As a new user to mAirList, I am responsible for tagging the station’s quite extensive record library.
I was thinking (and I hope you won’t think I’m lazy) that hundreds of people must have already done this for their stations. Is it against copyright to share MMD files, and if not, is anyone willing to do it?
I really want every piece of audio tagged properly but it’ll be 6 months before I can roll out mAirList to the station if I go through each music file we have. Is this just something I must live with?!?
The main problem with using someone else’s MMDs is that you can’t guarantee that they have the exact same versions of tracks, so they may not match your MP3s (or whatever). That could mean tracks being ‘cut short’ or (worst of all) the Ramps being ‘wrong.’ And your tracks may or may not include a 2s silence at the end (mine don’t); the ‘other person’s’ tracks may or not include that as well.
So all in all, it’s best to suffer it and ‘roll your own:’ it will prevent any of those ‘gotchas.’
Check the Modules, Auto Cue settings in Config: those will let you automatically set CueIn, FadeOut, and CueOut. Then you can load (say) 100 tracks at a time into the Playlist, and use a script to save all the MMDs for you ‘automagically.’ There was a suitable script posted here very recently: http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,4770.msg33985.html#msg33985
(Use the ‘finished script’ at the end of my post.)
I’m no expert in mAirList, but I’ll echo what Cad said. If you’re looking to import quickly, import with Auto Cue enabled. That will automatically set your Cue In, Fade, and Cue Out markers for you. This may be sufficient for your needs if you don’t wish to add Ramps. It worked well for me.
I’ve shared my own MMDs with a few people - but there are several conditions to satisfy before they become of any use:
a) Identical File Naming
I use upper case, square brackets, no commas or funny symbols.
b) Exactly the same Audio “Rip” from CD
CueIn, Intro and FadeOut times will be offset if you have silence at the start of a file (or not)
The only workaround is also taking that person’s audio as well as the MMD files. With some clever data manipulation, you could “auto-fill” basic data like Year, Album, Record Label etc and let mAirList handle the FadeOut points and then worry about the Intro and manually checking the FadeOut later on.
Thank you all, I have enlisted some help so should hopefully be up and running a little quicker than planned.
Quick question - I have taken a copy of station’s record library and added some new bits to it where we had glaring gaps. Some of the songs do need to have a Cue In point set due to silence at the start or to cut out the rubbish, but this can be done on inporting to the Database.
My question - if I ignore the Cue In/Out points now, will my intro, outro and fade out/start next marks be affected if I later import to the Database and allow it to automatically set the Cue In and Out points?
If you ignore those points now (but have or save MMDs), and later import to mAirListDB, you may have problems.
The process of importing a file into mAirListDB is precisely the same as dropping a file on the playlist.
So, if you have pre-existing MMDs, mAirListDB will say ‘thanks very much’ and will use the data in there, and will NOT scan the audio file for cue points.
I think (not certain) you can force mAirListDB to do an ‘auto cue’ scan while adding files (known as ‘synchronisation’) by leaving the checkbox on the dialog ticked, but as I always have pre-tagged the files, I always have that checkbox cleared when I do a sync.; which is why I’m not sure that ticking the box will force mAirListDB to do the scan regardless and, if so, whether or not it will also import information from the MMD file. I think Torben would need to answer that one.
I will soon add a few more check boxes to the Sync dialog so you can pick which data sources to use: existing tags or MMDs, Auto Cue, or even another database - the latter is useful to “copy” the metadata from an existing database (even non-mAirListDB) to a fresh mAirListDB.
In the meantime though, and just to clarify: if you have MMDs for all the files in the folder(s) you are about to Synchronise, AND you have Enable Auto Cue ticked on the Synchronise dialog, what happens exactly?
Possibilities:
All the data in the MMD file is imported, and no Auto Cue is ever performed.
All the data in the MMD file is imported, then Auto Cue is performed, and ‘Auto Cue’ cue points are created ONLY IF those cue points did NOT exist in the MMD file; i.e. the Auto Cue points DO NOT overwrite any existing cue points in the MMD.
All the data in the MMD file is imported, then Auto Cue is performed, and ‘Auto Cue’ cue points are used regardless; i.e. the Auto Cue points DO overwrite any existing cue points in the MMD.
Auto Cue is performed, THEN the data in the MMD file is imported, but the ‘Auto Cue’ cue points are NOT overwritten with the cue points in the MMD.
Auto Cue is performed, THEN the data in the MMD file is imported, and the MMD cue points are used regardless: i.e. the ‘Auto Cue’ cue points ARE overwritten with the cue points in the MMD.
I think that with the extra checkboxes you describe, if you have ‘Use MMD’ AND ‘Enable Auto Cue’ selected (cf. the situation above), it will be equally important—maybe more important?—to the user to know which of the above possibilities is the correct one.
PS: I think that you should have separate checkboxes for ‘Use MMD’ and ‘Use tags,’ and there should be a similar ‘hierarchy’ in effect as my ‘possibilities’ above. Maybe this would be implied by the physical order of the checkboxes on the dialog? The ‘top-most’ (or ‘bottom-most?’) checkbox taking priority over the others, in a ‘progressive’ way, if you understand what I mean?
And even with the new checkboxes I’m planning to introduce, MMDs will still have precedence over Auto Cue, and no Auto Cue will be performed if an MMD file exists. Likewise, no ID3 (or OGG/FLAC) tags will be read when an MMD file is present.
Imagine you deleted a Fade Out point found by Auto Cue on purpose before you saved the MMD file - would you want Auto Cue to detect it again when you load the item into the playlist or database?
There is a hierarchy of the various methods, but it’s hardcoded. Here’s what happens when you drag a file into the playlist (assuming none of the methods is disabled in the config):
Query all connected mAirListDB databases whether the files is listed in it. If so, use the record from the database and break.
Look for an MMD file. If it exists, read it and break here.
Look for a mAirList TXXX ID3 tag. If it exists, read it and break here.
Set Title := Filename
Determine duration (by opening the file with BASS)
[FX: Quickly copy/pastes Torben’s description to ‘quietly’ put into the Manual …]
cough< That was pretty much what I assumed.
I’m surprised that step 4 does not attempt to split the filename into artist and title; but also, I can see where that would lead, i.e. a full formatted parsing of the filename, using a config. string like %artist – %year - %album - %track - %title, for example. ;D
Which, depending on how you (or your ripping application) named your files when ripping them, might be a handy feature to have available … ?
