Display album name?

Hey guys, just a quick question is there an option to see the album name of the track being played? I like the announce the album name along with the artist & track sometimes. But find myself having to find it in iTunes or online which takes time, especially when I know that the album name is stored along with the track info.

Hope that makes sense, thank you!! :slight_smile:

The album name is imported from ID3 tags and stored as an “attribute”. You can look it up in the item’s properties dialog, but it’s not displayed in the playlist.

H,
did you know where i can find a description how to creare these attributes and where / how to save them? Also if using the MairListDB?
I would do the same with the commet, but didn’t understand how to do this.

Thanks

Piet: What Torben means is that if your MP3 file’s tag contains a TALB attribute (i.e. Album Name), mAirList will read this and it will be displayed in the file’s Properties dialog within mAirList, all without you needing to do anything other than drag the MP3 file into a mAirList Player! (To see the Properties dialog, either right-click the file in the Playlist and click Properties, or PFL the song; one of the tabs in Properties–sorry, I forget which tab!–will show you the track’s Album name, track number, and Year.)

If by ‘comments’ you mean the Comments in an MP3 tag, can I ask if your Playlist has the little + button beside the trracks, or not? If it does, you can display the Comments in the Playlist by clicking that button; if the button is not there, I’m sure there is a Config option to switch it on.

Sorry this is vague: I’m at work and not in front of mAirList!

BFN
CAD

Hi Cad,
thanks for your help and quick reply. This gives me some explenations which i didn’t know before.
Ok, if i understood correct, means that i don’t need to do anything to get the “comment” from ID3 tag into MairList.
That’s fine.
But how to do if i want to put in another attribute which is not standrd of ID3 tag? E.g. some additional informations which are not needed everytime but nice to have and if i have them once, why throw informations away?
And when i add this field (however), how to save it? And what would happend in case i move the tracks to another folder? I think in this case the information must put in again?

Greetz

Peter

First, use config. to add any new Attributes you would like (e.g. Weeks On Chart, Highest Chart Position, etc.). This creates the ‘headings’ or ‘fields.’

Then, either in File Tagger (or in the PFL Player or a Properties dialog within mAirList), you can type in the values you need under the ‘headings’ you created using config.

If you then save your data about the tracks as MMD files (Metadata Files), you will not need to type anything in twice. MMD files are a good idea: even if your MP3 files’ tags are ‘destroyed’ later by another program, all your info. about the tracks (cue points, artist, title, comment, etc.) will still be safe. Another advantage of MMD files is that they are XML files, thus stored as readable plain text; MMD files can also be read and manipulated by any program which can read/write XML files (or text files!).

I know it may seem ‘correct’ to save all metadata within the MP3 file tag (ID3 tag), but years of bitter experience have taught me that you cannot rely 100% on MP3 tags: too many programs (like certain MP3 tag editor programs I could mention) can ‘helpfully’ remove any data in an ID3 tag that they don’t ‘understand.’ Also, though some playout programs store data like cue in/fade out points in ID3 tags, the problem is that if you change programs later, all that information is ‘locked away’ and is not easy to transfer to your ‘new’ program’s database. MMD files make migration much easier.

Finally, if you have Excel, you will find my ExportMMD and ImportMMD Excel templates in this Forum. The macros in those templates can read/write entire folders’ worth of MMD files’ data into or out of Excel. I wrtoe them partly to check the contents of all my MMDs, but also so that I could edit (and then save!) any data within the MMDs, without having to open, edit, and save each one in the File Tagger or the mAirList PFL. I have half of the OpenOffice version done (the one which Exports MMDs if I remember: it’s some time ago!) and when I get some time, I’ll write the companion Import MMD for OpenOffice as well. (Because I personally use and prefer MS Office, I have let that project slip. In fact, I only installed [parts of] OpenOffice on my PC so that I could write OO versions of those templates/macros.)

I suppose your choice to use MMD files (or not) depends on whether you are using your audio files only with mAirList, or whether you also use your audio files with other playout programs.

BFN
CAD

Hi Cad,
thank you for your help. With this tips and information i think i understand the way how to handle datas on a good way and also how to do it.
The biggest advance of this way is that my ID3 Tagger can easily export to excel with all informations i want, so i still have an easy way to create the MMD files.
Next week i will go to china for several weeks and think i will have many time in the afternoons or weekends to test it :slight_smile:

Best regards

Peter

Dear Piet,

The last post in this thread: http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,3374.0.html contains my Excel template file, which will write song data directly to MMD files for you.

So, if you already have the information in Excel, this template will do all the work for you!

Note that you MUST keep the layout of the template intact: DON’T remove any columns, or change the order of the columns (the template relies on all the columns being where it ‘expects’ them to be).

I hope you will find the template useful: please just ask if there’s anything in it that you don’t understand or would like to know more about.

PS: You WILL need to enable macros to run it; it contains a large VBA program!

BFN
CAD