How to create your custom WMC waterfall

The images used for the backdrop effect whilst WMC is playing music (aka waterfall) are retrieved from music contained in the library’s setup in WMC BUT this is not the only place WMC looks to get the image’s from.

If you delete all the library’s from WMC it will still create a waterfall with coloured tiles and that darn Nija Tuna image. This is because WMC is programmed to also look in the following locations (win 7 command line used for examples) assuming you have used the defaults when installing windows or haven’t move your “Documents” to another location.

    C:\Users\Public\Music       – referred to in windows gui as “Public Music”
    C:\Users\User Name\Music    – referred to in windows gui as “My Music”

To see the images WMC is using in these locations you may need to alter the folder view settings so hidden files, folders and drives are enabled. Once enabled if WMC has created any images to be used for the waterfall you will now be able to see them. These the files with names similar to that below.

    AlbumArt_{22DEF56E-B474-45B4-ABF5-37FD463D1992}_Large.jpg

How Does knowing this help?

If like me you have your music stored somewhere other than the locations shown above then you can control which images are or aren’t used for the waterfall backdrop (see above image). There are however a couple of proviso’s to bear in mind. If you don’t the images won’t be displayed.

        1. The files must be jpg’s
        2.  They must use the filename format
              AlbumArt_{SomeUniqueNumber}_Large.jpg

Whether these are hidden or system files or the size of these files doesn’t seem to matter.

One last thing; if you don’t already know, to get rid of that pesky “Nija Tuna” image look in the following location.

        C:\Users\Public\Music\sample music

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