Another Music Help Question

[davdev]

Hi All

I am having some major problems with importing my music correctly. And I need help.

First off, I have about 3,000 MP3's. I have always used MusicMatch and everything was tagged through it. All my files are saved under G:\Music. And the files are named like:

"ArtistName-Album-trackname.mp3"

I do not have seperate folders per artist. All tags have Cover Art attached.

Now here's my problem. When I import into XLOBBY, Only the song name appears and all songs are listed under "Various Artists" and none of the cover art is present. I noticed there is nothing in the Meta Masks field for these, but there is for my Movies Database, which is up and working fine. Can someone help me get this up and running, as I cannot figure this out at all.

Ideally I would like to sort by atist-album-song, but at this point I would taks album-artis-song.

[Tracie]

Okay, I'm certainly no expert, but I wonder if you try putting your music in a folder hierarchy something like this:

c:\My Music\Artist Name\Album Name\.mp3 tracks

Then point Xlobby to the "My Music" directory. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth trying on a few to see if it will. Even though you've got all of the info in the tags, it's possible that Xlobby needs that organization to display the info correctly. Just a thought.

[dalanik]

I had similar problem recently because my structure was

d:\music\artist\song.mp3

and i kept getting "various albums" in my DB, even though my tags were OK. Then I changed to

d:\music\artist\album\song.mp3

and it works now.

You have to have albums in different folders, i dont; think it matters how folders are named, i.e. they could be 01, 02, 03... but should separate albums...

Also, in latest version of XLobby, I believe there is an option "user folder structure" in DATABASES tab (Press F2, then goto databases), but I didn't try it.

D.

[davdev]

So there is no way to tag this without putting these in seperate folders. If that is the case, It is the end of this software for me. There is no way I am creating new folders for 3000 MP3's, especially since for many albums I only took one or two songs. I probably only have 2-3 full albums, most I just took the songs I wanted.

I know Meedio can do music the way I need, but I HATE their movie structure

[dgemily]

anyway, you can use Meta Masks, but I can't help you for this... if someone can tell you, how to do it...

[davdev]

anyone know any meta masks I can try? thanks

[Colby]

Well dav Im sorry if you feel like this isnt the software for you. You said you have 3k songs in one directory. To me, that sounds like a various artist album. I see your frustration. You want xl to read the id3 tag instead of the file location to determine the album. You can do that.

All tags have Cover Art attached.

I doubt that. I have never seen an mp3 with embedded coverart. Please send me one. Chances are the covers are in a temp folder, hidden in your music directory or online. Where are these images stored? Coverart will be the only thing that will be difficult to map in XL. Thats what makes a folder structure simpler. The import metamask would automatically take care of the coverart assignment. You can use spiders and such, but it will be a process.

Assuming the ID3 tags are correct like you say, then you should be able to just change the category variable to display what you want. To sort your database correctly edit the sort order putting artist:albumname:trackname

Anyway, I hope this helps.

[davdev]

I love the way the Movie section is set up, the music is just a little frustrating ... so I didn't mean to sound huffy

Your right, the cover art is not attached to the MP3 directly per say. They were added when I used Music Match to tag all my files. I just meant that I had all of my songs tagged and the Cover Art was part of the tagging. Also, Windows Media Player and Meedio can also display these tags, so I know the tags are not just limited to MusicMatch.

I want to get XLOBBY to work for me. I did the trial of Meedio and hated it, so I could not imagine paying $50 for it. XLOBBY is just a lot more work to get it to work

You want xl to read the id3 tag instead of the file location to determine the album. You can do that.

How do I get it to read the id3 tag?

[Colby]

If you use the music template to import via id3 tags that is what it does.

You can see this in the music database, if you click edit db in the setup menu. Here will be all the info of your music. That is where you type in the sort order.

Xlobby may be more work, but its free. Besides you only set it up once and your pretty much done.

[davdev]

Thanks, I have tried doing it with the ID3 tags

One thing I noticed is that the metamasks field is blank, I am assuming there needs to be something in here, as all the other DB's have something in this field. Do I need to enter something in here?

[NJKMak]

Couple of things:
- cover art can be separate or in the tag if you are using v2 (the tag contains the data or a link to the file). Not sure if it matters, xl will handle both I think
- If it is in the tag, I believe XL picks up the art from the first file in the folder (you can see the location in the database)
- This program (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/mp3tagtools.html) is freeware and can create a directory structure from tags or filenames.

hope this helps

[davdev]

NJMAK

That program worked perfectly for me. I also did a fresh install of XLOBBY and everything is now working great. I could not be happier and thanks to everyone who lent me a hand.

Right now I got the movies and music section going, and I will tackle the rest later.

Thanks

[a06lp]

I've been reading and tinckering for hours now, and I frankly just don't get it.

Music Importing:
If I'm importing id3, does folder structure matter, or not?
If it doesn't matter (& don't see why it should), then having all my muisc in one folder, or having my music sorted into folders ("artist\album\track.mp3") shouldn't matter - it should all be the same to XL.
If it does matter, then what is XL using the id3 tag for?

Please help me understand this.

Music Sorting:
I cannot figure this out.
Setup>Databases>(Selecting a DB)>Edit>Sort Order
This "sort order" field seems to have no effect. no matter what i type in there (ex: "artist:tracknumber:trackname"), when I press "sort", nothing changes.
How do I make my music sort proerly?!

[Naylia]

if you are willing to reorg your files, iTunes will automatically rearragnge them into a folder hierarchy if you let it. it creates the folder structure based on your tagging info

[Marbles_00]

a06lp,

Sort Order should change the order of your database depending on how things are listed in the Items. As an example:
artist:albumname:tracknumber:trackfile should list something like the following:
Artist A/Song B
Artist B/Song A
Now simply taking out artist so the sort order is albumname:tracknumber:trackfile, then press the 'Sort' button, the order in the Items list should be:
ArtistB/Song A
ArtistA/Song B etc
Ultimately this will effect how your albums are displayed in your database (it should as I just tried it and it does for me).

Now I don't mean to get trivial, but where does the naming convention of the Items list come from? Simply typing in what you want in the Display window. And again, this ultimately displays the titles in your database. The kicker here is that this still depends on how your music ID3 tags are set up. Let me explain (I hope).

Now where do the ID3 tags come into play? I think they are mainly used to set up your fields. In the database editor, if you click on any of your albums, down in the bottom right corner you should see a list of fields titled: artist, albumname, genre, year, etc. These fields, from what I know and precieve are filled out by the ID3 tags. Now I'm not sure if they are filled out by ID3 1 or 2 (simple experimentation of modifying both would indicate). Further more, if you select a track, you may have tracknumber, trackfile, etc. These ultimately effect how the albums (and tracks for that matter) are sorted as well. This is also a good indicator to verify that your tagging is indeed correct. Now I'm not too sure what would happen if a track did not have the same tag description as all the rest in the album (ie song x has year 2000 while all the other songs in the album have year 1998)? That may be worth experimenting too.

Let's say that you have an album starting with 'A', which you set up to display Artist/Album, but there is no album name associated within the albumname field, well that will be sorted last on the Items list, if you sort by albumname, even though the album starts with an 'A' in its display.

I think, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, the only reason to really sort them in a particular directory structure, is to help keep a clean system. Again I'm not too sure, but it may be used initially to set up a database (in particular, used to set up the display naming convention), but maintaining it is all in the tags.

I think your really close to getting it, recheck the fields in the database editor to verify your tags are correctly set up. Oh and welcome to XLobby, from one ex-Meedio user to another, once set up, Xlobby is smooth sailing...and its fun to tinker with. I kinda went at it backwards by jumped in and started skinning, without fully learning how things are done to start.

If I'm wrong in my thinking, or if anyone can add something, please do.

I hope this was helpful.

David