Music organization on a PC

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 30 Nov 2008, 10:34

Though I was always interested in Carnatic music, I had not progressed beyond listening to just the melody, till this January. I started to actively listen with a view to discern the ragams. I converted all my CD's/tapes to flac/mp3's (only flac now - disk space is no longer a limitation), organized them ragam wise and started listening to several songs from same ragam consecutively. I started to slowly identify several ragams just by notes. My effort continues.

What helped me most in this process is the program that I use to organize my music: "MediaMonkey." This a free software (Windows only) that can be downloaded www.mediamonkey.com. What is fantastic about this program is that it allows me tag the mp3/flac files with custom fields: Ragam, Thalam, Poet, etc.; and it has a vbscript interface for me to write code. I modified scripts written by others for western users, to make it suitable for our music. Nowadays, I just start the program and my script plays 2/3 songs from a random ragam and goes to the next automatically. While a song plays, another script will bring up the lyric, if available in my collection.

I have put in many months of effort into this, in tagging each song with ragam/thalam/poet information, modifying scripts and collecting lyrics for the krithis.

Please see the images in the following links:
http://img224.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mm1kj2.jpg
http://img360.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mm3ht3.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mm4em6.jpg

If anyone is interested, I would be happy to write a tutorial and make the scripts available. One thing to note though, you would have to organize your music files with ragam/thalam info in the tags MANUALLY. I will make the database of this info and formatted lyrics for about 1200 distinct songs that I have.

credits:
Media monkey scripts, original author: trixmoto
Lyrics: thyagarajavaibhavam.com, karnatik.com, rasikas.wiki, sahityam.net, guruguha.wikispaces.com. Sri Desiraju Hanumanta Rao for Jayadeva's ashtapathis, Project Madurai for Tamil lyrics and of course Mr. Lakshman. I got a lot from others in this forum too.

Thank you all.

I have a deeper appreciation of carnatic music and it fills me with great wonder.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Nov 2008, 13:15

Enna_Solven: Thanks for letting us know. It sounds very interesting. I will definitely look into using it when I have some time. I have been wishing if iTunes can provide with some of these features especially the scripting capabilites and custom tags. iTunes smart playlist feature is sort of similar but with limited capabilities compared to full scripting.

Is it possible to write a script to take the value of the raga tag from the value of another tag ( or even preferably search all tags for raga names ( as defined in a raga name database ) )? Similarly for thala. It may help automate the re-tagging process.

Another idea that came to my mind while reading your post is, we can add tags about the sruthi of the song ( male/female, or 1 to 7 whatever ), type of song ( varnam, krithi, thillana, RTP etc. ) and other characterization ( main, sub-main, thukkada, RTP ). This way we can have it feed us songs in a full concert format but from different artists. The sruthi tag is useful if we want the flow from song to song to be smoother and in the same sruthi neighborhood. When I create playlists like that on iTnes or create custom CDs, it is a lot of tedious work to do it manually and it is static.

Thanks very much for writing about it and offering to share your work.

Mdrnkvn · Post by **Mdrnkvn** » 30 Nov 2008, 19:05

Thanks enna solven
I have been planning to organize mine for days now. How did you convert your audio tapes into MP3?
I have lot of private collection and I tried to convert them into MP3 using audacity. But, I was not happy with the player that I hve. I have a sony walkman but the audio port in my pc was also picking up the rotation sound.
I understand that Philips in INdia have brought out a soundmachine model which just converts the tape in to one single file. Then one has to load them through Audacity to split them
What method that you have used to convert the Audio tapes?

Will be thankful to know.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 30 Nov 2008, 20:55

vasanthakokilam wrote: Is it possible to write a script to take the value of the raga tag from the value of another tag ( or even preferably search all tags for raga names ( as defined in a raga name database ) )? Similarly for thala. It may help automate the re-tagging process...

Yes, it is possible for me to change it or make it a selectable option in a dialog. One word of caution: many programs choose to implement the tags in a non-standard way. And so, the tags would be unreadable by MediaMonkey. I heard that iTunes is guilty of this too. The best program (again freeware: www.mp3tag.de) to tag and verify tag integrity is mp3tag. MediaMonkey does respect the ID3v1 and v2 specs. Regarding checking a raga database, I was stumped by the fact that many songs (varnams) have same names but different ragams. Example: Mahakavi Bharathi's songs are sung in different ragams by different singers.

vasanthakokilam wrote:Another idea that came to my mind while reading your post is, we can add tags about the sruthi of the song ( male/female, or 1 to 7 whatever ), type of song ( varnam, krithi, thillana, RTP etc. ) and other characterization ( main, sub-main, thukkada, RTP )...

MediaMonkey provides 5 custom tags ans I have used them up for ragam/thalam/poet/krithi(standardized-cleaned-up-name-of-the-song-I-left-the-title-alone:for picking up the correct lyric). However, we could use other unused standard tags. As for as I am concerned (=novice), sruthi is beyond me. I am trying to identify swarams yet. I code RTP, varna, etc in the song name itself and parse it for lyric display purposes. We need to agree on a standard

Venkat (Enna Solven! = I was awestruck by my rediscovery of my roots)

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 30 Nov 2008, 21:16

vasanthakokilam wrote:I have been wishing if iTunes can provide with some of these features especially the scripting capabilites and custom tags. iTunes smart playlist feature is sort of similar but with limited capabilities compared to full scripting.

VK,

iTunes provides me with the same opportunity without having to write scripts - I have my song list sorted by rAgam, (I could do it by tALam as well), varNam, padavarNam, RTP, padam, sabdam, jAvaLI, tillAnA, kriti, composer, the deity the composition is on, instrumental pieces, vocal, harikathA, lullabies, my hindi and tamizh film music, some fusion tracks, bharatanATyam music (i.e. kritis with jatIs interwoven) etc, all using the 'smart playlist' function...I find the possibilities endless.

How is this any different?

The only issue I have with iTunes is that I have not figured out how to sort and make 'smart' playlists from my video clips.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 30 Nov 2008, 21:19

Mdrnkvn wrote:Thanks enna solven
I have been planning to organize mine for days now. How did you convert your audio tapes into MP3?

I played the tapes in my Technics (RS-TR373) tape deck whose output was connected to my PC. I used Nero to capture the audio into wave files. Even CDex (free, open source = sourceforge.net) can do this. I then cleaned up the hiss/click in Audacity/Goldwave and compressed them into flac(Free Lossless Audio Codec, open music format) using Flac (http://flac.sourceforge.net/). Mediamonkey will also do this, but you need to get the gold version and pay for it (I did, 20$).

Mdrnkvn wrote:I have lot of private collection and I tried to convert them into MP3 using audacity. But, I was not happy with the player that I hve. I have a sony walkman but the audio port in my pc was also picking up the rotation sound.
I understand that Philips in INdia have brought out a soundmachine model which just converts the tape in to one single file. Then one has to load them through Audacity to split them
What method that you have used to convert the Audio tapes?

Fortunately, I started buying CD's over 10 years ago. So, I had only 30 or so tapes. The conversion is a tedious process. My wife commented that I was wedded to the player! Unless the tape deck output is good, there is no point in attempting to convert. Plus, do not compress below 160 kbps VBR. As I play the music through good receiver and speakers, even the mp3's that I bought from emusic.com sounded not good enough. I gave up on mp3's. Now, I have mostly flac files, I have to reconvert my old mistakes

Flac compresses only to 40-50% of wave file size. This would mean approximately 20MB for a 4 minute song, much bigger than mp3.

Mdrnkvn wrote:Will be thankful to know.

Will provide any help I can.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 30 Nov 2008, 21:33

rshankar wrote:
vasanthakokilam wrote:I have been wishing if iTunes can provide with some of these features especially the scripting capabilites and custom tags. iTunes smart playlist feature is sort of similar but with limited capabilities compared to full scripting.
VK,

iTunes provides me with the same opportunity without having to write scripts - I have my song list sorted by rAgam, (I could do it by tALam as well), varNam, padavarNam, RTP, padam, sabdam, jAvaLI, tillAnA, kriti, composer, the deity the composition is on, instrumental pieces, vocal, harikathA, lullabies, my hindi and tamizh film music, some fusion tracks, bharatanATyam music (i.e. kritis with jatIs interwoven) etc, all using the 'smart playlist' function...I find the possibilities endless.

How is this any different?

The only issue I have with iTunes is that I have not figured out how to sort and make 'smart' playlists from my video clips.

Hi Shankar,

I went to MediaMonkey as I understood ITunes would not do what I wanted: play several songs at a time and move on to next ragam automatically. I didn't want to keep selecting what I wanted to hear. Plus I wanted to learn the meaning of the songs. I have the lyrics come up and move from stanza to stanza just by mouseover. My requirements were extremely specific

Plus I am an engineer. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail to be hit on its head!!

Venkat

Mdrnkvn · Post by **Mdrnkvn** » 30 Nov 2008, 21:38

Thank you enna solven!
So for the time being, I have to just look at my tapes - with lot of kvn - and resigned to the fate that one day they will be lost

Any how, thank you. I am quite comfortable with the audio quality of mp3 though for the music that I usually listen
Will surely remember to seek you for any technical help. Me not greatly tech savvy

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Dec 2008, 00:18

rshankar: I am with you on the rich InfOrg capabilities of iTunes. I am a big fan. Smart playlist is indeed quite a powerful thing. Itunes is an amazing program when it was released and it still is.

As Venkat said, it is probably good for most purposes, you do not really need scripting. With scripting, I think you will have more control over the order of songs played, along the lines I mentioned before. . For example, I want to set up a listening session that plays a Varnam, an RTP, a thillana and mangalam. Can this be done with the smart playlist? I know you can setup a play list with 4 rules and also specify 'any rule' but how do you control the order.

BTW, what fields do you use to store all that info?
How many of the 47 pieces of meta-data you can associate with a song.
Do you make use of the 'sort album', 'sort artist' columns etc.

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 01 Dec 2008, 00:59

I use the 'name' field to store info on the starting words of the composition, the type (i.e. varNam, padam etc), the rAgam, and tALam. The genre field is to put down the type of music (vocal, instrumental, HM, tamizh film songs, bharatanATyam music, lullabies etc.) and the comment field is where I store additional information (the deity the composition is on, or if it is a nationalistic song etc). I make smart playlists using any of the features I am interested in. The only issue I came up with is that if there are rAgas that share some aspect of their name - rItigauLai, gauLai OR bhairavi, Ananndabhairavi for instance - a smart play list for gauLai will pull up rItigauLai, or one for bhairavi will pull up AnandabhairavI. This can be avoided if gauLai or bhairavi is tagged as gauLai' or bhairavi'. This way, if you want a smart playlist of bhairavi, you sort by bhairavi', and Anandabhairavi will not feature in the playlist.

Say, you created a smart playlist for songs in your library that are in vasantA, and you want to hear all the vasantA songs by artist x - then what you have to do is to open the vasantA smart playlist and create another with artist x, and viola, you get another play list with all the vasantA songs rendered by artist x. Or you can use the + feature from your library to set up a smart playlist for vasantA, and then + artist X.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Dec 2008, 02:49

vasanthakokilam wrote:As Venkat said, it is probably good for most purposes, you do not really need scripting. With scripting, I think you will have more control over the order of songs played, along the lines I mentioned before. . For example, I want to set up a listening session that plays a Varnam, an RTP, a thillana and mangalam. Can this be done with the smart playlist? I know you can setup a play list with 4 rules and also specify 'any rule' but how do you control the order.

I tried creating an auto playlist in MM with what VK specified. The playlist got created but there was no way to control the order of songs in the list. However, this and other things can easily be scripted. One might even call it autoKutchery

Venkat

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Dec 2008, 03:12

One might even call it autoKutchery

Exactly.

Ravi, I now understand what you do. See if you can make it do autoKutchery..

The architectural problems with bunching up different pieces of information in one field and using 'contains' operator is one of entropy increase / information structure loss and that is why you have to resort to smart tactics like the one you mentioned to distinguish between Bhairavi and Anandabhairavi. If there is a specific field for Raga, then you can use the 'is' operator. So probably MM is better in that respect since it allows you to create custom tags. But it is also limited, it seems to have only 5 tags for custom use. I guess it is better than nothing.

Venkat, there was typo in one of my previous message. I am curious if MM scripting allows copying the value of tags from one tag to any one of the custom tags. This way any existing tagged files can be converted automatically to using the custom tags for raga, thala, composer etc. and the retrieval scripts can then be written against the custom tags.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Dec 2008, 04:04

Yes VK, it is possible. I have my own simple scripts to do it. Another power user has a a script called Extract Fields, that makes possible one-to-one mapping & one-to-many mapping either serially or in parallel!

Actually, I have some redundancy in my custom field as I am duplicating 'Title' with 'Song' and 'Composer' with 'Poet', thus loosing 2 custom fields. I did so, as initially I was reluctant to mess with the original fields; I was carrying on my experimentation on the custom fields only. There are many unused ID3 fields. I have left them alone; they could be used as well. I have accompanists info in the comment field, or Dikshithar vs. Thyagaraja raga equivalency, north vs. south ragas, etc. = things that I am interested to know but do not need to use in scripts.

MM uses SQLite for database and manipulation is quite easy with vbscript. In fact, I can hose the database if I am not careful. On the other hand, all the information is tagged in the songs, which I handle carefully while writing to. So, even if the database is corrupted, I will simply re-read the songs. Only info I would lose is the play count for each song.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Dec 2008, 04:18

Venkat: Got it.

Let us see if we can put it to good use like this. People put raga names in standard tags and it is not known ahead of time which field they used. Their library may not even be consistent across songs on which field they have used. If you have a database of raga names ( along with some known variations in spelling ), then a script can be written to retrive all the stadard tags, tokenize it based on a specified delimiter, map the token to the list of raga names and write it to the custom raga tag. If more than one token matches a raga and if it is not a known variation in spelling, we have to error out. Same thing with thala. It may still not be 100% perfect but we can manually fix those boundary cases.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Dec 2008, 04:55

Full of pitfalls

When I tried to automate this process at first, I stumbled across 'Sri', a ragam as well as starting word for countless songs! I got past it by matching longest ragam names first. It is doable. As far as variations in ragam spellings are concerned, I settled for accepted Tamil version. I insist on writing ragam instead of raga

I would need some sort of a csv file of a database, perhaps yours? My own has become squeaky clean. Won't stress test the code.

Will be back later. Going out with the kids.

Venkat

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Dec 2008, 06:52

ah.. details, details, where the devil is. Good luck with your heuristics to get around these problems but I can see a lot of cases where it will be hard to resolve automatically. Like if a song is in Sri but has words Kalyani in the song name. May be, you should print an error and move on if more than one word match potential raga names. Only other thing I can think of is, since you have a rich set of song title database, you can get an idea on which raga names appear in the song titles most frequenty and put that to some use.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Dec 2008, 09:37

I will expand on what I have, I have two or three versions of scripts that would do what you asked. I need to merge them and clean up. Meanwhile you can download MM and get used to the interface. While at it, try to install additional scripts from the same site -> forums -> scripts and components: MonkeyRok, AutoAlbumDJ (my modifications are based on these) and Extract Fields. AutoConcert will be very easy to implement - I will take it up later if you get comfortable with MM.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Dec 2008, 12:42

Thanks Venkat. It will take some time for me to get all that setup but I will. Thanks.

PUNARVASU · Post by **PUNARVASU** » 02 Dec 2008, 05:13

I have a lot of audio cassettes ; I am not conversant with the technology of converting them to mp3 formats or whatever the latest trend is. If any of the forum members are interested, I am willing to give them away so that they can be converted and enjoyed by them. Thanks.

PUNARVASU · Post by **PUNARVASU** » 02 Dec 2008, 05:14

Deleted. Duplicate post.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 02 Dec 2008, 07:16

VK,

Please let me know (when you get to it), what all tags might/may/perhaps contain the krithi/ragam info? I have one version of the script that would do the trick. We can choose not to restrict the input tags to search for, but then the script might take a long time to run through all the possible tags of each song in your collection. Also, do you want a confirmation box to pop up for each song (tedious), or you want this done quietly? I can produce a csv file to write out in trial mode. If you are happy with the results, you can choose to rerun the script in actual write mode.

No hurry.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 03 Dec 2008, 12:00

Thanks Venkat. Yes, the CSV file trial mode idea is great.

A quick scan at my iTunes shows that if at all a raga name exists in the tags, it is in the name field by itself or along with the name of the song
like 'kOlam kANa vArIr - Nattakurinji' or sometimes in the comment field. The artist field is fairly consistent, so is the album name.
But when there is no album name, strings like this are found 'GNB-TC-PMI-SP' which is very useful piece of info. I do not quite use the
genre field consistently. I need to get that fixed. I like rshankar's idea for that field.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 05 Dec 2008, 05:39

VK,

A first pass 'AutoConcert' script is ready. I am testing it. Here is what the log looks like:

------------------------------------ New Concert Selection ---------------------------------------------
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Varnam - Kanada 9429
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Sri Ganapathini - Saurashtram 8029
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: RTP - Suddha Dhanyasi 9057
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Thillana - Purvi 6764
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Mangalam - Madhyamavathi 8928

[GenerateNewTrack] Next track: Varnam-Kanada-Khanda Ata-Ramanadapuram Srinivasa Iyengar (9429)
[GenerateNewTrack] Next track: Sri Ganapathi Ni (8029)
[GenerateNewTrack] Next track: RTP-Suddha Dhanyasi-Chatursra Ekam--Khanda Nadai (9057)
[GenerateNewTrack] Next track: Thillana - Purvi - Rupakam - Subrahm (6764)
[GenerateNewTrack] Next track: Mangalam-Madhyamavathi-Adi-Thyagaraja (8928)
(End of list)
------------------------------------ New Concert Selection ---------------------------------------------
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Varnam - Saveri 8042
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Brova Barama - Bahudhari 8304
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: RTP - Suddha Dhanyasi 9057
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Thillana - Desh 6845
[AddTiedSongs] Adding single song: Mangalam - Madhyamavathi 9275

The 'adding' part is selection and 'generating' is when the MediaMonkey draws the songs serially into the play queue. It pushed out one concert and was preparing the second. It was fun & quick.

Have to debug and add instrumental/vocal/medley/single/multi-artist concert options.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 05 Dec 2008, 09:50

Very nice, Venkat. I will have to get ready. The surprise element in this AuthoConcert playlist has to be a quite a bit of fun.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 07 Dec 2008, 06:03

VK,

I have a working version for 'AutoConcert' now. The options page looks like this. Any comments?

-Venkat

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 09 Dec 2008, 10:41

Venkat: Excellent. You have included all the options I could think of. "Single Artist" Yes/No is a good one. Let us experience it and that will give us ideas for version 1.1 .

I have installed Media Monkey now, but have not done much with it yet.

Mdrnkvn · Post by **Mdrnkvn** » 09 Dec 2008, 17:17

Enna Solven! (What can I say!)

With you around and an informed user like VK to guide, I have now decided to buy an I-Pod. Next week!
I will then come and seek the counsel of both of you.

Kindly be around. ha ha

Md(RnK)Vn

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 10 Dec 2008, 07:04

VK,

Play with it for a few days. Once you decide you are comfortable, let me know. I will upload/mail these.

1. My conversion script that will scan for raga names and put them under custom fields (I still have to add more variations in spelling)

2. AutoRagamDJ/AutoConcertDJ - two ways of listening. (plus there is the original AutoalbumDJ)

3. MonkeyRok, that will show lyrics and songs in same ragam - may not be useful to you

3. My modified skin for MM, with a small player (as shown in my earlier screen shots). You do not *have* to use it. Any skin would do, but the player is small = it fits under the Monkeyrok panel.

Before doing any of these, you need to back up your collections

though I have not lost anything.

Venkat

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 10 Dec 2008, 07:07

Mdrnkvn,

I can help you with the MediaMonkey software on Windows platform. I myself do not have an iPod (but a clunky DELL Axim pocket PC.)

Venkat

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 21 Dec 2008, 03:34

Venkat, I browsed through the User Interface of Media Monkey and I am comfortable with it now. So, you can send me your scripts.

One side effect is, when I plug in my ipod/iphone, MediaMoney also jumps in and wants to own it as its toy. I would like to disable it. If you know how, let me know.

I looked at properties in a couple of places but they seem to be properties of a selected track.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 21 Dec 2008, 20:48

VK, Please give me a couple of days. I am refining/adding clarifications to the script user interface in MM options dialog. Christmas Holidays start in a couple of days; I can put it all together.

Go to Tools -> Options -> Portable/Audio Devices. Disable whatever you don't want to be recognized in the list of devices. It won't bother you anymore.

Can you read Tamil

& your computer display Unicode (Tamil, mostly) characters? Most of the Tamil song lyrics that I have are in Tamil. I need to convert them to/back to English otherwise.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 21 Dec 2008, 20:56

Though the kOkilam handles the bamboo melodiously it still coos only in Tamil

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 21 Dec 2008, 21:12

thank you cmlover.

sridhar_ranga · Post by **sridhar_ranga** » 21 Dec 2008, 23:13

Does any one know an easy way to copy music back from iPod to PC? My hard disk crashed

taking with it half my iTunes library, and I do not want to spend hours on hours re-creating the library by copying all my CD's to PC

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 21 Dec 2008, 23:38

Thanks Enna_Solven. Yes, take your time on the scripts. Thanks for the tip on portable device setup.

On the Tamil script, who am I to disagree with CML!!

On a side note, after not having much chance to read tamil for almost two decades, I was much relieved I did not lose any of it.
Writing in Tamil script is a slightly different story which was a wake up call for me and took a bit of self-berating and some conscious effort
to bring it to an acceptable level.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 22 Dec 2008, 01:44

VK,

Could you send me a list of song names that you have in your database. With MM, you can do it easily. File -> create reports -> track list (csv) or (excel). It exports something like this:

Artist Title Album Length Year Genre Rating Bitrate Path Media
T.M. Krishna Ninnenera - Panthuvarali - Rupakam Carnatic Vocal - T.M.Krishna 15:41 1999 Carnatic Vocal 70 157 F:MusiceMusicT.M. KrishnaCarnatic Vocal - T.M.Krishna2 Ninnenera - Panthuvarali - Rupakam.mp3 AudVid
T.M. Krishna Sarojadalanethri - Shankarabharanam - Adi Carnatic Vocal - T.M.Krishna 32:15:00 1999 Carnatic Vocal -1 157 F:MusiceMusicT.M. KrishnaCarnatic Vocal - T.M.Krishna5 Sarojadalanethri- Shankarabharanam - Adi.mp3 AudVid

I can edit my conversion script inputs to make the ragam-find hit rate close to 100%. It will also make it possible to get the thalam & composer info; which I won't be sure of just by looking at song names (infinite spelling possibilities) Let me know what you think. It is not essential. I can make it generic as I said earlier; but it would involve work on your part looking at all the script responses = ** hours.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 22 Dec 2008, 01:57

sridhar_rang wrote:Does any one know an easy way to copy music back from iPod to PC? My hard disk crashed taking with it half my iTunes library, and I do not want to spend hours on hours re-creating the library by copying all my CD's to PC

Sridhar,

Sorry, I cannot help you. I do not use an iPod. But the player I use (MediaMonkey) has to facility to synchronize back to the PC.

But, I can tell you this much about hard disks as you realized: They have to be backed up. I back up my data weekly to an external hard disk, and back up important data (not music files, too many GB's) to DVD media at least once in 6 months and keep them elsewhere.

VK, If you ever enable synchronization, be careful about these settings, if you do not want EVER to synchronize from iPod to MM. You may lose music files as Apple does not really worry about 3rd party software interfacing correctly with its own.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 22 Dec 2008, 03:23

Venkat, I guess I was not as ready as I thought. When I looked at the report, I realized that MM does not yet know about the majority of the collections in various external hard drives and knows only the a few thousand tracks in my internal drive. I need to connect the external ones and let it scan them and create its database. It will take some time. Do you think if I send you the partial list, it will help with customizing the scripts for me?

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 22 Dec 2008, 21:20

Yes, it would as long as you have been consistent

Send me only the fields that are relevant after editing it in Excel, if you do not want to let all fields show. Any info will make the process smoother for you.

1) When you add the songs, disable the 'Infer track properties' under Tools->Options->Library. It would start to interfere once you have established the database and written back all standard & custom info back into the music files. You can clear the library (File -> Clear Library... - this won't remove any files, just clear MM's internal database) and rescan all your drives with the above option disabled.

2) Please back up music files, if you can. Though I have not had any issues with MM, it would be wise to do so as you seem to have much more data. When you edit data with MM scripts, the tags are written to the *actual* mp3/other format files.

3) Windows XP or Vista? If Vista UAC may present problems running scripts with security warnings.

4) Any WMA files? This format is not good for storing tags.

5) I added some fancy stuff so that when you move the cursor over tracks in the list,s it would show what other singers have sung that song (in your database); but it needs fairly good processing power. I have a PentiumM 1.86 GHz notebook that delays the initial display by 1-2 seconds when a new track starts playing, because of all the sqlite queries needed to get this info. On my newer desktop. it is not an issue. I have added a switch to make this optional.

6) Do you have lyrics for all the songs that you have? I have about 1200 formatted songs for display.

Venkat

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 26 Dec 2008, 00:34

Venkat,

Backing up the music files is going to be tough. I realize that you are changing the tags on the files themselves. I will probably do this in small batches and once I get the confidence, I will unleash it on a bigger set.

I am on XP. There are probably some WMA files and predominantly it is mp3. I will play around with the the 'other singers of this song' feature. My laptop is a couple of years old ( single processor dual core )

I do not have the lyrics for the songs. I can definitely use your database.

Let me play around with the collection some more and then send you the Excel spread sheet of the current fields.

Thanks for all your efforts and willingness to share.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Jan 2009, 10:32

Hi VK,

I have worked on all 3 scripts to make them user friendly. I have been listening to cooked up concerts through the autoConcert script. It brought out some pieces that I have not heard in a while, including the two I posted in the sahitya forum.

It also threw up a surprise by selecting Madhyamavathi ragam, thiruppugazh & abhangs, etc. at the beginning, before RTP; nattai at the end before thillana... I was not constraining ragas, anyway. My knowledge about what goes first-what comes last is rudimentary. It will be easy to add though. Currently, I just make sure that all the krithis and RTP are in different ragas.

The other difficulty was if I chose to play only unplayed songs/single artist, I ran out of songs to play. I have added 'multiple attempts' as an option. It seems to work ok. I do not have a large number of songs my collection, yet.