How does Nightingale manage music library/database?

[avamk]

Hello,I am a new Nightingale user who is trasitioning away from iTunes as part of my plan to completely migrate to using a Linux distribution.

Right now I am testing Nightingale in Mac OS X 10.6.8, and so far I like many aspects of it. Thanks for making this software! It will be continually developed, right? The other software Im considering is Clementine 1.1.

Anyway, I found after some simple testing that when I add music, it is not moved into a managed library. How can I set up a managed library where I can specify the organisation of the files and folders. Of course I need to be able to add to, remove, and edit my music and have the organisation of the library keep up with it.

I considered setting up a beets managed folder that Nightingale watches for changes. The problems are: (1) If I move or delete songs in Nightingale that will comfuse beets (2) and if I make changes with beets to the file and folder structure, would that confuse Nightingale?

As someone using Nightingale for the first time, I would love to hear your suggestions. Thanks!

[ilikenwf]

Welcome! I need to fix the forum mailer (again?)...

Anyway, this is a placeholder as I'm going to bed...poke me if I don't respond. GeekShadow will too - he can answer many things better than I can.

[SteveW]

OK,

Version: Nightingale 1.11.0, Build 2223 (20120305180920) on 64bit Windows7 machine.

I've been using NigntinGale and SongBird for a while now. Not sure what beets does, it looks interesting and I might try a windows install at some stage. Both NG and SB monitor changes in a specified folder.

In my case the watch folder sits on an external drive and I use MP3Tag to do my tag editing and all the files in my library are set to read only.

Any edits using MP3Tag show up more or less immediately in NG and SB so I would think that anything you do using beets should show up OK in NG or SB.

I'm not sure about the other way around though I do use Mlyrics for lyrics tags but I do that before I finalize with MP3Tag - reason for that is that SB used to screw things up a bit and it is easy to check multiple files with MP3Tag.

Hope that helps
S

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

It sounds like you are searching for the manage music feature, which was removed in Songbird. There were some plans to let it relive in Nightingale, but nobody did the code work for that yet.
However, you can let Nightingale watch a folder for changes, and there is a delete from disk extension to directly delete song files from Nightingale.
The sync feature is also able to output files in a given folder structure, maybe these features help you already?

[avamk]

Thanks for the quick replies!!

Since I couldn't get my account activation email a few days ago, I took the liberty of also asking this question on LinuxQuestions.org.

With the information in your replies, other threads on this forum and LinuxQuestions, plus more experimentation, I got this:

Quote:I have cobbled together a library management setup that I am testing now:

1. Set up an empty folder and have Nightingale watch it for changes, e.g. ~/Music/
2. Set up beets so that the beets config file (~/.beetsconfig) has its music directory also as ~/Music/
3. Add files to your library by importing them through beets (not with Nightingale!) with the beets import command. Those songs will appear in your Nightingale library in real time since the ~/Music/ folder is being watched.
4. Metadata can be changed during import with beets, or after import with Nightingale. If you change metadata with Nightingale, run the beets update command so beets will be aware of the changes.
5. Beets (when you run the update command) will re-organise the folder structure inside ~/Music/ if metadata like artist or album changes, Nightingale seems to be OK with this.
6. If you use the Nightingale "Delete from disk" addon to delete the actual music file, also run the beets update command to make beets aware of it.
   

So far this is the closest I've come to semi-automated library file/folder management that is in sync with the Nightingale library.

I will mark the thread as SOLVED, but please let me know if you have a better solution! Thanks.

I will continue to test this setup, and will report back if I encounter more problems. But like I said in the post, please let me know if there is a better solution! Thanks!!

---

(10-03-2012 05:37 PM)SteveW Wrote:  Not sure what beets does, it looks interesting and I might try a windows install at some stage.

Thanks for your suggestions, I've included a link to beets in my previous reply. I guess it will probably work if you install Python 2.x and cygwin on your Windows machine?

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

Nice to hear you found a solution to work with.

Even if we had the Media Management Songbird had back then, this probably wouldn't have helped you as the beats software you mentioned seems to organize the tracks already, and two applications doing that may cause strange behaviour.

One thing I'm thinking about is Nightingale library information not stored in metadata, e.g. ratings, play- and skipcounts. I assume they get lost once the path changes?
If you can live without the play and skipcounts, Nightingale is able to save your ratings to metadata with a switch in the options window. I'd recommend you turn it on if you use ratings.
Sadly, I don't know an automated solution for play and skipcounts.

Anyways, have fun with Nightingale!

[freaktechnik]

You can force nightingale to write ratings to the metadata. Those tags possibly aren't compatible (we love you, songbird-taglib!) but then you have them in the file.
To activate this feature, you need to set the about:config value of "songbird.metadata.ratings.enableWriting" to true (just double-click it)

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

(10-04-2012 10:05 PM)freaktechnik Wrote:  To activate this feature, you need to set the about:config value of "songbird.metadata.ratings.enableWriting" to true (just double-click it)

As I pointed out above this is also available via the GUI options, in the playback category there's an checkbox for that (and please don't ask me why it is under Playback). I'd recommend the GUI way for non-technical users...

[freaktechnik]

(10-04-2012 10:52 PM)rsjtdrjgfuzkfg Wrote:  As I pointed out above this is also available via the GUI options, in the playback category there's an checkbox for that (and please don't ask me why it is under Playback). I'd recommend the GUI way for non-technical users...

Sorry, I didn't know there was a checkbox for that. I actually never saw the Playbackpanel before. Don't ask me why. I've klicked trought those poorly designed settings a few hundred times...

[avamk]

Somehow I also missed the checkbox! I will try it to see if Clementine 1.1 (which I am also trying) can see Nightingale embedded ratings. BTW, Clementine supports ratings in half-star increments, wonder if Nightingale will support that someday...