INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: LonWar on July 23, 2003, 11:43:02 am
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Can MC give you a text file of all your artists and albums?
If not does anybody know of a program that can do this??
Thanks,
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Click on Media Library or one of your view schemes and then select File->Export Playlist
You can export your data in various formats.
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How would I set up a play list to only include
Artist and Album... Once??
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Once you have exported the playlist, open excel and use a view filter to show only album / artist once.
This is how i did it.
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I don't have excel or anything like that.
I didn't really want it on this computer as I look at those apps about 8 hours a day.
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The output you get is what you get, delimited ascii, delimited by | chars. And there will be one line per track, meaning the Artist/Album fields will repeat, once per track per Album.
I assume Excel can (after importing) eliminate all fields but album and artist and show only unique entries (eliminating the dups). I have purposely never learned Excel, and nobody ever asks me to ever do anything with it at the office..... (which is my plan).
Other than that, you could hire me to write a C++ or Java program to do *exactly* what you want.... <well I gotta try...>
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I assume Excel can (after importing) eliminate all fields but album and artist and show only unique entries (eliminating the dups). I have purposely never learned Excel, and nobody ever asks me to ever do anything with it at the office..... (which is my plan).
Well it won't do it quite as easily as that. I've just written a quick macro that will delete duplicate rows. You need to paste the data into excel - say Artist is in column C & album is in column D. First sort by the column containing the artist then click any cell in that column and run the macro. When finished do the same with the album column remembering to sort first.
This is the macro:
Set startcell = ActiveCell.EntireColumn.Cells(1, 1)
Do Until startcell = ""
Set nextcell = startcell.Offset(1, 0)
Do While ucase(nextcell.Value) = ucase(startcell.Value)
nextcell.EntireRow.Delete
Set nextcell = startcell.Offset(1, 0)
Loop
Set startcell = startcell.Offset(1, 0)
Loop
If you don't know how do create the macro it's easy - just do the following in the excel workbook:
Tools> Macro> Macros - Type Test in the macro name box and hit create. You'll see a window with Sub Test() and End Sub. Just paste the code above in between these statements and then close the window.
Then to run the macro Tools> Macro> Macros> Test - Run. Let me know if it works Ok for you.
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Thanks, but I don't need the the functionality of the file containing just artist and album name, so I can continue to avoid ever learning or using Excel.
If I did need it, I could write it in C++ in no time flat, maybe 10-15 minutes (fully tested) or in Java (hours? I'm just now learning Java). [real men can manage their own memory and use pointers]
From a programming langauage point of view, it's just
- read a line from the file
- parse out Artist and Album
- insert into a container that does not allow duplicates
- sort the container
- display the container
When you say "paste into Excel", I know you can import the .txt file from MC delimited export directly into Excel, once you tell Excel the delimiter is a | pipe char.
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Thanks, but I don't need the the functionality of the file containing just artist and album name, so I can continue to avoid ever learning or using Excel.
If I did need it, I could write it in C++ in no time flat, maybe 10-15 minutes (fully tested) or in Java
The suggestion was meant for imjustagamer who probablycan't write it in C++. You suggested a solution using excel that would not work so I was just offering one that would. Hopefully imjustagamer can get access to excel to be able to achieve what he wants.
When you say "paste into Excel", I know you can import the .txt file from MC delimited export directly into Excel, once you tell Excel the delimiter is a | pipe char.
You can but it's just as easy to open the .txt and paste the contents into a blank workbook. Then it's a case of highlighting the pasted text and formatting it using the Data>Text To Columns function.
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Thanks, but I refuse to put excel on this computer as I have to look at it for 8-10 hrs a day at work.
I just thought maybe there was a way to do it with in MC easily.
I'll just look around for a app on the web.
Thanks anyway
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There is a way.
But it is 4:57 AM here.
So let me sleep and ,when wake up ,i will tell you
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aa 1.00a 07-23-03 George Kerber
This program reads an exported delimited file data file from MC
and outputs the Artist and Album names in sorted order. The
default delimiter is a comma, but can be change to any character
or string using the -s option.
Syntax: aa [ -options ] delimited_export_file_from_MC
[ -s <delimiter> ] The default is a comma
Okay I wrote the program in C++ 16 minutes....
Just export a delimited export file and give it to the aa.exe program and it will output a list like this
AC/DC,Back in Black (remaster)
Adams, Bryan,Adams, Bryan
Aerosmith,Aerosmith
Alarm,Strength
Albert, Herb,Greatest Hits
Aldo Nova,Aldo Nova - v1
Allison, Luther,Blue Streak
Allison, Luther,Here I Come
Allison, Luther,Life Is A Bitch
Allison, Luther,Live In Paris
Allison, Luther,Live in Chicago
Allison, Luther,Live in Montreux
Allison, Luther,Love Me Mama
Allison, Luther,Love Me Papa
Allison, Luther,Luther's Blues
Allison, Luther,Pay It Forward
Allison, Luther,Power Wire Blues
Allison, Luther,Reckless
The comma delimiter can be changed. So if your export file was named "Audio.txt" you would execute the following command at a dos prompt:
aa Audio.txt
and the output would come to the screen, better would be to
aa Audio.txt > aa.txt
and then the output would be in aa.txt which you can bring up in any text editing program and print.
Anyone who wants this, send me a message, I'll send you a zipped file of the program.
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Select all files ( CTRL -A) > Properties > Statistics. Click On the Icon next to the window toggle icon and select Artist / Album. Click the icon again and copy to clipboard. Make text file in Notepad. Save.
This has been a feature of MJ-MC for a long time.
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Cool, that is the best solution, you should have piped in right away..... before I spent 16 minutes writing a program....
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I have been looking for a program that will do this, unfortunately there is not much out there. I have found one interesting way to deal with this though. I found a program on Cnet called OrangeCD Catalog. It is $35, but allows you to export your library to a web page then print it. You can manipulate the templates that are already provided to do this. I have managed to make a template that displays the collection the way I want. It is collection1.
Here are a couple of links to some that I have created.
The first one, I created. The second is a template that is included. I only imported album covers on the first album. It is somewhat tedious to do covers, but mp3's can be imported right from your harddrive and exported to html to be printed with whatever titles, format, and colors you can create. It would be nice to see Media Center with something similar, but I am sure it is not high on the list.
http://www.johnfest.com/playlist/collection1.html
http://www.johnfest.com/playlist/collection2.html
It has a 30 day trial period.
jfmus
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you should have piped in right away.....
I kin onlly reed so fas. Hed two putt mi crayans awey. ;)
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jfmus -
Have you tried exporting as html?
It creates a page for you that your browser can display, not as slick as the OrangeCD program, but since you originally asked for Artist and Album name, MC makes a very nice page with that and more.
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jfmus -
since you originally asked for Artist and Album name, MC makes a very nice page with that and more.
It wasn't me. imjustagamer started this thread....
But yes, I have used the export to html. But you get a list of songs. Not albums. To get just the album list in MC, you have to send the whole thing to playing now. Then remove anything that is not track 1. That way you only have one listing. Then you have:
artist-album-year-location
What I have done is create a template that has:
artist
album1-year-location
album2-year-location
album3-year-location
artist
album1-year-location
artist
album1-year-location
album2-year-location
artist
album1-year-location
album2-year-location
album3-year-location
You can get more across a page and it is easier to read, with less manipulation. Also you can customize your report the same way we can customize hairstyles. It is not just a generic printout.
I am also using the printout to track my burned copies of my collection. If I just wanted artist-album, than this would be fine. I want the location of the backup included.
jfmus
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You make a new scheme:
Artist
Album
Search criteria : track number==equal to 1 include
Remove all infos you do not want from the left window.
You get only artist album.
Now ,it is up to you to export to ...
You can export to htlm and print it .
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Select all files ( CTRL -A) > Properties > Statistics. Click On the Icon next to the window toggle icon and select Artist / Album. Click the icon again and copy to clipboard. Make text file in Notepad. Save.
This has been a feature of MJ-MC for a long time.
Machine Head.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou. I used to do such a long winded thing with Excel etc.
This is brilliant.
1 Question though. I am still using 9.0 does it still work in 9.1?
Graham
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Yes.
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Thanks Z it works!!
MachineHead,
Man do I feel pretty dumb, I can't seem to find statistics in the properties section....
What is before and after it??
Thanks man, That was exactly what I was looking for!!
gkerber, Thanks for the time and trouble for writing that program... It was apreciated.
Thanks all.