HELP. Media players

sebcity

sebcity

New Member
I need to know how a media player such as windows media player or iTunes points to the music stored on your hard drive. In other words the songs are kept in, say, your my music folder. iTunes can play them without having to move or store them in a seperate folder (i know you can move them to one,but it is not necessary). I'm sure WMP does the same. Do they use a pointer or some sort of searching algorithm to find them?
Basically I need to know how the player knows where the songs are?
Thanks
 
I'm not certain about WMP, but with iTunes, the library indexes are stored within the file "iTunes Music Library.xml", stored in the My Music/iTunes folder. The content for each track entry tends to be of the format:
Code: 
<string>file://localhost/C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Peter/My%20Documents/My%20Music/iTunes/12%20Stones/12%20Stones/Back%20Up.mp3</string> 
  <key>File Folder Count</key> 
  <integer>4</integer> 
  <key>Library Folder Count</key> 
  <integer>1</integer> 
  </dict>
  <key>2116</key> 
- <dict>
  <key>Track ID</key> 
  <integer>2116</integer> 
  <key>Name</key> 
  <string>Broken</string> 
  <key>Artist</key> 
  <string>12 Stones</string> 
  <key>Album Artist</key> 
  <string>12 Stones</string> 
  <key>Composer</key> 
  <string>12 Stones</string> 
  <key>Album</key> 
  <string>12 Stones</string> 
  <key>Genre</key> 
  <string>Gospel & Religious</string> 
  <key>Kind</key> 
  <string>MPEG audio file</string> 
  <key>Size</key> 
  <integer>4357036</integer> 
  <key>Total Time</key> 
  <integer>181446</integer> 
  <key>Disc Number</key> 
  <integer>1</integer> 
  <key>Disc Count</key> 
  <integer>1</integer> 
  <key>Track Number</key> 
  <integer>2</integer> 
  <key>Year</key> 
  <integer>2002</integer> 
  <key>Date Modified</key> 
  <date>2006-09-20T13:00:25Z</date> 
  <key>Date Added</key> 
  <date>2006-09-20T12:30:48Z</date> 
  <key>Bit Rate</key> 
  <integer>192</integer> 
  <key>Sample Rate</key> 
  <integer>44100</integer> 
  <key>Comments</key> 
  <string>00001EC1 000024A9 000050BA 0000589F 000186B7 0000C37E 00008000 00008000 00002727 0000EA8E</string> 
  <key>Persistent ID</key> 
  <string>A53C38CCAF3AF8B3</string> 
  <key>Track Type</key> 
  <string>File</string> 
  <key>Location</key>
 
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