2004.06_Juk 2.0-Tag Editing without the Heartache.pdf

LINUX USER

KTools

Music Accountant

Colorful effects, all kinds of

sound manipulation – many

players abound with features. Unfor-

tunately, they often fall short when it

Music Oracle…

No matter how

tracks are trans-

ferred from a CD

to the computer

(e.g. using an

audiocd:/ slave ),

although most pro-

grams offer to check

FreeDB to discover

the artist and title, and

then store this informa-

tion in meta-tags with the

sound file. This approach typ-

ically causes no end of problems.

FreeDB often has no information

on CDs by lesser-known artists, and

most people are too lazy to change this.

Although users might assign useful file-

names, adding the meta-information is

typically too much like hard work. JuK

has a solution to this dilemma. Select the

file in the playlist, and select Tagger |

Guess tag information | From Filename

or press [Ctrl-F]. This tells JuK to use a

rule set, which is configurable via Set-

tings | Tag Guesser (see Figure 1), to

guess the title, artist and album.

comes to managing tag information,

an essential capability if you need to

organize your digital music collec-

tion. Seek, or ask JuK, and ye shall

find. BY DANIEL MOLKENTIN

software project by Scott

Wheeler, a KDE developer. Scott

was tired of MP3 players that were inca-

pable of managing information such as

the title, album, genre, or artist details,

stored in so-called ID3 tags. The program

has changed its name to JuK by now,

turning into a fully-fledged jukebox on

the way. Version 2.0 has become a KDE

3.2 [1] tool.

It either uses the KDE 3 multimedia

architecture, aRts, or the GStreamer [2]

multimedia framework to play tracks.

This is configurable in Settings | Output

to . This said, the menu option is only

available if you compiled JuK with

Gstreamer support in the first place. As

the binary package then also requires the

GTK library, glib, most RPM builders

tend to do without this functionality. The

next version of JuK will be able to play

and rip CDs itself.

unknown track, and

JuK automatically enters this data. If

multiple tracks match a signature, the

program will prompt the user to decide.

The hit rate for tracks in the database is

amazingly high.

You can tell JuK to ask the

MusicBrainz detective by selecting Ta g -

ger | Guess tag information | Internet Tag

Guesser (or [Ctrl-I]), but only if you com-

piled JuK with MusicBrainz support.

This was the case for the Suse packages

we used in our labs, but we did need to

… reloaded

Nondescript names such as Tr ack1.mp3

cause havoc. History tells us that most

people tend to forget the artist or track

name after a short while. All is not lost.

JuK allows you to ask the free music

database MusicBrainz [3] to guess the

track title. To allow this to happen, the

player creates a fuzzy fingerprint of the

track, which includes specific character-

istics of the song, no matter what format

it is in, and compares this information

with the database.

From this point on, the steps are simi-

lar to using FreeDB or CDDB. The server

provides meta-information for the

KTools

In this column we present tools, month by

month, which have proven to be especially

useful when working under KDE, solve a

problem which otherwise is deliberately

ignored, or are just some of the nicer things

in life, which – once discovered – you would

not want to do without.

Figure 1: JuK applies the rule highlighted in blue

to guess the ID3 tags for track number (%T), title

(%t), and artist (%a) from files whose names fol-

low the “Title number Artist – Title.mp3” format.

June 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

Play and manage your music with JuK 2.0

Q Tagger, that was the name of a

KTools

LINUX USER

[Enter], or simply

carry on typing to

ignore it. If you click

the playlist window

after completing the

correction, JuK will

ask you if you want to

write the changes to

the MP3 file.

There is a downside

to the Editor, however.

It needs a lot of space.

If you simply need to

correct a typo, you can

right-click on the entry

in the playlist. If you

right-click the Tr ack

Name column, the

menu that pops up

will have an entry for

Edit “Track Name” .

Select this item to

change the track

name. The same approach applies to all

the other columns. JuK again provides

autocompletion.

Rename File pop-up menu item that

renames selected files according to the

rules defined in Settings | File Renamer .

You can use a configuration, like the one

shown in Figure 3 below, to tell JuK to

create subdirectories, where needed, and

copy the renamed files to these directo-

ries.

Of course, you can also use the drop-

down menu to permanently remove files

from the disk. JuK will prompt you to

confirm before destroying your files,

however.

Figure 2: After typing a substring of an artist’s name that JuK recog-

nizes, you can either use the arrow button next to the “Artist” field to

select the name, or use the autocomplete function.

Browsing Your Collection

JuK lets you browse your music col-

lection while listening to the current

track. And if you suddenly stumble

across a track that you haven’t heard for

ages? To allow the current song to finish

playing, select Play Next in the drop-

down. JuK will insert your fave rave

without changing the playlist. This fea-

ture will work in combination with

random play by the way. And if you need

an overview of the tracks you have just

listened to, you can opt to display the

track history by selecting View | Show

History .

run YaST to install the libmusicbrainz

package and the trm [4] tool.

MusicBrainz, tends to concentrate on

the US music scene. For those of you

who live elsewhere, the next version of

JuK will have a function for uploading

tag information allowing users all over

the world to populate the database.

Global Changes

If you need to change the spelling of an

artist’s name across a number of albums

(for example, if you have various

spellings for “a-ha”, such as “aha”, “A-

HA” or “A-Ha”.), it might be quite

time-consuming to edit each title indi-

vidually. JuK saves you the trouble, by

allowing you to hold down the [Shift]

key, while selecting multiple files. You

can then pop-up the drop-down menu,

or launch the tag editor, to unify the

spelling with a single action.

While you are tidying up, you might

like to sort out that MP3 collection that

you never got round to. There is a

■

Well-Informed

If you want to add extended tag informa-

tion for a file from the CD booklet, for

example, you can enable the powerful

tag editing function by selecting View |

Show Tag Editor (see Figure 2). Select the

same function again to disable tagging.

When you type the name of an artist,

song or genre, JuK will autocomplete the

entry, if it has a matching keyword. You

can accept the suggestion by pressing

GLOSSARY

Figure 3: This file name scheme moves a selection

of tracks to ~/Music/artistname/albumname,

renaming the tracks to “[tracknumber]

track.mp3” in the process.

Rip: A term typically used to refer to digitizing

music or sound tracks stored on conventional

sound media, and copying the results to com-

puters.

audiocd:/ slave: A KDE component that

can display and parse the content of audio

CDs. If you type “audiocd:/” in the Konqueror

address box, the file manager displays the

tracks on the CD, allowing you to drag & drop

tracks into the virtual “Ogg Vorbis” and

“MP3” folders to convert them into these

formats.

FreeDB: A database (http://www.freedb.

org/) that has information on CDs including

the artist, title and genre. FreeDB uses the ser-

ial number of the CD for reference. The FreeDB

project follows in the footsteps of the CDDB

service. The providers of the CDDB service

changed the licensing model, allowing use

only under the most obscure circumstances.

Meta-tags: The MP3 format supports data

such as the album title, artist, track name,

release year, genre, etc. for audio tracks. This

meta-information is stored in so-called ID3

tags. There are several ID3 tag specifications

by now (e.g. ID3v1 and ID3v2). Ogg Vorbis uses

a similar architecture to store meta-informa-

tion.

INFO

[1] JuK: Daniel Molkentin,

“Local Jukebox Hero” Linux Magazine,

Issue 42, 2004, p. 74

[ 2] GStreamer: http://www.gstreamer.net/

[3] MusicBrainz database:

http://www.musicbrainz.org/

[4] TRM: http://www.musicbrainz.org/

products/trmgen/download.html

www.linux-magazine.com

June 2004

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