Media Player isn’t just about playing CDs. The real idea is to build up a library of digital media on your hard drive, from which you can create custom playlists and music CDs. If you already own some music CDs, ripping a few CDs will be a great way to start creating your personal media library. Though the term “rip” might sound like something bad, it’s not. It simply means to “copy,” and no harm will come to the CD when you rip songs from it to your media library.

When you rip a CD, you store a copy of each song from the CD on your hard drive. That song is in a format that’s more suitable for computers than the song that’s on the CD. You can put the original CD back in its case, and leave it there so it doesn’t get scratched up. Play the songs straight from your PC, or make your own CDs to play the songs in a stereo. Keep the original CD as a backup in case you accidentally delete some songs you’ve copied. Ripping CDs is easy, as you’ll see. But there are a few decisions you need to make up front, like where you want to put the songs, how you want them titled, what format you want them stored in, and so forth. We’ll look at all of your options in the sections to follow.

Options for ripping CDs

To choose options for how you want to copy CDs to your hard disk, use the Rip Music tab in Media Player’s Options dialog box. To get to those options:

1. Open Windows Media Player (if it isn’t already open).

2. Click the arrow under Rip and choose More Options.

The sections that follow describe what each option offers. Note that you don’t need to make selections from the dialog box for every CD you copy. Rather, you choose your options once. All CDs that you copy from that point forward will use whatever settings you chose.

Choosing where to put songs

By default, all songs you copy from CD will be placed in your Music folder. That’s a perfectly fine place to put them. But there’s no rule that says you have to put them there. You can store them in any folder you want. For example, you might put them in the Public Music folder if you want everyone who uses the PC to access the songs. Or, if you have multiple hard disks, you can put them in a folder on some drive other than C:. If you’re not so sure what all this talk of disks and folders is about, don’t worry about it. Just leave the “Rip music to this location” setting alone. Your songs will end up in your personal Music folder. Note that whatever folder you choose is referred to as the rip music folder in Media Player options. To choose a drive and folder for storing CDs, click the Change. . . button in the dialog box. Then navigate to the drive and folder in which you want to store the songs. For example, if you want to put the songs in your Public Music folder, expand the Computer, Local Disk (C:), Users, and Public folders, and click Public Music. Then click OK. The path in the dialog box shows where the songs will be stored.

Choosing how to name files

Each song you copy from a CD is stored as a file. Like all files, each song will have a filename. Windows Media Player names the files automatically, based on the track number, song title, and other media information. You’re free to choose how you want song files named. How you name the songs is entirely up to you, and won’t affect how they play. I like to have each song’s filename start with the song title. You may want to have each file start with the track number from the CD. To make your selections, click the File Name . . . button on the Rip Music tab of the dialog box. The File Name Options dialog box  opens. Choose the elements you want to use in each song’s filename. At the very least you should choose Song Title and Artist, because those are certainly useful pieces of information. Use the Separator drop-down list to choose which character will separate each portion of the name. To change the order of items in the filename, click any selected item and use the Move Up or Move Down button to change its position in the filename. As you choose components and change their order, the generic filename under Preview gives you a sense of how each song title will look with your current settings.

Choosing a file format and quality

Under Rip Settings on the Rip Music tab, the Format drop-down list lets you choose a format and quality in which to store songs you copy. Basically this all boils down to a trade-off between file size and music quality. File size has to do with how much hard disk space each song consumes. Quality has to do with the depth, clarity, and richness of the music when you listen to it. We measure music quality in kilobits per second, abbreviated Kbps. The higher the Kbps number, the better the music quality, but the more disk space each song consumes. Options for choosing are under the Rip Settings heading in the Options dialog box. First, use the Format: drop-down list to choose one of the following formats:

- Windows Media Audio: Songs are copied to Windows Media Audio (.wma) format files and compressed to conserve disk space. You can choose the amount of compression using the Audio Quality slider in the same dialog box. This is a good general-purpose format that plays on all Windows computers and many portable media devices.

- Windows Media Audio Pro: Similar to the preceding format, but includes features that make the music sound better on high-end multi-channel sound systems.

- Windows Media Audio (Variable Bit Rate): Same as the preceding format, but the amount of compression varies with the complexity of the information being stored. As a rule, you get better quality with smaller file sizes using a variable bit rate. But this format is not compatible with all portable music players.

- Windows Media Audio Lossless: Same as the preceding format, but files are not compressed at all. The sound quality is excellent, but the files are huge. Still, if you’re a true audiophile, or are interested in creating HighMAT CDs (High-Performance Media Access Technology), this is an excellent choice.

- MP3: MP3 is the most widely used format for digital music. It’s been around the longest. Unlike the .wma formats, you’re not limited to playing the songs on Windows-based computers. You can play MP3 songs on any MP3-compatible player.

- WAV (Lossless): Stores each song as a Wave file. These offer high quality, but create enormous files. So you probably want to stay away from this format unless you have some good reason to use it.

If you’re new to all of this, and at a complete loss as to what to choose, go with WMA or MP3. Those are common formats that almost any device can play. If you choose anything but a lossless format, you can then use the Audio Quality slider to choose what quality setting you want. Again, the basic rule of better quality creating larger files applies. Hard disk space is cheap and plentiful, so there’s no need to settle for the lowest-quality setting. If in doubt, don’t go below 128 Kbps or your music may all end up sounding shallow or kind of “tinny.”

Copy protecting music

The Copy Protect Music option on the Rip Music tab lets you decide whether or not you want to put copyright protection on the songs you copy. I think a lot of people choose that option thinking it will somehow protect them from messing up the songs. But that’s not how it works. The protection that the option offers is for the copyright holder, not for you. If you choose the Copy Protect option, the songs you copy will play only on the computer at which you’re sitting. You’ll also put other restrictions on the songs. For example, you won’t be able to import them into Movie Maker or other programs that normally let you edit music. If you want to keep things simple and make sure you can use your copied songs freely, I suggest you leave the Copy Protect Music checkbox empty.

Rip CD when inserted

If selected, this option tells Windows Media Player to copy all the songs from a CD as soon as you insert the audio CD. Choosing this option, along with the Eject CD option, described next, makes it easy to rip a whole collection of CDs in assembly-line fashion. For example, if you have a few dozen CDs you want to rip, you can just insert a CD, wait for it to be copied and ejected, and then insert the next CD. If you choose to rip CDs automatically, you can limit that action to when you’re actually in the Rip tab of Media Player, or always. If you’re not copying CDs in an assembly-line fashion, it probably makes sense to choose the first option, “Only when in the Rip tab,” because there will likely be many times when you insert a music CD with no intension of ripping that CD. When you’ve finished ripping your CD collection, you can then clear this option so that you have more flexibility in deciding what you want to do with each CD you insert into your hard drive.

Eject CD when ripping is completed

If selected, this option just tells Media Player to eject the CD from the drive when it’s finished copying the CD. As mentioned, choosing this option along with the Rip CD when inserted option is a great way to copy multiple CDs in a quick, assembly-line manner. Still more rip options

Media Player’s Options dialog box contains some additional options that affect what happens when you rip CDs. While you still have the Options dialog box open, click the Privacy tab. Then choose your options as summarized next. But remember, not all CDs have media information posted on the Internet. Therefore, even if you do select options as indicated, you may need to manually update media information for a song or album.

- Display media information from the Internet: Choose (check) this option to have media information, such as song titles, appear automatically when you play or copy a CD.

- Update music files by retrieving media information from the Internet: Choose this option to have Media Player automatically fill in information from songs you’ve already copied to your computer. When you’ve finished making all of your selections, click OK in the Options dialog box. Now you’re ready to start ripping CDs. Remember, you need not change the preceding settings every time you copy a CD. The settings you choose apply to all CDs that you copy.

Copying songs

With all the details of choosing how you want to copy CDs out of the way, you’re ready to start copying. Here are the steps:

1. If your Internet account requires logging in, get online so that you’re connected to the Internet and Media Player can download media information (song titles).

2. Insert the music CD you want to rip (copy) into your CD drive and close the drive door.

3. If Windows Media Player doesn’t open automatically, open it yourself. (If some other program opened when you inserted the CD, close that program, then open Media Player.)

4. If you chose the “Copy CD when inserted” option described earlier in this article, skip down to step 10 now.

5. If the CD starts playing, click the Stop button down in the play controls.

6. Click the Rip taskbar button and wait for song titles to appear. If song titles don’t appear within 30 seconds or so, the CD might not be in the CDDB. In that case, you can go ahead and rip the CD, and then fill in the details later in your media library. CDDB stands for Compact Disk Database. It’s an online database that contains song titles for most (but not all) commercially sold CDs.

7. Optionally, clear the checkmark to the left of any songs that you don’t want to copy. Media Player will only copy songs that have a checkmark.

8. Click the Start Rip button down near the lower-right corner of the program window.

9. Wait until the Rip Status column shows Ripped to Library for all songs you’ve opted to copy. If the CD doesn’t eject automatically, go ahead and eject it.

That’s it for ripping one CD. To rip more CDs, just repeat steps 4 to 11 for each CD. If at any time you want to check your available hard disk space, open your Computer folder. If you don’t see any indication of available disk space for your hard disk (typically Local Disk C:), choose Tiles from the Views menu in that folder. Copying songs from CDs you already own is one way to build up your Media Player music library. Any songs you don’t already own, but would like to, you can purchase online and download to your Media Player library. We’ll discuss how that works in the next section.

Automatically renaming songs

Earlier in this article you learned how you could control filenames of songs you rip (copy) from CDs. Those filenames don’t have a big impact on how information shows up in your library. The media information from each song actually comes from Properties in the file rather than the filename. Nonetheless, it never hurts to have some consistency in your filenames. For example, suppose you ripped a bunch of CDs before you realized you could control how the filenames of those songs are formatted. You change the rip settings to something you like better. That change won’t affect songs you’ve already ripped. It will only affect songs that you rip after changing the setting. You can, however, get Media Player to rename previously named songs according to your new settings. Here’s how:

1. Click the arrow under Library and choose More Options.

2. Choose Rename music files using rip music settings.

3. Optionally, if you also want to have the songs rearranged in your rip music folder (typically the Music folder in your user account), choose Rearrange music in rip music folder using rip music settings.

4. Click OK after making your selections.

5. To apply changes, click the arrow under Library and choose Apply media information changes from Media Player’s menu.

It may take a while to update and rearrange all the songs in your rip music folder. When the change is complete, click the Close button that appears in the progress indicator. You may not notice any changes in Media Player’s library. But you likely will notice changes when you open your rip music folder outside of Media Player. Most of the options and settings discussed so far have to do with groups of songs and things the Media Player does on its own. No matter what settings you choose, there may be times when you need to manually edit (or remove) items in your library. In some cases, you may need to change a single song title. For example, suppose you have songs named Track1, Track2, Track3, and so forth. You’ve already tried updating that information through techniques described earlier, but the song titles still don’t appear because the song titles aren’t available online. When that happens, you’ll need to manually change the media information. When changing a song title, you’ll want to work with one song at a time. In other cases, such as when changing a genre or artist name, you may want to make the same change to several songs at once. To make the same change to multiple songs in your library, you first have to select the songs you want to change. So before we talk about manually editing songs, let’s look at techniques for selecting the songs you want to change.

Selecting in Media Library

Your media library isn’t set in stone. You can change the information you see at any time. Typically you just right-click the thing you want to change and choose Edit to change it or Delete to remove it. I’ll get to the specifics in a moment. But first let’s talk about selecting items in the library. Selecting two or more items allows you to make the same change to all those selected items in one fell swoop. Selecting items in Media Library is much like selecting icons in folders. So if you already know how to do that you’re ahead of the game. You can select items in any view. But you might find it easiest to work in the Details view. For example, click Songs in the Navigation pane at the left side of the window. Then choose Details from the View Options button. And finally click whatever column heading arranges the songs in a way that groups them in whatever way is easiest for you to work with at the moment. One way to select all the items in a group is to click the heading that precedes the group. Any change you make to one of the selected songs is applied to all the selected songs. Another way to select multiple adjacent songs is to click the first one you want to select. Then hold down the Shift key and click the last one you want to select. The two songs you clicked and all the songs in between are selected. To select multiple songs that aren’t adjacent to one another, click the first one that you want to select. Then hold down the Ctrl key while clicking other songs you want to select. That same technique lets you unselect one selected song without unselecting any other songs. You can also use the keyboard to select songs, as follows:

- To select every song in the library, click Songs in the Navigation pane, click a song title, then press Ctrl+A.

- To select all the songs from the current song to the bottom of the list, click the first song you want to select and then press Shift+End.

- To select all the songs to the top of the list, click the first song and then press Shift+Home. To deselect songs, click a neutral area in the program window, such as the empty space to the left of the play controls. Selecting songs doesn’t have any effect on them, other than to highlight them. However, any action you take while the songs are selected is applied to all of the selected songs. Next we’ll look at things you can do with any one song or any number of selected songs.

Changing a song title

Every song on a CD is likely to have its own unique title. So you generally have to change titles one at a time. To change just one song title, first make sure you don’t have multiple songs selected. (Click the song you want to change so that only that song it selected.) Then right-click the title you want to change and choose Edit. Type the new title and press Enter.

Changing genre, artist, and such

You can change the genre, artist, album title, or any other media information for a song by right-clicking and choosing Edit. But because all the songs on a CD may have that same artist, or belong to the same genre, you might want to make the change to several songs. So first select all the songs to which you want to apply the change. Then click the word or name you want to change in any one of the selected songs and choose Edit. Type in the new name or word and press Enter. The change will occur in all the selected songs.

Changing incorrect media information

Sometimes Media Player will get media information from the Internet, but it’s the wrong information. This is especially true when working with multiple CD sets. Rather than manually typing all the information for the CD, you can take a shot at finding the correct information online. To do so, click Album in the Navigation pane. Then scroll to the album that has the incorrect icon, right-click its icon, and choose Update Album Info. Then double-click the album’s icon to see whether the situation has improved at all. If updating the album info didn’t help, you can try right-clicking the album title just above its song titles and choosing Find Album Info. Most likely you’ll get the same faulty information you got the first time. But you can click the Search button in the lower-left corner of the Album Info window that opens and try searching by the artist’s name or album title. You may get lucky and find the exact album you’re looking for. The Album Info window acts like a wizard, so you can just follow the instructions on the screen and use the buttons along the bottom of the window to aid in your search. If you do find the exact album you’re looking for, click the Finish button in the Album Info window and Media Player will copy the media information to the album in your media library. If you don’t have any such luck, you can still manually enter the correct information for each song on the album using the techniques described in the previous sections.

Rating songs

You’ve probably noticed the star ratings that Media Player adds to each song. By default, the ratings are all the same (three stars) because the idea is for you to rate each song according to your own likes and dislikes. Give five stars to your favorite songs, one star to songs you don’t like, and something in between for all the rest. To change the rating of a single song, right-click the title of the song you want to rate, choose Rate, then enter the number of stars you want to give it. To rate multiple songs, first decide what rating you want to apply (like five stars). Then select all the songs to which you want to apply that rating. (You can use the Ctrl+Click method to select multiple non-adjacent songs.) After you’ve selected all the songs to which you want to apply a rating, right-click any selected song, choose Rate, and choose your Rating. Any time you want to view all the songs to which you’ve applied a rating, click Rating at the bottom of the Navigation pane. The contents pane in the center of the program window will show rating categories; one category for ratings you’ve applied and another for songs you haven’t rated yet but were given ratings automatically. To play all the songs to which you’ve given a certain rating, right-click the rating icon and choose Play. To see all the songs to which you’ve applied a given rating, double-click the rating icon.

Adding lyrics

The Lyrics tab lets you fill in the lyrics for the currently selected song. You have to click the tab first, and then click the Add button on that tab. Then type or paste in the song lyrics. It shouldn’t be difficult to find the song lyrics online. Go to www.lyrics.com and search for the lyrics by artist name. Or, if that doesn’t pan out, go to any search engine, like www.google.com, and search for the song title followed by the word lyrics. For example, a search for Macarena lyrics would probably get you to a page that contains the song lyrics for the song titled Macarena (after a few false leads that take you to ads trying to sell you something you don’t need or want). To see the lyrics as you’re playing the song, double-click the song title in the Library to get the song playing. After you add the lyrics, click OK to close the Advanced Tab Editor. Then double-click the song title to get it playing and click Now Playing in Media Player’s features taskbar. Choose Play  ->  Lyrics, Captions, Subtitles  ->  Style1 (or some other style if available). The lyrics show below the visualization pane as the music is playing. The lyrics won’t move with the music. But you can use the scroll bar to the right of the lyrics to scroll through them. If you have lots of spare time and patience, you can even make the lyrics scroll with the music. You need to get back to the Lyrics tab in the Advanced Tag Editor for the song. Then click Synchronized Lyrics. A new dialog box opens with the lyrics and a timeline. Click a line of lyrics and then click Play to see how well the lyric start time jibes with the actual time in the song. If the lyric starts too late or too early, click Edit, adjust the start time, and test that line again. It may take some trial and error to get it just right. Then click OK. As an alternative to struggling with the Advanced Tag Editor’s approach to lyrics, check out some of the optional plug-ins you can download and install from www.wmplugins.com. When you get to the page, search for lyrics to focus on plug-ins related to lyrics and Karaoke.

Finding missing album art

If an album you copy has no cover art, you get a generic picture. As the generic icon implies, you can paste any picture you like onto the generic icon. Of course, you’ll need to find a picture and copy it to the Clipboard before you can paste a picture onto the icon. You can go looking for the album cover art in a few ways:

- Right-click the generic icon and choose Find Album Art. If necessary, use the Search button to try to find a suitable picture for the album cover.

- Go to www.lyrics.com, search for the album’s artist, and see whether you can find an appropriate picture to use as the album cover.

- Go to http://images.google.com and search for the album title. Maybe you’ll be able to find a suitable picture that way.