Music and Audio with XP
Great
Digital Media with Windows XP includes everything you
need to know to play digital music stored on your PC,
on audio CDs, Internet radio stations, and through Web-based
streaming audio. But it doesn't end there: With Windows
XP, you can almost endlessly configure Microsoft Media
Player for Windows XP (MPXP), manage digital music directly
from the Windows shell and through MPXP, copy music
from audio CDs to your PC, and create your own audio
"mix" CDs and data CD backups. And best of
all, these capabilities are all built into Windows XP...
for free!
Here are some tips for working with digital music and
audio in Windows XP.
Copy CD Audio in MP3 format with an MP3 Encoding Add-on
Pack
Microsoft Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) can record
CD audio in Windows Media Audio (WMA) 8 format natively,
but if you want to use the more common MP3 format, you
will need one of several MP3 Encoding Add-on Packs,
which will be available for download by the time Windows
XP is widely released on October 25. The add-on packs
will cost less than $10, and will be available from
Cyberlink, InterVideo, and Ravisent.
Use transcoding to save space on portable audio devices.
When
copying music from an audio CD to your hard drive, you
will probably want to use a decent encoding rate (128
Kbps WMA or 160 Kbps MP3 format) to ensure that the
resulting files are as close to CD-quality as possible.
But such files are pretty large, and if you're going
to be copying them to a portable audio device--such
as an Iomega HipZip or a Pocket PC--you won't be able
to bring very many songs with you on the road. To overcome
this problem, Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) supports
a feature called transcoding, which will let you downsize
files on the file as you copy them to a portable device.
So you might transcode 128 Kbps WMA files down to 64
Kbps, for example, to fit twice as many songs in the
same amount of space, with only a small loss in sound
quality. To configure this feature, open MPXP and navigate
to Tools, Options, Devices. Then, choose the appropriate
device and click Properties. This dialog will allow
you to set a custom quality level for music copied to
that device.
Use audio CD artwork in your digital media folders.
One of the coolest new features in Windows XP is its
album thumbnail generator, which automatically places
the appropriate album cover art on the folder to which
you are copying music (WMA 8 format by default). But
what about those people that have already copied their
CDs to the hard drive using MP3 format? You can download
album cover art from sites such as cdnow.com or amguide.com,
and then use the new Windows XP folder customize feature
to display the proper image for each folder. But this
takes time--you have to manually edit the folder properties
for every single folder--and you will lose customizations
if you have to reinstall the OS. There's an excellent
fix, however. When you download the album cover art
from the Web, just save the images as folder.jpg each
time and place them in the appropriate folder. Then,
Windows XP will automatically use that image as the
thumbnail for that folder and, best of all, will use
that image in Windows Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP)
if you choose to display album cover art instead of
a visualization. And the folder customization is automatic,
so it survives an OS reinstallation as well. Your music
folders never looked so good! Also, you can save a smaller-sized
image albumartsmall.jpg if you'd like: This file is
used to store the album art thumbnails you see in folder
icons.