subject: Play FLAC Files in Windows 7 Media Center and Player [print this page] Play FLAC Files in Windows 7 Media Center and Player
Have you ever really want to listen to a song but the song is just FLAC format which is not support for WMC or WMP? Now I will show you how to solve your problem--tell you how to play FLAC Files in Windows 7 Media Center and Player.
Note: In this example, we are using Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit edition.
Download and Install madFLAC v1.8
First just download and install the madFLAC v1.8 decoder. Unzip the file and run install.bat.
You'll be prompted by saying it has been successfully registered then click "Ok".
In order to verify everything is working, open up one of your FLAC files with WMP, and you'll get the following message. Check the box "Don't ask me again for this extension" and click "Yes".
Now Media Player should play the track you've chosen.
Delete Current Music Library
What if you want to add your entire collection of FLAC files to the Library? If you already have it set up as your default music player, you have to remove the current library and delete the database. WMP 12 is the best way choice for you to manage the music library in Windows 7.
Press "Alt+T" and navigate to Tools Options Library because we don't want to delete songs from the computer we need to Open WMP.
Uncheck the box "Delete files from computer when deleted from library" and click "Ok"
In your Library click "Ctrl + A" to highlight all of the songs in the Library and hit the "Delete" key. If you have plenty of songs in your library, you'll see the following dialog box while it collects all of the information.
Once all of the data is collected, check the radio button next to "Delete from library only" is marked and click "Ok".
Now you'll see the Working progress window while the songs are deleting.
Deleting Current Database
Firstly, click on Start and type in services.msc into the search box and hit Enter.
Then scroll down and stop the service named "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service".
Navigate to the following directory and the main file to delete CurrentDatabase_372.wmdb
%USERPROFILE%Local SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftMedia Player
Note: keep in mind the main file to delete is CurrentDatabase_372.wmdb (Actually you can delete them all if you want. ). If you're uneasy about deleting these files, make sure to back them up first.
After you restart WMP, you can begin adding your FLAC files. In fact, most of us will fell extremely annoying to see WMP try to pick up all of your media by default. To delete the other directories, go to Organize Manage Libraries then open the directories you want to remove.
For instance, here we're removing the default libraries it tries to check for music. Remove the directories you don't want it to gather contents from in each of the categories.
We removed all of the other collections and only added the FLAC music directory from our home server.
SoftPointer Tag Support Plugin
What's more, there's another utility from SoftPointer to add. It enables FLAC even other file formats to be picked up in the library much easier. It has a long name but is effective M4a/FLAC/Ogg/Ape/Mpc Tag Support Plugin for Media Player and Media Center (link below). Simply install it by accepting the defaults, and you'll be glad you did.
After your installation, re-launching Media Player to give it some time to collect all of the data from your FLAC directory thought it can take a while (It depends on the "size" of your collection ).
If you try to use it right away, WMP slows down considerably while updating the library.
After the library is setup, you'll be able to play your FLAC tunes in Windows 7 Media Center as well and Windows Media Player 12.
Album Art
One of the problems is that some of our albums don't show any cover art. But we usually solve it by right-clicking the album and selecting "Find album info".
Now confirming the album information is correct.
Note: If you are using a 64-bit machine, the process should be similar. But you need to make sure the codecs you use are 64-bit in advance.
You can get more Windows 7 tips, Windows 7 Wallpapers, Windows 7 Software from http://www.Newton360.com
