Windows XP [Electronic resources] : Visual Quickstart Guide, Second Edition نسخه متنی

Ripping CDs to Your Hard Drive

Media Player lets you copy

(rip) an entire album or selected tracks from a music CD to your hard drive. Each track winds up as a double-clickable file in your My Music folder. Disk-based music means no more CD hunts; you can use your CD drive for other things while you play music files. You can organize your tracks into custom playlists, burn them on custom music CDs, or copy them to your portable music player.

Before you copy your first CD, you'll want to set a few default options.

To set options for ripping CDs:

1. Choose Tools > Options > Rip Music tab (Figure 10.18 ).

2. Click Change if you want to store the ripped tracks somewhere other than your My Music folder.

3. Click File Name to specify which details to include in the filenames (Figure 10.19 ).

4. Choose a music format from the drop-down Format list.

Usually you'll want to create MP3 (.mp3) files rather than Windows Media Audio (.wma) files, Microsoft's proprietary, more compact, and vastly less popular format. If you choose the WMA format, uncheck Copy Protect Music so you can transfer tracks to other computers and portable music players.

5. Drag the Audio Quality slider to set the bit rate.

Set the slider in the middle of the range for a good sound-quality/file-size trade-off or experiment with different settings to see what suits your ears.

6. Click OK.

Tip

A little hunting around on the internet should find you a way to rip CDs that give you copying troubles.

To rip tracks from a music CD:

1. Insert a music CD into your computer's CD drive.

Media Player probably starts playing the CD on insertion. The player can play and copy tracks at the same time, but click Stop if you prefer silence while you copy tracks.

2. Choose File > CDs and Devices > Rip Audio CD. (If you have more than one CD drive, click the drive that contains the music CD.)

The Rip feature appears with all tracks checked or, if you ripped them previously, unchecked (Figure 10.20 ).

If you're connected to the internet, the player gleans the album's title and track names from AMG (www.allmusic.com) and lists them in the Rip pane. If AMG doesn't recognize your CD, see the sidebar in this section.

3. Uncheck the boxes for the tracks that you don't want to rip.

The topmost check box selects or clears all the tracks.

4. Click the Rip Music button in the taskbar (or press Alt+C).

5. If

Figure 10.21 appears, select Keep My Current Format Settings and click OK.

Select the Change My Current Format Settings option only if you want to change the default settings (refer to Figure 10.18).

6. Media Player begins copying tracks to your hard drive. The Rip Status column shows its progress.

The Rip Music button changes to Stop Rip, which you can click (or press Alt+S) to stop the current rip operation.

Organizing Your Library" later in this chapter.

If AMG Doesn't Recognize Your CD

If you lack an internet connection or if AMG doesn't recognize your CD, the album title

Unknown Album appears in Figure 10.20, along with the tracks Track 1, Track 2, and so on, all by Unknown Artist. At this point, you can accept the default names and copy the tracks anyway; they'll sound fine, but you'll have a hard time finding them in Windows Explorer or the library. Instead, take the time to type the names yourself before you copy the tracks.

To do so, click Find Album Info on the toolbar. A wizard appears to help you search for the CD in AMG's online database. If you still can't find it, click the wizard's Edit button; enter the album and track information in the text boxes; then click Next to accept the names.