Hi Brian. I can't get WMP to do anything at all. I have it as my default player. I went to my control panel and in auto play I have it selected as my music player. But when I I put a CD in the drive, nothing happens. I can't even get it
to rip CDs either. What do I do to fix this? I am using windows ten and aim running jaws 2021 Beta Jim
main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io>
On Behalf of Brian Vogel
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2020 11:03 AM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: I need a refresher course for windows media player. frown.
Ripping a CD Using Windows Media Player
What follows presumes that you will be ripping to MP3 format. Please read all the way through the instructions first, as the information about the
MP3Gain Utility and setting up a staging folder for it are every bit as important as the basics of setting up CD ripping. There is a separate set of instructions focusing on using MP3Gain itself.
1. Open Windows Media Player (WMP) and insert a CD. You can stop it as soon as it starts playing. You cannot do the steps that follow unless an
audio CD is in the tray and its tracks have been recognized by WMP.
2. Once the CD has been stopped, hit ALT+E to open the Rip Settings dropdown menu. Make sure you select the file format and audio quality level
you wish to have used on future automatic rips.
3. If you happen to have closed the Rip Settings menu ALT+E will open it again. There are two entries in this menu that immediately follow the Audio
Quality entry:
a. Rip CD Automatically
b. Eject CD after ripping
both are check toggles and can be used in whatever combination you'd like. If your goal is to always just rip a CD immediately without playing it
(unless you press the Play button) then both of these should be checked.
That's it. From the point you've got both of those boxes checked if you insert a CD that has not already been ripped it will immediately be ripped
to the location you've set up for your music library (for most of us that's the Music library that Windows has set up out of the box, but it can be changed) and ejected when the rip is complete (or has failed at some point - which is rare).
If you are ripping to MP3 format, and intend to use your resulting files on various players, I strongly suggest you take a look at the free
MP3Gain
utility. It saves both your sanity and your ears since the differences in the volume levels used for different albums is substantial. The program does a statistical analysis of how loud a given track "sounds to the human ear" and adds a tag at the start
of the file to adjust it to a target volume (and 89.0 db is their default, and works well). It does not reencode the file so it has no impact on the sound quality. I also strongly suggest that you do the following in Windows Media Player so that freshly
ripped files go to their own staging folder to be processed with MP3Gain rather than directly into your Music Library, which is where ripped content would go by default:
1.
Open the Tools Menu (ALT+T) then choose Options (O).
2.
Navigate to the Rip Music tab.
3.
In the
Rip music to this location section, there will be a folder listed, which defaults to your Music library. Activate the
Change button and then, if you’ve created the folder you want to use ahead of time, navigate to it and activate the
OK button. If you didn’t create it ahead of time, navigate to the folder where you want it to be created, then hit the Create New Folder button, give the new folder a name, then hit
OK. I suggest using your
Documents folder and to have a specific folder under there named something like
For MP3Gain Processing, so it’s obvious what’s in there needs to be processed.
4.
You can also take this opportunity to recheck your settings under the
Rip settings section to ensure that you have the checkboxes for
Rip CD automatically and
Eject CD after ripping are both checked and your MP3 bit rate (Audio Quality) is set where you want it. I always use the maximum of 320 Kbps, but many don’t go beyond 192 Kbps. That choice is
entirely yours.
5.
Activate the OK button to close the
Options dialog. If you checked both checkboxes, going forward any time you insert a CD when Windows Media Player is running it will automatically rip the contents to your staging folder and then
eject the CD once the rip process is complete. A rip for most CDs takes several minutes, at most, but the longer the CD the longer the rip time.
You will move the music files from your staging folder to your actual Music library after you have processed them with MP3Gain.
--
Brian - Windows
10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363
The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.
~ Lawrence Krauss
