SongKong

[simoncn]

For some users, keeping their library tagged consistently is a labour of love; for others, it is an unwelcome chore. If your library includes files created by various ripping programs over many years and/or downloaded from different sites that use different tagging conventions, the tagging is likely to be inconsistent to a greater or lesser extent.

There are programs whose purpose is to fix this and give you a consistent set of tags throughout your library. One of these is MusiCHi (see this page), which has been discussed in this forum. Another such program is Bliss (see this page) and another is SongKong, which has recently added support for classical music tagging (see this page).

SongKong scans your files and tries to find matches in the MusicBrainz database, then retags your files based on the metadata in MuiscBrainz. The MusicBrainz metadata isn't always complete and consistent, so SongKong applies some algorithms of its own to produce a better result.

I have tried SongKong on my own library. It matched just over 50% of my files and the tagging results are good, with only a few minor problems which the author is working on fixing. For more information on SongKong, see this page.

Another feature of SongKong is its ability to translate Naim tags into industry standard tags within your files. There has been some previous forum discussion of this (see this post). This feature is only in the "SongKong for Melco" version, though it doesn't seem to have any particular connection with whether or not you are a Melco user.

[paultaylor]

Reply to Post 173 on http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...11&page=18

(18-03-2017 15:51)Budgie Wrote:  Hi Paul,
Tried SongKong last night and so far I am not getting on very well. I followed installation instructions for Linux (I am running openSUSE Leap42.2 which is 64 bit, with KDE desktop) and ran the shell script. Seemed to be OK and SongKong v4.6 (Trial) opened a window on my desktop.

My experiences so far:-
1st try the album was not found in musicbrainz or anywhere else.

2nd try with a different album, the album appeared to be found but I was unable to find any screens to compare my present tagging with what is proposed. I had expected to find this but could not open anything.
3rd try with same album and while going through the tabs on Monitor Watch Folder the application crashed with a message to report to you. Sadly I couldn't cut and paste the message so I shall try and replicate. Do you wish me to proceed to give you feedback and should I communicate here, pm or email?
Budge

Hi Budgie.
Sorry your experience so far has not been upto expectation. So firstly I would generally recommend you run SongKong over your whole collection, this gives a much better view of its matching coverage then working one album at a time since it is impossible to predict what albums it will match and what it will not. Looking at your comments I am not clear if you are using FixSongs or Monitor Watch Folder, if using Fix Songs it should create and open a report in your browser, then click on the Song Changes section on the left hand side, it will open up below folders that have been modified, select a folder and it shows the list of files changed on the right hand side, select one of them and it shows all the fields that have been changed with their old and new values. But if using Monitor Watch Folder this continuously watches a folder looking for new folders added to it, it never ends until you have cancelled it, once you have cancelled it a report is then generated that would show changes.

Regarding the error, if you restart SongKong, select Help:Create Support Files and then email support@jthink.net the zip file that would give me the information required.

[Budgie]

Hi Paul,
Many thanks for the reply. Buried in work right now but shall persevere and report back.
In the meantime I am struggling with simon's answer to setting up booklet viewing. Even his example is beyond me. Also struggling to use "group" and "conductor" tags as the two tagging programs I use do not offer these.
So much I don't know. Spending more time tagging than listening!!!

[paultaylor]

Hi Budgie
I cannot help you with booklets but just to confirm that SongKong does support Conductor and Group. Conductor works with a vanilla MinimServer install, Group just requires a simple mapping in MinimServer. The plan is to write a series of blog posts showing how to use SongKong and MinimServer together, I begin with a summary of uPnP AV http://blog.jthink.net/2017/03/introduct...aming.html

[Budgie]

(21-03-2017 09:17)paultaylor Wrote:  Hi Budgie
I cannot help you with booklets but just to confirm that SongKong does support Conductor and Group. Conductor works with a vanilla MinimServer install, Group just requires a simple mapping in MinimServer. The plan is to write a series of blog posts showing how to use SongKong and MinimServer together, I begin with a summary of uPnP AV http://blog.jthink.net/2017/03/introduct...aming.html

Hi and thanks for that. I have subscribed to your blog, my first ever, and will gladly comment or share my experiences. Covering UPnP is a huge topic and I wish you luck. At some point you may wish to address UPnP over wireless bridges and the security issues which come with having a UPnP device facing the Wan. Meanwhile I look forward to learning the basics.
Best wishes,
Budge

[Budgie]

[snip]

Quote:Sorry your experience so far has not been upto expectation. So firstly I would generally recommend you run SongKong over your whole collection, this gives a much better view of its matching coverage then working one album at a time since it is impossible to predict what albums it will match and what it will not.

Whole collection is too big but I tried on one composer's subdirectory in one genre with only a few works.
SK ran OK and loaded and fingerprinted 430 songs of which 129 were matched to Musicbrainz release and with artwork and 12 with song only.
189 to were matched to Acoustid.

Quote: Looking at your comments I am not clear if you are using FixSongs or Monitor Watch Folder, if using Fix Songs it should create and open a report in your browser, then click on the Song Changes section on the left hand side, it will open up below folders that have been modified, select a folder and it shows the list of files changed on the right hand side, select one of them and it shows all the fields that have been changed with their old and new values. But if using Monitor Watch Folder this continuously watches a folder looking for new folders added to it, it never ends until you have cancelled it, once you have cancelled it a report is then generated that would show changes.

I started by pressing the Fix Songs button. This opened the Monitor Watch Folder. I then pressed Start and the processing ran and reported as noted above. Once the report had opened in my browser I was presented with a list of 8 links down the left hand window with the top link Summary opened in the right hand window. Clicking on the next three links did not give me matched song lists or song changes but just repeated the list of 8 links. The Not Matched to release or song did open up a list of 289 files which had not been matched to release or song. The not matched to release gave me a list of 301 songs not matched and the same with Musicbrainz release. The Discogs was not matched to any of the 430 songs.

In conclusion I have not yet been able to examine the proposed changes for any of the matched songs.

Quote:Regarding the error, if you restart SongKong, select Help:Create Support Files and then email support@jthink.net the zip file that would give me the information required.

File on its way! Will ask my other questions in due course but want to get this off to you so I can hopefully see the proposed changes.

[paultaylor]

To summarize, the browsing issue was that Javascript was disabled in the browser and this prevented the report being fully navigable, I have now amended the report for next release to warn the user if Javascript is disabled. The Monitor Watch Folder error was due to a problem with Linux rendering a font in X11, this is quite unlikely to reoccur but should be fixed in next release by an update to latest java version.

[uk75]

Hi Simon, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. Very much appreciated!

[paultaylor]

I have just written first article about configuring SongKong/MinimServer to get best results http://blog.jthink.net/2017/03/minimserv...rting.html - many more planned, hope this is useful for people and comments appreciated.

[paultaylor]

Songkong now has direct support for MinimServers group feature which I hope some will find useful, details at http://blog.jthink.net/2017/05/minimserv...roups.html

thanks Paul