Author Topic: Any Tips for a Media Monkey Convert?  (Read 4756 times)

JediMobius

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I've been using media monkey for years, but with my ever-expanding library, it's been getting incredibly bogged down. So far, I like a lot of what Music Bee has to offer, especially being lightweight and free with about the same essential functionality. So, I've been looking into the wikia page on file-naming templates, and it's pretty exciting to be able to automatically file-name appropriately where no tags exist, but there's one feature I'm going to miss. Media Monkey made it super-easy to filter tracks out of my main music library, so I can shuffle the whole thing if I want without random Christmas songs, classical pieces, or film scores coming up all out of place and whatnot. The functionality exists, but it's cumbersome by comparison, and not nearly as intuitive. For example, in media monkey, if I find a piece by Mozart that hasn't been tagged as Classical, I can either edit the genre tag to Classical, or just move it to the Classical Music library collection with a drop down box. Am I missing how to make that work in Music Bee?

The other issue I'm having is that when I delete an entire album artist, which I can't just use the delete key to do, the pane scrolls all the way up to the top instead of to the nearest album artist. Is there any way to change that, or do I just have to hope and wait for an update?

Any other tips?

psychoadept

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Welcome!  I used Media Monkey briefly before discovering MusicBee, although clearly I never got as familiar with it as you are.

Media Monkey made it super-easy to filter tracks out of my main music library, so I can shuffle the whole thing if I want without random Christmas songs, classical pieces, or film scores coming up all out of place and whatnot. The functionality exists, but it's cumbersome by comparison, and not nearly as intuitive. For example, in media monkey, if I find a piece by Mozart that hasn't been tagged as Classical, I can either edit the genre tag to Classical, or just move it to the Classical Music library collection with a drop down box. Am I missing how to make that work in Music Bee?

It sounds like an auto-playlist would fit this need the best, or possibly a library filter.  The main advantage of an auto-playlist over a filter is that you could delete tracks from it manually if you wanted.  Either way, you can set it to filter out whatever criteria you don't want to shuffle (e.g. Genre is not Classical).  Then you can shuffle the playlist or filter, rather than the whole library.  

For the drag-and-drop type of tag fixing you're talking about, library explorer will do it.  If you have genre as a top category, then dragging a track to the Classical genre will set its genre to Classical.

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The other issue I'm having is that when I delete an entire album artist, which I can't just use the delete key to do, the pane scrolls all the way up to the top instead of to the nearest album artist. Is there any way to change that, or do I just have to hope and wait for an update?

I think this was fixed in a recent patch.  Try updating from the link on this page: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Latest_Update
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JediMobius

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It sounds like an auto-playlist would fit this need the best, or possibly a library filter.  The main advantage of an auto-playlist over a filter is that you could delete tracks from it manually if you wanted.  Either way, you can set it to filter out whatever criteria you don't want to shuffle (e.g. Genre is not Classical).  Then you can shuffle the playlist or filter, rather than the whole library.

Well, I use auto-playlists with my portable devices in mind, so I guess I'll have to get to know filters.

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For the drag-and-drop type of tag fixing you're talking about, library explorer will do it.  If you have genre as a top category, then dragging a track to the Classical genre will set its genre to Classical.

Define top category...

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I think this was fixed in a recent patch.  Try updating from the link on this page: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Latest_Update

Lol. It got worse for me. Now, deleting an entire artist blanks out all three panes until I click "Music" in the library tree. Also, my media buttons on my keyboard stopped working... :\ I'll just have stick with my other solution while I sort through my library. (I've been sending the offending album artists to a playlist for deletion later.)

psychoadept

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Well, I use auto-playlists with my portable devices in mind, so I guess I'll have to get to know filters.

They're a simpler version of Auto-Playlists that allow you to sub-divide your library.  The wiki is a little weak in this area, but this page may help: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Filters

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Define top category...

First, activate Library Explorer in the left panel.  Genre may already be a category, but if it's not you can right click and go to the Categories menu to activate it.

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Lol. It got worse for me. Now, deleting an entire artist blanks out all three panes until I click "Music" in the library tree. Also, my media buttons on my keyboard stopped working... :\ I'll just have stick with my other solution while I sort through my library. (I've been sending the offending album artists to a playlist for deletion later.)

I think Steven will see this, but particularly for the media keys problem it might help to make a detailed bug report.  The updates were supposed to make them work for more people, not make them stop working.
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Steven

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JediMobius

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Awesome! Version 2.4 makes Logitech happy. The media keys are even fairly responsive, which is nice.

Oh, but only when Music Bee is in focus. It doesn't pause or advance if Chrome is in focus. :/
Last Edit: April 06, 2014, 06:01:43 PM by JediMobius

Steven

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i dont know what Chrome is, but if you shut it down and another app is in focus does the same thing happen

psychoadept

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I think that means the browser, Google Chrome.
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JediMobius

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Yes, I use Google Chrome.  :D

So, yeah, if Music Bee is out of focus at all (If I click the taskbar or desktop) my media keys don't do anything.

I should probably mention I'm running Windows 8...

johnnyboy

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here's my opinion.
MB does not communicate with i phones and doesn't have a DLNA  client. But that's it. In every other aspect MB is far superior.

JediMobius

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Well, I do hope there is dlna in MB's future. I might just have to use Plex...