Copying Audio Tracks from CD to Hard Disk

Windows Media Player enables you to copy CD audio tracks to your hard disk for later listening, creating your own custom CDs, or downloading tracks to your portable player. To copy an audio CD to your hard disk, first make sure that you have selected the file format that you want to use and that you have adopted an appropriate naming scheme and location for your copied files. (For details about these configuration decisions, see "Configuring Windows Media Player to Copy Music from CDs.") Next, insert the disc, and then choose Copy From CD on Windows Media Player’s taskbar. Windows Media Player might also begin playing your CD. That’s not a problem; Windows Media Player can play and copy at the same time.

If you’re connected to the Internet, when you choose Copy From CD, Windows Media Player will consult AMG to determine the name of your disc, as well as the names of each track and the genre of music the disc contains. Figure 17-5 shows how Windows Media Player might look after it has successfully found all this information.

Figure 17-5. If your CD is among the 200,000 known to AMG, the title of the disc will appear at the top of the copy window, and the tracks will be identified by name.

Initially, the check boxes next to the track names will all be selected. To copy particular tracks only, clear the check boxes beside tracks that you don’t want to copy. To clear or select all the check boxes at once, clear or select the check box at the top of the column.

When you copy a CD, the album becomes a playlist in Windows Media Player’s Media Library. If you want to be able to play the album back in a custom track order, you can create that order now, by dragging track names up and down in the copy window. Or you can do this at any time later on, by selecting the album in your media library.

For more information about playlists, see "Working with Playlists." For more information about Media Library, see "Managing Your Media Library."

When everything is set as you want it in the Copy From CD window, click Copy Music to begin the copy process. If this is the first copy you’ve made, you might see the following message.

Click Do Not Protect Content if you want to take responsibility for using the copied tracks in an ethically appropriate fashion. Otherwise, leave the check box clear.

For more information about protected content, see "Understanding and Protecting Your Digital Rights."

As tracks are being copied, the copy window reports the progress of this operation. You can do other things in Windows Media Player while this is going on—listen to the radio, listen to the CD you’re copying, or listen to something else altogether. If you have two CD drives, you can even play one CD while copying another. (Use the Play menu to choose the disc you want to play after you begin copying the first disc.)

Editing Track Information Before You Copy

If AMG recognizes your disc but doesn’t have all the track names the way you want to see them in your media library, click Get Names in the copy window. AMG’s information will appear in a pane at the bottom of the copy window. (You can enlarge this pane by dragging the horizontal split bar that separates it from the original track listing.) To change any part of this information, click Edit. An edit window, similar to the one shown in Figure 17-6, will then appear.

You can use the boxes at the top of the editing pane to edit the artist name, album name, or genre. You can use the boxes below to edit track and artist names for individual tracks.

The text at the top of the editing pane implies that your edits might be sent to AMG to update its database. It’s not clear whether that transmission of information from your system to AMG actually occurs or, if it does, how and when errors in the AMG database might be corrected by user feedback. The important thing is that editing the album information will keep your own media library in good order. And doing it before you begin the copy process will ensure that the file names that you’ll see if you work with your media library in Windows Explorer will be correct.

Figure 17-6. If you don’t agree with the album information returned by AMG, you can edit it here.

tip - Pay attention to genre and artist names

AMG often abbreviates musical genres in ways that are unnecessary for Windows Media Player. If you’re bothered by this—if you’d rather see Country than CTRY, for example, edit the genre before you copy. Genres become playlists. You get one playlist for all your Rock tracks, another for all your Jazz tracks, and so on. So it’s good to be consistent about genre names. Artists too become playlists. On albums where different artists perform on different tracks, AMG generally doesn’t provide the track-by-track details. If getting the playlists right is important to you, edit before you copy.

What to Do If AMG Has Never Heard of Your Disc

If the AMG Web site doesn’t recognize your disc or you don’t have an Internet connection to retrieve the information, Windows Media Player proposes to name it Unknown Album (followed by the current date and time). Tracks will be named by their order on the disc (Track 1, Track 2, and so on), the artist will be identified as Unknown Artist, and the genre will be called Unknown. At this point, you will have three options:

• Don’t worry about it; just go ahead and copy.

• Copy now, worry later.

• Fix the names before you copy.

If you accept the default names, your music will sound fine, but you’ll have a hard time finding your way back to it, either in your Windows Media Player media library or in Windows Explorer. If you copy now, figuring that you’ll edit track, album, and artist names later on, you’ll be able to make your media library look right. But in Windows Explorer, your file and folder names will be a jumble of Unknowns, and editing the media library later in Windows Media Player will not alter the file names in Windows Explorer. As your library grows, this state of affairs will almost surely come to annoy you.

To avoid confusion later, do your editing now—before you click the Copy Music button. Follow these steps:

1. In the Copy From CD window, click Get Names.

   In the lower pane of the copy window, AMG will inform you that it is ready to search.

   

2. Click Next.

   AMG will display a text box and prompt you to enter the name of the artist or artists performing on your disc.

3. Enter the artist name and click Next again.

4. If you are prompted to identify your artist from a list, select the correct artist and click Next. If the correct artist does not appear or if Not Listed appears, click Not Found and skip to step 7.

5. If you are presented a list of candidate discs, select the correct album and click Next. If the correct album does not appear, or if no album appears, click Not Found and skip to step 7.

   If you’ve selected a multi-disc album you’ll also be prompted to specify the disc (Disc1, Disc2, and so on).

6. If track information appears, edit the information if necessary, and then click Finish and skip to step 8. If the track information is missing, click Not Found.

7. If you clicked Not Found at any point above, a form will appear similar to this one that contains as much (or little) information as could be retrieved from the Web site. Fill in any empty text boxes and then click Finish.

   

8. The information you retrieved and supplied now appears in the copy window. Select tracks as usual and begin the copy process.

The foregoing procedure assumes that you have an Internet connection. If you do not, you will not be able to get to AMG’s tracks editing form. You can—and should—edit your track information in Windows Media Player’s copy window. Right-click the first item you want to edit and choose Edit from the shortcut menu. This will put you into an edit mode, in which you can move from column to column by pressing Tab or Shift+Tab, and move from row to row by pressing the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key.

Alternatively, you can edit a particular column for all selected rows as follows:

1. Select the rows you want to edit (or press Ctrl+A to edit all rows).

2. Right-click anywhere and choose Edit Selected Items.

3. Use Tab to move to the column you want to edit.

4. Make your changes and press Enter.

You can use this procedure as a quick way to edit the Genre column for an entire album, or the Artist column, if the same artist performs on all tracks.

Unfortunately, you cannot edit the album name in Windows Media Player’s copy window. Therefore, if AMG doesn’t recognize your disc, and you are temporarily without an Internet connection, it’s probably best to wait until you can go online. Then click Get Names as described above and use AMG’s edit form.

The list of CDs recognized by AMG stands somewhere above 200,000 and is constantly growing. The service has very little information about classical music CDs, however. If you want to copy a classical collection to your hard disk, your best bet is to find a third-party CD player that uses an alternative Internet service called CDDB. The CDDB database of classical discs is extensive, and after you have copied your discs via the other product, you can import the resulting files into your Windows Media Player Media Library.