Song Names Display Inconsistent

[Love Music]

Running Win XP, VLC 1.1.9.
New to VLC. Tried to read documentation, but it referred to Preferences Tab which doesn't appear on the app. My Tabs are: Media Playback Audio Video Tools View Help. ... no Preferences.

Problem: I name all songs "Artist - Song Title" (no quotes). Playlist view lists some in full, but some with only "Song Title".

[VLC_help]

Tools -> Preferences...

Your songs have additional metadata which is shown by default in playlist.

[Love Music]

When i view tools/media info the songs which display full (artist - title) in playlist do not show an album cover. The songs which do not display full (only title) seem to all lack an album cover !! Is this the meta data you refer to ?

Why would the programmer omit the artist in playlist whether the album cover was found or not ? The album covers are frequently unreadable which leaves no way to see who's singing. He would have to make an exception to accomplish this ! It would be better to make the playlist display consistent - metadata or no.

[VLC_help]

You can remove metadata support from VLC if you don't need it. IIRC removing libtaglib_plugin.dll should do it.

[Love Music]

Thank you for your time & answers. I think i can/should post my further q's in the other non-OS forum.