press Ctrl+M combine key to show the Menu.
6. Click View -> Choose Columns.
7. Check Subtitle and then click OK.
8. Please sort by Subtitle and see if the issue can be resolved.
In Windows Media Center, we can perform the following steps to sort the music files:
1. Open Windows Media Center and then go to Music -> music library.
2. Click the album you would like to sort the files.
3. Click "play album".
4. On the left, click "View Song List".
5. Click "Edit "List".
6. Move the songs by pressing the arrow button listed and then sort the way you want.
7. Click Done.
In addition, you can save the list as Playlist.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Linda
- Marked As Answer by Linda YanModerator Wednesday, October 07, 2009 1:23 AM
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Friday, October 02, 2009 7:02 PMOk it seems to work. :)
But do you know to sort it like this by default ? 'cause everytime I close and reopen WMP, the sorting is messed up again and I need to chose "subtitles sorting" again. -
Monday, October 05, 2009 5:47 AMModerator
Hi Darats,
You can just save the tracks as Playlist in Windows Media Player to save the order of the music files. :-)
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Monday, October 05, 2009 4:28 PMWell, that is not what I really would like. Anyway, thanks a lot for your support,
Hopefully Microsoft will take this into consideration for the next WMP version... -
Monday, October 05, 2009 4:37 PMHi,
Surely if you name the Album, e.g. My Album (Disk 1) and My Album (Disk 2), then the tracks will be sorted first in Album then Track order. That's how I have all my music set up & it works fine :p
Hope it helps :)
Jeff
If anyone is helpfull, please click the 'Vote as helpfull' icon. If anyone has answered, please click 'Suggest as answer' at the bottom of the post involved :) Thanks -
Tuesday, October 06, 2009 8:47 AMyeah, I know it will works, but I will have two different albums instead of only one. Actually my question was more : How can I make WMP use the "album number" tag.
There is a hole bunch of normalized tags that can be put into a mp3 file. the problem is that WMP doesn't use it at all. The "album number" is just an example, but a lot of them cannot be displayed into the WMP library. If there is no way to set it up properly, I hope a new version or a plug-in will correct it.
Does someone know if editing the Windows registry via "regedit" could help to put more tags into WMP ? -
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:10 PMgood question. bump on this one. any way to make WMP use the "set" field or any chance this will come with an update. it is silly that it is missing, especially when WMP11 supports the "set" field in the advanced tag editor.
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Thursday, December 24, 2009 4:10 PMI am considering finally building a Media Center PC and was testing out WMC just now and noticed this flaw. This is a dealbreaker for me as I have hundreds of multi-disc albums in my collection and am not willing to re-tag them. I'm adding my request for this to be fixed by Microsoft. If they have in Windows 7, I would consider buying a copy if I can somehow demo it first.
Thanks for bringing this up! -
Friday, December 25, 2009 12:51 AM The strange "subtitle" answer above is not really a valid notion given the lack of persistence. When you step back, you see as koawmfot noted that this is really about the use of the "Set" field. WMP does not and will not use the Set field to sort. Instead it uses Album title as Shark noted.
So the correct answer here would be to use the Album title field as the descriptive identifier. If you really don't want to do this, you can use the track number such as by setting t1d1 to be 0101, t1d2 to be 0201, and so forth. So those are the viable solutions, really.
The problem with "Set" is that it doesn't fit well within the Explorer namespace / folder views. This is consistent with the player storing one album in one folder, as opposed to dumping everything to one common folder - where you may have issues with filename collisions depending upon your naming scheme.
As such it is not supported and is unlikely to be supported, sorry.- Marked As Answer by Ronnie VernonMVP, Moderator Monday, April 19, 2010 9:07 PM
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Monday, January 18, 2010 12:02 AM
This feature works great in Zune.
Of course the Media Center software ties into Windows Media Player and not Zune, so I have no way of using Zune elsewhere in the house if I wanted to network my media. I have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of multiple disc albums and this is a big deal for me. It sure would be nice if Microsoft fixed this. -
Monday, February 01, 2010 9:38 PM
Microsoft unforunatly needs to work with the way tags are supposed to be used, not what is convenient to them to use. Telling us all to not use the tags correctly is a bit like assuming there is no issue with the software but that we should live with way that windows does not work with multiple CD albums. Albums have a name, and that does not include Disc 1, Tracks have a name, and the numbers of CDs in a particular album, is something that Microsoft has to realise is a reality. I alos have many Multi CD albums, and put simple this is a basic flaw in the software, which should be fixed now not in the future.
As it stands Windows Media plyer can not handle correctly any multi CD albums, and as such is broken as a media player. This has always be a major flaw in Media player and Media center.
Come on Microsoft stop telling us to use some cobbled up work around, such as renaming each CD which basically gives you multiple albums not one and then you have issues trying to just play a multi CD album without a playlist.
This is not hard just use the tags, as other well known MP3 player do. I have 2 copies of Windows 7 so far but I'm unable to use Media player in either and have instead to use Itunes as this (for all its other flaws) at least can handles multi CD albums without any issue.- Proposed As Answer by Gwk Thursday, March 11, 2010 6:35 PM
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010 12:34 PMMy 2 cents, basically the same as BHauxwell.
The title is the same for a release, not a disc number stuck on the end. You wouldn't ask a music store for "whatever disc 1" so why would you have to use this as the title?
If ID3 standards do not include album number, fine don't use them. But ID3 does support subtitle, as does WMP, but ordering should be Title - subtitle - tracknumber. The only way this can be done is in a single album view. Absurd. Create a new play list for every multiple disc release? Crazy.
For all the things WMP can do right this is the reason I keep turning it off.
Maybe one day Ill be able to get this streaming, in the right order, to my Xbox360 also.
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010 9:41 PMIf it bothers me having the discs treated individually, I just renumber the multiple CD tracks into a single album. So, 1-12 on Disc 1 and 1-12 on Disc 2 becomes 1-24. (Easily done in one shot using Mp3tag and it's renumbering wizard.) Problem solved, and 100% compatible with every player and device out there. Like it or not, support of disc # sorting is not universal.
This seems to be the way digital music stores treat their catalogs as well.
By the way, the pre-Zune HD devices don't deal with disc # at all... even though the Zune PC software supports it. So, Zune didn't really support it. Left hand, meet right hand. Thankfully, Zune HD now matches the software. -
Saturday, February 20, 2010 12:13 PMDoesn't work that well for 5-6 disc box sets renumbering to sequential, also subtitle is not valid truly a valid fix because its a track subtitle by id3 definition. ID3v2.3 specs TPOS which is Set in WMP (but not used???) or disc number in itunes for disc numbering....
So is WMP an expanded file browser only, or is it a media player which should be handling tags correctly? -
Saturday, February 20, 2010 7:19 PMThe subtitle suggestion is in my opinion bogus.
Set doesn't work because then you get into filename collisions in the shell.
The best plan is to use the Album Title: "Self's Awesome CD Box Set [Disc 1]" or such. -
Sunday, February 21, 2010 12:25 AMAn even better plan is to use a player that makes the correct use of ID tags, such as foobar2000.
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 12:46 PMNot really an option. Watch your library albums entries blow out by another 20% and forever trying to find things on the streamed end (Xbox 360). And once again it's not true to the release.
Agree about the subtitle being bogus, why was it suggested in the first place? -
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 1:07 PMI have tried MonkeyMedia, Foobar, Tversity and I'm using iTunes due to my phone. On Linux I'm using Quod Libet. They all have plus and minus points. None of them have this issue with multiple disc albums.
If WMP is the core of the standard Microsoft environment (PC, Media Centre, 360 streaming) then it should do it right. The only way that happens is if people raise the the problems in the first place. Just changing a media player on the computer opens up new issues regarding streaming/encoding/other people who use the computer etc. -
Thursday, March 11, 2010 6:37 PM
I sure hope that Microsoft will fix this shortcoming. I have quite a few multi-disc albums and never had an issue with a third party media player. Now I am forced to run WMP due to my new multi-room system and quite a few flaws become apparent. This is one of them and ought to be fixed.Microsoft unfortunately needs to work with the way tags are supposed to be used, not what is convenient to them to use. Telling us all to not use the tags correctly is a bit like assuming there is no issue with the software but that we should live with way that windows does not work with multiple CD albums. Albums have a name, and that does not include Disc 1, Tracks have a name, and the numbers of CDs in a particular album, is something that Microsoft has to realise is a reality. I alos have many Multi CD albums, and put simple this is a basic flaw in the software, which should be fixed now not in the future.
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Monday, April 12, 2010 4:11 PM
The subtitle suggestion is in my opinion bogus.
Set doesn't work because then you get into filename collisions in the shell.
The best plan is to use the Album Title: "Self's Awesome CD Box Set [Disc 1]" or such.
Can you please explain how this would cause filename collisions in the shell? -
Monday, April 12, 2010 7:10 PM
For example DJ Shadow's Diminishing Returns disc 1 and 2 have matching names across discs. (That's off the top of my head from the first match in my library. There will be many other collisions.)
There are semi-messy ways to work around the filename collision problems, but evidently the team in charge of this implementation decided to go with the simpler approach in both aspects.
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Sunday, January 02, 2011 7:45 PMSeems that there is no acceptable solution, I need something that works with standards. Neither the Album title solution is okay (in face, I want it to be displays as one album on other devices (mp3 players) and the subtitle solution is also a wmp only solution. Hope for a fix from MS! Guess I have to use iTunes again!
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Thursday, January 13, 2011 7:31 PM
WMP is truly an awful program, i used it as my primary media application for years and finally switched over to iTunes because WMP had so many damn bugs that they just didnt seem to care to fix, problems that existed back in WMP6 and still do (the disc # support being my biggest issue, its constant insistence on making and displaying an albumart.jpg image that is 200x200 when i have perfectly good 500x500 image embedded in each song file, trying to split artist tags like "AC/DC" into "AC" and "DC" as well as many other variants, not even reading the tags on 300+ songs which i tagged myself and lumping them into the 'Unknown' category, etc. etc.).
Microsofts Zune software is a huge step in the right direction tho, if you havent tried it id sincerely recommend it. Currently ive had to go back to WMP to try to set up media streaming to my Xbox 360 for music because i cant seem to get the Zune software to do it, and im hating every second with WMP. Switch to iTunes or Zune, Zune does a great job of monitoring your media folders, iTunes does a great job of not messing anything up lol!
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Tuesday, February 01, 2011 10:56 AM
Agreed that the suggested solutions are bogus.
I have three albums with over 200 tracks each (all long audio books). The longest has over 1000 tracks. All of course are very multidisk, and it rather matters which order they are played in.
Do they suggest I then create this 1000+ long playlist, or edit 1000+ files to get them into the right order? Or are they going to fix their broken software?
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Sunday, March 20, 2011 2:32 PM
No, the correct answer here is for the user to tag albums correctly (with "Disc 1" etc. in the album title only when it was in the original release title, and the machine-readable disc number information stored in the "Disc" tag). Any semi-competently-designed media player (including iTunes, MediaMonkey and any of the default Linux media players) will read and use this information.
I don't have a problem with software companies taking bold decisions to improve usability, but this is an omission motivated by laziness and incompetence. Fix it.
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Thursday, July 07, 2011 3:18 PM
Not sure if this has been mentioned or will help but:
Select all the music files you want for disc 1.
Right Click > Find Album Info > Edit > Tick Box "This is a multiple CD" > Select Disc 1 > Done > Finish
WMP will re-label as "Album Name Disk 1"
Repeat for however many discs you have.
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:21 AM
Not sure if this has been mentioned or will help but:
Select all the music files you want for disc 1.
Right Click > Find Album Info > Edit > Tick Box "This is a multiple CD" > Select Disc 1 > Done > Finish
WMP will re-label as "Album Name Disk 1"
Repeat for however many discs you have.
Yeah... a fun word of warning on this. WMP will happily screw all of your composer information when you do this. Not really a viable option if you care about things like that. -
Saturday, December 08, 2012 5:14 AMYeah, I really want to be able to do this, too. I was pretty much forced to abandon iTunes because ripped files won't play properly on my new Android phone. So now I'm puzzling over how to combine my multi-disc albums into a single album rather than separate albums. If WMP could do this before, why was the ability removed? As a computer programmer, it seems rather stupid to remove useful features. Will WMP11 work in Windows 7? If so, where can I get it? Meanwhile, I'm going to fuss around with Mp3tag to see if that will solve my problem. Microsoft, please restore this functionality. It really IS important.
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Sunday, December 09, 2012 3:20 PM
rhiguera: the Windows Media Player Plus! plug-in can make WMP's library recognize disc numbers.
The only supported way to get WMP 11 on Windows 7 is to install and run it in Windows 7's (virtualized) XP Mode. For details, see
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7
Tim De Baets
http://www.bm-productions.tk -
Wednesday, December 19, 2012 5:44 PM
I hate to say it but I have to continue to use iTunes for now.
MICROSOFT NEEDS TO SUPPORT CD# and Track #. Is that too much to ask? The work arounds above are all bull#$% I wish people would stop posting garbage like that!
Renaming an album is NOT an option. Renaming Tracks to add in the CD# is NOT an option. Supporting CD# is the only option and it's hard to imagine that in 2012 Microsoft has not figured that out? Really? STOP working on Windows 8 and just fix the current version!
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