Tagging wav files?

FYI: Monkeys is now on Linux as well.


Full details on the monkey forums.


About tagging - Media Jukebox has native APE file support and its own DB to support a lot more metadata with your song files. Of course Media Jukebox supports WAV as well - but why waste all the HD space when you just make APE files.


APL files for various playback options on live CDs, MIX cds, etc.. is really cool as well. Intergration with EAC is a bonus as well.


It took me about a year of research and testing to finalize on my toolset for archiving all my audio.


I have yet to find anything that gives me the flexibility and amount of options that APE has - and hey - if something better comes along, no sweat - reconvert my APE files back to WAV.


All who read this really owe it to yourselves to take a look at this software if you are serious about building an in house media server for your music collection.


-Brian

Jon:


IMO, metadata linked to media files would be used for a variety of purposes, including: (1) organizing files by genre, artist, album, author, director, actors, or any other field of data (see DVDProfiler for good examples of data for DVDs); (2) quickly searching by data fields or by text for specific media files; (3) creating playlists of favorite files; (4) random playlist generation and playlist generation based on user-defined rules; (5) "smart" playlist generation based on user habits; (6) easy access to online sources of information about the files (CDDB, FreeDB, IMDB, etc.) from which the initial metadata fields could be quickly populated.


Most importantly, this "metadata" would have to be linked to a media player of choice for each of the files and not part of a proprietary setup. Ideally, the whole thing would be modular: GUI, metadatabase, and player(s).


- Ken

Quote:
*grin* You just described what we plan to build. We have a vision (which I am sure is shared by many AVS-folk) of a complete digital media solution based on modularity and open system hardware and software. A number of people have built parts of this vision but some big parts (like a good database) are still missing (as far as we know) and a lot of glue is missing. We have recently started up a venture to address some of this. We are simply deciding what to tackle in what order. Just for reference, we have done this type of thing before (I guarantee you are using software we had a hand in..


The first thing we tackled (because it is something of a pre-requisite and was fairly qucik) was the storage itself. We will soon launch a line of terabyte+ file (using hardware RAID 5) servers which could be used for media storage (although they are simply general purpose PCs running either Linux or Windows so they could be used for many other purposes as well). We hope to price these at under $5k for 1TB and under $10k for 2+TBs...


However, we are primarily software geeks and so the database aspect is the most appealing to build next. One key characteristic of what we hope to build is that it will be done using layered graphs (think RDF if you are faimilar with it). This will allow arbitrary layers of metadata (e.g. from IMDB, CDDB, MTV, personal data, your buddy, a pay service, etc) with the user deciding which layers override which. Each layer can, of course, change independently...I realize that this isn't necessarily clear right now. I hope to start a separate discussion somewhere soon on this topic...


-Jon

Quote:
Just for reference (IMHO), relying on soley filenames is worse than tagging for associating data and metadata. This creates a very brittle system and makes it difficult to move things around, share, etc...At the minimum, a database needs to contain a decent hash of the actual data...


-Jon

Ken -


EAC for the ripping and Internet DB lookup as well as making my file names "standard".


You can have EAC when done ripping turn around and make APE files as well. More info on this integration on the monkey forum. If you already have a ton of WAV you can easily batch convert them from within the GUI of Monkeys.


Files are stored on a server - I do my ripping work, conversion on local HD then move APE files to my central media server. Media Jukebox does support a client/server architecture so that you can have multiple Jukebox clients talking over your LAN for access to your media library.


Only doing CDs right now - DVD is in my plans.


For MediaJukebox I use Mouse navigation. I have a pronto and IRman as well but would probably spend more time with something like APEjukebox for the HTPC to browse my media collection. I mainly have some custom playlists and just run those. My mouse navigations is pretty limited - could easily convert these operations to the pronto - probabaly will some day.


Really waiting on the new XP Freestyle interface from MS to see how that looks - coupled with their Mira 802.11 devices for complete media control - before I go all crazy with the Pronto configuration.


-Brian

Brian:


Thanks for that explanation. I'm still experimenting with various setups, including using Mario Cascio's CDLobby program as a front-end for Winamp and using MusicMatch Jukebox as alternative playback device and for Internet radio. I've finally started creating m3u playlists for each of my ripped albums (all wav format now) which I use in batch files to launch Winamp from within CDLobby.


I need to experiment some more with APE compression and the final version of MJ8, which looks pretty good.


I've also held off on comprehensive Pronto programming, mostly out of laziness, but also out of difficulties with getting the Pronto to operate my Talisman interface. But I recently purchased a Gyration Gyroremote for mouse navigation, and I'm pretty happy with it.


Freestyle and the Tablet PCs do look intriguing, esp. as a means of controlling a remote network device in another room (like the Turtlebeach Audiotron which can be controlled from anywhere on the network through a web interface).


My ideal networked house would have a terabyte media server, a HTPC for driving the high-quality home theater audio and video, an Audiotron music player hooked to the hi-zoot stereo system in one room, and some sort of lower-end A/V player for the bedroom -- all controlled with tablet PCs.


Maybe someday . . . .