Re: FreeDB

  • From: <jaffar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:53:33 +0800

The database is present for you to use at your own discretion.  How you deal 
with the data is up to you.  As i said, the data is programmable.  Cheers!
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bryan Schulz 
  To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 1:39 PM
  Subject: Re: FreeDB


  hi,

  why would you want a bloated database of thousands of cds that you don't have 
sitting on your drive?
  why didn't they write it to analyse what you have by comparing/getting a 
snapshot of your cdex entries and only populating the tables with tangible data?
  Bryan Schulz
  The BEST Solution
  www.best-acts.com

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: jaffar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:55 PM
    Subject: FreeDB


    Hi All.  If like me, you are a music fanatic, have a vast music collection 
which ranges from classical to Jazz to Pop to Rock and would like to have them 
organized and propperly tagged so you can find them whenever you want them, 
then I'd like to recommend a free, open source, programmable music database 
called FreeDb www.freedb.org
    If you visit it's download page, You'll find the following:
    1.  complete database files which are updated from month to month.
    2. Update files which when you download accompanying utilities, and 
together with the update files wich are smaller in comparison, will update your 
database so you don't have to download the complete files which are rather 
large, upwards of 500 MB every month.
    3.  An accompanying howto that will help you to develop stand alone FreeDB 
related software, for example software that will update, submit or mirror your 
database in a network.
    4.  A server that will allow you to submit and retrieve database updates as 
and when you like.  However, the server software requires some technical know 
how to build and configure as it is not a straight forward gui software.
    The files are in the unix format by default, but you could change them to 
the windows format via a utility called mkfreedb.exe.  If anyone wants to host 
this utility on their server, let me know and i will send it along as the 
website for this utility is rather obscure and I came across it only after a 
thorough search of google.
    Here is a synopsis of the steps you'll need to take to download the 
database and the utilities described.
    1.  Go to www.freedb.org and click the download page.  By default, you'll 
land on the server download page.  Click parent directory.  Unfortunately, this 
directory has no headings to mark where each subsection exactly is, so use your 
tab and arrow keys to find what you need.
    If you want to download the complete database, then you'll need to look for 
files with words "freedb-complete" followed by the year month day date format.
    so, for example, if you want to download the complete database for october, 
then you should look for the file tagged as:
    freedb-complete-20081001.tar.bz2, which translates to year 2008, month 
october, and date as the first of that month.
    If you downloaded the complete database for september for example, and you 
want to update your database to october's, just download the:
    freedb-update-20081001.tar.bz2 which is consideraably smaller, about 7 mb 
in size.
    Once you have those, download a zip file called freedb-updater.zip which 
contains a freedb.exe updater file.  All you need do then is to unpack the 
complete september database files into a directory, say music-database.  Then 
double click the updater.exe and browse to your music-database folder, then 
browse again to your updater file, freedb-update-20081001.tar.bz2, then tab to 
the start button and your september database will be updated to the current 
one.  Btw, be prepared to give your database folder at least 4 gb of disk space.
    Now, if you wanted to change the format of your database files from the 
unix format to the windows format, just do the following.
    1. create a folder.  We'll call it music-windows-database for clarification.
    2. copy and paste the complete database file, and the mkfreedb.exe which i 
will send along to any one who wants it to your music-windows-database folder.
    3. open your command prompt and cd to your music-windows-database 
directory, so assuming your directory is on your C drive, the command is:
    cd c:\music-windows-database
    Now, all you have to do is to issue the command
    mkfreebd, and your windows database will be built with all its default 
structure, and the database files copied to the appropriate subdirectories.
    Your music-windows-directory will then contain the following subdirectories 
and a log text file.
    1. blues where all the blues music data files will be copied.
    2. Classical where all the classical music data files will be copied.
    3. country where all the country music data files will be copied
    4. data, where all the data files necessary for the database to function 
will be copied
    5. folk where all the folk music data files will be copied
    6. jazz, where all the jazz music data files will be copied
    7. misc where all the miscellanious music data files will be copied.
    8.  newage where all new age music data files will be copied.
    9.  reggae where all reggae music data files will be copied.
    10.  rock where all rock and pop music data files will be copied.
    11. soundtrack where all film soundtrack music data files will be copied.
    12. a log file will be created to tell you how the build process transpired
    Warning: please note that the conversion of files from unix to windows 
format takes hours.  I did my conversion yesterday evening my time, and the 
conversion process is still going on as i write this email.  This is hardly 
surprising as there are millions of cds floating around in the music market out 
there.
    Once you have organized your database, You can then use programs such as 
mp3 tag
    www.mp3tag.de to tag and organize your music.  You can even store the music 
data in the recognized dbms like mysql, microsoft access or any dbms of your 
choice.
    first create the following tables.
    1. artist
    2. title
    3. album
    4. year
    5. publisher
    6 track number.
    Give the files in your database the sql extension, then load them as a dump 
into mysql or the dbms of your choice.
    If you need any more clarification, please let me know.  Cheers and happy 
tagging.


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