A couple of newbie questions

[Andrew Hebron]

Hi folks,

I'm new to MM, so apologies if these are daft questions but I've searched around and can't find obvious answers.

First of all, I'm using MM 4.0.5 Gold on Windows 7 and have just added all my MP3s to MM and done a load of tidying up of duplicates, missing tags, inconsistencies etc and have successfully used the Auto-organise function: My Music/Album Artist/Album/Track_Name

Question 1: why, when I rescan, does MM remove the Album Artist info? (And am I right in thinking that a rescan will delete empty folders as long as I have that option selected?)

Question 2: how do I import playlists (3mu's). I see a lot of answers saying File/Import, but I don't have any "import" option.

Thanks in advance!


Andrew

[BKKKPewsey]

1. No if the tags are correct and the Album Artist field if filled in. If you use check for unsynchronised tags under files to edit that will show any files where the tags do NOT match the library.
   If you select all those listed and ctrl S that will sync (write the tags) to all those files.
2. m3u files are auto-imported if they are contained within the folders scanned by MM.
   You will find them under Playlists - Imported playlists

[Andrew Hebron]

1. No if the tags are correct and the Album Artist field if filled in. If you use check for unsynchronised tags under files to edit that will show any files where the tags do NOT match the library.
   If you select all those listed and ctrl S that will sync (write the tags) to all those files.
2. m3u files are auto-imported if they are contained within the folders scanned by MM.
   You will find them under Playlists - Imported playlists

CTRL S was what I was missing; seems very slow to write the tags, so I won't know about the m3U files until later. Thanks for your help.

[rovingcowboy]

check the status bar on the bottom of mediamonkey. it has a right click menu. some features allow you to change the speed of the priority for that feature to highest. try that to speed it up.

get "Bills 2 Process Manager " freeware program found at most freeware sites i got it at majorgeeks.com
it allows you to change what cpu your programs use if you have mulitple cpu's. and most win 7 systems do.
it also allows you to put the priority of the program to what you want it to run at. or you can let the program
adjust it when needed.
it also allows you to keep the cpu cycles down when it is doing the auto adjust of the prioritys for you.
that will speed up things for you.

[Visualizations]

I'm a newbie. Is there any way I can get new visualization STRAIGHT to MM without this Winamp stuff? That confuses me. I tried it via the 'copy the dll's and put them in MM dll's . . . .blah, blah, blah!'

Good Lord there has to be a simpler, user friendly way for a newbie to get a few new visualizations to use with MM. It is like Soundspectrem (sp?) set me up for failure. IE, 'click the media player you have.' Cool. There is Media Monkey! This is going to be easy! WRONG! UGH! Boy, was I wrong . . . I downloaded a few of their visualizations (ie. G-Force), then they give me a confusing message about 'its in the winamp file . . . .go there and copy it to Music Monkey.' Paraphrase. Anyway, I tried to follow their directions. I could not get it to work.

What happened to the good old days (like with WMP) were you DL'd visualizations and you were immediately able to use them without a bunch of 'copy this' to 'that'. Ghez . . . .

Any help please? Or, am I just stuck with ONE MM visualization (MilkDrop). I mean its cool and all . . . but isn't there a user friendly way to get some more different visualization? Why can't it be as easy as WMP 9 was/is???

Help please.

Thanks.

[Lowlander]

It is up to creators of visualizations to create visualizations that would work out of the box with MediaMonkey.

In most cases creating a file winamp.exe (can be done with Notepad) in the Program Files\MediaMonkey folder is enough to trick WinAmp addons to install in the MediaMonkey plugins folder instead.

[deanwelsh]

It is up to creators of visualizations to create visualizations that would work out of the box with MediaMonkey.

***That is one thing I find frustrating. Many of them act as if that is the case so I DL them and then they don't work and then I have more cr*p on my HD to be clean off out a later date. Just for the record, my version of MM is

In most cases creating a file winamp.exe (can be done with Notepad) in the Program Files\MediaMonkey folder is enough to trick WinAmp addons to install in the MediaMonkey plugins folder instead.

OK, but . . . could you walk me through - step by step in how to do the above? I know how to create a new folder on my desktop and call it something. Grin. I guess that is no help.

Thank you for the kindest of a reply.

Dean

PS: do you have a lot of these winamp/MM 'monsters' as visualizations? And how does one get a playlist to stay in the order you have put it in AFTER you have burned it? That is most frustrating. Especially with an audiobook. I get all the tracks in the order they appear in the book. I tell MM to burn my disk. What I get back is what appears to be a randomized mess of tracks . . . not a fun way to listen to a book!

[Lowlander]

1) Open Notepad, File > Save As. File Name = winamp.exe and Save as type = All Files. Save the file in the Program Files\MediaMonkey folder.

2) Are you burning an Audio or Data CD?

[deanwelsh7]

1) Open Notepad, File > Save As. File Name = winamp.exe and Save as type = All Files. Save the file in the Program Files\MediaMonkey folder.

2) Are you burning an Audio or Data CD?

Lowlander, sorry for the delay. I had some health problems here at my home that needed my immediate attention. So . . . now that they are taking care, back to PLAY TIME!

Thanks so much on the detailed instructions on how to make the needed file in notepad. I'll give it a try within the next 48 hours and let you know how it went.

To answer your question: Most of the time I burn in Data format. If there are two different procedures contingent upon if one is burning in data or audio to keep things in playlist order - please kindly supply both.

IE -- "if you are burning a disk in data format -- do x, y, z -- to keep tracks in your playlist order."

"However, if you are burning a disk in Audio format and want tracks to stay in the playlist order you put them in -- do a, b, c . . . instead."

Thanks a bunch.

Dean

[Anamon]

Is it just a freakish occurence on my computer, or doesn't MediaMonkey already come with a dummy Winamp.exe in its directory?
I just checke with the latest 4.0.6 build and it definitely creates a Winamp.exe in the installation path, so you don't have to do anything. It's 30 kB in size and even starts MediaMonkey if you run it.

Also, since MediaMonkey 4 doesn't only come with MilkDrop but also Geiss, I think the problem here is not with the installation of the visualisations, but that you're looking for them in the wrong place within MediaMonkey. If you go to "View > Configure Visualization..." you get the list of all plug-ins that MediaMonkey detected and can call. There should be 2 available in a fresh install of MediaMonkey 4, probably more if you've already copied others into the Plugins directory.

[Lowlander]

With a Data CD you'll often see it sorted on filename and thus you'd need to make sure the filenames are named in the correct sort. MediaMonkey can do this when you use <Auto Number> as first item in the filename (given you don't use folders). So a mask like <Auto Number> - <Artist> - <Title> will work.

Audio CD's will be in order and no action other than having the tracks in the order you'd like them is needed.

Masks: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... ormats/4.0

[deanwelsh7]

With a Data CD you'll often see it sorted on filename and thus you'd need to make sure the filenames are named in the correct sort. MediaMonkey can do this when you use <Auto Number> as first item in the filename (given you don't use folders). So a mask like <Auto Number> - <Artist> - <Title> will work.

***That worked perfect! Thanks! 68 different tracks, with of course different titles, but MM did not re-arrange the list via the alphabet . . . I did as you suggested above and all sixty eight tracks stayed in my playlist order.


Audio CD's will be in order and no action other than having the tracks in the order you'd like them is needed.

***That is cool to know. Thank you.

***Take care, Dean

Masks: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... ormats/4.0

[djdonm]

I'm Not a NEWBIE, but I can't figure out where to post these two questions, so forgive me, and move them if necessary (so long as I can track the replies). Question #1; I'm a wedding DJ, have been using MM for 10+ years, have a lifetime license. I am still on V3.1, the last time I did an update it was a disaster.... all of the very valuable playlists disappeared when I opened the new version. These were built on years of requests and success, so I haven't dared update since. I'm getting more & more prompts to upgrade;
a; has the playlist transfer thing been fixed, or is there even a remote chance I will lose playlists (if I'm going to lose those lists then I'm NOT upgrading for love nor money).
b; is the latest version that much more exciting than what I already have, I LOVE Media Monkey and I've gotten pretty good at using the shortcuts and stuff, I'd hate to become 'stupid' again.
Topic #2, is there a way for me to have a field of comments about a song; example; 'This is great for Garter Toss' and then be able to search that field (like any of the other fields) by keyword, such as Garter. This would be a big time saver, I do a lot of weddings and am getting tired of writing things down in a notebook, then loosing the notebook or forgetting it in the truck. PLEASE advise on this topic. DJ Don Michaels

[Lowlander]

a) you can always recover the old DB if something goes wrong. The recommended upgrade path would be to install 3.2.5, run File > Maintain Library with complete optimization enabled and then upgrade to 4.0.6. MM4 includes many bug fixes as well as video and UPnP support.

b) Under Tools > Options > Search you can select which fields are included in the search.