INTRODUCTION - Overview and Uses

Know Your Attributes!

Attributes...what's the big deal? Why are Attributes so valuable? Let us count the ways!   Attributes are Editable Copy an MP3 or other audio file into the Copyable Music Folder. Now, move your mouse over the little "-" hyphen character beneath the Comment column heading, left-click once, and release. The hyphen will change to a black block. Type-in any word, such as "Song" (without the quotation marks) and hit Enter. That's the manual way of editing an attribute. You can just as easily edit other attribute columns. For example, you could mark the Tempo "Fast," the Genre "Rock," and the Artist "Beatles." You can also edit lots of files at a time, very quickly, using the Army Knife tool, but for now, keep reading so we follow a train of thought.   Attributes are Searchable In the example we just mentioned, the file can now be found by a search for the Artist: Beatles, the Genre: Rock, or the Tempo: Fast. Once you have marked the attributes of your audio files, they will be "findable" by our TuneStacker™ music selection program, regardless of where they are located on your hard drive.   Folders Don't Matter Because the files are indexed (and findable) regardless of their location, you're not limited to a rigid "folder structure." Instead, you can organize your folders however it makes the most sense to you. The number of files per folder doesn't matter either when it comes to finding files in TuneStacker™, though it's smart to keep the number of files per folder smaller (under 100 files) because it makes the list of its contents come up faster when you open a folder window.   Attributes are Powerful! You'll be using attributes as the basis for all your music selection, so we advise you to wait until after you've carefully planned-out your format before marking your songs' attributes. Once you decide how you want your music mix to flow, you'll also know better how you'd like music searching to happen, and you can then mark the songs accordingly, and get the most powerful use out of them.   ID3 Tags are Pure Gold MP3 song files frequently contain "embedded" information (called ID3 tags) about Artist, Title, Album, Comment, Genre, etc. In order for that information to be accessible by the TuneTracker System™, the data must be copied over to the song's visible file attributes. This is done automatically if you are ripping the songs using our TunePrepper™ program, however if you are working with pre-existing files, you'll need to run them once through the Army Knife program, selecting to copy ID3 tags > Attributes. It's possible to do hundreds or even thousands of them at-once by running Army Knife and dropping-in whole folders full of them. Not Always Accurate Some ID3 tag information may have come from the Internet, input by volunteers who misspelled or completely omitted some fields of information. You'll probably need to "tweak" the attributes of files whose information was copied over from ID3 tags, so we recommend you give all your songs a careful inspection to be sure the attributes are as you would like them to be.

Once there was a lady named Nancy Nelson who had three children; Adam, Larry, and Mandy. Her children were playing hide and seek with a dozen other kids in the park, but it was getting late and Nancy needed to gather her kids and head home. Nancy didn't feel like hunting for all three of them so she just yelled, "Kids, cummon, it's time to go. Get in the van!" Suddenly, from behind trees and rocks and bushes came every kid in the park, and they all crammed into Nancy's minivan. "Oops," said Nancy, "I guess I should have been more specific."

Nancy was smart not to waste time tracking down each of her three kids separately, but she should have been a little more discriminating about how she called them. If she had just added one word, "Nelson," she could have retrieved the "Nelson kids" instead of every kid within earshot.

The Nelson kids have other attributes that make them each unique besides their last name, so it's theoretically possible that Mrs. Nelson could have also called them out from their hiding places using other "criteria." She could have called them out variously by using their first names, their middle names, their ages, their heights, their weights, their eye colors, their hair colors, their street address, or their phone numbers. Not terribly practical in our example, but it serves to illustrate a point, which is, of course, the reason for the story!

In the TuneTracker System, our TuneStacker™ music selection software plays the role of Mrs. Nelson when it looks for songs to add to your program logs (playlists). Based on instructions you provide for it in your format clocks, TuneStacker™ hollers out across your hard drive, looking for songs that meet your search criteria. The difference is that TuneStacker™ isn't going to shout for them based on their Age or LastName! TuneStacker™ uses more "songish" attributes like Artist, Album, Title, Comment, Tempo, Genre, etc.

Returning to our story for a moment, imagine if Nancy Nelson had yelled, "If grandfather had two heads, come out!" If none of the kids had a two-headed grandfather, she wouldn't wouldn't find too many children that way, would she? Similarly, if your format clock tells TuneStacker™ to look for a fast tempo song, but none of the songs in your music library have had their Tempo attributes marked with the word "Fast," TuneStacker™ will be unable to find any songs matching that criteria. So it's critically important that you mark your songs' attributes according to the ways you want them to be found.

If you open up the Copyable Music Folder (double-click on the Station folder, then the music folder or in /boot/apps/TuneTracker System/Templates), you'll see an example of the kinds of attributes available to you for your music. If you're diligent in marking them, you will love yourself for it later. The reason is BeOS.

BeOS is set up like a big, indexed database that allows instant lookup of any file, anywhere, by any attribute! So as you add attribute information to your songs (and other audio files), you give our software the ability to find them based on a broad variety of search criteria. Our TuneTracker™, TuneStacker™, and Lightning programs all make great use of the information. So well-marked attributes let you really control your music mix, making finding songs during request shows (using Lightning) an almost instantaneous experience.


EDITING ATTRIBUTES

To manually edit a file's attributes, open the folder containing the file, and assure the column for the attribute you wish to edit is visible. For example, if after scrolling left and right, you don't see the Tempo column, you may need to add it so you can edit its contents. Do so by clicking on the Attributes pulldown menu at the top of the window, and in a submenu area representing the type of file (such as MPEG Audio File), click to put a checkmark next to Tempo.

Once the attribute column you require is displayed, the actual editing of the file's attributes is done by just "renaming" the little hyphen displayed in the column where you want to make the change. It's really easy. Just use the same "click and change" technique you're accustomed to using when editing a filename in Windows. Hold your mouse over the little hyphen (-) where you want to type the label, left-click, and release. When the label text changes to a black box with white character(s), just type in the new text, then hit the Enter key. If you are adding text to an attribute for the first time, left-click over the little hyphen (-), wait for a vertical cursor bar to appear, then begin typing, hitting Enter when you're done. You may need to try a couple times until you get the knack of where to click to activate the cursor.

If you're adding the same information to several files, you can take advantage of copy/paste to save yourself some typing. Just type-in the label once, and before hitting Enter, do CTRL-C (for copy). Then click on another attribute label, wait until it turns black, then do CTRL-V (for paste).

If you want to edit the attributes of multiple audio files simultaneously, drag and drop them into our Army Knife TTE program, or right-click on the selected files (opens a dropdown menu), choose "Open With" and specify Army Knife. If more than one Army Knife icon is visible, choose whichever one you want.

One note of caution: If you're editing more than 25 or so files at the same time, don't use the "Open With" approach mentioned above. Instead, select the files in their folder and drop them onto the Army Knife program while it is running. Doing "Open With" on too many files at once coupld clog up your system sufficiently to require a reboot to clear it.


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