Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

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charmingnathan
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Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

Hello,

I hope you friendly folks on this forum can help me.

It has sometime since I used Media Monkey, when I did I was using XP, encountering problems with Amazon & Discogs Taggers - the former of which had stopped working, and I was moreorless advised that XP was essentially becoming incomptable with most of the features Media Monkey offers, so...

Back to today, and I have downgraded to Widows 7, and I still have a lot of songs to catalogue; these are for use for an online radio station's radio player, so some sort of organisation is needed between artist, title, and the artwork shown.

This is the Radio Player we intend to use, if you know of any better, please advise: https://prahec.com/project/radio-player/docs

As well as this, I hope to include extra information in the information box at the bottom; would this be detected by the playout system, which will probably be RadioDJ?

I also believe I was cataloguing the artworks in a 'non-standard'way previously, basically I was downloading an artwork and just attaching that within the same 'artist and track details within Media Monkey. Would most radio station player's detect this artwork, rather than looking to a database to locate?

Thanks for your help and advice on any part of the above.

Cheers.
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

Sounds like you should ask this at the software you're planning to use. MediaMonkey is fairly flexible (for example you can embed or use external Artwork), but many software/hardware can be very particular in what they can work with (like only external Artwork smaller than 500x500).

There is nothing non-standard about embedding Artwork. It tends to be easier to work with (as each file has the Artwork), but requires a bit more space (1 Artwork per file for embedded vs. 1 Artwork per Album for external).

Amazon was lost due to changes made by Amazon discontinuing that service, it's not related to being on XP. Discogs is a great alternative for MediaMonkey 4, MediaMonkey 5 will have its own build in methods again (not sure if they're officially supporting XP anymore though).

Not sure what the box at the bottom is where you want to include more information.
charmingnathan
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

Thanks very much for your reply, Lowlander, it is much appreciated.

A couple of questions:

1. Is Media Monkey and most or all of its features still compatble with XP then?

2. Has the Amazon tagging feature been ceased out completely now then? Sorry, I thought that was XP related?

3. Is embedding artwork the process I have been using? For example, just downloading then adding the picture within the song file within Media Monkey? I thought there was an alternative more 'standard' method whereby I think the artwork was stored in a separate folder and labelled with 'artist-title' format? On the other hand, i could be talking rubbish! :wink:

4. The box at the bottom is where one can include extra information, and in on the 'front page' of the software where one enters artist, title, and album information, unless that's been dropped since the last time I used Media Monkey?

Cheers.
Lowlander
Posts: 56465
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

1) MediaMonkey 4 should work on XP, I'm not sure if they're actively fixing XP bugs though.

2) Yes, MediaMonkey 4 has no build in tagging, this for all versions of Windows: http://www.mediamonkey.com/broken-auto-tag.htm?l=en

3) Don't know, depends on your settings. Go to the Edit > Properties > Artwork tab and hover the mouse over the Artwork and the tooltip will tell you. Embedding is fine and has less chance of loosing association with Artwork. If the other software supports it I would choose embedding over external Artwork.

4) Not sure what you're referring to. Maybe Edit > Properties. By default any tag changes are saved to the files: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... erties/4.0 This should be something most software/hardware can use.
charmingnathan
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

Thanks again for your reply , Lowlander.

1. Fair enough.

2. As I thought, thanks for the clarification.

3 . As I was making a poor attempt at describing what I've been talking about as far as embedding and external artworks are concerned, I thought I would dig out the E-Mail from the software developer of the radio player mentioned above, perhaps this will make more sense?

"My player has function which allows importing artwork from FTP folder or any other server based folder (but it requires artwork images name format: "ARTIST - TITLE"). It also allows artwork from Centova cast and other sources. So priority is user entered images then centova cast and then itunes/lastFM It does require firewall open to connect to stream (PHP -> Stream). So obviously there are also other solutions to this problem. But I don't exactly know how you store artwork. Is it image files in some folder or just MP3 files? The second one is bad because reading MP3 for artwork is slow.

Okay so first important thing is knowing where artwork is. From previous explanation you store artwork within mp3 file (MediaMonkey stores images inside the mp3) which for your use makes our options very very narrowed (or small). Player sadly can not read mp3 for artwork (it would also require direct access to files which stream does not provide) and even if we gave access to files via FTP/other the CPU power required to read all files would be enormous".

Does that make my question any clearer?

4. Just looked, the box I meant was the Comments Box!

Thanks for your help.
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

3) Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists has the setting how Artwork is stored (ones added through MediaMonkey). You can also manually save files to the Album folder. Do make sure you use Album folders when using external Artwork. It seems odd that the common folder.jpg isn't supported as well.

The Album Art Tagger can help "fix" the Artwork for you by extracting it from the files to external Artwork: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8678&hilit=album+art+tagger

4) Comments are saved to the files metadata along other metadata. So any software that reads the Comment fields should be able to see it.
charmingnathan
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

3. A couple of things here....not entirely sure what you mean by "Do make sure you use Album folders when using external Artwork. It seems odd that the common folder.jpg isn't supported as well." When you state album folders do you mean instead of an artwork folder for "Abba - Waterloo"?, I create a folder for "Abba - Abba", assuming that "Waterloo" comes from the "Abba" album?

Your reference to "The Album Art Tagger can help fix the artwork for you...", does that mean it can go though the thousands of songs I catalgoed previously, and automatically create the external artwork folder, AND insert the artworks in there too?

4. Noted, hopefully RadioDJ can see it?!

Thanks again.
Lowlander
Posts: 56465
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

3) The tracks on the Album should be stored in their own folder with only tracks from that Album and the Artwork files associated with that Album. With external Artwork it's up to the program to pick up the Artwork and associated it with the correct files. This requires proper organization of files on the PC.

It doesn't matter if you have the Album folder as a sub-folder of the Artist or include the Artist as part of the Album folder's name. Just as long as all the files on the Album art in 1 folder and only files from that Album art in that folder.


Did you check out the Album Art Tagger to see what it can do?
charmingnathan
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

3) That sounds like one hell of a lot of work for someone who has a lot of 'single' .mp3's stored, rather than album based .mp3's?

So, taking my Abba analogy a stage further, I would need a folder labelled "Abba-Abba", with all the single artworks included in that folder from the singles that make up that album?

And no, I haven't checked the Album Art Tagger yet, I've been busy re-organising my computers! :wink:
Presumably this would come to my aid?

Thanks for your help.
Lowlander
Posts: 56465
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

If you don't organize files with their Artworks in separate folders you'll need to disable Scan file directories for Artwork under Tools > Options > Library. This will stop MediaMonkey from matching Artwork files with files, but prevent them from being associated incorrectly.

This however won't stop this from happening with other programs.

Note that MediaMonkey can automatically create the Album folders using the Album tag (if present) or use an $if() condition to create a folder based on Title if Album is empty to create the proper (for MediaMonkey) folder organization when using external Artwork.
charmingnathan
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:59 am

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by charmingnathan »

I thought I posted a question asking about a tutorial for Album Art Tagger, and another thread about an error message received when trying to use Discogs Tagger on Widows XP, but both appear to have been deleted?! :(
Peke
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Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Peke »

Hi,
Most likely your posts were merged to existing topics. In some cases users reported that Windows XP fail due the outdated IE Rendering Engine and SSL/TLS security incompatibility.
Best regards,
Peke
MediaMonkey Team lead QA/Tech Support guru
Admin of Free MediaMonkey addon Site HappyMonkeying
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Lowlander
Posts: 56465
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Widows 7, Media Monkey, Amazon, & Discogs.

Post by Lowlander »

Your posts are in the appropriate topics: https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/searc ... 8&sr=posts
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