INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: NickM on September 08, 2005, 10:02:40 pm
-
I would like to print out a booklet showing cover art, files and album information. I can cut and paste raw lists from MC, but cannot select the cover art.
Has anyone tried printing a library booklet? I am not suggesting this should be a feature of MC as I am sure it will be of little use to most people!
Is there a way to read directly from the MC library database? Maybe set it up as a datasource in Windows and use an SQL query to extract the information? I wonder if the cover art would come too?
nick
-
I can't believe that no one else has 80+ year old parents who need a print out of all their music!
nick
-
Nick
No way to access the library as a datasource in the way you mention, AFAIK. Most solutions to this sort of thing seem to revolve around MCs ability to export the library in XML format and transform that into something you can use, eg suitable for import into a third party database, or a nicely formatted HTML document. Although the details of XML are mostly beyond my knowledge, there are/were people on the forum with an interest in this. If you know all about XML you can probably discount all of the rest.
Try this thread (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=24875.0), and follow the links to scotts MCXML export plugin and the related links (below) which will take you to scotts useful MC XML primer.
You can get the presets at http://pages.sbcglobal.net/scottraymond/Presets.htm - plenty of XSL to get you started.
A less elegant and more restrictive way it seems might be to export your entire library (as a playlist) to HTML, including the coverart filename field, and edit the output to make those filenames appear as images.
Hope that helps. Perhaps someone with more detailed experience will chip in.
-
Thanks Lee, I will export to XML and see how I can format it. I'll post the result if it looks any good!
nick
-
It's a real KLUDGE, but I have managed to printout an album list with coverart. At this stage someone will say, "But that's easy, just click, click" etc.
From Marko's Album playlist, I select and copy to an Excel spreadsheet. Some formatting, some macro's and voila !...
I have not yet worked out how to put the XLS file in this message, but if anyone wants to try it, mail me
nicholas at hotmail dot com
nick