MediaMonkey 2.4.2 Readme - June 18, 2005 ------------------------- 1. Introduction MediaMonkey is an easy-to-use media organizer for serious music collectors. It catalogs music files (MP3s, WMAs, OGG, MPC, APE, FLAC, VQF, WAV files) and audio CDs, and helps you: - Organise your music and help you find the tracks you're looking for - Tag tracks in your library (automatically) in a variety of formats (ID3v1&v2, OGG, WMA, APE2, RIFF) - Play MP3s and other audio formats, level volume, and display funky visualizations - Synchronize tracks with your portable audio player - Record CDs into OGG, MP3, and WMA files - Convert any supported format into into OGG, WAV, MP3 or WAV files - Create playlists and music mixes quickly (manually or automatically) to suit any occasion + Much, much more... 2. OS Requirements MediaMonkey has been tested on: - Windows XP - Windows 2000 (SP3/SP4) - Windows 98 - Windows ME - Windows NT 4 3. Installation a) Double-click the file you downloaded, and follow the on-screen instructions. b) If you had a previous version of MediaMonkey installed, it is recommended that you rescan your drives for any Album Art so that the 'Files to Edit|Unknown Album Art' node is updated. To do so, press to get to the 'Add Tracks' dialog. Press the 'Options' button and uncheck 'Only for files with changed timestamp or file size', and then select all your drives and click 'Ok' to rescan them. After you're done, re-enable the 'Only for files with changed timestamp or file size' option for better performance. If you had a previous version of MediaMonkey Gold installed, and deleted it prior to installing the new version of MediaMonkey, then the configuration settings of your Virtual CD will be lost. Go to: Tools | Options | Virtual CD & Preview, and reset the Virtual CD directory to its previous location. c) Note: If you receive a database-related error, it likely means that data access components on your operating system aren't up-to-date or have been corrupted. If this occurs: -Install the latest version of Jet Drivers appropriate to your operating system (version 4.0 SP8 for all OSes except WinME) via: http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/downloads/updates/default.aspx#jet -AFTER the Jet drivers have been installed, install MDAC 2.7 Service Pack 1 Refresh via: http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/downloads/updates/default.aspx#MDACDownloads This should trigger components of the Jet drivers to register, after which your system (& MediaMonkey) should function properly. d) If no sound is heard when you try to play a track, you may want to try switching output plug-ins. Go to Tools | Options | Player | Output Plug-ins and change from DirectSound output to WaveOut output. e) If you have problems playing or encoding WMA (Window Media Audio) files, it may be due to outdated Windows Media Drivers. You can install the most recent drivers from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx Note: MediaMonkey does not currently support WMA drm-protected files. f) If you try to generate a report or use Scripting functions and receive an error, it is likely because Windows Scripting functionality hasn't been enabled (sometimes the case in Windows 98). The error that appears is "Microsoft VBScript runtime error. ActiveX component can't create object: 'Scripting.FileSystemObject' ". If this occurs on Win98, go to the Control Panel and: -Click 'Add/Remove Programs' -Select the 'Windows Setup' Tab -Choose 'Accssories' (List) and click 'Details' -Check that "Windows Scripting Host" is checked off g) If you use the JAWS screen reader for the visually impaired, you should copy several files to ensure that JAWS works correctly with the skinned version of MediaMonkey: Copy http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/MediaMonkey.jcf and http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/MediaMonkey.jgf Into the directory: \Settings\ENU\ Note: is either C:\JAWS50, C:\JAWS510, or C:\Documents and settings\\Aplication data\Freecom Scientific\JAWS\6.0\ 4. Advanced Configuration a) Command line options A number of flags can be set when running MediaMonkey from the command line: /NoSplash - don't show splash screen when starting MediaMonkey /Next - play files after the current track /Add - add files to the Now Playing queue You can use these options as follows: MediaMonkey /NoSplash /Add "My song.mp3" b) .ini file customization MediaMonkey saves configuration information on a per-user basis to an .ini file stored in: C:\Documents and Settings\USERX\My Documents\My Music\MediaMonkey\MediaMonkey.ini Advanced users can edit the MediaMonkey.ini file to change several settings. If you plan on making such changes, it's prudent to back up your .ini file beforehand. Also make certain to close MediaMonkey before making such changes so that it doesn't overwrite any of the changes you've made. i) To change the location of the database from a user's \My Documents\My Music\MediaMonkey\ folder, move the .mdb database file from its current location to a new location and add the following line to the [System] section of the .ini file: DBName=full path\filename.mdb (for example DBName=C:\My Documents\Databases\music.mdb) ii) To eliminate illegal characters when auto creating file names from tags, there is a section [FilenameMappings] in the .ini file, where hexadecimal values define mappings between characters. For example E1=61 means that "/" is mapped to "a". You can modify these settings if you're adventurous. You can find hexadecimal values of characters in the "Character map" application included with Windows. Note that unicode is not supported in this feature. iii)To change the manner in which MediaMonkey attempts to interpret Track Properties from track organization and filename, edit the [SongMasks] section (MediaMonkey attempts to match the masks in that section in sequential order). c) Shared environments If you wish to share MediaMonkey's configuration file and or database among multiple users: i) Move the MediaMonkey.ini file to the \Program Files\MediaMonkey directory. This will cause all users to have the same MediaMonkey settings, however, you must make sure that all users have appropriate permissions to read/write to this directory. ii) Ensure that your MediaMonkey database has correctly set permissions so that all users can read/write to the database. 5. Known Issues a) Problems playing CDs and/or failed CD scans and Freedb lookups. First verify that CD sound hasn't been 'muted'. Double-click the speaker icon in the system tray, and ensure that 'mute' is not checked off for both Wave/MP3 and CD Audio. i) On some systems (usually on a Win9x system with multiple CD drives using ASPI drivers), MediaMonkey will have trouble playing CDs or play the CD but display an error message, due to an incorrect mapping between physical drives and their associated drive letter. This typically occurs when drive letters and IDE interfaces are not in the same order. On most systems this can be resolved by configuring the the CD Reader Input Plug-in: -Click 'Tools'|'Options'|'Input Plug-ins'|'CD Reader' and press 'Configure' -Highlight each drive, and Configure each interface to use 'Win32' instead of 'ASPI' OR -Highlight each drive, press 'Configure' and change the 'ASPI device' to the physical device that actually maps to the drive letter in question. Once you press 'Ok' (3x) and exit the options dialog, your problem should be solved. ii) On some Win9x systems, it may be necessary to reassign Windows CD Drive letters to match the order of IDE interfaces. e.g. IDE Interface Current Mapping New Mapping cd1 IDE2 Master D: E: cd2 IDE1 Slave E: D: To remap a Windows 9x CD drive: -Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. -Double-click the System icon, and then click the Device Manager tab. -Click the CD-ROM drive you want to change, and then click the Properties button. -Click the Settings tab. -In the Reserved Drive Letters section, set Start Drive Letter and End Drive Letter to the drive letter you want the CD-ROM drive to use. Click OK until you return to Control Panel. -Restart the computer. More information about how Windows assigns drive letters can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;234048 iii)If you continue to have problems playing CDs and/or receive "Win32 Raw_Read" error messages, you should consider installing version 4.6 of Adaptec's ASPI drivers. This will solve 2 problems: 1) CD drive failure because user is not logged in as administrator. Windows NT/2000/XP systems use SPTI CD drivers by default, and these can fail if the user is not logged in as Administrator. ASPI drivers, on the other hand, don't have this problem. 2) CD drive failure because ASPI drivers have been somehow corrupted. More information & working aspi drivers may be found at: http://aspi.radified.com/aspi.htm If you still experience error messages, you can disable digital CD playback, by deleting the in_cdreader.dll plug-in from the \plugins directory. b) Problems editing properties when tags are in a language that is right to left. This occurs if track properties are in Hebrew or Arabic. To get around this problem: -Got to Tools|Options|Appearance|Skins and enable [x] Override Skin Theme with Windows System Theme c) Problem playing/tagging/analyzing volume of WMA tracks with filenames containing non Western European characters. MediaMonkey supports almost any foreign language that is supported by Windows. In order to enable foreign language support, Windows must be configured with the foreign language in question as the default language (e.g. if you wish to play/tag/level tracks that have filenames with Russian characters, Russian must be configured as the default language in Windows. This can be done via: Control Panel | Regional Settings using the 'Set default...' button. Note: this problem occurs with formats other than MP3 and OGG. d) Unable to get 'Level Volume' to work on tracks with filenames containing non Western European characters. Level Volume is currently not supported for such files. e) Problems using multimedia keyboard player keys on some Logitech keyboards that have installed the old iTouch drivers. These drivers are required to enable the keyboard to control MultiMedia applications such as MediaMonkey, even when the application is minimized. However, the older drivers are not configured by default to work with MediaMonkey and if the multimedia keys are used while MediaMonkey is minimized, tracks keep skipping. To get around this you can do the following: 1) If your keyboard is relatively new, update to the new SetPoint drivers (if supported) and proceed to 2) 2) Change the Players.ini file included with the keyboard drivers as follows: [Players] MediaMonkey=cmd,MediaMonkey.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,MediaMonkey MediaMonkeyNS=cmd,MediaMonkey (non-skinned).exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,MediaMonkey [Players.Display] MediaMonkey=MediaMonkey MediaMonkeyNS=MediaMonkey [Players.Seek] MediaMonkey=cmd,40148,xxx,1 MediaMonkeyNS=cmd,40148,xxx,1 [Players.Rewind] MediaMonkey=cmd,40144,xxx,1 MediaMonkeyNS=cmd,40148,xxx,1 [Players.BurnSupported] MediaMonkey=True MediaMonkeyNS=True 3) If the above doesn't work or if the problem occurs with a non-Logitech keyboard, add the following to the mm.ini file: [System] InterceptMMKeys=0 f) Database corruption errors. If you receive database corruption errors, the likely cause is that Microsoft MDAC and Jet drivers are not up to date. Try the following: a) Click File | Maintain Database | Compact Database command . This may resolve the issue. b) Install updated MDAC/Jet drivers as described in the installation section (3c) above. g) Problems synchronizing with iPod Photo. Album art is not synchronized with the iPod Photo, and in some circumstances, synchronization fails altogether. This will be resolved in a future version. 6. Tips a) How to enable cross-fading between Tracks: If you are using Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP, you can enable crossfading or gapless playback via the included DirectSound output plugin: -Go to Tools|Options|Output plug-ins and set DirectSound as the output plug-in if it isn't already. -Click the 'Configure' button to configure the plugin. To enable crossfading: -Select the 'Fading' tab -Change the default fade length to 600ms -Double-click 'On start' and then 'On end of song' to enable fading -Click 'Apply' and then 'OK' To enable gapless playback: -Select the 'Buffering' tab -Increase the 'Buffer length' to 5000ms -Increase 'Buffer-ahead on track change' to 3000ms -Select the 'Fading' tab -Ensure that fading is disabled for 'on start', 'on first start', and 'on end of song' since if fading is active, gapless playback will be disabled. -Select the 'Other' tab -Check "Remove silence..." Note: another excellent option is the Sqrsoft crossfading plugin which allows gapless playback AND crossfading concurrently: http://www.sqrsoft.com.ar/en/index.html. To use this plugin, after installing it to the WinAmp directory, you'll have to manually copy OUTSQR.DLL and the ACF directory to the \MediaMonkey\plugins directory. This plug-in is known to have problems on some systems, though. 7. Plug-in Configuration: DeFX for Winamp v0.97 DeFX by Franco Catrin is included with MediaMonkey, allowing you to use MediaMonkey for karaoke via its voice removal function. The full features of DeFX are: a) Pitch Modulation. Choose between Chorus, Flange or Phaser (New), and set your favourite configuration, changing Rate, Depth and Amount of effect. b) Voice Removal. Remove the center channel depending of the specified amount. Most singers record their voices on this channel, if so, the voice will be removed. c) Reverberation. Make your music sounds like it were played inside/outside a big room. Pitch change, rise or move down the pitch of the song without affecting tempo. d) Balance. Lets you hear only the left or right channel on both speakers. To activate this plug-in, simply go to Tool|Options|Plugins|DSP Effects and make Defx active. Press Configure and you'll see a message box asking you to launch the control panel, just press OK. For more information about how the voice removal effect works and a full version history, see: -The DeFXInfo.htm file in the plugins directory -The new Defx www site at: http://defx.sourceforge.net/ If you want to contact Franco, write to ancelot@directo.cl. For information about future updates send a mail with the subject "I use DeFX" to be added to a mail list. THANKS to all the people who have give some attention to this little plug-in. All the people who have helped me without knowing it, publishing their knowledge on the Internet... the real democracy!. A great kiss (ah!) to my dear girlfriend Claudia (Kuaria) for his support, love, comprehension and everything she knows =D Many thanks also to Claudia's brother Miguel (ex-Mr_Peco, now cibersurfer_master) Claudio Nicora for his great idea to improve the Voice Removal effect. As you may see... it's IMPLEMENTED from v0.97, Marc S. Ressl for his help in the MuchFX bug, Guillermo Vargas and family for their continuos support, from the '80s, Johanne for his first lessons about audio when we worked together when I was I child. More friends and their ideas: Cesar Hernandez, Giorgio Marazzi, Rafael Ramirez, JUCA, Pastelito.... Franco Catrin L. Email: ancelot@directo.cl Homepage: http://www.ancelot.8k.com ICQ: Ancelot (30449379) 8. Plug-in Configuration: CD Reader CD Reader by Vladimir Kopjov is a fantastic input plug-in that improves the quality of Audio CD playback, and makes it more reliable, especially when multiple CD Drives are present. CD Reader is installed by default with MediaMonkey, and can be configured via Tools | Options | Input Plug-ins For more information about CD Reader, see in_cdreader.txt in the Plugins directory. 9. Feedback and Questions If you have any comments or questions, we'd be happy to hear from you. Contact information follows: - Discussion Forums: http://www.MediaMonkey.com/forum - Technical support e-mail: support@MediaMonkey.com - Homepage: http://www.MediaMonkey.com 10. Acknowledgements MediaMonkey has become what it is thanks to a large extended community. Aside from those already mentioned in the 'About' panel, special thanks go to: - Tyll Zybura & Highelf for the German translation - Pablo Shmerkin for the Spanish translation - Octopod for the French translation - Oliver Tonet for the Italian translation - UI, Felix Atagong, Lowlander for the Dutch translation - Paulino Michelazzo for the Portuguese translation - Jaroslaw U for the Polish translation - Shashka (Alex) for the Russian translation - Pavle Lacarac (aka Peke) for work on the plugins - Russell Samuels for doing all the stuff no one else wants to - Jiri Hajek for coding into the wee hours every morning and selling his soul to the monkey + Countless testers and reviewers who've helped MediaMonkey grow every day --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 2005, Ventis Media, Inc.