New User Trying To Grasp The Features

[darrin]

Hi, I've been using UltimateJukebox for years on my Mancave setup.  I only use video files in AVI format and I have a single Windows 10 computer connected to a small monitor to run the track selection interface and a large plasma TV mounted on the wall to display the video tracks as they play.  I've always loved the simplicity of the software, but the software isn't supported anymore and it frequently locks up on various AVI files requiring me to convert them with different codecs on AVC Ultimate in order to coax them to play.  Basically, I'm looking for a newer, supported software package that can do the same thing.

I've downloaded the demo version of TouchJams, installed it and configured it for my dual monitor setup.  I linked the video files to my collection in a sibgle path and it searched and discovered all 5200 AVI files on my external hard drive.  It plays them perfectly, however I'm having major issues with the interface.  Either I can't work out how to configure it to display the index of my files correctly or the features I need are missing.

My files are stored on my external drive as follows:  E:single folder/<directory> where the <directory> is a series of sub-folders called "0-9", "A" through to "Z", "In Concert" and "Testing".  The "0-9" and alphabetic folders contain all of the videos for a particular artist or band based on their first letter or surname with addition folders inside for bands/groups with two or more AVI files.
This works out great for Ultimate Jukebox because the playlist selection window for VIDEO displays a breakdown of:  0-9, A, B, C, ... Z with any sub folders for artist/groups displayed between the letters.  Clicking on a letter will display a list of "one hit wonder" songs, while clicking on the artist/group sub folder displays a list of their available tracks.  Double clicking on the track(s) you want adds them to the play list.  Simple.
However, TouchJams takes the path of E:Single Folder/ and creates a single "Library" called Single Folder which contains 579 "albums" all called "unknown/unknown" which contain the one-hit-wonders or the individual artist/group tracks.  Because all of the albums are called "unknown/unknown" then you have absolutely no idea what you're selecting.  For some strange reason the album containing the ABBA tracks shows a blurry image of the group instead of the generic "disk".  God knows how that happened.
The only way I can think of to break them down is to create 579 links to each folder/sub folder for TouchJames to search for available media and store them under 579 separate libraries, but there's no way I'm going to do that.

Another issue is the "search" function".  Yes, it does work and I can look inside the "Single Folder" library for key letters/words, however once I make a single selection from the results, I then have to click back on "search" and reenter the keyword again... and again... and again... and again.  This is a major pain if I want to search for "Status Quo" and then play 5 of their videos.

So, in summary, what I'm looking for is the ability for the video "Albums" to display the folder/sub folder name instead of "unknown/unknown" and for the search function to allow multiple selections to be added to the play list from the query results.

I've looked through all of the options without any luck.  Perhaps it just isn't possible or I'm looking in the wrong place.  Alternatively, does the demo version not have all of the customizable features of the full registered version?

Any help/suggestion would be appreciated. 

[tonyneen]

Your media files need to have tags in them for Touchjams to display them corectly, i use mp3tag.

The following is recommend for your media library:

1 - Tag Info - media files have at a minimum the Artist, Album and Title tags filled out
2 - Folder Structure - media files are organized into folders which represent albums

Below explains these 2 points in more detail.

Tag Info

In order for TouchJams to organize your music library correctly and to provide accurate search capabilities, audio and video files should contain at a minimum the Artist, Album and Title tag info. If a particular media file is missing any one of these 3 tag fields, a default value will be used:

Tag Field
Default Value
Artist "Unknown"
Album "Unknown"
Title filename less the folder and filename extension

Folder Structure

Along with sufficient tag info, media files should be organized into folders on the storage medium being used. All the media files in a last child folder are treated as a physical album, or CD.

However you choose to create the folder hierarchy in your media library, the concept to remember is that all files in a last child folder will be treated as an album.

Here is some help on setting up your folders.

This will fix your search issue.

I'm in a bit short of time at the moment, let me know how you get on and i will be back later.

Cheers

Tony

[darrin]

Thank you Tony, I really appreciate your help with this. I haven't used "mp3tag" before, but I'll download it and give it a whirl. I hope it allows bulk assigning of tags to multiple files as it won't be fun to do 5200 videos one at a time. As long as I can get the Artist and Album fields done then I'll be able to see the text title within each "album" and both of those "unknown" fields you pointed out will populate.
Once I've had a cup of tea and made some phone calls then I'll start on it.
Cheers,
Darrin

[tonyneen]

In mp3tag, you can do "file name to tag", that may be useful to you if your filenames are how you want them, too transfer the file name to the tag fields.

[darrin]

We'll I'm part way there. I downloaded Tigo Tago to tag my AVI files however only the ARTIST tag sticks and the ALBUM refuses to hold any changes.

I discovered why there was an ABBA track with a graphic. It was a lone MP4 file. The ARTIST and ALBUM tags seem to stick to the MP4 file and after tagging all of the music videos under "A", I've discovered that TouchJams really doesn't like AVI formatted files for accessing the tag information. Only the MP4 file updates the UNKNOWN - UNKNOWN text to display correctly. As a result, it has its own line under the Library "Artist" display while everything else is clumped under as single "unknown".

On the plus side, the "search" function works perfectly.

So, as simply batch renaming the AVI files to MP4 doesn't allow me to update the tags afterwards, it looks like I'm going to have to use AVC Ultimate to convert all of the 5200 AVI files to MP4 and then tag them in Tigo Tago. I'll let you know how it goes. :-)

[darrin]

Jan 22, 2021 17:39:46 GMT tonyneen said:

In mp3tag, you can do "file name to tag", that may be useful to you if your filenames are how you want them, too transfer the file name to the tag fields.

Thanks.  Tigo Tago has a similar function.  However, as I was going into each folder and dealing with one group/artist at a time, I just needed to update the first tract and there was an option to copy the same value down the column so it transferred to ever track below it.  Thankfully that saved a lot of time.

[darrin]

Well, I have it doing what I want it to. I bought the full edition last night and now I'm busy converting and tagging my files (got to "J" so far). Thanks for the help. The only glitch I've seen so far is the video from the second monitor jumping to an extra window on the interface monitor when it flipped to auto-DJ. It has only done it twice so it is hard to replicate the error and it was on the Demo version so perhaps it is fixed and the full version.
I really like this package and there are lots of functions that I need to explore once I have the basics sorted out.
I still wish there was a sort/display library by actual folders option as well as using tagged artist and album, but that just because it was the way I had my existing files organized. :-)

[tonyneen]

Pleased you are getting there, it all takes time to get your tagging sorted, but when it's sorted, Touchjams works well.
You will get the odd "Glitch", but what i have found is that that is normally due to a bad media files.