So I bought some music recently (hey, it IS my birthday!), in high quality Vorbis format, of course.The files had the appropriate metadata, of course. Rhythmbox displayed a lot of nice information, of course. Windows Media Player 10 didn’t. Of course. I’m used to MS stuff being a bit backward sometimes, but this had me on the verge of mild irritation.
So, to solve the problem, I had a look at the Lossless Audio Blog. It nicely linked to a Sourceforge project called WMP Tag Support Extender, which is an apt name and a handy project.
Installation was fairly straightforward, but perhaps surprisingly didn’t automatically enable tag support in WMP. Guess I’m used to things “just working” in Linux. To enable extended tag support for FLAC, Vorbis, and other fancy file types win WMP, do the following:
- Download and run the .msi installer. Be sure to check all the formats you need (I did ’em all)!
- In Windows Media Player, do Tools –> Plugins –> Options…
- Go to “Background”, then click the “Add” button
- Navigate to C:\Program Files\piPOol\Windows Media Player Tag Support Extnder or similar. Add the file WMPTagSupportExtender.dll
- Make sure the plugin is enabled (checked)!
- (Re-)add the Vorbis, etc files to the library by doing F3 –> “New files and all existing files in library”
And you’re done! The files should show the correct information, like artist and album, as well as genre and others. Happy listening.
Of course, I definitely think Microsoft should be able to handle a few additional (open!) formats. Not that I’m especially surprised they don’t…