Omar turned me onto this fantastic tool for quickly and easily fixing the album data in Windows Media. Album Art Fixer may follow Microsoft’s not-so-sexy, name-it-what-it-is product title strategy but make no mistake, the product is way cool. It is especially useful for people who are running Windows Media Center edition as MCE uses the “Album Artist” field where many tracks only get their “Aritist” field set when you RIP (esp. for those of you who insist on sticking to MP3s). It also has a handy interface for getting cover art via a web search (Google by default).
The process of fixing all your albums is very easy (Album Art Fixer is on version 1.5.2 at this point, the refinements continue). I’ve ripped over 500 albums to disk so far and fixing them all was completed in one painless sitting last night (it took less than 20min). I won’t re-hash the instructions on the Album Art Fixer page, their simplicity says it all. I will add, however, that I’m picky when it comes to making sure my music is correctly labled and filed, so I was aprehensive about letting software do the changing. Album Art Fixer does, however, allow you to adjust or reject any changes before it changes your media’s metadata.
The software is donate-ware, so you can download it and try it out absolutely free (it’s fully functional). If you like it and use it you should, of course, show your appreciation by donating via PayPal.
You don’t have to take my word for it,
Album art fixer recommendation by Omar.
The album art fixer site: http://www.avsoft.nl/ArtFixer/default.htm
A review here: http://thomashawk.com/2005/01/album-art-fixer-review-two-thumbs-up.html
Media Metadata usage guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/techart/winmedform/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwmt/html/wm_metadata_usage.asp?frame=true
