Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

So, the illusion of a possible solution has fainted!!! I wonder what changed your mind. And the time passes and the MMC folder-disc gets bigger, making the use of the disc more difficult (to work smooth you have to have some empty space, usually 1/4, I was told, and now I am close to 1/10).

You did not answer if it is possible to move massily (is there such a term?) tracks with the same genre, so that I could move jazz and christmas music to the new folder, since my main aim is to listen to my MMC in the random mode.

Hope I don't become a bore with my endless thanks but how else could I express my gratitude to your unexpected valuable help? Waiting forward for that bright idea, which will definetely solve my problem.:smile2::smile2::smile2:

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

So now, you tell me to make 2 MMCs for each one of the two drives, both in the C drive (that, you say is of foundamental importance) and a third one (addind in it the two others) also in the C drive. Up to now I told you I make two backups for insurance to my D(partition of the laptop's disc) and G (external disc, carrying all the tracks in my MMC).

Although I suggested this possibility at first, I think that this is NOT a good idea. I would stick with one MMC and a backup copy of that MMC (that you periodically update since if you backup your MMC and then add more tracks to it, the copy will not have those extra tracks).

Remember that backing up the MMC is NOT the same as backing up your audio files. It is only backing up your list of files in your collection and where they can be found on your computer.

Your backup MMC can be anywhere on your computer (or even on a removable drive, your laptop or on data CD) so long as you can find it and get it back into the same folder as dAP when and if you need it. I don't think that dAP can actually do anything with an MMC that is not in the same folder as dAP.

I will give some more thought to what you are doing and make more suggestions on your other issues later on.

Best wishes,
Bill

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

I am getting enthusiastic about it all. Never thought I could find m8s showing such a wellcoming interest to an eternal newbie. Because truth is I never had the time to read and put in practice all the possibilities this exciting program has to offer, partly because I often simply cannot understand what it's all about. For instance, I never got into understanding and functioning of 'power pack', because I just thought that it's out of my interests.

So, yes I have the r11 of the dMC with the po wer pack and, thanks to xoas, dap r3 beta6, also cd writer r2 (which I don't use because it has not the function of writing the titles on the CD). What is of importance is that, besides ripping my own CDs, the most of the tracks I am storing is a product of editing satellite radio broadcasts, mostly not easy to find, a fact that makes them unique and precious.

What I do then is record the broadcast and afterwards, seperate the songs, cut out the speach, convert them with thd dMC to 256/48000 and simultanuously store them to a folder of my D disc (partition of the laptop's disc). Then I go to my MMC and add those tracks to it. Afterwards I use the 'arrange files' option, completing the 'genre' and every other detail I want to have in the ID tag, and arrange them in the folder, disc where my MMC lies. This way whatever song I already have in the MMC (of course with the same exactly title) stays out. So, when I go back to the folder on the D disc, I add the remained songs one-by-one to the MMC and compare them with the already existing file with the same name. I compare the quality of the sound and the length and I keep the best. Because of the nature of the tracks (radio broadcasts) it's obviously a function I can't afford to loose.

I promise to test your proposition as soon as I will be sure that I have nothing to loose. Because many times I have lost not the songs, never that, but elements of the ID tags (genre, song title, year of recording), which sometimes I find, other times not, when I open and search the second page of the ID tag. Are you saying that if I put the collection in my C disc, it will be more appropriate and solid? I don't know which things I could cut to find space in the C disc!!! You see all the programs go there, and I have that tendancy to download new programs all the time!

Thank you for the wonderful way you analysed the various things to the ignorant, but surely music lover! Imagine I never could manage to make a playlist, since it's really hard to use an explorer just by the name of the artists. I find it extremely difficult to make cds or fill out usb sticks for the car, since there is no way to find tracks by genre (if you want to use only hits of today, or greek or latin eg.) You cannot make playlists using just the collection, where it is easy to choose songs. By the way, when I want to move tracks to another folder, I always use the dMC, but till now using the convert to mp3 function. I saw now that also an 'arrange files' exists. Is there another way?

So now, you tell me to make 2 MMCs for each one of the two drives, both in the C drive (that, you say is of foundamental importance) and a third one (addind in it the two others) also in the C drive. Up to now I told you I make two backups for insurance to my D(partition of the laptop's disc) and G (external disc, carrying all the tracks in my MMC). But it seems the one in the laptop's disc is more accurate. But you say it has to be on C. (I'm repeating just to exclude the misunderstandings). And you say I should not use the arrange option, you mean of course in the final product, the MMC1+2. So, I will loose the option to compare the version and choose to keep the best. In the individual MMCs I can, of course, use the 'arrange' function, too.

I would add that it's a real honour to chat with you guys, with Donny also, creator of so many great things and skins (though, to speak the truth, I never could understand the function and utility of, the very beautiful indeed, 'QueMaster'. I also would express my curiosity on how he never tested his creations with his mother tangue (being neighbors and having the same strange, not latin, languages). Donny, don't you ever listen to serbian music, or are you making the id tags in seblish (I don't know if there is such a term, we here use Greeklish for writing Greek with English alphabet characters)

Owe!! I thing so far for now. Hope don't make you tired. Always thanks for your interest.

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

As for backing up, I cannot use for everything disc C of the laptop, because it's full. All the programs go always there, resulting in only 4.35 GB empty space.

This should not be a problem. Try to imagine that your computer is a library of music files and that MMC is like a magical card file that allows you to see all the tracks that are in the library and to access any you want instantaneously. The card file itself doesn't contain the tracks, it just lists the tracks that are in the library and how to access them in case you ask for them. So one way this is true is this: backing up your MMC does NOT involve backing up all your tracks, it only involves backing up the card file. If you follow the directions to locate your MMC you should see it being many Mb large, perhaps even 100 Mb or more for an extremely large collection. But it should certainly fit easily somewhere where you can access it if you need to.

But when you arrange the collections don't you move all the songs to the disc where the collection has its mp3s? (which is exactly what iI am afraid of?)

Likewise, imagine that your various drives are like different floors or different branches of a large library. If you add more floors to the library and then store more tracks on the new floor, you can still add these tracks to your card file (MMC) without having to move MMC or the tracks.

I know of course that you can add songs from another drive, without arranging them, but this way you cannot compare anything, or if you do, it is much more difficult. Never thought though to make two or more MMCs and arrange them in the, so called, 'main MMC', but ,really, have you tested it, or is it just an idea?

I have two ways of looking at this question of arranging. One is to point out that as long as you have your tag information in order MMC is going to arrange everything in order regardless of where it is physically stored on your computer. If you rip the odd numbered tracks from an album to one drive and the even numbered tracks to a second drive, they are still going to show up in MMC just the same as if they were stored on the same drive. Your magical card file will make your music library look well-organized even if tracks are scattered about every which way (just as long as the card file/MMC knows where each track is at).

The other way of looking at this is that even though MMC will create an order for your collection based on tag information regardless of how well-organized your collection may be, that there are some important advantages to having your music collection physically well-organized. While the Arrange Music feature in dAP is obviously a powerful tool for doing this, I agree with Donny's post above that it is not likely to be the right tool for you in your situation and there are alternatives. If you use dBpoweramp Music Converter (dMC) to rip tracks, and if you have a registered version of dMC, you can use the Arrange Tracks utility codec (which is also available for dMC r12+/r13) and it will do pretty much the same as the Arrange Music feature in dAP. Again, arrange the tracks on your drive before you add them to your MMC.

Also, if you have dMC r11.5 or earlier with (I believe) the Power Pack, or a reference version of dMC r12+/r13 you can use the dynamic naming feature to set up your naming convention and any version of dMC should allow you to specify the drive and location you want your tracks ripped to. If you use some other ripping or converting program, it probably has its own way of adding and organizing tracks which is also OK.

As for the last bit, I have worked with multiple MMCs but I have not personally tried what I suggested in terms of having separate MMCs for each drive and a master MMC that would encompass the whole collection. If you tried this you would still have all of the MMCs on one drive (the one with dAP in it). But although I am confident that a user could do this, I would have to agree with Donny that it really is not a good idea because of the difficulties in keeping the separate MMCs all up to date and coordinated and because there are simpler means for accomplishing the same goal.

To prove to yourself how all this works, try ripping some tracks to your new drive, organize them (maybe trying out the dMC Arrange Tracks utility codec) and then add them to MMC. Remember that this will not move the new tracks to your other drive. I think you will see that it is really pretty simple once you get used to it.

Now if you have tracks in MMC that you want to move to a different location, then we can talk about that later.

Best wishes,
Bill

[donny]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Hi, I read the thread, and I will try to add some more help, though not sure if it will really be helpfull

the problem with multiple drives - I would recomend not using the arrange function if you want a simple and secure solution. nothing else really comes to mind. The thing that xoas suggested is pretty sure to work. 2 mmcs (col1, col2), separate on 2 drives, arranged on 2 drives. but as he said unitying these two would make a third collection (coluni), and any changes in col1 or col2 would not reflect on the coluni. and no changes on coluni would be reflected on col1 or col2.
I just tried combining mmcs, and it really does create the new collection as described above.
maybe if you would keep col1 and col2 and change only them, and recreate coluni when needed. but I think that this is maybe too much work.

so I would recomend not using the arrange function in mmc. maybe if you have the paid version (power pack) of the old dmc(music converter) R11 that works correctly with dAP (audio player), you could use the "Arrange music codec" before adding to the library.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/legacy/codec-central-legacy.htm

as far as skins go - I didn't know about that glitch, as far as I know, dap is not unicode - it stores the everything in the mmc in ascii. though I am maybe wrong.
but I did test with my files that have non-english alphabet signs, and indeed they do display correctly in some skins and not in others. I find no pattern in this. there are some very old skins that work as should, and some new that don't. The skins are also by different authors, including me...
in my version of the Beyond skin (local), on one part of the skin it displays correctly while on other it doues not...
maybe I'll dig a bit more about this, but for now it just seems you will have to pick skins that do this correctly.
I never noticed this before, since I don't really have much tracks where this is evident.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

PS Forgot to mention how glad I am for using the beta version, which is obviously superior to the previous one. Thank you for telling me.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Now with respect to your original question, I would like to state that if you have a system with dAP and lots of Music files on Drive C and you have another drive (Drive G) on your system, dAP can access files on Drive G as well. You could do this by right-clicking those tracks on Drive G that you want to add to dAP and selecting the option Add to dAP. Alternately you can open up your My Music Collection and clicking on the arrow to right of the menu item Add Music in the upper left corner of the MMC (My Music Collection) window. You will find options to add tracks or folders or to automatically search for and add any music tracks from a designated source (this is the New Track Lookout option).

You may be used to using the Arrange Music feature of MMC to organize your tracks onto a disk. dAP cannot (to the best of my knowledge) do this as a simple operation if your music collection spans over 2 or more disks. But dAP allows you to have more than 1 MMC (the must have different titles). You could create separate MMCs for each drive on your system that has music folders and use the Arrange Music feature within the MMC for each disk and then add them to your Master MMC that would have all your tracks on all the drives from your system.

I'm really greatful for your long detailed answer, with which I think you covered all my questions (remains the unicode in the skins that don't have it). So it's my turn to tell you how I use the MMC. I add songs the second way you described ('Add music'), so I think it is essential to arrange them too, because this is the way not to include songs you already have in the collection, and even compare the two (or more) versions and keep the best (better sound or complete version instead of a part only of the song).

I know of course that you can add songs from another drive, without arranging them, but this way you cannot compare anything, or if you do, it is much more difficult. Never thought though to make two or more MMCs and arrange them in the, so called, 'main MMC', but ,really, have you tested it, or is it just an idea?

As for backing up, I cannot use for everything disc C of the laptop, because it's full. All the programs go always there, resulting in only 4.35 GB empty space. When I bought this laptop they advised me to make 2 paritions in the 80 GB disc, so I have C 36,8 (with 4,35 empty) and D 30,6 (with 12,5 empty). And I make my backing in D, also in G (465 with 68,5 empty). And I told you that only the backing in D was good enough to not loose the details ( genre, year of distribution, etc).

So, now that I want to add a new I 465 GB disc, you are saying that all I have to do is make a new MMC2 with the contents of the new disc, having already a MMC1 whose all the contents are kept in the first disc, and then make another MainMMC (on which of the two discs?), where I could add the two MMCs. But when you arrange the collections don't you move all the songs to the disc where the collection has its mp3s? (which is exactly what iI am afraid of?)

As for the preventions you gave me, I have had bad experiences too. But I do not want to learn by damaging something again. The only possible thing I think I'm stuck in is to make a new MMC with all my jazz selections, since they're sort of different music and I could listen to them seperately, but again how you transfer one-by-one 'bout 30.000 selections to another drive. Or is there a way to move all selections of the same genre at once, and I don't know it?

Sorry, one question leads to another, but the principal is if I followed you or if I understood something wrong. Thank you again for your interest.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Wrongly put, the right one follows

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Sorry I was unable to get back to this yesterday.

With respect to backing up your files I would refer you to the Help files for dAP which talk about this thusly:

It stands to reason, if you have spent time creating your collection and rating tracks, it should be backed up once in a while. Load MMC and look at the top on the title bar dBpowerAMP - Music Collection 'xxxxx' - will tell you the name of your collection files. Next look in the folder dAP was installed to (normally C:\Program Files\illustrate\dBpowerAmp). Your collection files will be a bunch of files all starting with the name of the active collection.

I've been able to uninstall/reinstall dAP (either for an upgrade or to address some problem) and usually have not had problems with having to back up the collection, but I had one bad experience where I had to rebuild MMC from scratch, so I would advise anyone to backup their collection before upgrading or reinstalling dAP.

With respect to general assistance with how dAP and My Music Collection works, I would refer you to your Help file for dAP. You should be able to locate it by going Start> All Programs> dBpowerAMP> Help> dAP. The folder listed here as "dBpowerAMP" might possibly have a slightly different name, but you will know the right when you see dBpoerAMP Audio Player as one of the options below Help. I think you will find a lot of useful information there.

Now with respect to your original question, I would like to state that if you have a system with dAP and lots of Music files on Drive C and you have another drive (Drive G) on your system, dAP can access files on Drive G as well. You could do this by right-clicking those tracks on Drive G that you want to add to dAP and selecting the option Add to dAP. Alternately you can open up your My Music Collection and clicking on the arrow to right of the menu item Add Music in the upper left corner of the MMC (My Music Collection) window. You will find options to add tracks or folders or to automatically search for and add any music tracks from a designated source (this is the New Track Lookout option).

You may be used to using the Arrange Music feature of MMC to organize your tracks onto a disk. dAP cannot (to the best of my knowledge) do this as a simple operation if your music collection spans over 2 or more disks. But dAP allows you to have more than 1 MMC (the must have different titles). You could create separate MMCs for each drive on your system that has music folders and use the Arrange Music feature within the MMC for each disk and then add them to your Master MMC that would have all your tracks on all the drives from your system.

There is one important warning I would have for you with respect to tracks that are on MMC. This is: ONCE YOU ADD TRACKS TO MMC, DO NOT MOVE THEM (except through the Arrange Music feature) UNLESS YOU FIRST REMOVE THEM FROM MMC AND ADD THEM BACK LATER. If you do so, MMC will not be able to locate them and they will be useless to MMC. If you have more than one MMC, I strongly believe that if you use the Arrange Music feature for tracks in one MMC that any of those tracks that are also on the other MMC will become inaccessable to the second MMC.

A similar issue is that changes you make to the tag or file name after a track is added to MMC will not be recognized by MMC.

I suspect that some but not all skins for dAP support Unicode tags, but offhand I cannot tell you which ones. I do not think that there is an easy way to turn on Unicode tag support for the skins that do not support Unicode tagging. I will ask one of the skin designers to weigh in on this topic.

I hope this has helped. If you are still having problems with managing your music collection on multiple drives, please provide a little more detail about how you are adding and organizing tracks on your drive, how you are adding these tracks to dAP, and what problems you are having in accessing these tracks.

Best wishes,
Bill

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

But it does!!! Told you that in the default and the magnum skin it has no problem to read the greek titles, written in greek in MMC of course. That does not happen with the other skins and I am asking for the little 'unicode' secret which I could put in so that the other skins would do the same.

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

By Greek you mean the files have greek tags and filenames? If yes, unfortunately dAP hasn't yet been updated to support Unicode filenames.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Thank you my friend for the precious help to the obviously blind. Could you please, or someone answer me also how do I make readable the greek song-titles on the dap? (I did what I should so far, but with no result, in the read text section)

I also would appreciate an answer to my primary question, on how can we add songs from a second hard disk to my collection, since when we arrange the songs there is only one root folder on the arrange files window.

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Go into the dAP install directory, then Skins\Default\Editor and then you will find the color.txt. This example is for the default skin, change "default" to the skin name.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Sorry, but it's obvious that if I knew where to find color.txt and the editor folder, I wouldn't ask you. Can you please consider me dum and tell me?

In the meantime, I discovered (!!!) the skin site and downloaded some. Some are marvelous but in the most them the greek letters are not readable (in the default and 1-2 skins that is possible). Is there a way to make it work?

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Put the following in your colors.txt file in the Editor folder:

0
0
0
255
255
255
128
128
128
0
0
255
255
255
255
0
0
0
0
0
0
255
255
255
255
255
0
128
128
128
245
245
245
194
194
194