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[Khatru]

I've been using JRiver for several years now and recently bought a new computer.  I used Windows easy-transfer to move all my media from the old pc to the new one. I reinstalled JRiver and, while all the albums, songs and artwork show up just fine, most of my CD's that were recorded with the WMA format will no longer play.  I jet an error message from the JRiver player that says: "Playback Problem ? Something went wrong with playback".

I've searched Google (and these boards) with no luck.  I own all the CD's effected by this, but I really do not want to spend hrs and hrs reinstalling.

I've even tried a few "WMA-to-MP3" converters and they haven't worked.

Has anyone encountered (and solved) this issue?  Your help would be greatly appreciated!

[blgentry]

Can you play those WMA files with another player?  Like windows media player or something?

Do you have the old computer still?  Do the affected files still play on the old computer?  It might be a good test to copy several files from the old computer onto a thumb drive or something and then copy them onto the new computer in a different directory.  I suppose it's possible the files were corrupted during transfer.  I'm not familiar with windows easy transfer, so I'm just speculating on possibilities.

Good luck,

Brian.

[Khatru]

Thanks Brian -

The old PC still plays all the files.  The new PC only plays the MP3's.

I deleted the whole "easy transfer" file and started over - this time doing a direct PC-to-PC transfer over my home network.

Same result:  the MP3's play fine while the WMA's will not play at all.  But the song files are all there. The players load the album artwork and song details, but simply won't play the blasted wma files.  I've tried playing them with the Windows 10 player (Xbox music), the standard "Windows Media Player" and, of course, JRiver.  No luck with any.

So irritating.

Can you play those WMA files with another player?  Like windows media player or something?

Do you have the old computer still?  Do the affected files still play on the old computer?  It might be a good test to copy several files from the old computer onto a thumb drive or something and then copy them onto the new computer in a different directory.  I suppose it's possible the files were corrupted during transfer.  I'm not familiar with windows easy transfer, so I'm just speculating on possibilities.

Good luck,

Brian.

[blgentry]

I'm guessing there is some sort of DRM attached to the WMA files you have.  You say you have all the CDs, but did you rip them to the WMAs?  Or are they downloads from somewhere?  I don't know much about WMA, but I know that they have optional DRM.

Hopefully someone else here more knowledgeable about this will chime in.

Brian.

[JimH]

Please try a search at Microsoft, but you may need to re-rip. 

Older versions of Windows Media Player had encryption on by default, even when you were ripping your own CD's.  It had a setting which could be turned off.  It was meant to prevent sharing.  After a while, Microsoft changed the default setting.   

[CountryBumkin]

See this link about removing DRM http://stream-recorder.com/forum/four-ways-remove-drm-wmv-and-wma-t9592.html?s=6595dfcb3a50fbc730ae2fd9c502c6de&

[Khatru]

I think JimH hit the nail on the head.

These are all from cd's I ripped years ago.  I do still have all the cd's, but am wanting really badly to not have to re-burn them. I have a large collection. Fortunately, 70% of my collection was ripped as MP3's.  I am not sure I ever purposefully selected the WMA format.  That's why this is so maddening.

Please try a search at Microsoft, but you may need to re-rip. 

Older versions of Windows Media Player had encryption on by default, even when you were ripping your own CD's.  It had a setting which could be turned off.  It was meant to prevent sharing.  After a while, Microsoft changed the default setting.   

[JimH]

Try ripping a few in a lossless format like FLAC or APE.  It isn't hard to do and you may find the sound quality is better.

[krmasson]

What kind of WMA do you use? Lossy, or lossless ?
WMA lossless is not-so-standard, and not recognized by all players, even if MC recognizes them perfectly.
Maybe you should activate the "convert to PCM 16 bit" in the Media network / DLNA servers / advanced options ?

It could be that you activated the option on the previous computer, and did not on the new one ?

Regards.
CM