Chapter 5
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Using MP3rat Chapter 5 |
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5.1 Playing Songs |
MP3rat provides three playing options: add songs to the current playlist, play and add songs to the playlist, or direct play. See Section 8.1.10, MP3rat Player, for configuration instructions.
When this option is enabled, selected songs will be appended to the current playlist. You can selected either individual or groups of songs to be added. To directly play songs when Add to playlist is configured, select a song and choose Play Song from the Main Window's context menu.
5.1.2 Play and Add to Playlist
The selected song will immediately start to play and it will also be appended to the current playlist. This is a combination of the other two options, Direct Play and Add to Playlist.
Playing a single song in direct play mode will override any current player operation. When more than one song is selected in this mode, the current playlist is cleared and replaced by the list of songs selected with the first song in the list playing.
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5.2 Searching |
Searching is an integral part of MP3rat and is always active. Additionally, the search facility in MP3rat is incremental, which means that MP3rat will update the search results as each character is typed. This makes performing searches much faster and easier because you can see the results as you type. The search field is located in the Toolbar.
As mentioned in Section 4.5, there are two search types that can be used to search the currently loaded bookmark list:
A Keyword search locates songs by matching the keywords typed in the search field with words in the keyword field of the song. To perform a keyword search, press the keyword search button and type the desired keywords into the search field.
The Exact String search looks for matches of strings of words in any field of the song property. To perform an exact string search, press the exact string search button and type a query into the search field. Options for this search include case sensitive searching and specifying which specific fields (Title, Artist, Album,...) should be searched.
MP3rat offers a range of search options along with support for Boolean search operators. See Section 7.6, Advanced Searching, for further details.
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5.3 Keywords |
Keywords can can contain any letters with the exception of the following: < > / \ ! & * % + = ? . , \ | ^ ( ) { } [ ] : ; ~ A period may appear in the middle of a keyword, such as "v1.0", but may not appear at the start or end of a keyword.
Tagging a keyword is something that you manually do to mark important keywords. What is an important keyword? Anything you want, but normally it is a keyword that is shared by several songs. Many users often use tagged keywords in place of folders! The important concept is that tagging a keyword allows you to differentiate important keywords from unimportant ones.
See Section 5.8, Dictionary Window, for instructions on how to Tag or Untag Keywords.
Tagged keywords have three distinct advantages over regular keywords:
First, they are displayed with a yellow tag adjacent to them so they are easily located.
Second, you can configure the dictionary window to only display tagged keywords, by choosing the "Show only Tagged Keywords" option from the pop-up menu:
Third, they are displayed in a list box when editing Song and Common Properties so you can easily add them to other songs. The song property dialog with tagged keywords is shown below with "00's" and "Rock" selected as tagged keywords:
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5.4 Editing Songs |
MP3rat provides many different ways to manually or automatically edit the songs properties.
To edit the song properties of a single song, highlight it in the main or playlist window and click on the
toolbar button, select Properties from the Edit menu, or select Song Properties... from the context menu. This will display the Song Properties dialog window:
When a word in the column to the right has a checkmark, that means it is in the keyword set. Removing the checkmark will remove the keyword from the song properties. When you are finished with this dialog window, you can either press OK to save changes or Cancel to exit without saving.
The
button will invoke the Filename Extract feature, see Section 7.2 for further details.
will reorder the keywords in alphabetical order.
Pressing
will hide or show the list box on the right.
or
will save any changes and take you to the previous or next song's properties. The keyboard shortcut to simulate pressing these buttons is ALT + either the left or right arrow keys.
The
button will write the ID3v2 or ID3v1 tags as dictated by options selected, Section 8.1.9.
MP3rat allows you to modify common song properties with a single command. Highlight in the main or playlist windows the songs that you wish to edit and click on the
If all the selected songs share a common property, the according field will be populated with the shared data. If they do not share a common value, each property will be displayed blank, but drop-down lists will contain all the different choices.
Any common keywords shared by all the songs will be displayed in the Keywords field. Deleting a keyword from the Common Keywords field will remove that keyword from each bookmark if the changes are confirmed by pressing the OK button.
MP3rat features a filename extraction utility to mine song properties from the filename format. This can be performed in a batch operation, please see Section 7.2 for further information on filename extraction.
During an import, song properties are automatically populated with the ID3v2 and ID3v1 tag information. If a specific ID3v2 tag field exists, that property will be used first. Otherwise, if a ID3v2 field doesn't exist, the corresponding ID3v1 field is used if present. If no tag exists, the field is left blank, unless it is the title field that will be set to the filename. The keyword set is a combination of all the import paths, title, artist, and album fields.
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5.5 Toolbar |
The toolbar provides easy to reference buttons for operations that might be performed repeatedly.
See Section 9.2 for definitions of each toolbar button.
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5.6 Main Window |
The Main Window displays all of your songs. It is fully configurable so you can select the song properties that interest you most. Right-clicking on any song will display the context menu that provides several options.
Play Song Direct play the song Play and Add to Playlist Direct play the song and also append it to the current playlist Add to Playlist Append the song to the current playlist Cut Ctrl+X Remove the song and copy the contents to the clipboard buffer Copy Ctrl+C Copy the songs properties to the clipboard Paste Ctrl+V Paste clipboard contents Delete Del Remove the song from the song database, see Section 7.10 for further information Show Other Songs... Have other songs by the same Artist or on the same Album displayed in the Main Window. Note: Selecting this feature will change your search type to Exact String. Write MP3 Tag Ctrl+W Create or update the song tags for the mp3 file based song properties Song Properties... Alt+Enter Opens the Song Properties dialog for that particular song Edit Common Properties... Alt+Enter (Not Shown) Replaces Song Properties... in the context menu when more than one song is selected - opens the Common Properties dialog 5.6.2.1 Adding or Removing Columns
Right-clicking on any column heading will bring up a pop-up context menu. From this menu, you can choose which columns to display or remove from the main window by clicking on the item in the list. You can remove a column by removing the check mark next to the corresponding item.
Columns can also be managed by selecting Columns... from the View menu. The Customize Columns dialog will be shown:
Column headings can be reordered by holding down the Ctrl key and using the left mouse button to drag and drop a column headings to the new location.
Another option is to reorder the Column Headings display order from the Customize Columns dialog. Highlighting a column and pressing the
or
buttons will reorder the column list accordingly
MP3rat provides the ability to sort songs by each song property by utilizing the column sort. HINT: This is a very valuable feature when used in conjunction with the search utility to locate specific songs faster!
The yellow arrow next to the column heading indicates the sort criteria and direction of the main windows contents. Left-clicking on a column heading will make it the actively sorted column. Shown below, the rating column is sorted from highest to lowest:
Clicking on the sorted column heading will change the sort order direction. In this case, the rating sort was reversed:
Clicking on any other column heading will sort the main window by the column clicked upon. The order of the new sort will first depend on the item being sorted upon. In cases, such as sorting by filename, you can only ever have unique item. However, in cases such as rating, where several songs can share the same rating, the sort will be organized based on the last sorted selection. For example, if you want to sort all your songs by Rating, and then within each rating group sort based on the Listen Count, you would first click on the Listen Count column heading and then on the Rating heading.
To resize columns, place your mouse between two column headings until the pointer turns to a horizontal arrow. Once this has happened, you can adjust the column size by dragging and dropping it to the new size.
Status icons appear to the left of songs in the main window. They are a convenient method to quickly determine whether songs are available. Moving your mouse over the icon will display a tooltip message indicating the status of the song.
The status icons are configurable, see Section 8.1.8 for further details. By default the status icons are defined as:
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5.7 Playlist Window |
The playlist window allows you to manage, modify, and create playlists. The playlist filename is shown in the heading, located at the top of the window. At the bottom of the window, the total playing time and size of the playlist are shown. The currently playing song is indicated by a yellow triangle
next to the song. The indicator appears white
when a song is playing that is not from the playlist. A song displayed in red is not available and will be skipped. The order of the playlist can be reorganized by dragging and dropping songs to the new desired location. The playlist window is displayed by selecting checking the Playlist item in the Tools menu:
Right clicking a song will display a popup menu:
Clear Playlist Alt+C Clears all the songs from the playlist Shuffle Playlist Alt+L Reorganizes the playlist in new random order Remove Song Del Removes the song from the playlist Move Up Alt+U Moves the song up one spot Move Down Alt+D Moves the song down one spot New Playlist Alt+N Create a new playlist file Open Playlist Alt+O Open an existing playlist file Save Playlist Alt+S Save the current playlist file Save As Save the current playlist under a different filename Edit Song Properties... Alt+Enter Opens the Song Properties dialog for that particular song Show Other Songs... Have other songs by the same Artist or on the same Album displayed in the Main Window. Note: Selecting this feature will change your search type to Exact String. Edit Common Properties... Alt+Enter (Not Shown) Replaces Edit Song Properties... in the context menu when more than one song is selected - opens the Common Properties dialog for the selected files Send Playlist to Preferred Player Alt+X (Not Shown) This option is added when MP3rat is configured to use a different player. Sends the playlist to the other player
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5.8 Dictionary Window |
The dictionary window allows the user to view, search, and modify the keyword dictionary. When the option "Show only Tagged Keywords" is not checked, the entire keyword dictionary will be displayed. The dictionary window is displayed by selecting checking the Dictionary item in the Tools menu:
Right clicking a word will display a popup menu:
Search Enter Replace the search expression with the currently selected keyword Add to Search Ctrl+Enter Appends the currently selected keyword to the search expression Copy Ctrl+C Copy the selected keyword(s) to the clipboard as text Rename Rename the keyword Delete Del Remove the keyword(s) from the dictionary Tag Keyword Adds a tag to the selected keyword Untag Keyword Removes a tag from the selected keyword Show only Tagged Keywords When checked, only tagged keywords are displayed in the Dictionary window 5.8.1 Searching the Dictionary
In addition to operating like a normal list box, the Dictionary Window has an incremental search so that you can quickly locate a keyword by typing the first couple letters of the word. Pressing an arrow key or escape resets the search so you can type in a different word.
5.8.2 Show only Tagged Keywords
When the list box is configured to display only the tagged keywords, it will only list the keywords that have been tagged.
For more information on tagged keywords and their benefit, please refer to Section 5.3.2.
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5.9 MP3rat Player |
MP3rat contains a straight-forward and easy-to-use mp3 player. It is show at the bottom of the MP3rat program window:
For detailed information of how to use the player see Section 9.4.
See Section 8.1.11 for player configuration options.
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5.10 System Tray |
The system tray is a small part of the Windows Taskbar. Typically the system tray is in the lower right corner of the display and includes the time along with other icons. MP3rat can optionally display a small icon
in this area. See Section 8.1.5 for options regarding displaying and hiding this icon.
Left Double-clicking on the Icon
Right Clicking on the Icon
Pause is an option when a song is being played, Play is shown when the player is stopped.
System Tray Tooltip Display
MP3rat's tooltip will change to match the currently playing song. The tooltip will identify the Title and Artist of the currently playing track without having to maximize MP3rat. Hovering the mouse cursor over the MP3rat icon in the system tray will display this information:
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