Browse-By-Cover....it's here!

**juve021** · 07-25-2007, 10:37 AM

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

my structure is the same..a nd it seems it would be easy to create a better "builder" script that essentially searched every folder in your music directory.. if the folder contains .mp3's.. an .m3u would be created in that folder and the folder would be deemed a "album". If the folder did not contain mp3's it would be considered a plain directory. Doing it this way could pretty much ignore the actual structure needed. Changes to the source would also need to be done for subdirectories. If a album folder clicking the album would load it into winamp, but clicking a non-music directory would simply enter that directory so you can see its subdirectories.

Here's my xml file. I have no idea why its cuttin off first letters.

Code:

<artworkinfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>enny Williams</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>tar Wars EPIII OST</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>iller Kuts from Core</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>

other than that good stuff the swf takes ALOT of CPU cycles.. even on my amd 2800. Something's gotta be done about that.

Are your albums name "artist - album"?
so its path would be for example, c:\music\albums\artist - album\
also what filename are you using for your album art files? folder.jpg? album.jpg?
Yes, CPU cycles is a known and huge issue for this thing.

**Sonicxtacy02** · 07-25-2007, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by juve021

Are your albums name "artist - album"?
so its path would be for example, c:\music\albums\artist - album\
also what filename are you using for your album art files? folder.jpg? album.jpg?

my format is G:\My music\Genre\Artist\Album\artist name - track.mp3. My art is named folder.jpg.

**juve021** · 07-25-2007, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

my format is G:\My music\Genre\Artist\Album\artist name - track.mp3. My art is named folder.jpg.

Yeah, thats how John and I guess the majority of peeps have their music. I will try to modify my program to work with that structure and post a new version.

**kbreeden** · 07-25-2007, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

my structure is the same..a nd it seems it would be easy to create a better "builder" script that essentially searched every folder in your music directory.. if the folder contains .mp3's.. an .m3u would be created in that folder and the folder would be deemed a "album". If the folder did not contain mp3's it would be considered a plain directory. Doing it this way could pretty much ignore the actual structure needed. Changes to the source would also need to be done for subdirectories. If a album folder clicking the album would load it into winamp, but clicking a non-music directory would simply enter that directory so you can see its subdirectories.

Wouldn't it be even cleaner if the script looked for any directory containing a folder.jpg file and called that an album folder? Most people, I think, only include a folder.jpg in a folder where there's an actual album. Many folders have miscellaneous mp3 files that are not part of albums and you wouldn't want an m3u created in those folders.

Attached is an image of my music folders. The folder for Bryan Adams (he sucks, I know) contains both mp3s and an additional folder for an album. The album folder will, of course, contain all of the songs in the album plus folder.jpg. The only way to be sure you're actually dealing with an album is to check for the folder.jpg file.

**Sonicxtacy02** · 07-25-2007, 12:24 PM

that would work as well... probably better than my method

i'll see what i can do about that.

**ThunderStick** · 07-25-2007, 01:12 PM

is this skinnable

**Sonicxtacy02** · 07-25-2007, 01:20 PM

you can skin its surroundings buy the actually meat of it is a .swf file.

**EL CAMINO** · 07-25-2007, 01:34 PM

i agree, this way any folder containing a folder.jpg will be added, and then a playlist can be generated to be used to load the music, but, how is to skip the playlist thing? just load the music from the folder that contains the specific jpg.

**ToddW65** · 07-25-2007, 01:59 PM

Isn't there an app that just scans a folder for mp3's and writes a playlist based on the tags? i.e. a playlist by Artist, another by Genre, etc.

BTW, when organizing by the Artis/Album method, how does everyone categorize Various Artist/Genre CD's that have say...William Shatner doing free-form jazz and Pantera in a duet with Ozzy, both on the same CD?

Originally Posted by kbreeden

Wouldn't it be even cleaner if the script looked for any directory containing a folder.jpg file and called that an album folder? Most people, I think, only include a folder.jpg in a folder where there's an actual album. Many folders have miscellaneous mp3 files that are not part of albums and you wouldn't want an m3u created in those folders.

Attached is an image of my music folders. The folder for Bryan Adams (he sucks, I know) contains both mp3s and an additional folder for an album. The album folder will, of course, contain all of the songs in the album plus folder.jpg. The only way to be sure you're actually dealing with an album is to check for the folder.jpg file.

**JohnWPB** · 07-25-2007, 05:13 PM

Originally Posted by ToddW65

BTW, when organizing by the Artis/Album method, how does everyone categorize Various Artist/Genre CD's that have say...William Shatner doing free-form jazz and Pantera in a duet with Ozzy, both on the same CD?

I had a lenghty chat with Liquid Smoke just a few nights about this very same thing. When I first started tagging my music, I had to use the same artist name for the artist tag, to keep the albums together. This sucked for Compilation albums such as "Billboards top 80 hits".

BillBoards top 80's hits - Tainted Love.mp3 ect. This was the wrong way to go about it I found out after some research.

There is an Orchestra/Band tag in many MP3 tagging programs. This allows you to have the song then tagged and named "Soft Cell - Tainted Love" and then in the Orchestra Tag to use "Billboards top 80 hits". When done this way, it will still keep the correct songs that belong to the correct album together correctly. This is the way iTunes, Media Center and most other programs handle keeping the music organized.

It took a bit to get used to it, so my best suggestion is to copy a compilation folder of mp3's as a test bed and mess with the tags till ya figure it out. If you screw it up bad somehow, you still have the originals

A picture is worth a thousand words

Here is a screen capture of Tag & Rename. Notice that all of the artists names are different in the file names and in the tags. However the "Orchestra" tag overrides that IF that tag exists, and the music is sorted correctly in iTunes, Windows Media Player ect ect.