Overview

Create a music database of all your albums, artist and tracks with details information, album covers, artist images, etc.

Settings

For first time setup, see the Music Setup Guide.

You may also use the MediaPortal Configuration Tool to create your database, as well as select more advanced options, see Configuration > Music > Database

Select the Database option from the Music Settings menu to display the Music Database Settings screen:

To create a music database:

1. Select the Folders (as defined in Music Folders Settings) that contain the music files you wish to scan and add to your music database.
2. Select the Thumb Creations options you prefer
3. Scan music folders to create your database

Folders

1. Choose one or more folders under Folders - you may need to use the up/down arrows to scroll through all the folders available. The folders that display are those you selected in Music Folders Settings. 
2. Press OK/Enter to select a folder to Scan. The "Scan" label will display on any folders you select to scan. Pressing OK/Enter again on the same folder will remove the "Scan" label and folder will not be scanned.

Note: MediaPortal will remember the folders selected for Scan so you don't need to repeat the selection. 

Use for Thumb Creation

  Tips   MPTagThat - to tag all your music files, and add album covers. Fanart Handler  for Artist fanart MusicInfoHandler to automatically 'scrape' artist and album info in the background whenever MP is loaded 

Select the source you wish to use to auto generate thumbnail images of artists and album covers for display in MediaPortal.  

• cover art embedded ID3- Tags - Default: on
  most music taggers, and  programs like iTunes or Media Monkey, add the cover art inside the mp3 in the ID3-tag, Enable this option if you have mp3's with covers inside the ID3 tags
• folder.jpg (recommended) - Default: on
  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.
  • *.png *.jpg (prefers 'front' cover) - Default: on - if you enable folder.jpg you can choose which image format you prefer as the main image or front cover.
• Create genre preview thumbs - Default: off
  The thumbs for the genres will be taken from the first file.
• Create artist preview thumbs - Default: off
  The thumbs for the artist view will be taken from the first file.
• 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 this option, MediaPortal can recreate the cover art thumbs from the music folder and other programs can also see the cover art.

Scan music folders

  Tip Schedule a regular scan to update your music database if your music files are stored on a drive that may not be always available, see Music DB Reorganizaiton plugin.

Selected your scan options:

• 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 this 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 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.

• 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

Once you have selected all your options, click the Scan music folders button to scan the folders for any changes in your music collection and add them to the database. 

Related

• Music Settings