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[Harroun4]

For those of us who are fanatical about the format and details of the text describing our music collection. This applies for the case of locally ripped CD's. It is obvious that the data base is different from the text displayed during playback which I believe is stored in the "tag" data. Corrections can easily made to the text during playback. However this will not correct the data displayed when the CD is inserted in a drive. Thus if re-ripping or copying of the disc is needed the corrections are not applied.

What I am looking for is a way to also correct the text displayed from the drive without the need to insert the CD again. Once the Cd's are ripped, they are not easily retried and inserted into the drive. (IE: in my case the CD's are stored in USA and I live in Thailand)

Is their a way to access this data without the physical CD inserted into the ??

If not, may I suggest an addition to the program that would link the "tag" data to the data for the source data base. Possible formats of a second window to display both data's or an option to copy the changes to the data base.

Almost on a daily basis as I listen to my music I see my typo's and am making corrections, but sadly if I need to rip the disc again, my corrections are lost.

Additional question: does anyone know the name and location of the data base file. This data is quite precious to me as the collection is over 4500 disc's and I have about 15 years and thousand of hours invested perfecting my format. Perhaps this part of the back-up process.

Many thanks, Harroun

[Frobozz]

Are you wanting to update the freeDB database with your corrections?

There are ways.  But not really worth the trouble.  Just let your fixes and changes be lost.
The idea with ripping is that you rip once.  You shouldn't be thinking about ripping the CDs a second or third or fourth time.  Rip once to a lossless format and that's it.
Once the files are imported into JRiver Media Center you can make changes to any tags as necessary.  Let it be at that.  There is no need to sync your changes back to freeDB.

JRiver does have its own YADB for track and album names. 
Select an album.  Right-click >> Library Tools >> Submit Track Info To Online Database
You can submit your changes there.

[Harroun4]

My goal is to transfer data from freeDB in Nero program to MC20. not the other way around. This I can do by using my copies of the Cd's made in Nero. This will put the data in the local data base of MC20, now I need to copy my scanned art work to MC20. and then all this ends up in the MC20 tag fields. But when errors are spotted, it is highly desirable to record these not only in the tag fields, but the data base.

The reason for this is in the event of HD failure and having to re-rip the entire collection can take from two months time to close to a year or more if the text requires re-typing.

So if I keep backups of the local data base and my art work I should be able to reconstruct all by simply ripping the original CD's. My estimates for each disc of about six minutes if no data entry or scanning of required, that is 450 hours or 18+ 24 hour days at best. Any other required intervention multiplies these numbers tremendously.

Thus I need to be able to access the local data base the same as when the CD is inserted in the drive, but without actually inserting the CD.

Regards, Harroun

[ferday]

What do you mean by local database?  The information in the tags is the same as that of the MC database...so you must mean something else

I also have a large collection, and I've also spent thousands of hours and $$$ over 20+ years.  I could care less about the CD's; I have 4 digital backups including two which are off site.  Re-ripping the CD's is not considered as an option to me

[Harroun4]

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about this.

Please if you can do the following experiment to see what I am talking about.

Either take a new un-ripped CD, or unavailable one that is already ripped.

Put in the drive and open the window for the drive. If the CD has not been ripped previously, it will be listed as unknown disc. And there is no data or album art attached to it. (of course if ripped before then there will be some data there).

Download some data for the on-line data base, but make no changes to this. Rip the disc and when finished the Cd will be ejected and a new window will show the tag file data. Now either scan or load artwork and modify the text in a way that will make it very obvious of the changes.

Now re insert the CD and select the window for the data on the CD. You will see that the artwork is not associated with the disc and the editing of the text is not present.

I think this will show you what I am talking about. Somewhere in the instructions it seems I saw something to the effect that there is a local data base and if the CD has CDtext on it, if the instructions indicates that if the data has an entry for the specific CD it will use that data, if not and CDText is present it will load the text data. I have tested this and it really does happen that way.

In addition by the drive letter on the window is the album title. It is the one downloaded. When I change the title, this is not changed by the drive letter.

Several times in my experimenting I had just used the downloaded text, but then went back, inserted the CD and loaded the artwork and my corrected data there. The difficulty is the need to insert the CD to access this data.

This is what I am looking to be able to do. In my old mechanical system I had been able to find the data in Nero program and make the corrects there. Thus if I burned a corrected CD, the data was used. thus when enjoying the JRiver MC I would like to make corrections to this data in addition to the tag info.

In time if I am able to make the sort of back ups you are using, then I will agree totally with what you say. I am just starting this project and have many decisions to make for the final configuration. In time I hope to work on the program to interface with my Crestron control system. But just one step at a time. We have many years invested and expect more to come.

I hope that I have not confused the issue by saying too much.

Incidentally, I suggest keep you CD's somewhere available. I live in Thailand and one day got raided by the police ( think someone was pissed off at me), but I had no pirated material at all in the room and even though I had copied the CD's over as mentioned before, all the originals were on location. After several hours of searching my room, the told me I was "OK" and apologized. I asked the if someone had called them, they said yes. I think I know who it was and I had refused to lend them some money, knowing full well it would never be repaid.

Regards, Harroun

[Frobozz]

I wonder if the database you are actually saving to and reading from is actually the CDPLAYER.INI file?

I believe Nero is able to read and write to the CDPLAYER.INI file.  And I believe JRiver can read from that file.  So it's possible that the way you've been transferring data about CDs has actually been through the CDPLAYER.INI file rather than freeDB.  Maybe. This is just a guess.

CDPLAYER.INI is a file that is usually in the C:\Windows folder.  Have a look in your Windows folder for the file.  Then open the file in a text editor to see if it has the data for the CDs you've been transferring.  If the file is not in your Windows folder then do a file search for it.  It may be located in a different folder.

If the data you're after is in the CDPLAYER.INI file there are ways to extract it without re-ripping your CDs.

[Harroun4]

Sir: Thanks again for the help.

I just did a search of my HD for CDPLAYER file and only show a DDL  file. Am using Win 8.1

So did some further testing and see very strong evidence that there are in fact two data base type things in MC20.  In all appearances one is for the person who puts a physical CD in a drive and plays directly from it and the other is for playing MP3 type files.

Yesterday I ripped a music CD and have played it. Going back to track on the ripped file and calling up the "Tag" data, it shows played date and time, the "bookmark" file has an entry and there are other bits indicating it has been played.

Now, putting the CD in the drive and look at the list of tracks, call up the "Tag" window for the CD. this list has the same data fields as the MP3 Tags. But clearly is indicated the CD has been never played, never skipped, is not part of any playlist and the bookmark field is MT.

Check out the "screen shots" attached, I think you will see what I am talking about. There are some interesting differences in the header between the 2 compared to 4.

Harroun

[Frobozz]

If the reason you're wanting to go through the process of migrating data from Nero to JRiver Media Center is to get tags for classical music then there are options.  Ripping classical music is a challenge.  Classical is difficult to tag and freeDB is not very good or consistent for classical music tagging.  I have over 500 classical music CDs that I've ripped.  The only way to rip that many classical CDs and keep your sanity is to find tools that make the job easier.

If you're ripping classical I'd suggest using either dBpoweramp or CUERipper.

dBpoweramp is commercial and costs $39-$58.  It's advantage is that it accesses and combines info from multiple tagging databases.  It gets data from AMG, GD3, SontaDB, Musicbrainz & freedb.  It knows how to deal with classical music and is able to give you good tags for classical.  It will save you a lot of time, and save your sanity.  That alone makes it worth the $40.  Especially for people with classical music.

CUERipper is free.  It is able to get data from Musicbrainz.  Musicbrainz has reasonably good classical tags.  The tags are consistent and good.  Its weakness is that it doesn't always have all of the classical CDs in its database.  It's better for classical music than freeDB.  CUETools/CUERipper doesn't have an installer.  It comes as a zip file that you extract to a directory.  Then manually double-click on the EXE files to run the program, or you can create shortcuts and put those shortcuts in your start menu.

There are some other tools that can also help with ripping and tagging classical music.  For example mp3tag can scrape info from Amazon.  But that's a solution of last resort. 

[Harroun4]

Sir, thank you kindly for your reply and help.

I have tried to keep my explanation simple to avoid confusing the issue. And looks like I have added to confusion in the process instead.

In the beginning I was never satisfied with any on-line data base and thus have never used any one title in it's entirety. Only as a starting point or just do it from scratch. my typing is fairly fast, but not accurate. So I do see errors from time to time during play back so want to make the corrections, but end up with these corrections being applied to what ever master data base I am using. Just so I have this data if needed in the future.

Anyway, currently all of my original CD's have been copied over to physical CD's (about 4500) with the text data formatted to my preferences. The hard work is already done. Especially for classical music and boxed sets the result is gratifying. Scanning the lists everything looks like it belongs together. When the album titles are sorted alphabetically, the inherently come up in the correct order. Then following some sort of unpublished standard for classical music, the titles all start with composer name followed by a colon. Then the primary title of the track. If this piece of music has multiple "movements" then the title is ended with a semi-colon and then " I. movement description' Second movement is labeled "... II. movement description". The artist info available from that field in the CD. My program I wrote for the Crestron system now looks for the semi-colon and places everything up to the semi colon on one line and then the movement details on a second line. And followed with the remaining movements in this manner. When this tests OK, then was able to make the display highlight the main title and the current movement line.

The attached photo should show you the results of my efforts.

I have much time until I come up with the best system to make the transfer. Currently in Bangkok, TH and expect to spend a couple of months in USA where the CD's are stored and keep busy doing the ripping. The basics will be nothing more than put the copy CD in the drive and rip away. The art work will be a separate operation, have a CF with all my previously scanned images are, but stored by CDID code. Will be a tedious task and boring after a while.

PS: I have never done any programming on a PC, but plenty on many other systems, but looking at some of the developer stuff on this site, maybe I can learn to program here and then do as I see fit.

Best regards, Harroun

[gvanbrunt]

I'm having some trouble understanding what are trying to do, so if my comments below don't apply you'll need to clarify some more.

You are correct in your findings that MC considers the ripped files and the CD as different. It will keep track of them separately.

Am I correct that what what you want to do is have them share the same information? So if you reinsert the CD it shows the updated data from the ripped tracks? If that is correct, why would you ever want to do this? The tracks are already on the PC, so what is the point of putting the CD in?

[ferday]

Also working hard to follow...but it appears that he was using CD-Text, which in the physical array of CD players he was using would've been the only way to change "tags"...and even then only through re-burning to another CD to keep the changes on the CD-Text.  His old cd system was kind of like MC tags but only for cd-text

This would have been an agonizing process to put it lightly!  Harroun you have some patience!

So you want the "master data base" (in this case MC20) to match up with the cd-text, so in the future if you put the physical CD in the MC20 tag information will show up rather than the old CD text....right?  If so I think your solution is going to lie in .cue files...

[Harroun4]

Sorry for the confusion, all I would like do is have a complete and up to date data base of all my CDText work for use in the event I have rip the discs again. Is a good thing I kept my Nero user data base up to date of the last ten or fifteen years. Hopefully will never need. It's one of those things if you don't do, you wish you did and vice versa.

As you can see for the photo above, the multi disc boxed set, all the CD titles look like the belong together.

From my experimenting so far I know if the MP3 files get deleted or otherwise lost, the data is gone. Now with the case of the CD in the drive, the text can be edited and remains that way. No ripping again is required. For me the inconvenience is having to get find the CD and put in the drive to do that. I suppose a fellow could keep a list of the CD's that have been corrected and tackle the job later. For me this would be when errors are spotted when in Bangkok and my CD's are in the USA.

Thanks again for all the help. Regards, Harroun

[Frobozz]

Now this is beginning to make sense.  You've been using CD Text to export data from the Crestron system to your ripped files.  It's a data migration problem and project.  And with 4500 CDs you don't want to have to retype in your custom tagging.

I haven't used Nero in almost a decade. I'm no longer familiar with how it operates.  I also have never used or seen how Crestron works.  The challenge is to figure out how to export data from either Nero or Crestron and then get that data added to the tags for CDs that you rip and move to system using JRiver Media Center.

I'd look at trying to figure out where and how Nero is saving its data.  Where is that data and what is the format of that file or database.  Find out if there is a way to export that data to a format that is more universal (like maybe an XML file or a CSV text file) that you could use to import that data into your tags or into JRiver Media Center.

I'd also do the same with the Crestron software.  Find out where its data is stored and how it is stored.  Figure out if there is a way to export that data to something like an XML file or CSV text file.  Figure out if there is a way to read the Crestron data using other tools.  Figure out any way to export that data in a usable format.

Then once you have the data exported in a usable format the next challenge is figuring out how to import that data to the proper tags or how to import that data when doing a CD rip.

One potential idea.  If Nero or Crestron are able to export their data for a CD to freeDB it is possible to run your own freeDB server locally on one of your own computers.  Have Nero or Crestron export the data to your own local freeDB database.  Then use your local freeDB database when ripping the CDs to get that data into your ripped files.  The freedb.org web site has info on how to set up your own local freeDB database.  I've never done it myself.  But it is possible.

[Harroun4]

Thanks again for taking time to chat with me. We are getting closer to understanding what I am trying to do. I will look into freedb and see what can be done. But looking at Nero program it does not look like there is anyway to export the user DB. I have poked around before and found nothing of interest.

Because I have copied all 4500 or so Cd's over with the text as I like it. I can rip from them into MC. As long as that CD ahs not be previously inserted, the first time the CDText from the disc will be uploaded to the program. So I am good up to that point.

The thing I am trying to do is access the MC data base later without inserting the CD again. When casually listening to music and spotting typo's I can correct directly into the TAG file. Good so far.

Now I think the best plan is to just do a copy and paste the album title and the correction to a text file and later when the CD's available to insert, I can do the corrections.

So, I think we can lay this topic to rest unless someone comes up with a way to access the CD data base in MC without inserting the physical CD.

Regards, Harroun

[Frobozz]

Exact Audio Copy (also known as EAC) is able to get tagging data from CD Text when it rips a CD.
First configure the drive options in EAC to tell EAC that the drive is CD-TEXT capapble
Insert a CD
Go to Database >> Get CD Information From >> CD-TEXT

I don't know if EAC will read the style of CD-Text that you're using (there's more than one flavor of CD-Text).  You can try it to find out.

You can rip with a third-party ripper like EAC and then import those files in to JRiver Media Center.

[Harroun4]

Thanks for suggestion. But I have burned a couple of Cd's here using Nero as I did for all the others and tested ripping these CD's on MC and works fine.

Thanks.

[gvanbrunt]

Ah, now I see what you are getting at. The CD entries are hidden normally, but I believe they can be accessed and edited. Look here:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Search_Language#Modifiers

look at the ~d one, in particular ~d=c. I think that is what you are looking for.

[Harroun4]

Wow, sir, you are spot on. This is exactly what I needed. Just a couple of key strokes and the program does exactly what I needed. In fact today I will be using it as I have a few mistakes in some CD's I ripped yesterday.

MC program is obviously so  powerful it is going to take some time to gain some proficiency. In time I hope integrate this with my Crestron home automation system. The program and imitation offers unlimited possibilities.

Let me check one thing. This CD data is part of the main data base and will be backed up with the backup procedure? I am so nervous about loosing many years and hours of work I want to be very sure I am covered.

Another question, I am looking, but is there a way to make the program to start playing a "play list" or "group" at the last track listened to? My lists are quite long and my listening preferences are to play the list from start to end so in time I know I have enjoyed my total collection.

Best regards, many thanks, Harroun

[gvanbrunt]

I have MC integrated with my home control system (Insteon with an ISY). I wrote a plug in for Eventghost so when I press play and a movie is playing the lights dim etc. Not made for Crestron, but I'm sure something can be done there to. May give you some idea's about how to do what you want:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=92375.0

[JohnT]

Let me check one thing. This CD data is part of the main data base and will be backed up with the backup procedure? I am so nervous about loosing many years and hours of work I want to be very sure I am covered.

Yes, it's backed up along with the rest of the database.

[gvanbrunt]

Another question, I am looking, but is there a way to make the program to start playing a "play list" or "group" at the last track listened to? My lists are quite long and my listening preferences are to play the list from start to end so in time I know I have enjoyed my total collection.

I don't know of anything like that, perhaps someone else does. One thing you could do is create a smart list that uses the original playlist and the last played field to only give you the files from that last not recently listened to. Not perfect, but does work somewhat.

[Harroun4]

You all can not imagine how much help you have been to me. You have cut the time in half to transfer the data from old system to MC. Unfortunately I have ended up with the text information stored on copied CD's which is easy to load into MC. My album artwork is stored in graphic files with file naming using the CDID code. In fact the texted is transferred to Crestron system and also stored by CDID code. This worked well for the interface between the12 Sony CD changers and Crestron system.

This leads to the next question. I have looked but do not find, is somewhere in MC is the CDID code used or stored and assessable?? This would greatly speed up the process of locating my already graphic files. Right now all 4500 graphics are stored in one directory. I can feel the eye strain already visually looking for the correct pictures. Also in the future when I return to USA and set the system up, I could use this code to retrieve the data already there.

One other question. I am just starting to consider doing so serious programing with the MC system. It looks like I will be needing a programing language and compiler, correct?? I am fairly acquainted with C programing. Can anyone recommend a compiler program. I know several are on the market, but this is my first attempt to program for a PC.

Once again, your assistance has helped me immensely. Good communications and sharing of information and experiences from my worldly experience makes the world go around much smoother. Too bad more of the world leaders are unwilling to do this.

Best regards, Harroun
Bangkok, TH

[JohnT]

Here's one resource:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Web_Service_Interface