Comment Feed for Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience (Dan on Channel 9)

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

JamieLaing — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:56:01 GMT

I'm here, with a great heaviness in my heart, to tell you that Windows 7 WMP completely trashed my 1.5 TB MP3 library. I started it up, pointing it to a network watch folder and saw it doing some good things, organizing my library and gathering additonal info on incompletel files. Unfortunately I left it running overnight, and found extensive destruction to my file names and tags. Specifically, WMP took tracks from a single album and renamed them the wrong names. The file names were changed and the metadata was changed, usually creating duplicates, and oddly often duplicating odd numbered tracks. So what once were tracks 1 through 8 for example, often became duplicates of tracks 3, 5, and 7.

Fortunately, the folder structures were not renamed and as far as I can tell the files were not moved to album folders of the wrong name, so I think I can write some software to get out of this mess. My folder structure goes "Artist/Album", so I am hoping I can inspect those folder names, then gather the track lengths and compare against the actual tracks in the album and put things back.

What an incredible disappointment.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

someone — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:44:51 GMT

Dear shell team, I refuse to upgrade ever until you fix ALL of these issues:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproperf/thread/0e55ded6-6b12-4b2d-9714-902ebd562813

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Markweee — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:27:11 GMT

Jason is the Program Manager responsible for syncronization of Personal Information Manager (PIM) data between new windows certified portable devices and PC applications. Jason has come to Windows after working with PIM data on Exchange Server.

Online Science Degree AND Criminal Justice school

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Zian Choy — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:44:00 GMT

I have this problem a lot too.

Even when I go through Windows Media Player's "Find Album Details", the metadata and album cover often don't even make it into the library, never mind the actual folder and media files themselves.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

dyapp — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:00:22 GMT

David,

I'm sorry to say that I tested W7 Beta extensively with the Windows Explorer and Libraries are very inconsistant, horribly broken and don't work well with WMP12. The default behavior keeps changing, doesn't always show the same thing every time you open the folder location editor, and the help is not consistant with designed behavior and Windows Explorer is worse than XP. I sent a lot of feedback yesterday through the system under Programs/File Management/Organize. This is not good, who the heck tests this stuff? Its not working but half the time. WMP12 doesn't even find Videos in the Video Library. You cannot even click into the My or Public folders in Documents, Pictures and Videos, but you can in Music??? Why is so strange.. the details come up differently under each Library too.. and people are confused because even the My and Public Folders are virtual names.. XP Windows Explorer just worked. Also I can no longer use the White Space to bring up the correct Right Context Menus.. it always wants to high light and select stuff I don't want to click on. Why is this so functionally broken?? Get your team in order!

Having a broken, inconsistant and crazy behavior is un-acceptable. I might have to stick with Vista or XP instead if you cannot get this right. Libraries are just a search targeted to specific folders and yet it doesn't even work.

Regards,
Dennis

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

stutony — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:19:16 GMT

The problem with that feature, is that IT connects to the internet, and Downloads the information or metadata related to the file (e.g. Album name, year, artist, album art, etc) and 'applies it' to the media files. Problem is, IT DOES NOT APPLY THE INFORMATION to the file itself but to the 'WMP Library.' It is an issue I have dealt with as long as I used Windows Media Player, and for the changes to apply I have to at least apply them 4-6 times. And gosh forgive if the player decides to do a Library Update, all my applied changes get lost. That is what makes me wonder if Windows Media Player 12 will give us the option to let us do permanent changes to media files, then 'Lock' those changes in case we do OS re-install, or apply media to another library at another computer.

All I am saying is that I don't want my music to get wrong information and have to leave it as is. I don't like the album art that is too dark, too bright, or the color is bleeding.

Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

David Washington — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:35:08 GMT

I'm glad you like what you see.

Thanks for the suggestion about the preview pane. I have forwaded it on to the feature owner.

Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

David Washington — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:31:47 GMT

Hey! It's David from the video.

Great question. What kind of support for image tags are you looking for?

All of the stuff that we showed in the video is built on top of the flexible and extensible shell property system. Even though a particular image format may not have support out of the box ISVs can plug in to give full support. For example, if you use a Canon EOS-1D camera you can get RAW support in Windows by installing the canon codec.

Thank for posting. Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.

Regards,
David

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Kenneth LeFebvre — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:41:17 GMT

How well will Windows 7 work with existing metadata formats? I'm thinking specifically of the various forms of metadata for pictures. The support for image tags in Vista is extremely limited, though I really wish I could abandon Lightroom in favor of just natively managing my pictures and all their metadata directly within Explorer.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Paul Phillips — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:56:13 GMT

Hi,
This is a really great presentation, Windows 7 Search and Find features look really useful and I would upgrade my Windows just for this feature as its just what I've been missing.
One suggestion - Please can the Preview pane highlight the search terms too? So when you click on the Preview button the text in the document is highlighted in yellow. I've seen this in other search tools (specifically Enfish) and this feature is really useful.
I can see you are previewing and highlighting in yellow the text underneath the document name in the search - this is useful too so keep this.
thanks

Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Paul A. Gusmorino 3rd — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:21:45 GMT

Yes, users (and developers!) can create new libraries in addition to being able to include more folders in the exising libraries like Documents, Music, and Pictures.

For example, suppose you store your visual studio projects in d:\projects. You can create a new "VS Projects" library and include the d:\projects folder in it. This new "VS Projects" library shows up alongside your Documents, Music, and Pictures libraries. From it, you can take advantage of library features shown in the video like the the new views for finding things "by type" or "by date modified" and the search box improvements for building queries.

Your files, of course, remain in d:\projects. The "VS Projects" library just provides you with a convenient way to find and organize those files. If you had a second folder where you keep additional visual studio projects (e.g. d:\moreprojects), you could include it in your "VS Projects" library, too.

Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Brandon Paddock — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:09:42 GMT

The preview pane now has a button on the right side of the commands module to turn it on and off. It also has a hotkey, Alt+P.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Paul Smith — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:49:25 GMT

Good work guys.

I loved the idea of virtual folders like we had in the early Windows Vista builds, where the Documents folder was a saved search result, dissapointly that feature was removed as it was too confusing - although it does still exist, it was just unhooked from the Documents, Music folders etc.

This is an excellent replacement for it. I've always wanted to get public documents and pictures show up in the same view. I had to train the rest of the family to use the Public Documents links, and links to the Home Server on the Favourite Links section instead. This makes it much simpler to use, and they won't need to remember where specific things are stored anymore. They can just hit Documents on their Start menus and see the lot.

Also like not showing image names in the Pictures view too - I used to be religious about naming images, but now I just leave them with the default name from the camera and tag them instead. I suspect a lot of people do the same thing too.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

PaoloM — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:02:41 GMT

There is no "WMP library" anymore.

WMP uses the library framework in Windows 7.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Gio — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:39:40 GMT

Just remember to click the "Apply Media Information Changes" and step 3 will be carried out immediately...

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

GRiNSER — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:16:33 GMT

Will the Preview Pane be as accessible/powerful as in OS X? When I compare Vista with OS X on my box and macbook pro, it is so much easier to preview stuff in finder by simply pressing the SPACE key (everything else isn't that great in finder *g*) and then the preview comes as an overlay which can be simply closed by another press on the SPACE key. Simple, efficient (uses overlay to have more space for showing the previewed content in a great way) and fast concept. Couldn't you take some cues from them?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Bas — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:37:13 GMT

The point I was trying to make is that WMP12 will use WDS

Ah, I missed that part, thanks. That would be positive.

I remember an older version of media player (7 or 8 I think) had a command in the menu to 'commit' your data to the files, but that disappeared in subsequent versions

No, that's still there. In the Media Library menu, you can choose 'commit changes to files' or whatever that's called in English. Not that it works, of course...

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

John — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:32:59 GMT

I get the same thing Bas.

I remember an older version of media player (7 or 8 I think) had a command in the menu to 'commit' your data to the files, but that disappeared in subsequent versions. :(

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Defcon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:11:32 GMT

Will Libraries work like Smartfolders on OSX? Saved searches in Vista are horrendously slow and don't work very well. Can I define my own Libraries? I'd like to be able to say "This is a view of all my avi files >20min on all my disks that I haven't seen yet", have this query run locally as well as my WHS shares, and be updated in realtime.

And why can't file metadata be attached to every file (for god's sake, NTFS has had ADS forever) instead of the stupid limitation on tagging only certain types of files. If we can tag any file, define custom searches that use that metadata, and compose Libraries out of these searches, then we are very close to the holy grail of WinFS. But I'm almost 100% sure this is not what we'll get.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

intelman — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:35:35 GMT

Can I bribe anyone at Microsoft to send me the same bits PDC attendees got?

Visual Studio 2010 + Windows 7 M3 haha.

This organization is quite a bit better than what is in Vista, but I still do not think Vista is that bad. I use a save search for my documents pictures and music, but it certainly doesn't work the way it does in this video.

Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Scott — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:56:21 GMT

These are the videos I want to see! Windows 7 looks to be everything Vista was supposed to be.

The features shown in this video seem to be what WinFS's goal was - to make users forget about where the actual file was stored and concentrate on the task at hand.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

DCMonkey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:11:18 GMT

The point I was trying to make is that WMP12 will use WDS and its associated metadata writing features instead of its own homwgrown library/metadata system. Therefore the problem you are having specifically with WMP not writing metadata to files may go away.

And they probably won't bother fixing code in the current WMP that's going to go away in WMP12.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Bas — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:19:19 GMT

If the WMP library works the same as in XP/Vista, it'll be as follows:

Edit album artist
WMP writes album artist to its own library
WMP periodically writes data in library to the actual file's metadata

It's step 3 that always fails for me. Which would mean that the file's metadata wouldn't ever get up to date, which would mean that the Libraries wouldn't be able to pivot on that data. The only way of fixing it that I see is getting Windows Media Player fixed, but I'm sort of giving up on that, since nobody else seems to have this problem.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Brandon Paddock — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:14:50 GMT

I don't know how WMP editing affects the files in Win7, but I can try to find out. I've never had a problem with it, though. I'm sure David, Paul, and others will be checking out this thread and taking note of your feedback, so keep it coming!

Hopefully part 2 will be up soon, featuring yours truly =D

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Bas — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:11:30 GMT

In other words, I should now completely abandon editing metadata through media player, because the Library feature and Windows Search will all use the metadata in the actual file, that Windows Media Player refuses to write to the file, rendering my file unfindable.