fatManager Online Help
Introduction
You
can manage your mp3 collection using fatManager.
With fatManager you can tag mp3 files. Tagging means that you assign
each song to categories and subcategories. For example, the genre of a
song could be a category. Rock, Pop and
Techno are then subcategories of the genre. Another category
could
be the mood of a song. Subcategories of the mood would be calm,
melancholic, happy, hard, etc. fatManager
allows you to define your own
categories/subcategories, and it comes with two predefined
sets (a
detailed and a simple set) ready for use. Personally, I prefer the
simple set, because it's handier and the experience of the
last three years has shown that it works very good.
In
addition to assigning songs to categories, you can rate each song with
a quality factor between 1 (very good) and 6 (very bad).
After
you
have tagged your songs, you can use fatManager to search the database
quickly and to build automatic playlists. Automatic playlists can be
build by creating search patterns where you define wanted
categories and a maximum quality rating. For
example with a few mouse clicks you can tell fatManager to select all
songs which belong to the categories rock, alternative and
folk,
with all moods except melancholic and which are from the year 1990 to
2010 and have a good quality rating. The settings for such
a
query can be stored in presets, so later you can simply select from a
list of predefined presets to get the desired song collection.
Furthermore
fatManager is already a jukebox for the desktop. But since it lacks a
playlist, the use of the fatTony server should be preferred (more about
fatTony below).
I have developed fatManager in 2003 and since
then I
am working with it. It is blazingly fast, rock solid and runs smoothly
without flaws.
I patched Coolplayer
- a very good Open Source mp3 / ogg player - so it can be connected to
fatManager and can be remotely controlled by fatManager. Since
Coolplayer is open source, please contact me if you want to obtain the
source
code.
As mentioned before, fatManager lacks a
playlist. It would
have been easy to add a playlist, but I did choose a different
approach, because I wanted a solution for audio streaming which can be
remotely controlled. There are several devices on the market which can
be connected to your HI-FI rack and which receive and playback mp3
audio streams via Wlan. I bought such a device to put it into my
living-room, since I didn't want to use a PC in my living
room.
Now I had the challenge to use the logic of fatManager together with
such a device. A normal UPnP solution like TwonkyVision wouldn't help
in this case. So I wrote three programs to solve the problem:
fatTony,
the server. fatTony runs in background (as a Windows service) on your
PC and uses the databases and presets created by fatManager. fatTony
has its own network protocol and can be remotely controlled by the two
other client applications: fatPlayer and fatPocket.
fatPlayer and fatPocket
are identical, except that fatPlayer runs on normal Windows
and
can
be put for example on a notebook, subnotebook or tablet PC, whilst
fatPocket is for PocketPC's. And this is really cool! Now you can sit
in your living room with this small pocket device and remote control
your
server. You can select presets and songs by name, move them into the
playlist and fatTony (together with Icecast)
streams the music onto your Wlan receiver. In addition you can stream
your songs into the internet without any additional work, so some
friends can listen to the music you are currently listening to, whilst
they are hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Moreover, since
everything is done via network, you could even remote control the
fatTony server via internet from far away.
Installation
Download
fatManager, unzip and run "setup.exe", follow the instructions on the
screen.
Setup installs two components: fatManager and
Coolplayer
Setting
up fatManager
Run fatManager. It will show a message box that
it has no database in use.
This is the time to create
a new database.
Important:
fatManager and
fatTony can be operated best, if you organize your mp3 collection on a
single harddrive in a single directory (with any number of nested
subdirectories, of course). If you haven't done so, organize your mp3s
in that way first, before creating a new database.
First
of all you should check which categories you want to use for your
database. There are two predefined sets of categories: "simple" and
"detailed". I recommend to use the "simple.fatcat".
If you want to see
the contents of the predefined category files first, or if you wish to
modify a category file right from the start before creating a
database, do the following: Chosefrom the main menu "File |
Categories". In the upcoming dialog you select "Open File" to view or
modify an existing category file.
Categories or organized as "Main categories" (for example the Genre)
and "Sub categories" (for example Alternative, Rock, Pop, etc.). You
can create up to 256 main categories and up to 32 sub categories for
each main category.
Note: you can even modify the
categories of an existing database later at any point in time.
After
you have finished viewing and/or modifying/creating your category file,
click in the main menu on "File | New" to create a new database, and
follow the instuctions on the screen:
First, fatManager will
prompt you for the path of the database. Select the top-level directory
of your mp3 collection.
Afterwards fatManager will ask to
chose a category file. Select one.
In
the last step you can add directories, which contain mp3 files. As
explained earlier, it is best if you have only one top-level directory.
After
clicking ok, fatManager starts scanning you mp3 files and adds them to
then internal database. Depending on the number of files, this can take
some time.
When the scan has finished, you
are ready to use fatManager.
Note:
you can create multiple databases for the same mp3 collection, simply
chose different names for the database file (and if wanted,
also
different category files). This is for example useful, if you
put
all mp3 files of your whole family into one directory. But since each
member of your family has its own preferences and will rate songs
differently, each one can create and operate its own database.
Using
fatManager
When
you run fatManager, it will launch Coolplayer - which is an mp3 player.
You can move Coolplayer in any position on the screen and operate it
independently of fatManager. If you want to make Coolplayer your
standard player for mp3 files, right click on it and chose "Options",
then click on "Register Filetypes" (you need administrative permissions
in order to successfully register the filetypes on your machine!).
You
will notice that Coolplayer
is a very lightweight mp3 player with starts very fast, uses low memory
and CPU time and plays everything as it should. Coolplayer is my
favorite mp3 player, I don't use any other.
Song
Naming Conventions
I recommend the following naming scheme
for your mp3 files, which allows to use fatManager best:
[Artist]
- [Album] - [Track Number] - [Song Title]
Example:
The Subways - Young for Eternity - 07 - Oh Yeah.mp3
This
naming scheme is not only useful within fatManager, in my opinion it is
the only meaningful naming scheme one can use to have some logic and
sort order within his/her song collection.
Important: File
names must be UNIQUE. fatManager allows you to move mp3 files around to
other directories within your collection without the need od re-tagging
them. This is possible, because fatManager uses the file names (without
path information) as the one and only identifier. For this reason it
does not accept doubled file names. To rename files or groups of files,
fatManager offers a powerful tool, see below for more information.
Views
fatManager
offers two views on your mp3 files: the "File View" and the "Filter
View"
In
the file view you will see all your mp3 files and it allows to tag mp3
files (i.e. assign songs to categories and rate their quality).
In
the filter view you can "filter" your collection by selecting
categories and the rating the files must match.
You
can switch at any time between both views by using the "View Menu" or
the following two toolbar buttons:
Note: you can
specify the sort order of your view in the "View Menu".
"Sort
by Files" means the order in which the files are on your harddisk.
"Sort
Alphabetically" means to sort the files alphabetically.
"Sort
by Status" is relevant for the file view. It sorts the tagged files in
front of untagged files.
Tagging
Switch
to the file view and select one or more mp3 files. You can select a
group of files by selecting the first file in the list, then pressing
the SHIFT-key and clicking on another file. You can select or deselect
single files by holding the CTRL-key down before selecting. You can
select all files in the list by pressing CTRL-a.
After
you made your selection, you can rate the selected song(s) by chosing a
value from 1 to 6 from the rating combo box:
"1" means very
good and "6" means "very bad".
By
checking subcategories, you assign the selected song(s) to categories.
You can check multiple categories and subcategories at the same time
for each file. This is useful, because often songs belong to more than
one genre and when building queries later in the filter view, you might
want to have certain songs to appear in different queries.
When
you select multiple files at the same time, the text of the
subcategories might turn into green. This means some of the selected
songs have this subcategory checked, but not all.
You
will
notice the red cross and the green checkmark in front of each song. The
red cross means: "This song is untagged" and the green checkmark means:
"This song is tagged." A song is tagged when it has assigned a quality
rating as well as at least ONE category.
You can
specify a wildcard, which is applied to the
file names to filter specific songs for the file view. For example
"*doors*" will select all files which contain
somewhere the word "doors". The "*" is a placeholder for any number of
characters which are skipped. Beside the "*" you can also use the "?"
which is a placeholder for a single character.
Note: fatManager
does not use the ID-tags of mp3 files. It neither reads nor writes
them. All tagging information is stored within the database files. This
has several advantages, which become obvious when you are using
fatManager for a longer period of time. I might explain the various
advantages in the future, if I find the time.
Filtering
After
you have tagged some files, you can switch over to the filter view.
When you are in the filter view, the rating combo box and the
subcategory checkboxes become a different meaning: they are now search
criterias which must be fulfilled to make songs appear in the filter.
If
you chose for example "3" for the rating, all songs which are tagged
with a quality of 1 - 3 do match the filter criteria.
In
addition you must check subcategories that must be matched. Below the
category checkbox group you have three radio buttons titled "all must
match", "include each" and "exclude each".
For
each radio button you can make your selection of categories.
For
example, if you select "all must match" and then "Alternative" and
"Rock", this means that only songs are filtered, which are
assigned to
both categories at the same time.
In contrast, if you select
"include each" and then "Alternative" and
"Rock", all songs are filtered, which are assigned to
either category.
Finally, "exclude each" will exclude songs,
which have any of the selected categories.
This is a
very powerful tool to build complex filter criterias.
In
addition you can specify a wildcard, which is applied to the file
names. For example "*doors*" will select all files which contain
somewhere the word "doors". The "*" is a placeholder for any number of
characters which are skipped. Beside the "*" you can also use the "?"
which is a placeholder for a single character.
I
suggest you start playing around a bit with the different settings to
get a feeling for the logic behind it.
Note: fatManager
holds the complete database in memory in order to process queries
blazingly fast. I have implemented several algorithms to keep
the
memory usage as low as possible. You can verify this when looking at
the task manager of Windows.
Presets
Each
filter setting as a whole can be stored as a preset.
To store a
preset, enter a name and click the save button.
To
select a preset, chose it from the list.
To delete a preset,
chose it from the list and click the trashcan button.
Jukebox
fatManager
is already a jukebox. Simply click the play button and fatTony will
start the playback of your songs (the shuffle button is very helpful).
But because fatManager lacks a playlist, fatTony should be used for
better control of what shall be played back.
Resynchronization
If
you add new mp3 files to your collection, or if you rename or move
files within your collection to another directory, you need to make
fatManager aware of it.
In order to do so, chose from the main
menu
"File | Resync". fatManager will scan your predefined mp3 directories
and add new files as required. If you have moved files to another
directoy without renaming them, fatManager will notice it
automatically. If you deleted files, fatManager will complain about it
and show a dialog with a list iof files it could not find. If you are
sure this is correct, simply chose "Delete" in the dialog to remove the
files from the database.
Important: File
names must
be UNIQUE. fatManager allows you to move mp3 files around to other
directories within your collection without the need od re-tagging them.
This is possible, because fatManager uses the file names (without path
information) as the one and only identifier. For this reason it does
not accept doubled file names. To rename files or groups of files,
fatManager offers a powerful tool, see below for more information.
Renaming
Files
fatManager offers a powerful tool to rename files or
groups of files. To do so, chose from the main menu "Files | Rename
Files".
A
dialog appears. Click on "Add Directory" to chose one or more
directories. fatManager will scan the given directories for files and
show them in a list. You can then select songs and rename them.
A
very powerful feature is the "Group Rename" tool. In order to use it,
select a group of files and click on "Group Rename".
You
can then define a search and replace pattern. The best of all is the
feature to put text in front of file names by leaving the "Replace
Pattern" empty. If you have a group of files from the same artist (or
album), which contain the song title only, you can easily put
the
artist's name in front of all files with a single operation.
Exporting
Files - Tanking Up mp3 Players
You can export files - for
example to your mp3 player or a USB stick - by using the export feature
of fatManager. Chose
from the main menu "File | Export". A dialog appears.
For
USB devices, like an mp3 player or a USB stick, or to export files to a
directoy (in order to burn from there to a CD/DVD), chose "File System"
from the devices combo box. You can then select how many megabytes
shall be exported, and if the files shall be shuffled, numbered and if
a fatManager database shall be exported also. Numbering is meaningful,
if you export shuffled files, because burning software will order files
alphabetically. If you number the files the are sorted by their number.
Exporting the fatManager
database is useful, if the receiver of the files is also
using fatManager. The exported database will only contain the file and
tagging information for the exported files.
Burning
to CD/DVD is implemented into fatManager as an experimental feature.
The "Scan" button
allows to scan for CD/DVD recorders, using the open source software
"CD-Record". CD-Record requires an ASPI driver on your system,
otherwise the scan function will not find any cd/dvd recording devices.
You can get such a driver from http://web.ncf.ca/aa571/aspi.htm.
You can also search in google for "wnaspi32.dll", which is
produced by Nero AG.
Since
the burning feature is experimental, it might happen that
fatManager does not find any burner, even when an ASPI driver is
installed.
Afterword
The other
features of fatManager are self-explanatory.
One
last advice: make regular backups of the fatManager database - just in
case fatManager should have a malfunction (which I never experienced
within the past three years), or in case of a headcrash of your
harddrive.
I wish you a lot of fun, and please
donate if you are using this software!
Make a
donation:
Visit my
Sponsor
If you are yourself a software developer, you should
definitely visit my sponsor IDEAL
Software.
They make a very fine library called "Virtual Print Engine" (VPE),
which can be used to programatically create and print documents and
reports on the fly. Blazingly fast and accurate PDF export is also
provided by this tool.
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