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[jukeboxuser99]

I am trying to switch from WMP10 to Media Jukebox. I was able to transfer my music collection OK. Not all columns came through, but the important ones did, with one BIG exception: the ratings. They are messed up. What I mean by that is that on some albums, the ratings are correct (same as what I had in WMP), on some, they are higher/lower than what I had in WMP, and on some they are not there at all.

I searched the boards for a few hours but in vain. It is possible someone has posted a solution for this. If so I am very sorry, if someone could post a link to a posted solution I would be happy to follow it.

I heard good things about MJ so wanted to try it, but if the ratings don't work it is going to be show stopper for me. I don't want to manually re-do all the ratings.

While searching I also found that some users have had issues with ratings "disappearing" or "changing" in various situations. How big or pervasive of an issue is this?

Do any of these issues go away if you switch to the paid version (MC-x.y) ? I would be willing to switch to MC if that means these issues would go away.

I am running windows XPSP3.

thanks in advance,
Jukeboxuser99

[JimH]

If you know the name of the tag that is missing, you can add it to MC.  Try a google search for the name.

MP3 files?

[jukeboxuser99]

The field in WMP10 is calling "Rating". I suppose the tag is called either "Rating" or "rating". This is a standard field in WMP10.

MJ mapped this field to its own field called "Rating" without me doing anything special, although it did not do it correctly, which is the problem.

My WMP10 files are all MP3 files.

thanks,
Jukeboxuser99

[Alex B]

MJU12 and WMP use a different scale in the "popularimeter" ID3v2 file tag.

The system has been adjusted slightly in MC14 in order to make more compatible with a few slightly different rating tag implementations, including WMP's. More info: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=53283.0 (J River has implemented the changes I suggested in the Media Center program.)

Unfortunately that does not help MJ users.

Perhaps you could simply export five playlists from WMP (one for each rating value) and import the playlists to MJ. In MJ you can mass tag the files in each individual imported list. For instance: go to the imported "five star" list, select all files and apply the five star rating.

[jukeboxuser99]

Thanks Alex B; this is a great idea. However, I am having some difficulty implementing it.

To test the concept, I created a test play-list called TestPlayList, and put some songs in it. I could right click on TestPlayList, and choose "Edit Play-list in action window".

This showed all the songs in the play-list. Then I could select all songs in TestPlayList (ctrl-a) or highlight all songs, right click on any song and choose "tag" (or click tag in the left corner of the window); then edit the rating field.

I could verify in the library that all songs in TestPlayList had the new rating.

So then on to  what I actually wanted to do, I created five play-lists in WMP and named them "1star", "2stas", "3start", etc. Each play-list contained tracks with the ratings suggested by the list name.

I imported the plays-lists and they showed up in "recently played" area. I was able to move them from there to where they showed up on the same level as normal play-lists(i.e. outside the "recently played" area).

The problem is that when I choose one of the new lists, say "1star", it does not show me all the songs that are in that play-list. I cannot therefore select all songs and changes their ratings. So MJ basically does not "know " the relationship of the songs in play-list "1star" to the files in the library. Further evidence of this is that if I select "1star" and choose "play" it actually opens WMP!

Could this be because MJ does not handle files with ".wpl" extension? I noticed that ".wpl" was not one of the extensions explicitly listed in the "file -> import playlist" dialog, so I had to choose "All files" in "Files of type" drop down.

In "Tools -> Options -> File Associations", I have "All types selected" checked on, so everything is selected. In the help contents, I could not find anything under ".wpl".

Bottom line is: this is a great idea, I just need to figure out how to get it to work ;-))

I searched the forum for ".wpl" and apparently no one has been able to do it, and also apparently the support for ".wpl" is, at least theoretically, only available in MC14 or whatever the latest MC version is (i.e. the paid version).  If it works in MC, I would not mind paying for it..

Thanks,
jukeboxuser99

[jukeboxuser99]

Hi.. It's been a while and I have not seen a reply.. Is it reasonable to assume that no one knows of a solution, or am I doing something incorrectly?

thanks.

jukeboxuser99

[Alex B]

Definitely a while. Somehow I missed your reply.

The new version, MJ14, should now use a fully compatible system. It should be able to read the WMP rating tags correctly.

However, I just tested WMP11 again and noticed that it does not always actually write the rating tags even though I have the option "maintain star ratings as global ratings in files" enabled. In my quick test the rating tag was sometimes written only after I changed another tag. Sometimes a new rating value was reverted to the previous value after editing another tag in the advanced tag editor. The behavior seems to be quite irrational.

So you may still need to use the "playlist system" for transferring the rating values to MJ.

As you have noticed, the wpl format is not supported. You must use the m3u format. WMP can save m3u playlists, but you must gather the files to "Now Playing" and use the "File > Save Now Playing List As..." command (press the alt key on to access the file menu if you have the menus hidden). Select the "M3U Playlist" option in the "Save as type:" drop-down list.

EDIT

Actually, you can create a very small m3u playlist (one file is enough) and add more files later. Once the playlist is saved in the m3u format it will appear in the tree on the left and WMP will keep the disk file synced.