Overview

The Music Database is the key to using the Music features in MediaPortal. Here's how you scan  your music and add to to the MediaPortal Music Database.

Music Database Settings

As of  v 1.3.0 you can also select or change these settings within the MediaPortal interface, see Music Database Settings.

You can choose to scan your hard drives for music files and automatically scan them into the Music Database. 

Then you can use all the database views and even modify the Music Views and Music Track Format Masks to customize exactly how you wish to display and use Music in MediaPortal.

To learn and understand the effect of the choices you make, see Using MediaPortal > Music, especially Organize Music and Browse Music

Scan Music Folders

Music shares can be any folder on your local hard drive, file or network server, or even a remote FTP folder. MediaPortal will scan whichever folders you select and add any music files to your Music Database. To add folders/shares see Music Folders

• Strip artist prefix - Default: off
  Here you can list the prefixes you wish MediaPortal to ignore or strip when sorting and displaying your Artists in the Artists database view
• Treat tracks in an individual folder as an album - Default: off
  If you have a folder with a lot of different music files in it,  the folder will be used as an album. Use this if you have a lot of different tracks in one folder, such as for compilations

Use for thumb creation:

Select the source you wish to use to auto generate thumbnail images of artists and album covers for display in MediaPortal.  These thumbs are stored in ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\Music or Thumbs folder.  The options are listed in order of priority.

• cover art embedded ID3- Tags - Default: on
  Most music taggers and programs, such as iTunes or Media Monkey, add the cover art inside the mp3 in the ID3-tag. Enable this option if you have mp3s with covers inside the ID3 tags
• *.png, *.jpg (prefers 'front' cover) - Default: off
  This option uses whatever .png or .jpg file MediaPortal may find in the same folder as the track in question. If one of these files is named "front", it will be given preference.
• folder.jpg - Default: off
  An easy way to use cover art is to put the cover art in the same folder as the music file(s) and name it folder.jpg. MediaPortal will use this folder for cover art. Disable this if you have added cover art to your ID3 Tags, or if you let MediaPortal scan your iPod.

Starting with MP 1.3.0, cover art embedded in ID3 tag is set as default option instead of folder.jpg image.
MediaPortal prioritizes embedded images over folder.jpg as they generally provide much better resolution images, but will 'fall back' to folder.jpg if no cover art is embedded in the ID3 tags.

Note: The new default setting will only take effect on a 'clean' or fresh install of MediaPortal. If you have cover art embedded in ID3 tags and update MediaPortal you should change the setting and rescan your music database.

Use existing album thumbs to:

Select these options if you wish to auto generate thumbnail images for Genre and Artist preview thumbs, as well as separate cover files.

• Create genre preview thumbs - Default: off
  The thumbnail for each genre in the genre view will be taken from the first file of that genre.
• Create artist preview thumbs - Default: off
  The thumbnail for each artist in the artist view will be taken from the first file from that artist.
• Create missing folder.jpg from album thumb - Default: off
  If you select Treat tracks in an individual folder as an album this option will become available. Use it to create a copy of the cover art MediaPortal can download automatically in the album folder. If enabled, MediaPortal can recreate the cover art thumbnails from the music folder and other programs can also see the cover art.

Set date in database for new/changed files to:

A new option has been added so you can choose the date the MediaPortal uses to identify how long the file has been in your collection. This option allows you to customize how the views that sort by date work. By using the current date setting on day one of using MediaPortal all music will be new. If you use modified date you can maintain a view showing all files that have changed recently. The options are:

• Current Date (Default)
  Whenever a new track is identified the current date will be used as the added date and will never change.
• Creation Date
  The actual creation date of the file (as shown in Windows explorer) will be used. If the created date changes then this date will be updated in MediaPortal
• Modified Date
  The actual modification date of the file (as shown in Windows explorer) will be used. Whenever this date changes MediaPortal will update its added date.
• Only update new / changed files after [date] where date is the date of your last update - Default: on
  This option improves performance of the auto update feature by only adding new or changed files since the last update
• Auto update DB on changes in share - Default: off
  Selecting this will monitor the music folders already in the database for changes at a specific time and update the database.
  Note: This option replaces the function of the Music Share Watcher plugin prior to version 1.1.0 of MediaPortal
  If your music collection is stored on a NAS (Network-attached storage) you may use the Music DB Reorganizaiton plugin to schedule the update, since MediaPortal may not be running and the Music Share Watcher will not be notified.
• Update database from selected shares button
  Once you have selected all your options, click the button to scan the folders for any changes in your music collection and add them to the database. The progress will display in the progress box. - you may also schedule the scan by using the Music DB Reorganizaiton plugin

Changelog