Hi!

 

I did a new install of Vista Media Center because I would reorganize my media somewhat, also I added some new hardware. I followed the advice from a colleague to do this;

1) Remove all shared media folders and public folders (dont understand why because they keep reappearing)

2) Add all media through Media Player because Media Center screw it up.

 

Ok, my media is organized like this;

On my 1TB USB harddrive I have three root folders

e:\Music

e:\Pictures

e:\Videos

I first added the music, in the library I told it to monitor e:\Music for music, and it added the albums and it looked okay in media center too.

Now the nightmare started... I proceeded to pictures. In media player I switched to Pictures. And here is where the crap begins. Why are there not separate watches for music pictures and videos. Anyway I added the watched folder e:\Pictures and of course it added all my album art also from e:\Music. I deleted that from the Media Player, But the problem is like this. In media center when I select Pictures I first is presented with a folder named e:\Pictures and only after I click on that can I see all folders with pictures. This is totally absurd. Please help me to correct this!!!!!

And now the third and final craziness, Videos. I selected videos in Media Player and added a new folder to watch e:\Videos. ANd when I started Media Center I couldn't believe my eyes,

When selecting Videos I first is presented with three folders e:\Music e:\Videos and e:\Pictures

First when I select e:\Videos Can I see my folders with videos. This is strange because I have no video files in my e:\Music folder.

Can someone help me to correct this. The person at MS responsible for this crazy design should be... well. Enough said.

So please can someone please help me to correct the Pictures and Videos for me and I would be extremly grateful. And how can I restart this, do I have to delete the metadatabase first?

And finally does anyone know why the extremly annoying folders under shared and public and user keep reappearing. I deleted them, final!

 

kind regards

Henrik - who is very upset....

I just talked with a friend who is also a developer like myself and she also worked a lot with usability. And we both agreed that the way the library is working now, is plain illogical. We also agreed on a very simple fix for this:

- First make three folder lists, instead of the one list today. In media center when you select either music, pictures or videos there should be a separate list of folders under the "library" form. That way we can prevent that folder art is added to your picture library etc when you add music.

- Second, add a checkbox for music, pictures and videos that says "Show rootfolders". People organize things very different some keep a flat structure and some like to build folder trees. By using this property we can ensure that annoying folders like my e:\Pictures is never shown. Another possible fix is to simply add a rule, if only one root folder is visible, drill down one level and show those.

What is extremly strange is that if you add music in the c:\User\Public\Pictures, THEN all the subfolders show properly when u click pictures in Media Center. Somehow this logic is in the code somewhere, but only works for the public folders. Please then simply enable this logic for ALL folders.

I don't know how many times this subject has been brought up, I added bug reports and feature requests in the Fiji beta but they where all ignored. I wish two things from MS

1) Make a fix!!!!

OR

2) Write some kind of manual instructing how to add the media properly. Perhaps I do it the wrong way????

kind regards

Henrik

Problem solved!

 

/Henrik

MrNorth:

Problem solved!

/Henrik

Hi Henrik,

I was watching this thread with interest.  Can you share the solution, please?

you can just edit the registry to point the system special folders (pictures/music/videos...) to the new location. I've a 1TB array for storage in my rig with those folders in it and just edited the reg to point to them. After a reboot its completely transparent to the system. Clicking on pictures in start menu goes to eg e:\pictures instead of c:\users\....\pictures.

As for the random folders in the pibrary, that can be easily fixed in windows media player by setting the libraries to folder view and removing the erronious locations.

This way firing up media center for the first time my library is built automatically & correctly.

---

http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Vengence_IRL

Hi!

The solution is this;

 

1) turn off UAC and reboot system.

2) Right click on my pictures and select the "path" form.

3) Browse for wherever you have the pictures and click ok. In my case e:\Pictures

4) Start media center and click pictures. You picture folders should appear now without the root folder e:\pictures

I did the mistake of usiing Media Player to organize my media. This won't recognize this change. But media center does...

good luck

Henrik