Select-o-Magic 3000
is an open source GUI (GTK+) application
that builds a simple
data base
of your audio files
(
MP3,
M4a/AAC,
Ogg Vorbis,
and
FLAC
)
and allows you to create a filtered
M3U playlist
(supported by most media players) based on many different
criteria,
including, but not limited to,
genre, beats per minute, artist,
year of release, and album title.
Playlists may be saved to disk, or sent directly to any
of several compatible
media players.
There are a few steps to started with
Select-o-Magic 3000.
First, configure the
audio file types
to be scanned for the database.
Second, select a compatible
media player.
If you don't have any compatible media players installed
on your system, that's okay, you can still use
Select-o-Magic 3000
by saving your playlists to a file.
Third, select what filter
criteria
to use in the file selection.
The default of Genres, Artists, and Albums is a
good place to start.
You can change the criteria configuration at any time
without having to re-scan the audio files.
Fourth, scan your audio files to create the
database.
Select which audio file types you wish to be added to the
database.
The file types currently supported are
MP3,
Ogg Vorbis,
M4a,
and
FLAC.
Any changes to this configuration will require a
re-scan of your
audio files, and may require deleting the database first.
As well as saving the playlist to a file,
Select-o-Magic 3000
can send the playlist directly to many different
media players.
You may enter the name of your preferred media player
or select a
known compatible player from the drop down box.
(See the above screen shot)
This is the status of media players as tested with
Select-o-Magic 3000:
The criteria configuration is an intuitive process.
You must select at least one criteria for filtering,
all others are optional.
The currently supported criteria are:
Genres: The type of music. For example: blues,
classical, country, folk, hip-hop, jazz, rock, and world.
Artists: The artist, band, or group who composed
and/or recorded the track or album.
Years: The year in which the track or album was
recorded or released.
Albums: The album or CD on which the track appears.
Moods: An arbitrary description such as "romantic",
or "happy".
The "Mood" tag is only available for MP3 audio files
and is poorly supported by most MP3
file tag editors.
BPM: The Beats per Minute (BPM) tag (available only
for MP3 and M4a audio files) is also poorly supported,
but I have found one
free (as in beer) software tool that can automatically
detect BPM and
update the MP3 tag info. Sadly, it's a MS-Win program,
but runs fine under
virtualized
Win-XP, and reportedly also runs under
WINE.
The BPM tag is sometimes stored incorrectly
as a floating point value.
Select-o-Magic 3000
rounds these values off to their nearest integer value.
Keys: Available only for MP3 and M4a audio files,
this tag is also poorly supported by file tag editors.
It is defined
here,
as:
The 'Initial key' tag contains the musical key in
which the sound starts. It is represented as a string
with a maximum length of three characters. The ground
keys are represented with "A","B","C","D","E", "F"
and "G" and halfkeys represented with "b" and "#".
Minor is represented as "m". Example "Cbm".
Off key is represented with an "o" only.
Click on the "Scan Audio Files" button on the top menu.
This will open
the folder selection dialog.
Select the folder where your audio files
are stored, and then click on the "OK" button.
A dialog box will then be displayed showing
the file scan progress.
Files are scanned at the rate of approximately
fifty files per second,
so if you have a great many audio files this may take some time.
Subsequent scans of the same folder will
execute much more quickly.
When the scan is complete, click on the "OK" button.
After making any changes to, additions to, or deletions from
your audio file collection, it is necessary to re-build
the database.
Note: The "Delete Database"
function will not
affect your audio file collection.
The selection is an intuitive process. You must select at
least one item in each column.
Using the above screen shot as an example, selecting "Blues" in
the "Genres" column will fill the "Artists" column with all
artists who have at least one audio file tagged as "Blues".
As you click on more genres, the relevent artists will be
added to the "Artists" column.
Selecting artists will populate the "Albums" column, and so forth.
Click on the "Make Playlist" button.
This will bring up a dialog box
allowing you to select how many audio files you want in
your playlist.
If you choose fewer files then the total number available,
then the files for the playlist will be chosen at random
from the available files.
After selecting how many
files you want for the playlist, click either
"Save as File"
and a file browser/chooser will allow you to save the playlist, or
If you have configured a
media player,
clicking the "Media Player" button will send the playlist
directly
to the configured media player. If the media player is not
currently running, it will be started automatically.
The default playlist file name is "Playlist.m3u",
and the default folder
is your home directory.
You may find (especially with a large collection of audio files)
that you have a favorite set of complex criteria that you wish
to re-use. Select-o-Magic 3000 supports saving
these criteria selections to a file.
The above screen shot is an example of such a saved criteria.
Specifically, it is the "Blues & Folk Faves" in the
"Saved Criteria" column.
To Save Criteria:
Clicking the "Save Criteria" button in the main window
brings up a dialog that will allow you to save the current
criteria as a new file, or replace an existing file.
A left mouse click on a saved criteria will load that criteria.
A right mouse click on a saved criteria will allow you to rename
or delete that saved criteria.
The best way to guarentee your audio file are properly
tagged
when
ripping
them from compact disc is to use a quality, versatile,
ripping program
that supports tag editing.
By far the best Linux program for ripping CDs is
Asunder:
Disclaimer: I'm a contributing author to Asunder. But no other
ripper offers
the configuability, simplicty of use, and the ability to edit the
artist, title, year, and genre
tags before ripping. (Genre and year tag editing are my contributions
to the project)
A CD ripper that allows tag editing is important because
Freedb,
the online CD database, often has incorrect tagging info (for example,
there really is no such genre as "Soundtrack").
If you already have a large collection of audio
files with incorrect tagging
information, a good solution is to fix the tags with a
tag editing program.
Here are some Linux tag editors that work well.
And even though my Google research suggests that "Select-O-Matic" is
no longer a valid trade mark, and cannot be trade marked, I don't
want to risk any nasty letters from attornies. Also,
a Google search on "Select-o-Magic" yielded zero hits.
And Select-o-Magic 2000
would be so last millenium.
Can I tag my audio files with more than one genre or mood?
No. This is a limitation of the
ID3 (and most other) tagging
standards. However, you are free to invent any genre or
mood you wish and
tag your audio files as you deem appropriate.
Porting to other platforms such as MS-Win and Apple Macintosh
If you can help with any of these, please
contact me.
As this is an unfunded, free as in beer,
open source
project, the only renumeration available is the glory of seeing
your name in the
credits.
BECAUSE THE LIBRARY IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO
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