OK, so I finally got motivated to build an HTPC running Windows MCE 2005 and now i'm trying to rip all of my CD's. I've actually never done this before, so perhaps I'm missing something stupid in my LAME config.

Anyway, I followed the EAC and LAME instructions from the knowledge base. I chose this command line:

-V 0 --vbr-new --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

and for my file naming convention under EAC Options -> Filename, i chose:

%A\%C(%Y)\%N - %T

Ok, so i've ripped a couple CDs and the quality is great, and the mp3's seemed to be tagged properly. However, it doesn't looked like things are tagged properly at the album level. Specifically, Media Center shows no album art and the album artist shows as unknown for the CD's i have ripped. The weird thing is that the album title and genre are being recognized by Media Center. So, any ideas what i need to do to make this work without manually entering the artist, and grabbing the cover art from amazon and using the folder.jpg trick?

Is there a way to embed the album art into the mp3?

Any help would be appreciated,

John

Use a tagging program like Tag&Rename or The Godfather to add this sort of information. EAC/LAME doesn't support anything more than basic tagging.

thx, i'll give it a try this weekend.

I'm not directly familiar with Windows MC, but I do know Windows Media Player 10 can tag and organize files in your library automatically - album art, lyrics, and other tricks included. I use it as my primary music player, so I can offer some advice. Before I do, however, you'd be best off checking out the Windows Media Player 10 How-to Center here.

I assume the same tricks work for Media Center. Keep us posted on how it's going.

Well, Tag&Rename is awesome. It only took me a few minutes to get the hang of it. However, MCE was killing me. MCE was not recognizing the mp3's that I was tagging. I thought that I was tagging them incorrectly, but as it turns out, I just needed to update the media library in WMP 10. This took me two hours to troubleshoot, which is partially my fault as this in in the T&R FAQ's. Honestly, I stopped reading the FAQ's after I got to that bit about copying Artist to Album Artist to be MCE friendly, which i was overly positive was the problem. Anyway, I'm all set now, but i have alot of ripping to do.

Thanks for the help,

John

OK, cool. Hope it goes well.