New to MusicCabinet - but a few questions...

[sizetwo]

I installed everything fine - and when I read about the extension itself it sounded like a good idea - as I have a rather extensive library.
However, I really need the folder structure to be the same as it is in regular Subsonic. Is this possible? My folder structure on the server is
Genre>Artist-Album, and I need to keep this when browsing the left hand side of the player. Having it Artist>Album like it is now is really not useful for me. I have not found a way to change this - is it possible to go back to using the default view?

[hakko]

Hi! As it says in the docs, MusicCabinet browses your library by tags, not by folder structure. You can keep all your files in the same directory and you still get the same interface (artists in the left frame, which can be filtered by genre using the drop-down box). At the bottom of the left frame, you can choose "switch to file-based browsing", but that interface doesn't give you all the options that the tag based interface does.

[sizetwo]

Thanks for the quick response. As much as I appreciate the last.fm integration, this makes the plugin unusable for me then, which is quite a shame. I understand from a GUI point of view that this is the only solution, but when browsing sometimes poorly tagged files, it becomes too difficult to browse - also, less intuitive for some of my friends using the system. For my continued use, I would need to be able to have a top-level folder structure that can lead to easy access to the albums below. Example is the folder named "Electronica 1990-2000" would not be something that can easily be integrated into tags (imho), so my system falls apart when using MusicCabinet. Alas.

Either way, great product.

[hakko]

Too bad it doesn't work out as one could wish! For me, it was an early design decision to only support well tagged music collections. I need to know which tracks exactly are in your library, to be able to match them against top tracks from last.fm, for example. When people have untagged files called 01 - track.mp3, there's just nothing to work with. I've no idea which artist biography to display, which related artists etc.

Also, personally, I prefer getting semi-automatic tags from last.fm over having to categorize everything myself. It's also my belief that some music falls into multiple categories (like rock, 70s, female vocalists) and I like being able to browse by either genre and at the same time generate playlists of songs matching all of them. I don't know how to achieve that using just folders. So to me at least, tags are superior to folder structure, even though I understand it's not the case for everyone else.

Regards

[sizetwo]

I absolutely agree. And since I started ripping my CDs I have tried to keep it quite consistent. However, as mentioned in the example, I prefer folders indicating timeperiods and genres, rather than complex strings (I guess one could somehow specify genre electronica/release year >1990<2000 some how, but folders work better. Anyway - good effort!

[sizetwo]

So now I cant really figure out how to uninstall the MusicCabinet extension ... and I cant find it in your documentation. Any pointers?

[hakko]

I made a faq thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10877

[sizetwo]

Ok Thanks! Its actually growing on me a little so we will ser what happens.

[grubenpony]

Hi there!

I recently updateted to 4.7 and had to find out, that the music folder accordion mod is not working.
that was a big prob to me so I decided to test musiccabinet, because I read about the accordion-option in there...

and now I see similiar probs like the threadstarter.
i have to explain that I normally did a global preselction in subsonic by using the former top left pulldown menu to choose between major categories like ALBUMS, SAMPLERS or MOVIES.
now every artist appears on the left side- that made a former f.e. A-section with 20 artists now a 80 artists list.
is there any way to use the folderview AND display the selected folders (ALBUMS) subfolders (or artists) in the left row?

BR,
Tim

[hakko]

There are no hidden settings. The left frame displays your artists (from all media folders). There's no way to distinguish content found in just one media folder in the left frame. Your folder structure is exposed in the file tree view, but since the primary browsing method is by tags, folder locations are not taken into account.

[grubenpony]

I have a huge DB, containing amongs other 30GB of about 9000 (fully tagged songs), digitally recorded a decade ago from MCE with a dbox.
It would be very helpful to implement some kind of global "restrict by tag" or so. Then I could tag Aall files of a folder ALBUMS, MCE, MOVIES.
That would enable s.o. to define "profiles"- Similar to the earlier folder-preselection.
Is there a possibility to use some user-defined not yet used id3-tag-field for that?

anyone still understanding what i am thinking about?

[hakko]

If you're familiar with SQL, you could actually achieve this. I tried for myself and created a new tag called "the f word" and then I added it to all my artists found in a folder called /Volumes/Music/F* (which will include all my artists called something starting with F). I did it using a tool called psql which comes with the Postgresql installation. You could also use pgAdmin, a graphical tool that'll let you run SQL statements against the musiccabinet database.

Code: Select all

insert into music.tag (tag_name) values ('the f word');

insert into library.toptag (tag_id) select id from music.tag where tag_name = 'the f word';

insert into music.artisttoptag (artist_id, tag_id, tag_count) select distinct artist_id, tag.id, 100 from library.directory d inner join library.file f on f.directory_id = d.id inner join library.filetag ft on ft.file_id = f.id, music.tag where tag_name = 'the f word' and path like '/Volumes/Music/F%';

After logging in/out, the genre "the f word" appears in the dropdown box in the left frame as a new genre and if I select it, only artists from my F* folders are shown.

To get rid of it:

Code: Select all

delete from music.artisttoptag where tag_id in (select id from music.tag where tag_name = 'the f word');

delete from library.toptag where tag_id in (select id from music.tag where tag_name = 'the f word');

delete from music.tag where tag_name = 'the f word';


That's the closest I can think of. Run it on your own risk. I think it is a good idea to keep the tags lowercase.

[grubenpony]

wow- i will have a try- unfortunately my knowledge is some kind of ristricted- but a good friend of mine should be able to guide me!
I will try that after my holidays!
and come back with some more questions...

Thnx!
Tim