Refresh Library in Vista Media Centre (Home Premium)

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lyonrouge

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#19557 21-Feb-2008 16:54

Before I completely reinstall the OS, does anyone know how to refresh the media centre library to re-read only the watched directories. I was watching a network resource, but had skipping issue so changed to a local copy, I removed the watch of the network resource and added the local drive, but now every track is duplicated.

I have tried removing the netowrk share completely so that windows can't see it, but the library is still duplicated. I tried re-running the setup wizard (which promises to reset defaults) but the library does not change. If I have to reinstall to get over this I may try XP media centre instead (not sure if it has similar or worse problems).

ictgeeknz

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#112123 21-Feb-2008 18:56

I think I remember getting around this by using Windows Media Player, as Media Center just seems to just sit over top.

Delete the existing library contents in Windows Media Player.
Use More Options > Library > Monitor Folders, configure and import again.
Once you've got the library in Windows Media Player the way you want it, Media Center should clone what is there.

There is a way to blow away the Media Center library all together, but I can't find the info on it at the mo.

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#112124 21-Feb-2008 18:59

That's correct. Just open WMP and delete the library. Make sure you uncheck the option to delete the files when deleting the library. Then just press F3 to seach and load the library again.

lyonrouge

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#112151 21-Feb-2008 21:03

thanks, that appears to have done the trick, but has introduced a new problem that I thought I had fixed. What is the group by data for albumns in Windows MEdia Player / Media Center? I have tracks of an albumn being split into two different references to the albumn. I originally though it was albumn name, year and composer that defined an albumn, but it appears to not be the case.

ictgeeknz

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#112226 22-Feb-2008 06:43

All my music is in Windows Media Audio and the metadata tags (Album Info) is pulled from the Internet by Windows Media Player via AllMusic.com (AMG) 98% of the time you don't need to edit the tags from here, as they're very accurate!

Using Advanced Tag Editor on one of your files, check that the following is defined

TRACK INFO tab
Title, Track number, Album, Genre

ARTIST INFO tab
Artist, Album Artist, Composer

How have you done your tags, manually?!?

lyonrouge

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#112247 22-Feb-2008 09:59

They have been done by MusicMatch. I found iTunes split an albumn up if the year or composer varied within the albumn, so for those albumns I cleared those values, and iTunes displays the albumns correctly. This is my first shift in media centre (as I now know, actually media player). I'll hunt about on the broken albumns via Media Player and see if it has additional fields that MusicMatch does not display.

lyonrouge

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#112315 22-Feb-2008 15:41

I believe I have found the cause, and currently restoring from backup to verify.

As the album "group by" clause includes Albumn, Year and Composer, I removed the composer field from all the tracks to ensure an albumn would appear correctly. In Media Centre (not player) I then removed the "look for media information from the internet", however, in Media Player, the "Retrieve Additional Information from the internet" / "only add missing information" was still set, therefore all the fields I had carefully cleared where being re-populated and breaking the Albumn display.

lyonrouge

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#112349 22-Feb-2008 18:33

Thanks everyone, got it working now.

Once the update was disabled, the albumns did not get broken. Now that I know the group by condition for media player / center, I have ensured there are no duplicate art works in the albumn view, i.e multiple discs with a single cover have been merged together (bit of track renumbering and renaming required), with a satisfying end result.

thanks again fellow geeks.

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lyonrouge

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#113182 26-Feb-2008 17:18

I have an interesting problem now, when I start the machine and view the library, 79 items display then after a minute or so it starts adding the remaining albumns until all 397 display (random albumns are duplicated in the display, different ones each time). Then another minute or later I can start playing an albumn from the library.

Does anyone know why this happens and how I can stop it. It appears to be re-reading the file system, which is odd as the idea behind a library is that the albumn data is stored in a local database to avoid this sort of action.