Yet Another "Ant Music Catalog" (MP3)

[sracer]

I've been a longtime fan of Ant Movie Catalog. It is by far head and shoulders above all of the other DVD catalogers out there. Having just updated my DVD catalog and printed a nice catalog of my films, I thought it would be nice to do the same for my mp3 files. I searched high and low and there was nothing that came close to cataloging mp3 files as AMC does for DVDs.

So I stumbled across the Mods section of this forum, and saw the work that others have done to tweak AMC to support Book, Recipe, and CD catalogs. Nice, very nice! So I used the same techniques to begin working on an MP3-specific version.

Here's the desktop shortcut to Ant Music Catalog (patched w/new icon)


Here's the main window. Still working on which fields to use/not use. Ultimately this version of Ant Music Catalog will be able to handle both individual mp3 files as well as a single entry representing an entire Audio CD. By Default, Track Names are displayed in the list... but by selecting "Group by..." and "Album", the tracks are then organized by album... very cool.

I have to figure out how to change the icon in the upper left corner. I think that it is in the language file, but I can't figure out the format... yet.



Fullsize: http://www.divshare.com/download/1611949-158

Here's the About dialog.... just for fun.



My music files are all organized physically by Artist \ Album the way that Windows Media Player 10 expects them to be. Each album has appropriate album art in each folder (via folder.jpg). In addition each .mp3 file has the album art embedded in the audio file itself as an ID3 tag.

I used a freeware tool called MP3Indexer to scan my folder tree for my MP3s. The resulting .xls file was then converted to CSV and imported into Ant Music Catalog. This will allow me to periodically update my catalog without having to type in each new track/album.

If there is interest, I'll make the language file available along with instructions on how to use it, instructions on how to automatically generate the CSV file needed for import, and templates for generating catalog reports (by track, artist, and album w/album art).

Click here for : AntMusicCatalog-MP3

[antp]

If you wish you can send me the file so I put it on my server in case that other people are interested.

About the icon in upper left corner, it is not in the language file, it is in the executable itself (in resources; you should be able to change that using tools like ResHacker)
The language file only contains the flag shown in the language list, as a 16x16 4-bit bitmap file UUEncoded.

[sracer]

As soon as I have it completed, I'll give you everything I have. (related to Ant Music Catalog that is. )

I can see that tweaking the language file can be a bit tricky, so I created a custom syntax profile for my editor (EditPlus). This uses color to show structure and helps visually identify typos. I'll make the syntax file available too.

[sracer]

Another nice side-effect was by assigning "Track #" to the "Translated Title" field. When I "Group by Album", the Albums are sorted alphabetically (by album name) but within the album, the tracks are sorted by track #.

This approach is surprisingly flexible. I have noticed however that the .top, .width, .left, etc. tags act differently based on the particular field being modified. Some fields will "autosize" while others will not. Resizing the window just wreaks havoc on the formatting until the program is closed and reopened.

I didn't realize that the other Ant ... Catalog mods "faked" the image field by floating it over an empty spot. If the picture field could act like the other fields, it would really be helpful.

[pollewops]

HI SRACER,

I am really interested. I also wrote some version of ANTP to music for my music collection, but i was never very happy with it.

Hope I like yours better.

After that PK-MovieDB needs to be resritten for PK-MusicDB ;-)

[pollewops]

Hi Sracer,

Could you also keep in mind that CD's with music could be added ?
Or are you doing that already ?

So CD's with a trach listing ?

[sracer]

Hi Sracer,

Could you also keep in mind that CD's with music could be added ?
Or are you doing that already ?

So CD's with a trach listing ?

Hi pollewops. Absolutely! The idea is that this mod will be able to track both single digital audio tracks as well as CDs (and cassette, LP, and 8-tracks) in the same database.

A single digital audio file (mp3, wma, ogg, wave, etc.) would be a single entry in the database. A single audio CD would also be a single entry in the database.

For digital audio file entries, the "Tracks:" field is not used, but it IS used for CD entries.

This is a pretty ambitious mod. Once I've run it with live data, I will create a user's guide.

[sracer]

Here's what it looks like when a CD is added:


Fullsize: http://www.divshare.com/download/1626527-70e


Pull-down for Audio Format:




Pull-down for Media Type:

[sracer]

Using the FIND function of AMC and doing a search on Media Type of CD allows the user to work with only CDs.



Fullsize: http://www.divshare.com/download/1626948-7a8

[pollewops]

Looks great....
Maybe an import feature is required for all the tracks and cd's/mp3's i have now ;-)

[sracer]

Ok, here is a rough version for testing. No instructions with it yet. If a person doesn't know how to apply an AMC mod, then they shouldn't be testing this yet.

*** SEE FIRST POST IN THREAD FOR LATEST VERSION ***

The album art script does not work. Until the user's guide is written, look at the screenshots in this thread for how to use Ant Music Catalog for digital files and audio CDs. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

[pollewops]

Looks great. I tried the AllMusic.IFS file as well and that worked fine except that I didn't get the tracks ;-) Some rewrite is required here.

Question:
When you do an SQL export you have to enter the table name. Could that tabel name be saved somewhere. It seems now always to get defaulted to "movies"

Remark:
- When I resizes the AMC window, the fields are moving around. Could they be locked ?
- The tabs are very random. Set them in the right top --> down order.

[antp]

Question:
When you do an SQL export you have to enter the table name. Could that tabel name be saved somewhere. It seems now always to get defaulted to "movies"

This is remembered in version 3.5.1 but it is possible that it was not the case in previous versions, though that it is supposed to be.

[pollewops]

Question:
When you do an SQL export you have to enter the table name. Could that tabel name be saved somewhere. It seems now always to get defaulted to "movies"

This is remembered in version 3.5.1 but it is possible that it was not the case in previous versions, though that it is supposed to be.

I updated my AMC with 3.5.1.0 and even then the SQL default table is "movies" after restarting AMC.
The filename is remembered, but the table name not !

[antp]

It is saved until the program is closed... (i.e. it is still there if you reopen the export window)
So there is a bug somewhere when transferring config data to the prefs.xml file.
I'll fix that in the next release.

[sracer]

Looks great. I tried the AllMusic.IFS file as well and that worked fine except that I didn't get the tracks ;-) Some rewrite is required here.

Yep... add that to the list.

Remark:
- When I resizes the AMC window, the fields are moving around. Could they be locked ?
- The tabs are very random. Set them in the right top --> down order.

I noticed that too. The only thing that I can figure out is that certain fields are defined a specific way for that frame.... and only top, height, width, left variables are "exposed" to us through the language capabilities.

For example: some fields auto-size, others don't. And in the original layout, that makes perfect sense. We want the window to auto-scale based on how we resize it.

Unfortunately, I don't think that we can have it both ways. Either we can have a window that auto sizes fields as we resize the window (with our mouse), or we can have accurate placement (for custom mods) of fields that are fixed size and position (which will look a little goofy if we resize the window).

There is SO much potential in using Ant Movie Catalog as a general database engine/frontend. In the little tinkering that I did for cataloging mp3 files, the result is already head and shoulders better than the dozens of dedicated application that I tested. (That is a testament to Anton's coding skills, not my tweaking abilities )

I'm considering cobbling together a little WYSIWYG database form designer for AMC that would allow users to graphically design the window, assign appropriate text, and when they press a button, generate the .lng file... ready for use.

[fulvio53s03]

very nice extracting informations from AllMusic!
... but the list showed is too large, I think. Is it possible to restict it? I mean: look for a certain title by a certain artist? Thanks

[antp]

For fields placement, I would have to check how I could make that more configurable for the users. I do not know yet what I will do. Even for normal use it could be useful, as some users may want to change the layout or just remove unused fields.
If I add new fields this will also have to be possible for those with a small screen, else there will not be enough space to show all fields.

[fulvio53s03]

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain my thougts.
I mean: when I use the script to extract data from AllMusic and I give the title of an album (i.e. Dark side of the Moon"), I obtain a list where I find all the album which contains "dark" or "side" or "moon" etc.
If I could say even to search "Pink floyd", I'd have very few album in the list....
Am I clear, now???
Anyway, Thks for the previous ad the next answer!
Hi, Ant.

[antp]

I was replying to "sracer" actually