A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of the errors and design issues I was seeing when using the Media Library within Windows Home Server 2011. Since then, another issue has made itself known, and I’ve had yet another facepalm moment whilst contemplating the shortcomings of WHS 2011.
This time, it’s a metadata issue in the Music Library section.
There are two types of metadata stored in the Music Library section of WHS 2011. The first is metadata stored as Tags in the audio files (the tracks) themselves. Examples of Tags are:
- Track title
- Track Artist
- Album
- Date Album released
- Genre
- Album Art (e.g. the cover of the CD or LP)
In both Windows 7 and WHS 2011, the Album Art is also stored as an image file in JPEG format alongside the audio files in each directory folder containing the collection of tracks making up an Album. By convention, the Album Art is stored as a file called folder.jpg. These JPEG files are the second form of metadata used in the Music Library. The Windows Media Player application will also automatically generate additional JPEG files holding copies of the Album Art at different resolutions. These all have names of the form AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Large.jpg, AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Small.jpg, and AlbumArtSmall.jpg. The “Large” files contain Album Art with a resolution of 200 x 200 pixels, while the “Small” files have Album Art at a resolution of 75 x 75 pixels.
The issue is that there is a scheduled process running in the background in WHS 2011 that goes around generating metadata for the Music Library, and it is doing two things:
- As well as generating the additional JPEG files in each Album folder, it is also overwriting the original folder.jpg files with a version of the Album Art having a fixed resolution of 200 x 200 pixels.
- In some cases, it is also appears to be writing incorrect Tag metadata into the audio files themselves.
This is unwanted and unwelcome behaviour. Many of us have spent hours ensuring that our music metadata is accurate, complete with high-resolution Album Art. To have WHS 2011 come along, and without so much as a by-your-leave, destroy hours of work is simply a disaster.
Those of us who are using Windows Media Center to access our Music Libraries on WHS 2011 have deliberately created high-resolution versions of Album Art. As one exasperated user writes:
Seriously Microsoft. On what planet is 200×200 an acceptable resolution for cover art? Are we back in the 1980s or something? Windows Media Center is displaying the image on a 1080p display, which is pretty much the norm these days, and the 200×200 image stretched looks absolutely ratshit.
Quite.
I have at least got a workaround for the Album Art issue. I store high-resolution versions of the Album Art as Tags directly into the audio files themselves. I have found that Windows Media Center does seem to have the sense to use these embedded Album Art tags, rather than the low-resolution versions of the folder.jpg files written by WHS 2011. However, you have to have the Album Art tags in place first, before Windows Media Center adds the album to its library, otherwise it will take the low resolution folder.jpg file instead, and once it has that, it’s not a simple job to wipe it out.
The fact that WHS 2011 can also apparently write incorrect Tag metadata into audio files is particularly worrying. I have found seven albums (out of about 900) in my collection where this seems to have occurred. The albums’ files have been modified since being placed on the server – and I haven’t modified them, so I can only conclude that it was something in WHS 2011 running as a scheduled process. This is absolutely not acceptable behaviour, and we need to find a workaround, or for Microsoft to come up with a fix, quickly.
Update 5 August 2011: Well, at long last, it seems that Microsoft have responded to the pleas over this mangling of metadata. Today, they finally acknowledged that a workaround that was first posted on the Microsoft Connect web site on the 20th June would in fact stop this behaviour.
Perhaps they were embarrassed by the evident frustration of a user called wiseadam1 who posted this scream on the 1st August:
This is unacceptable. Not sure if one guy in MS has been the same three eyed mentally challenged ignoramous that thinks this feature being turned on by default in all versions of WMP since v6.4, is the best idea since sliced bread…it’s NOT!
I don’t like your music scraper touching my tags, and I’m tired of it. I pay for your server software, and you slip one in on us in the background to start grabbing tags from WMP and the internet that only YOU seem to think are incorrect. TURN IT OFF! I understand you think you can make this music media world a better place, if you could only go in and tag it all yourself….but even when I have perfectly tagged albums, you still seem to think the one bonus track at the end is part of a japanese release with a different album art when it’s not, or you take the 500×500 perfect album art Folder.jpg and kill it to a 200×200 pixelated craptastic jpg!
If you, or anyone there ever wondered why we all chose every other music manager rather than WMP….it’s because it’s horrible at managing music. I wish I was ignorant to the whole thing and I could just dumb it out like I guess what you think the majority are that will use WHS2011, or that use your WMP “recommended settings” will magically do for them, but I can’t. I won’t. $130 down the drain, and now that it’s down to about $50…..so I’m guessing I’m the only one that bought it.
EPIC WHS FAIL
Amen, brother!
Update 16 February 2012: Microsoft have released a software update to address this issue. See this post for more information.
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