Star ratings

[Amanaman]

I have a few WMVs that I have assigned star ratings to on Vista, but I am now replacing these with avi files yet it won't let me rate them - is there any way to get past this? I have quite a few files so it was useful to be able to sort them by rating.

[DereX888]

The only solution to keep your own ratings forever is to use a player that keeps the "star ratings" in it's own exportable database - and which doesn't rely on any Windoze's Registry to store it (because you'll always loose that every time you reinstall windoze). You could then open the "ratings database" and easily edit it manually for those videos you've converted into other formats.

By "assigning stars in Vista" you are doing exactly what I said about Registry keys, and because of that I doubt you can edit it easily even if you're proficient enough to dig in Windoze's Registry.
WMP (that's what "Vista" internally uses) remembers your star rating of each file not based on its content, but based on the exact file's registry key it generated for it. In other words, to your "Vista", the very same video or song but in two different formats is not the same song or video anymore, it treat them as if it were completely different songs or videos (while they are not, they're just in different formats). IIRC, WMP generates a unique registry key for each viewed or listened file, it's own uniqueID, so it won't be easy even to find which key represented any particular video. Because of the DRM crap in WMP and Vista, it is all oh-so-secret that I wouldn't be surprised if its encrypted too...


I don't use any "star ratings" for my music or videos (I pretty much know and remember what I like more and what I like less or I don't like at all) so I can't tell you what other players may be more useful for you, but I'm sure there must be some.