Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[najarip]

Hi,

I enjoy MC very much, but more and more I am missing one great feature. As my music collection grows, I select which songs I want digitized and which not. But I do want MC to know about the 'undigitized' songs I have on CD.

Is there a way to import songs from CD's (with using cddb) and NOT creating corresponding mp3 files? I just want all my songs on CD's in the MC database, with or without mp3 files.

MC has done so much for my mp3 collection, it is hard to go about and use another software program for my 'undigitized' music, especially when they do not come close to the capabilities that MC has.

Any ideas or can you make this a feature request?

[Alex B]

MC has an internal CD database. You can look up CD info without actually ripping the audio tracks.

Here is how you can make the CD database visible in MC11.1:

Topic: How-to: add All Media & CD database to the tree

[MrC]

Hi,

I enjoy MC very much, but more and more I am missing one great feature. As my music collection grows, I select which songs I want digitized and which not. But I do want MC to know about the 'undigitized' songs I have on CD.

Is there a way to import songs from CD's (with using cddb) and NOT creating corresponding mp3 files? I just want all my songs on CD's in the MC database, with or without mp3 files.

MC has done so much for my mp3 collection, it is hard to go about and use another software program for my 'undigitized' music, especially when they do not come close to the capabilities that MC has.

Any ideas or can you make this a feature request?

Yes, you can absolutely do this.  I had the same question, and the solution is really quite simple.  It involves two tasks - adding a database field (I created one called "reference id", and creating a view scheme to see it.  Once that's done, its a simple matter of inserting the CD, allowing the meta-information download, and then just adding your id.

I sort the panes by Location (root), Refernce ID, Album Artist (auto), Artist, Album.  When a new CD is inserted, the new one sorts to the top of the Reference ID list as Unassigned, and its a simple matter of selecting Unassigned and assigning the number.

If you need more help, let us know.

[marko]

there's a lot of scope to play with, if you can imagine it, you can probably do it. I often found myself looking for a particular track, and so, thought, why not combine the two databases and just do one search? Enabling bi-directional filtering for the viewscheme adds plenty of functionality too.

"where is it?"

1. Populate MC's CD/DVD database
gather together all of your audio cd's and audio file backup discs and feed them into your optical drive while MC is open. For most mainstream stuff, YADB should provide for you, be prepared to type in the details of any stuff that might be considered 'obscure' though. You don't need to rip, or import, or anything else, just let MC see the discs and display their contents.

2. Create the viewscheme
in MC's tree, click on 'playing now'
from the top toolbar, click on 'edit' and then on 'add view scheme' to launch the following dialogue:


fill it out like so:


Step1: each 'view item' will be a pane
ignore the presets. click the 'add' button, choose standard item, then choose 'Album Artist (Auto)' from the list, and give it a grouping of 2 (or 3, or 4 if you prefer).


next, choose 'Album Artist (Auto)' again, but this time, do not set any of the grouping options.
next, add the standard 'Album' item using the same steps as above.

next, we add the 'where is it?' pane. this made using an 'advanced expression', so, click the 'add' button once more, only this time, click on 'advanced expression' to open the expression editor:


fill it out as shown. you can copy/paste the following line into the expression field:

if(isequal([file type],cda,1),retail CD,if(isequal([removable],1,2),offline,available))

for the curious, it says:
if a file is a .cda file, then display retail cd for this file,
if it's not a .cda file, is its [removable] flag set? if it is, then display offline for this file (audio file on backup disc)
if it's not a .cda file, and it's [removable] flag is not set, it must be available via the main library, so, display available for this file.
the official database expressions page can be found here

next, add the standard item, 'Volume Name'
finally, add the 'people' pane, which is also a standard view item.

Step 2 is, I think, intuitive enough.
Step 3 is 50% down to personal preference. honour parent search strings should be unchecked and filter in both directions must be checked. theatre view and tree options are for you to decide.

Step 4 is where it all happens. Paste the following line into step 4's field:

~d=mc [media type]=audio

click the OK button to close the dialogue, and see your new view scheme placed on the root of your tree.



Using the view scheme:

select the view scheme in the tree and type into the search field (up there in MC's top-right corner)
the scheme filters down to show where it is. for this image, i searched for morning glory


here, the view scheme tells me at a glance that I have hits on retail cd, a backup disc called mp3-2 and also hard drive D:\

Are friends always borrowing cd's? Would you like to keep track of who has what? then use the [people] tag. It works both ways, so if you're looking for a cd/dvd, this will tell you if there's any point getting out of your chair to find it or not, or conversely, clicking on a name will show exactly what that person currently has away with them.



I find this a really useful viewscheme, you may do too.
I plan to tweak it a bit more soon, so that it will also show me at a glance which of my cd's I have not ripped.
That's all for now folks, time for me to go to work.
hope you enjoy,
-marko.

[JimH]

Thanks, Marko.

[udeups]

Marko,

Thanks a ton for your thorough and well-explained how-tos. They're really appreciated.

I was wondering, if you feel up to it, could you show us what schemes you use under your "workshop" view scheme? I've got a small (unorganized) list of schemes that I use to do maintenance on my library. It's mostly the basics: missing coverart, needs audio analysis, etc. The rest of the cleanup I do on a case by case basis, which I'm quickly finding to be not scalable. Any ideas you had to share would be appreciated.

[hit_ny]

Amazing how-to marko ..thx.

but you did post on this topic in the past and was not so impressed ?

Importing offline media into your main library can lead to many problems. None of them critical, but most all of them will get very tiresome very quickly.
they will get caught up in your smartlist results for example, and if the the disc is not present in the drive, MC will begin complaining.

ps. In case you were wondering, I ditched my Cd & DVD viewscheme in favour of "whereisit?"

Apologies if i quote you out of context here.

What has happended to make you change your mind ?

[marko]

hit_ny,
Absolutely nothing has changed. I still stand by the above quote
A more recent quote here with the uber relevant bit highlighted:

1. Populate MC's CD/DVD database
gather together all of your audio cd's and audio file backup discs and feed them into your optical drive while MC is open. For most mainstream stuff, YADB should provide for you, be prepared to type in the details of any stuff that might be considered 'obscure' though. You don't need to rip, or import, or anything else, just let MC see the discs and display their contents.

If you build the viewscheme above, you will see that the .cda files and any "offline" files show up in the file list with the "non-imported" audio icon. That's the beauty of the viewscheme for me, it really does show everything in one place.

You actually raise a good point that I should maybe have touched upon a bit more heavily than I did in my quote. Thanks for highlighting it, and hopefully in time before everyone goes and imports all their cda files into their main libraries!!!

It also reminds me to mention a little caveat regarding the CD/DVD database. I mentioned it before, away back in 2004.
MC catalogues every cd or DVD that it happens to see in your drives, so, every so often, you will find yourself removing a game disc or two, perhaps quite a few "unknown discs" and some software installation discs too. I don't really mind this, but would like that if I've removed a disc from the database, MC would remember that add not add it again the next time it sees it. That's just good manners, no?

Or perhaps it should only import volumes that only contain files that MC is configured to import generally, if there are "data" files on there too, don't import it?
I don't know what the ideal solution would be. At the moment though, we're saddled with repeatedly removing them by hand. It's not a massive job really, a quick run through every three months or so perhaps.
Of course, leaving discs in optical drives is not considered good practice anyway, but who doesn't do it? I've lost track of how many discs I've lost to PC's I've been working on, finished, packed up ready to return, then.....
oh bugger, I've left the disc in there but can't be bothered plugging it back in to retrieve said disc

and udeups,
maybe another day for that, it is somewhere on my list of things to do, all I can promise atm is that it won't be tomorrow;)