In WMP 12, the metadata that I added manually suddenly disappeared

Question

I have a problem with metadata disappearing (one time) in WMP 12, but only in one of two folders that WMP is monitoring.

I'm running Windows 8.1 on a Surface Pro (not 2). Most of my 150 GB of .WMA music data were ripped from (classical) CDs. Less than 10% were downloaded and converted by me from .FLAC to .WAV files. These two types of files are in separate folders, but both on an external (USB 3.0) drive. And I've instructed WMP 12 to monitor both folders. So each time I copy new WAV files, they show up in WMP, but I have to manually edit all the metadata: Album Name, Composer Name, Artist Name, Track Number, and Track Name. Once I've done that, those 282 .WAV files (=songs) show up correctly in the indexed lists along with the files ripped from CDs. So far, so good.

Suddenly today, all those 282 .WAV files were no longer indexed, instead appearing us "Unknown" composer, "Unknown" album name, etc. When I sort the list by Composer, they all show up in a single "Unknown" Composer folder at the end. And the song names have reverted back to the file name. One curious quirk is that the Album Art is still associated with each track/song/file, because when I hover over the song name in the library, the blue popup continues to show that image.

I'd guess that it will take me 7 or 8 very boring hours to reenter all that metadata manually. I'm willing to do that if there's some way to ensure that this won't happen again. My first hope is that all this metadata is preserved somewhere and can be retrieved and matched up with its correct file. If not possible, I'd at least like a way to lock this data so that if whatever event zapped the metadata reoccurs, I won't again lose all this vital info.

When I try to guess what caused this disappearance, I come up with two possibilities. First is that WMP perceived that the USB 3.0 drive was no longer there (for whatever reason), and so it deleted the songs and their albums from its library, and then when it re-found the drive it re-added them, but with the default names of "Unknown." The second possibility has to do with my various attempts to sync music files with my Windows 8 phone, which has so far not worked satisfactorily. I tried syncing with WMP, with the Windows Phone app for my PC, and with drag-and-drop in File Explorer, all yielding imperfect results. Perhaps some operation in that process cause a hiccup that forced WMP 12 to temporarily drop the monitored folder with the WAV files (and then re-add it). (Though why that would happen to only one of the two monitored folders would be a mystery.)

Question 1: Is it possible that the metadata is still somewhere and can be retrieved?

Question 2: Is there a way to lock metadata? If it's only a global lock, I'd be willing to turn it off just when I need to do manual indexing. But a lock at either the album level or the song level would be better.

Thanks for any help,

John

Answer 1

I'm afraid that your metadata changes are lost and will have to be re-entered. The reason lies with the very poor tagging support of the WAV format. When you edit metadata for WAV files in WMP's library, the changes are only stored in the library and not written to the WAV files themselves. For more info, see

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/WMP/WAV.htm

I suggest that you convert the files to a format with better tagging support, like MP3 or (possibly lossless) WMA.

Answer 2

I would suggest you to manage metadata for the songs using the files in the explorer, assign the attributes and it will automatically sync in Windows Media Player.

To try your suggestion, I went to the folder where the problem .WAV files are located. For the columns of metadata I wanted to add, I made sure with the Column Chooser that those columns were listed in the folder (and the values are, indeed, all currently blank, see 2nd image below). But when I try to edit those values I don't see a way to do so. When I try to right-click on the file, I don't see a way to edit values. When I open Properties from the Context Menu, the values in the Details tab do not seem to be editable there (see 1st image below). When I click on the Advanced button, I can see that the checkbox labeled "Allow this file to have contents indexed..." is checked, which makes me feel there should be a way to edit values in the metadata columns. So how do I do that? (BTW, none of the files appears in the Properties dialog as read-only.) Again, I'm working in Windows 8.1 on a Surface Pro.

Answer 3

Hi John,

This could have occurred if you have managed the metadata from the library inside Windows Media Player and not from the files/folder that contains the media files.

Basically, in order to make sure that the metadata settings are in place when something goes wrong, I would suggest you to manage/assign metadata to the files directly in the drive and not in the Library inside Windows Media Player. I don’t think metadata can be stored somewhere or neither be locked. But, the formats for the media files can be locked.

So, I would suggest you to manage metadata for the songs using the files in the explorer, assign the attributes and it will automatically sync in Windows Media Player (if you have enabled the settings to sync metadata in Windows Media Player). This will ensure that everything including all the metadata will be in place in the folders, even if anything goes wrong in Windows Media Player.

For issues that occur while syncing the media files from Windows phone to media player, try running Windows Media player troubleshooter to reset the settings and check if it resolves the issue.

Follow the steps to run the troubleshooter:

a)            Press Windows and W key togethe to open the search menu.

b)            Type Troubleshooting inside the search box.

c)            Click on Troubleshooting icon.

d)            Click on View all on the left side panel.

e)            Double click on Windows Media Player Settings.

f)             Follow the onscreen instructions.

Please let us know if the issue still persists.