Background of “Retrieve Additional Information from Internet” Media Option

  • Article

Applied to:

Windows Home Server 2011 , Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials

 

What is Media Information?

Media Information (sometimes called "metadata") is a general term used to describe the contents of a digital media file. For music files, the following are some common types of Media Information:

  • Title (the name of the song)
  • Album (the name of the album on which the song appears)
  • Album Artist (the name of the primary artist associated with the album)
  • Contributing Artist (the names of the artists that performed the song)
  • Genre (the type of music)
  • Rating (the number of stars that the song has been rated by you or a data provider)

How Media Information on Shared Folders and RWA site are updated

For Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, you can store your media files on shared folders and access them from RWA site. However, if you use explorer to copy/move music files to the shared folders or RWA sites, the Media Information may not be displayed.
There are two ways to update the Media Information:

1. Automatic Update

Background:

A task is created to ensure the Media Information can be refreshed automatically from the internet.  This is implemented by a scheduled task that syncs the online media metadata regularly, without user interaction.  This option is listed under Dashboard - Server settings - Media, in the Media library section.
Note after Update Rollup 2, this task is by default turned off. An informational alert will be send, notify user that the “Retrieve additional information from the Internet” option is not enabled.

 **Steps:
**If you want to utilize the Automatic Update Feature, follow below steps to turn this option on:

  1. From the Dashboard, click Server settings, and then click Media.
  2. In the Media library section, select the check box “Retrieve additional information from the Internet.”
    Note, once you turn on this feature, your customized Media Information may get overwritten by the latest information from the internet.

 

2. Manual Update

Background:
There are several methods you can use to manually update the Media Information.
Note after Update Rollup 2, to protect the customized Media Information from being overwritten, the automatic update option is by default turned off. An informational alert will be send, notify user that the “Retrieve additional information from the Internet” option is not enabled.

 Steps:

You can open Windows Media Player UI, follow the instruction to add or edit Media Information manually. For details, Please refer to the online help on the media player “Option” page.
When you see the alert that the “Retrieve additional information from the Internet” option is not enabled, you can click to ignore the alert.  This ensures that the customization of the Media Information won’t be overwritten silently.