Not sure if anyone other than Tom and Dave have looked at the new /music stuff yet. If you already have, here are some changes from today:
You can now (in most situations) click on the artist and album column headings to sort alphabetically by artist or album instead of track name.
Search now works better.
If you /sync/, and all the files you sync are music files, you are automatically redirected to /music/yourname/recent where the new files will be right at the top.
The checkboxes let you edit (click 'edit' at the bottom - although you can only edit your own songs of course.) Note that you can edit multiple songs at once. This is especially useful if you are adding album and artist info (yeah, sorry, I can't read the id3 tags from the mp3 files yet.) On the edit page you can fill in the artist and album info one time, and have it apply to all the tracks you have selected for a multiple track edit.
So I'm imagining: FTP a whole album worth of songs. Go to /sync and they will be sucked into the database and you will be taken right to /music/username/recent where what you just uploaded will be at the top of the page. Click to select them all and on the edit page add the artist and album info in one place to assign them to all the tracks.
Also note that there is a checkbox at the very bottom that will select all the checkboxes above it (or unselect them if any are selected.)
Also to note, 'trackname' is distinct from the actual filename. So trackname can have any special characters or spaces or whatever you want. When you /sync the system just uses the filename as the trackname (probably I can make it smarter about this), but you're going to have to do a little editing no matter what. I leave the filename as whatever it was when uploaded, say, 01_ella_and_louis-I_wont_dance.mp3 and change the trackname to the more readable 'I won't dance', while making the artist 'Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald' and the album 'Louis and Ella Again'.
Since the system sorts by album and artist it would be nice if we could be careful with spelling. When entering artist names (again on the edit page) I also supply a pull down menu of artists already in the system. Take a look in there first, since using that for repeat artists will assure that all spellings are consistent.
Oh - don't forget the search box. That really is the easiest and fastest way to find stuff. The search is constrained to whatever view you are looking at. So if I am looking at /music/jim/ and I do a search it searches only in my music. Searching from /music/ searches everywhere.
You get a spot in the /music system automatically (at /music/username/) the first time you upload a music file. It recognizes .mp3, .wma, .ogg, .ram, .aiff as music files. What other extensions should be considered music?
Tom found some bugs, so now adding to and removing from playlists is closer to actually working all the time.
Note that when you make a new playlist (you see the 'new playlist' box only in those places where you can make a new playlist) it goes as a sub playlist to the one you are in when you make it. So the whole thing can be arbitrarily hierarchical. In other words you can make a playlist under your username, and then make a playlist under that new playlist, and so on and so on. The sub lists only show up as you drill down into your lists.
Probably I'm making it more confusing than it is. But if I make a playlist at /music/jim/test and then on that page I make another playlist, test2, it ends up at /music/jim/test/test2, not at /music/jim/test2. So this means that it doesn't show up in the left column when you are viewing /music/jim/. You have to click through to /music/jim/test/ before you see any playlists that are under /test/.
This way you can make a hierarchy to collapse your side bar if it gets too long. For instance, dave could make a 'music sampler collection' playlist, and then move his many music sampler playlists to underneath that. You might or might not want to do that depending on how you feel about that left column getting very long.
A couple of other things I'm noticing:
1. Is the reason for numbering tracks so they'll have a specific order in the playlist? This doesn't seem to be working for me. The system remembers the numbers I gave the tracks in edit mode, but doesn't reorder them in the playlist. For example, the playlist "Slowes, The (Cory Arcangel)" shows two sets of numbering--one in the playlist and one in edit mode.
2. This is cosmetic: if you inadvertently add a track to the same playlist twice, the system allows the duplication. If you try to omit the duplicate track the system removes both of them. (It can be fixed by re-adding the one track)
Number 2 I can fix. Thanks. That's subtle, but it's cool when that stuff like that works.
Number 1 I'll have to look at. It can be confusing. When you edit a song, the track numbers you enter there should be the track number of the song on the CD. When you are looking in the complete list (/music/) or your complete list /music/tommoody/) it should sort by artist,album,and then tracknumber, so the songs should appear in the order they are on the disc.
But when you make a playlist, you can also assign a playlist order. This would be the tracknum not as it appears on the CD, but in the order you designate for that playlist.
But I haven't put this part into the 'edit this playlist' screen yet, so there is no way to adjust the track order of individual playlists yet. But everything else is set up for this, so that may be why you are seeing weird effects. Tomorrow this will be added.
Hmmm, the order of the Slowes songs I'm trying to give it in edit mode is the order on the CD-R. The order in the complete list is the alphabetical order of the titles. They're not grouping together in the complete list (or my complete list) because those lists are sorted alphabetically--by track name, not by artist or album.
If our goal is to have the universal "complete list" be alphabetical by artist, should we agree on a naming convention--like "Zappa, Frank" instead of Frank Zappa for a solo artist?
Re: my first paragraph above--Duh, I just realized you could click on for example the word artist at the top of the table and have it sort alphabetically by artist. The Slowes tracks are fine when sorted by album. But when sorted by artist they revert to alphabetical rather than track order on the CD-R.
My question in the second para still stands. It looks like I'm seeing a lot of Dylan under Bob, for example.
Huh- I changed the album title from "CD-R" to "Slowes, The (CD-R)" and the track order in the complete listing reverted to alphabetical rather than the order on the CD-R.
Re: the naming convention. I'm going with "Zappa, Frank" while I still have relatively few to change.
Something else I noticed: longer file names (like the prog mp3s I downloaded and saved here) are cut off so folks will need to edit "filename" so it at least says .mp3 (or whatever) at the end.
Whoops--tried to edit the file name, adding .mp3 at the end and the system tells me it's already in there. But the cut off URL in the library shows "404 error" when I tried a test-download. Going forward, I'll upload shorter file names, but in the meantime, how can I edit/shorten the ones that are already in the system?
Thanks for the help Tom. I will try to work through these.
Filename problems seem like the worst. Some of this is legacy issue stuff. There used to be an arbitrary 45 character limit on filenames. Now that limit is 200, so I don't see a problem there. But checking just now in the database, there are 47 songs in there that are incorrectly tagged. I will fix these, and they should work again. (The filenames were truncated, and .mp3 was added to the actual file, but in the database it just show the truncated file without the .mp3 - that's why you are getting 404s.)
[...]
Okay, that went pretty well. I believe I fixed all the filename problems except in the following cases:
4 : grand_drive-_a_little_like_youi
88 : boards_of_canada_happy_cycling
88 : Biff_Naked-I_love_myself_toda
88 : Jeff_Buckley-Grace-06-Hal
88 : Jeff_Buckley-Grace-06-Hal
These files have entries in the database but do not appear to exist in any form in the filesystem. The first one is Dave's and the other 4 are Sally's. Is there an explanation for this that doesn't involve the software having lost these?
Hi Jim, I was having troubles uploading music files when I first started. these are all the ones that never "took". I think its cause they file names were too long and didn't have the .mp3 tag. Anyhow - the entries can be nixed, no problem.
Yes the order by track number was not working correctly when sorting by artist (well, it was from /music/, but not from anything below that like /music/username/). Fixed now. Hopefully I didn't break anything else. As usual, my once simple script has mushroomed into a labyrinth worthy of Borges.
Thanks Sally. Yeah, you have to have the file extension.
There used to be a lot of other issues with filenames you had to watch out for, but now the system is a lot more liberal in what it will except. So really the extension is the only thing you have to make sure of now.
Thanks for fixing those. Fortunately I only had a few, too. Interesting about the 45 to 200 character increase, I didn't know that.
I am snowed under right now and not paying attention to the music side of life one bit - hope I'm not holding up the whole process by doing nothing - if I am let me know and I'll tweak my list.
Nope. No problem. I removed those files from your list.
One thought for down the road: right now our "complete lists" default to "alphabetical by track name." Could it be "alphabetical by artist"? When I do it that way I get a very orderly-looking list.
I agree. I had it defaulting to trackname just because people hadn't filled in their artist info. But I could probably change it now.
|
You can now (in most situations) click on the artist and album column headings to sort alphabetically by artist or album instead of track name.
Search now works better.
If you /sync/, and all the files you sync are music files, you are automatically redirected to /music/yourname/recent where the new files will be right at the top.
The checkboxes let you edit (click 'edit' at the bottom - although you can only edit your own songs of course.) Note that you can edit multiple songs at once. This is especially useful if you are adding album and artist info (yeah, sorry, I can't read the id3 tags from the mp3 files yet.) On the edit page you can fill in the artist and album info one time, and have it apply to all the tracks you have selected for a multiple track edit.
So I'm imagining: FTP a whole album worth of songs. Go to /sync and they will be sucked into the database and you will be taken right to /music/username/recent where what you just uploaded will be at the top of the page. Click to select them all and on the edit page add the artist and album info in one place to assign them to all the tracks.
Also note that there is a checkbox at the very bottom that will select all the checkboxes above it (or unselect them if any are selected.)
Also to note, 'trackname' is distinct from the actual filename. So trackname can have any special characters or spaces or whatever you want. When you /sync the system just uses the filename as the trackname (probably I can make it smarter about this), but you're going to have to do a little editing no matter what. I leave the filename as whatever it was when uploaded, say, 01_ella_and_louis-I_wont_dance.mp3 and change the trackname to the more readable 'I won't dance', while making the artist 'Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald' and the album 'Louis and Ella Again'.
Since the system sorts by album and artist it would be nice if we could be careful with spelling. When entering artist names (again on the edit page) I also supply a pull down menu of artists already in the system. Take a look in there first, since using that for repeat artists will assure that all spellings are consistent.
- jim 3-24-2004 11:43 pm
Oh - don't forget the search box. That really is the easiest and fastest way to find stuff. The search is constrained to whatever view you are looking at. So if I am looking at /music/jim/ and I do a search it searches only in my music. Searching from /music/ searches everywhere.
- jim 3-24-2004 11:45 pm [add a comment]
You get a spot in the /music system automatically (at /music/username/) the first time you upload a music file. It recognizes .mp3, .wma, .ogg, .ram, .aiff as music files. What other extensions should be considered music?
- jim 3-25-2004 12:08 am [add a comment]
is .wav?
- dave 3-25-2004 12:50 am [add a comment]
Yup. Thanks. Added .wav.
And .shn not that anybody will probably ever use that.
- jim 3-25-2004 1:14 am [add a comment]
Tom found some bugs, so now adding to and removing from playlists is closer to actually working all the time.
Note that when you make a new playlist (you see the 'new playlist' box only in those places where you can make a new playlist) it goes as a sub playlist to the one you are in when you make it. So the whole thing can be arbitrarily hierarchical. In other words you can make a playlist under your username, and then make a playlist under that new playlist, and so on and so on. The sub lists only show up as you drill down into your lists.
Probably I'm making it more confusing than it is. But if I make a playlist at /music/jim/test and then on that page I make another playlist, test2, it ends up at /music/jim/test/test2, not at /music/jim/test2. So this means that it doesn't show up in the left column when you are viewing /music/jim/. You have to click through to /music/jim/test/ before you see any playlists that are under /test/.
This way you can make a hierarchy to collapse your side bar if it gets too long. For instance, dave could make a 'music sampler collection' playlist, and then move his many music sampler playlists to underneath that. You might or might not want to do that depending on how you feel about that left column getting very long.
- jim 3-25-2004 2:37 am [add a comment]
A couple of other things I'm noticing:
1. Is the reason for numbering tracks so they'll have a specific order in the playlist? This doesn't seem to be working for me. The system remembers the numbers I gave the tracks in edit mode, but doesn't reorder them in the playlist. For example, the playlist "Slowes, The (Cory Arcangel)" shows two sets of numbering--one in the playlist and one in edit mode.
2. This is cosmetic: if you inadvertently add a track to the same playlist twice, the system allows the duplication. If you try to omit the duplicate track the system removes both of them. (It can be fixed by re-adding the one track)
- tom moody 3-25-2004 2:52 am [add a comment]
Number 2 I can fix. Thanks. That's subtle, but it's cool when that stuff like that works.
Number 1 I'll have to look at. It can be confusing. When you edit a song, the track numbers you enter there should be the track number of the song on the CD. When you are looking in the complete list (/music/) or your complete list /music/tommoody/) it should sort by artist,album,and then tracknumber, so the songs should appear in the order they are on the disc.
But when you make a playlist, you can also assign a playlist order. This would be the tracknum not as it appears on the CD, but in the order you designate for that playlist.
But I haven't put this part into the 'edit this playlist' screen yet, so there is no way to adjust the track order of individual playlists yet. But everything else is set up for this, so that may be why you are seeing weird effects. Tomorrow this will be added.
- jim 3-25-2004 3:16 am [add a comment]
Hmmm, the order of the Slowes songs I'm trying to give it in edit mode is the order on the CD-R. The order in the complete list is the alphabetical order of the titles. They're not grouping together in the complete list (or my complete list) because those lists are sorted alphabetically--by track name, not by artist or album.
If our goal is to have the universal "complete list" be alphabetical by artist, should we agree on a naming convention--like "Zappa, Frank" instead of Frank Zappa for a solo artist?
- tom moody 3-25-2004 3:54 am [add a comment]
Re: my first paragraph above--Duh, I just realized you could click on for example the word artist at the top of the table and have it sort alphabetically by artist. The Slowes tracks are fine when sorted by album. But when sorted by artist they revert to alphabetical rather than track order on the CD-R.
My question in the second para still stands. It looks like I'm seeing a lot of Dylan under Bob, for example.
- tom moody 3-25-2004 4:01 am [add a comment]
Huh- I changed the album title from "CD-R" to "Slowes, The (CD-R)" and the track order in the complete listing reverted to alphabetical rather than the order on the CD-R.
- tom moody 3-25-2004 4:24 am [add a comment]
Re: the naming convention. I'm going with "Zappa, Frank" while I still have relatively few to change.
Something else I noticed: longer file names (like the prog mp3s I downloaded and saved here) are cut off so folks will need to edit "filename" so it at least says .mp3 (or whatever) at the end.
- tom moody 3-25-2004 4:46 am [add a comment]
Whoops--tried to edit the file name, adding .mp3 at the end and the system tells me it's already in there. But the cut off URL in the library shows "404 error" when I tried a test-download. Going forward, I'll upload shorter file names, but in the meantime, how can I edit/shorten the ones that are already in the system?
- tom moody 3-25-2004 4:56 am [add a comment]
Thanks for the help Tom. I will try to work through these.
Filename problems seem like the worst. Some of this is legacy issue stuff. There used to be an arbitrary 45 character limit on filenames. Now that limit is 200, so I don't see a problem there. But checking just now in the database, there are 47 songs in there that are incorrectly tagged. I will fix these, and they should work again. (The filenames were truncated, and .mp3 was added to the actual file, but in the database it just show the truncated file without the .mp3 - that's why you are getting 404s.)
[...]
Okay, that went pretty well. I believe I fixed all the filename problems except in the following cases:
4 : grand_drive-_a_little_like_youi
88 : boards_of_canada_happy_cycling
88 : Biff_Naked-I_love_myself_toda
88 : Jeff_Buckley-Grace-06-Hal
88 : Jeff_Buckley-Grace-06-Hal
These files have entries in the database but do not appear to exist in any form in the filesystem. The first one is Dave's and the other 4 are Sally's. Is there an explanation for this that doesn't involve the software having lost these?
- jim 3-25-2004 6:48 pm [add a comment]
Hi Jim, I was having troubles uploading music files when I first started. these are all the ones that never "took". I think its cause they file names were too long and didn't have the .mp3 tag. Anyhow - the entries can be nixed, no problem.
- sally mckay 3-25-2004 7:01 pm [add a comment]
Yes the order by track number was not working correctly when sorting by artist (well, it was from /music/, but not from anything below that like /music/username/). Fixed now. Hopefully I didn't break anything else. As usual, my once simple script has mushroomed into a labyrinth worthy of Borges.
- jim 3-25-2004 7:11 pm [add a comment]
Thanks Sally. Yeah, you have to have the file extension.
There used to be a lot of other issues with filenames you had to watch out for, but now the system is a lot more liberal in what it will except. So really the extension is the only thing you have to make sure of now.
- jim 3-25-2004 7:12 pm [add a comment]
Thanks for fixing those. Fortunately I only had a few, too. Interesting about the 45 to 200 character increase, I didn't know that.
- tom moody 3-25-2004 7:33 pm [add a comment]
I am snowed under right now and not paying attention to the music side of life one bit - hope I'm not holding up the whole process by doing nothing - if I am let me know and I'll tweak my list.
- sally mckay 3-25-2004 8:37 pm [add a comment]
Nope. No problem. I removed those files from your list.
- jim 3-25-2004 9:35 pm [add a comment]
One thought for down the road: right now our "complete lists" default to "alphabetical by track name." Could it be "alphabetical by artist"? When I do it that way I get a very orderly-looking list.
- tom moody 3-25-2004 7:24 pm [add a comment]
I agree. I had it defaulting to trackname just because people hadn't filled in their artist info. But I could probably change it now.
- jim 3-25-2004 7:39 pm [add a comment]