User's Guide
Library Window
Playlist Window
Track Editor Window
Customization
Advanced Topics
Regular Expressions
Trouble Shooting
Tables
ID3 Frame Descriptions

Command Line
jampal Command
Making an Envelope
Tag Backup
Text to Speech

Author
Peter Bennett

My Other Projects
Peter's Backup
Proxy and debug tool

Table of Contents

Name

Synopsis

jampal open [ library ] ...

jampal cleanup [ -reorder ] library-name [ moved-file-dir ]

jampal playlist condition [ options ] ...

jampal fieldcodes [ library ]

jampal playlistcd disknum [ output-dir ]

jampal envelope [--artist|--artistalbum|--none] [--nosort] library-name diskser

description

jampal duplicates [ --NODUP ] [ --NEXTFILES ]

jampal tagbkup [ bak ]

jampal tagupdate options filename [ filename ] ...

jampal mp3lame [ -recode|-recode-even ]

Description

jampal is a cross platform mp3 song library management system. jampal stores and organizes a library of 60,000 songs or more. It can be used as a jukebox to play the songs. It performs extensive editing of song tags using ID3v2. The library is based on the IDV3V2 standard. The library is extensively customizable. Text to speech voice synthesis to announce song names is an option. The library is organized and customized by ID3V2 tags, including any number of custom tags you can set up. A utility is provided to back up the ID3V2 tags so that your customizations, such as song ratings, are not lost if you have a disk failure. There are utilities to rename and organize the song files by album, artist and song, and to generate playlists from criteria you choose. Generated play lists can be burned to CD or written to an mp3 player. Song announcements can also be added to songs written to CD or player.

Cygwin Under Windows

There are some things that have to be done if this is used with Cygwin under Windows. To install with cygwin, extract the tar file and run "make install". This installs all scripts and programs and adds Jampal to your Start menu in Windows.

Make sure that in the Jampal Customize dialog, under library, the option "Use Unix Style Paths" is checked.

All paths must be set up so that the path is compatible with Windows. This means creating links for example ln -s C:/Music /Music makes the /Music directory compatible. The setup will already handle "Program Files" and the user profile directories. If you store songs in a different directory you will need to set up links. All songs must be accessed from the same drive letter. This can be achieved in windows by creating links, junctions, mounting disks in a directory, or simply putting all files on one disk.

Open Command

jampal open [ library ] ...

The open command launches the main jampal GUI application. Detailed documentation can be found by using the Help menu option from the main window.

Open Command Options

library

File name and path of library. The library name should have an extension of .jampal. If the supplied file name does not end with .jampal the extension will be assumed.

If the command is run without any parameters, the last library that you had opened will be opened again. Alternatively you can specify the file name of one or more libraries on the command line to open those libraries. The library has a name ending with ".jampal". If no library has been opened before a default library called ~/Music/library/default.jampal is created. If you have changed the LIBDIR specified in your ~./jampal/jampal.conf file, the default library is created there instead. If the specified or last opened library cannot be opened, an error message is displayed and the default library is opened. Normally you will use a GUI based menu to launch this.

Cleanup Command

jampal cleanup [ -reorder ] library [ moved-file-dir ]

The cleanup command cleans up your library by moving files and renaming them. Make sure that all of your songs are loaded into one library, and that library is located in the directory specified by LIBDIR in ~/.jampal.jampal.conf. The default location is ~/Music/library.

The cleanup command makes sure that all files are named according to song and artist and are under a directory named as Album Name. See section "Setting up your song files" below for an explanation of the directory structure. Songs are moved to new directories as required. Songs are never moved to a different Disk Directory. Disk Directories are never renamed or moved. Songs are ordered within the album by track number. Albums are numbered according to the order they are found on the disk. The order of albums in a disk directory is not changed unless you use the -reorder option.

Songs that are marked for deletion in the jampal GUI application (by setting the value D in the Jampal frame) are moved to a rejected files directory. By default this is at ~/Music/reject. The directory name can be changed by updating the ~/.jampal/jampal.conf file.

When you run the command it will not rename any file or make any change without first giving you an opportunity to review it. It creates a text file report showing all files that will be moved. The report is displayed with "less" and you can use normal paging as used with vi or man pages. Press q when you are finished reviewing it. You are then prompted to run the renames, see the report again, or abort.

After running it reminds you to reload the library. If jampal is open you must use the "File, Reload Library" menu to reload the library. If you forget to do this no harm will result, but trying to access any files that were renamed will fail until you either reload or else close jampal and open it again.

Never run cleanup against a playlist, temporary library, or any library that does not have all of your songs. This would reorganize some files and leave others in their old place.

The cleanup command does many checks before running to make sure it will succeed. If your directory structure is wrong it will tell you and stop. If there are two songs with exactly the same name and artist in the same directory it may give an error message and you will have to rename one.

If cleanup fails or gives any error before you have responded yes to running the renames, nothing has been changed. You can rerun after making any changes you need.

If cleanup fails during the running of the renames, or is terminated for some reason, the library will be incorrect. No songs will have been lost or corrupted. Clear the library (Menu option Edit, Clear Library). Then reload the library by dragging the directory or directories containing the songs from the file explorer, or using the menu "File, Open" to open the directories. If all songs are under a master directory you only have to open that directory. Make sure your rejected items directory is not under the directory structure that you are opening. It will take some time to reload the songs (on a fast machine 15 minutes for 40,000 songs). Then you can run cleanup again.

Setting up your song

files

The first essential is to have all songs set up in the jampal library with song titles, album names, artist names, and track numbers.

Your library of mp3 files should be backed up on to CDs or DVDs. Name each CD or DVD with a serial number of the form YYMMDD_HHMM_X, using the date and time you created it and any character you please instead of X (e.g. you may want to identify the CDs with one character representing music type).

If you are starting out and they are not yet on CDs or DVDs, create a directory named as described, and put your files in subdirectories under that directory. Put up to 700 MB per CD directory or 4.2 GB per DVD directory. You can name the subdirectories anything you want, or just put them in one subdirectory.

If you have songs without an album name or you have only one or two songs from an album you may not want them put in a separate directory. You can update frame Directory with a directory name that overrides the album name when organizing files on disk. The Directory frame is a "user defined text information frame" with description "Directory". Make sure this frame is listed in "Library Fields" in the customize dialog. Also add this field to the tag editor, and select it in the Display Columns. Now you can enter values in the Directory field and those tracks will be placed in a directory named after that field instead of named after the album.

If you have two albums with the same name and different artists in the same Disk Directory, they will get merged into one. Please change the album names so that they are different. This happens with Album titles like "Greatest Hits". Call the album something like "Demis Roussos Greatest Hits" to prevent this problem.

In order to use cleanup successfully the files in your library must use the following directory structure.

Disk_dir_1

Album_dir_1

Song-file-1.mp3

Song-file-2.mp3

Other songs ...

Album_dir_2

Song-file-1.mp3

Song-file-2.mp3

Other songs ...

Other Albums ...

Disk_Dir_2

Similar structure to disk dir 1...

Other Disk Dirs ...

Each Disk Directory is typically a copy one CD or DVD where you have archived the songs. The design of the system expects that you save your mp3 files on CD or DVD and copy them as one directory per CD or DVD. It is optional to have multiple disk directories. You can have up to 999 albums in a single disk directory. Disk directories do not have to all reside under one directory, they can be anywhere on your file systems.

To get started if you have all of your songs under one directory, first move them under a second directory, as follows.

Disk_dir_1

Temp_Album_dir

Song-file-1.mp3

Song-file-2.mp3

Other songs ...

After running cleanup the temporary album directory will be deleted and all songs will be under their respective album directories.

If you have moved files around to get them in this directory structure, open the jampal GUI, clear the library, and reload the songs by dragging the disk directories from the file explorer, or using the menu option to open the disk directories.

Cleanup Command Options

-reorder

Reorder directories within a disk. This can only be done when there are no other changes pending. The way to make sure of this is to first do a run without the -reorder option. Then open the file called ZZAlbums.txt which exists in each Disk Directory. This is a text file. Move lines up or down into the desired sequence of albums. Save the file. Run the cleanup command with the -reorder option.

library

File name and path of library. The library name should have an extension of .jampal. If the supplied file name does not end with .jampal the extension will be assumed. If the library name is given without a path it will be assumed to be in your main library directory (defined by the LIBDIR variable in .jampal/jampal.conf).

moved-file-dir

In order for the library to be correct, you should not move or rename song files on the hard drive (except for the automatic moving and renaming done by cleanup). There is an exception to this rule. If you need to move one or more directories (albums) from one place to another, you can use this feature. You can move any number of directories to a single new directory, then use cleanup with the destination directory specified as the moved-file-dir parameter. cleanup will adjust the library and rename all the other directories accordingly. This is most useful when you are trying to split albums up into groups of 700 MB for burning to CD.

If you have moved one or more albums to a new directory you can list the directory here. Jampal will automatically find the files in the library and update the library with their new locations. This saves having to remove and re-add them to the library.

Playlist Command

jampal playlist criteria [ options ] ...

playlist generates a playlist based on a variety of selection and sort criteria. Once the playlist is generated the GUI is opened and the playlist can be viewed or played.

Each playlist is placed in a directory named for the current date and time and playlist name. These directories are stored in the location identified by the PLAYLISTCD parameter in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf. All prior playlists remain available in the directory until you delete them. You can clean up by deleting playlist directories.

A column in the playlist display identifies a disk, directory and song number sequence which is used if you are going to copy the playlist to CD or mp3 player.

After the list is created you are prompted whether you want to copy the songs to a staging directory. Depending on the size of your library and the criteria there may be enough songs for many disks or many player refills. The program prompts you to create as many as you need, one disk full at a time. The disks that can be created are identified by numbers within the playlist and you are prompted to enter a number to identify which set of files to copy. Each disk full is placed in its own directory, so creating more than one will not cause overwriting. If the songs are not copied immediately they can be copied from the playlist later using the playlistcd command. When you have finished burning to CD or copying to player you should delete the staging directories to release the disk space.

In the playlist options described below, many apply only to the files copied to a staging directory. All options apply equally whether you copy when prompted after running playlist or copy later using playlistcd.

There are some examples of playlist commands in the scripts/examples directory.

Playlist Command Options

criteria

This defines the criteria for selection of songs for the playlist. Any fields that are stored in your library can be used. To find the field codes for your library run the fieldcodes command. You can use any expression using awk syntax and any fields in the list of fieldcodes. You can add more fields to the library by customizing in the GUI. You can also set up a table that allows you to prioritize by various values af a frame such as Genre. See the section below entitled PLAYLIST ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES.

Examples (Quotes as shown are required) :

Select all songs with Genre of Country

’GENRE == "Country"’

If Country may sometimes be written in lowercase, uppercase or mixed case, use

’tolower(GENRE) == "country"’

Select all songs which contain classic in the Genre somewhere

’match(tolower(GENRE),/classic/)’

Select all songs by John Denver that do not have country in the Genre

’ARTIST == "John Denver" &&
! match(tolower(GENRE),/country/)’

Select all songs

1

Select songs based on a table of preferences (see PLAYLIST ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES)

’MySearch[GENRE] > rand()’

--sort sort-field

Sort the playlist by the given sort field. If you leave this out the existing sequence in the library is used. This is an awk expression for fields that will be used to sort the playlist. You can use ’random’ for a random sequence, or else expressions using the fields in the field code list.

Example

Sort by track within album. This concatenates album name , a blank, a pipe character, track number into a string for sorting.

’ALBUM " |" TRACK’

Put songs in random sequence. The value ’random’ is a very random number of 12 digits.

’random’

--reverse

This will reverse the sort sequence given in the --sort option.

--announce

This chooses to have audio announcements of song titles included in files copied to the staging directory. Synthesized announcements are stored in the front of each mp3 file.

In order to use this option you must have lame installed. Lame may not be available with your installation. It is free software and can be downloaded and installed.

--tracksperdir nnn

This specifies the maximum number of tracks per directory when copying to a staging directory. This is useful if the player only displays 2 digit song numbers within a directory. The default is 100. The maximum is 999.

--startdir nnn

This specifies the starting directory number. The default is 1. The maximum is 999 so if you use a number close to that and directory numbering exceeds 999 you may have problems.

--library library_name

File name and path of library. If not specified it defaults to the main library which is the value of the MAINLIBNAME parameter in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf. The library name should have an extension of .jampal. If the supplied file name does not end with .jampal the extension will be assumed. If the library name is given without a path it will be assumed to be in your main library directory (defined by the LIBDIR variable in .jampal/jampal.conf).

--ann_separate

This will cause announcements to be created as separate mp3 files when copying to a staging directory. The default is to merge the announcement into the mp3 file of the song. This is only applicable when the --announce option is selected.

--speak text

Specifies what will be spoken in the announcement when copying to a staging directory. The default is ’(TITLE . ARTIST)’. Any field codes for the library can be included. Additional words can be included by putting them in quotes, for example ’"Presenting " TITLE " by " ARTIST’. This is only applicable when the --announce option is selected. If there are foreign language songs, including English in the announcement will not be useful.

--speak_sep

If there are songs that use the "Follow" option, then two songs will be copied to a staging directory with one announcement. This parameter specifies what to say in between, for example ’" followed by "’. Do not use this if there are different language songs. The default is ’". "’, which is a period so that the speech synthesis will insert a pause as if it were the end of a sentence.

--dirchange condition

The condition is an awk expression using any field codes from the library. The same rules apply as for the selection criteria. If the expression changes, a new directory will be started. For example specify ARTIST to start a new directory for each artist. Note that if the songs are not sorted by this field, it may create a new directory for each song. The default is no chenge of directory except when the maximum songs per directory is reached. There is a special value DIRALBUM which will split directories the same way as is done by cleanup, album names unless a directory name is specified in the "Directory" tag.

--appendseq

When copying to a staging directory, this option causes the program to update the song name in the mp3 tag to have a sequence number in front. This is to defeat the sorting of songs by name that some mp3 players do. Announcements of the name do not include the sequence number.

--cdsize nnn

Specifies the size of the CD or mp3 player memory in megabytes. Default is 690. Songs will be split into disks according to the size.

--stagingdir directory_name

Gives the name of the staging directory where the songs will be written for burning to CD or copying to mp3 player. In the case of an mp3 player you can give a directory name where the player is mounted. If you do not do this it will write to a directory on your hard drive and you can copy to the player afterward. The default directory is the one specified by the CDSTAGING parameter in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf.

--filenumberstart nnn

The starting number for numbering files in each directory. Default is 1. Maximum is 999.

--playlistname name

The playlist directory and playlist are named using the current date and time as YYMMDD_HHMMSS. If you supply a value here it will be appended as YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_name. This is to help you remember the purpose of each playlist you create. The default is no name so that the playlist will be named YYMMDD_HHMMSS.

--tagupdate tag_setting

Here you can supply one or more updates that you want made to ID3 tags when copying to the staging directory. For example if you have an mp3 player that only displays song title and artist but you want to see displayed the rating you have given the song in your customized field, you can update the tag to have that added to the ARTIST frame. The format of the parameter takes any parameter valid for the tagupdate command, and can include any fieldcodes from the library. For example, to add a customized preference frame in front of the artist use this:
’"-ARTIST \"" ID3V2TAGTXXXPeter "/" ARTIST "\""’

--startdisknum nnn

The starting number for numbering disks. The default is 1. Maximum is 999.

Playlist Environment Variables

PLAYLIST_SEARCH_SETUP

This variable is used to set up a table which can be used to set priorities for inclusion of songs based on a preference.

For example

export PLAYLIST_SEARCH_SETUP=’
MySearch["Country"]=0.8
MySearch["Rock"]=0.5
MySearch["Pop"]=0.2
MySearch["R&B"]=1’

This sets a criterion so that 80% of Country songs, 50% of Rock songs, 20% of Pop songs, 100% of R&B songs, and nothing else are selected. The criterion

that would be used with this in the playlist command is

’MySearch[GENRE] > rand()’

This assumes that Genre values match exactly those values. There is another example in the scripts/examples directory.

Fieldcodes Command

jampal fieldcodes [ library_name ]

Displays a list of fieldcodes included in the specified

library

Fieldcodes Command Options

library_name

File name and path of library. If not specified it defaults to the main library which is the value of the MAINLIBNAME parameter in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf. The library name should have an extension of .jampal. If the supplied file name does not end with .jampal the extension will be assumed. If the library name is given without a path it will be assumed to be in your main library directory (defined by the LIBDIR variable in .jampal/jampal.conf).

Playlistcd Command

jampal playlistcd disknum [ staging-dir ]

Copies a playlist disk to a staging directory. This uses an existing playlist created by the playlist command and does the same operation as is done by the last step of that command.

If the --announce option was used with the playlist command that created the playlist, you must have lame installed. Lame may not be available with your installation. It is free software and can be downloaded and installed.

When running this command you must first change directory to the directory where the playlist is stored. The directory will be named YYMMDD_HHMM or YYMMDD_HHMM_description and will be in the directory identified by the variable PLAYLISTCD in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf.

Playlistcd Command Options

disknum

Disk number desired. This is matched to the disk number stored in the playlist, where there is one disk per 690 MB of data, or other value requested when creating the playlist.

staging-dir

This overrides the default staging directory or other staging directory specified when creating the playlist. You can use the mount point of an mp3 player to store the songs directly on the player.

Envelope Command

jampal envelope [ --artist | --artistalbum | --none | --album ] [ --nosort ] library-name diskser description

The envelope command prints CD or DVD envelopes for your mp3 disks. It also can prints a song list for songs on an mp3 player.

The envelope command uses OpenOffice.org Writer or LibreOffice Writer. If one of these is not installed an on the path you will see an error message. LibreOffice is available via a free download.

The program scans the library and creates an openoffice write document with the songs listed and the albums listed on a page configured as an envelope. It then opens the document in openoffice. YOu can make any changes you wish, such as typing in headers or your name, then print with openoffice. There are instructions in the jampal HTML help with illustrations on how to cut and fold the envelop page to make a CD envelope. If you are creating a list for an mp3 player just print the list and leave out the envelope page.

The first pages of the document are an insert listing of tracks. The last page is an envelope. If you are making a DVD cover you probably have so many albums that the last page does not hold all the names and actually produces several pages. In that case, use openoffice to insert columns in the last page, sufficient so that it all fits, as follows.

Select menu format, page, columns tab. Select 2 or 3 columns. Then use menu format, table. Reduce the column sizes and reduce the left spacing. After this you may still need to select the whole table and reduce the font size. You can use fractions, such as 6.6 to achieve the correct size so that it fits on one page.

Envelope Command Options

--artist | --artistalbum | --none | --album

These options define headings that appear in the list and the items that appear on the envelope cover. If nothing is specified here the default is album, i.e. an album name heading is printed at the top of each album and albums are listed on the cover. Artist groups by artist and artistalbum groups by artist and album. None indicates that there are no headings in the list and no titles on the cover. This would be used if you had sorted the songs in random order. For any of these options to work the songs must be in order of the appropriate field. If they are not you could get a heading for each song.

--nosort

The songs are normally sorted by filename before being printed. This assumes you are printing an envelope for a disk that is a copy of directories from your library. The -nosort option will print songs in the order they are stored in the library, i.e. the order they are displayed in the jampal GUI. Make sure to save the library or close the GUI to make sure the desired ordering is saved. If the library is a playlist generated by the jampal playlist command, --nosort will be the default.

library-name

Specifies the path and file name of the library from which songs are to be listed. The library name should have an extension of .jampal. If the supplied file name does not end with .jampal the extension will be assumed. If the library name is given without a path it will be assumed to be in your main library directory (defined by the LIBDIR variable in .jampal/jampal.conf).

diskser

This is used to select the songs to be selected. If you are printing from a playlist generated by the playlist command this specifies the disk number (3 digits starying at 001). If you are printing from another library or playlist this is used to match of the full file name. If this is an empty string all songs in the library are selected.

description

This is any text that you want printed at the top of each page.

Duplicates Command

jampal duplicates [ --NODUP ] [ --NEXTFILES ]

The duplicates command searched for potential duplicate songs in the main library. It scans your main library (specified in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf) and creates a new library called duplicate that contains all of the songs that it suspects are duplicates, sorted so that the potential duplicates are together.

The first column of the library contains a DUMMY column with two numbers. First is a numeric sequence of the song number identified as a possible duplicate. Second is a number identifying which duplicate it is. This makes up the sort sequence, so if you change the order of songs in the duplicate library you can click on this column header and get it back to the initial sequence.

Look at the library and decide if the songs are real duplicates or not. If they are duplicates and you do not want to keep both copies, mark one as rejected. If you want to keep two or more copies mark each with a number in the Dup column. Then in future these will not be shown as duplicates.

Mark a song as rejected by putting D in the Jampal frame (User defined text with description "jampal"). Then running cleanup will move those files to your rejected directory and remove them from the library.

You can fix the duplicates by:

Accepting the duplicates by typing a different number in each "Dup" column. The "dup" column is a "user defined text information frame" with description "Dup". Add this to your library fields to use this feature.

Marking some files for deletion by typing D in the "Jampal" column.

Combining one or more versions into one file using the "Combine Duplicates" menu. This is used if the same song is found on two or more albums. You can save disk space by keeping only one copy of the song on your disk, and still have it show up under each of the albums and track numbers. This will create "Alternative Albums" for all the duplicates in one copy of a song, and flag the extra copies for deletion. Songs marked for deletion are moved when you run the cleanup command. See the online documenattion for more deatils on "Edit, Combine Duplicates".

Duplicates Command Options

--NODUP

You can use the "Dup" tag to indicate duplicate song names you wish to keep or to indicate that these are actually different versions of the song and should not be reported as duplicate. If you specify --NODUP this will be ignored and the songs will be reported as duplicates.

--NEXTFILES

Normally the duplicates command ignores songs in the directory specified by NEXTFILES in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf. Specifying this flag will also include that directory in the check.

Tagbkup Command

jampal tagbkup [ bak ]

The tagbkup command uses the tagbkup program to keep a backup of your mp3 file tags. This assumes that you have the actual mp3 files backed up somewhere, on CD DVD or hard drive. After you make changes to files by editing the tags you will want to backup the files so that you do not lose the changes. Jampal allows you to store lots of information in the tag, including your personal preferences, which could change at any time. Taking a backup of the entire mp3 file every time you change tags will take a lot of backup space. The tagbkup command takes a backup of the tags of your main library and stores them in a directory identified by the TAGBKUP entry in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf. Make sure you backup that directory regularly. Running tagbkup on a large library can take some time. The command shows its progress in number of files read on the console. Also it shows details of all files changed since the last tagbkup. At the end of a run the program displays the results and asks whether to remove tag backups of files that you have removed. To restore a CD use the following commands (assuming /r is the location of your cdrom and 000904_1758_rest is the location you want to restore the CD to).

. /usr/jampal/scripts/mp3.profile
cd /r
mkdir -p $MAINDIR/000904_1758_rest
tagbkup -v -r -x -d $MAINDIR/000904_1758_rest /r/*/*.mp3 $TAGBKUP/tagbkup

Tagbkup Command Options

bak

This indicates that the backup must be run. If this is not specified the program displays the results of the prior tag backup and asks whether to remove tag backups of files that you have removed.

Tagupdate Command

jampal tagupdate options filename [ filename ] ...

General purpose command line program to update or display ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags on mp3 files.

Many files can be updated at once, to update selected values on each file.

This does not interface with your library. If you update tags using this command for songs that are in a library, please open the library, select the songs that were updated and select the menu "Edit, Validate tracks" to refresh the information in the library. If you are not sure which ones you changed you can select all the songs in the library and validate them, but this will take longer.

In the utility directory are some openoffice.org spreadsheets which can be used for updating songs if you have some complicated change that is easier by updating a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet produces a file that can be used as input to tagupdate.

Tagupdate Command Options

-OPTIONFILE optfilename

This supplies a file name from which options are read after all options on the command line are exhausted.

-ENCODING encoding

This supplies encoding for the option file.

-DISPLAY

This displays the tags and file information. If it is specified before update options it displays values before the update. If it is specified after or between update options it displays the value after the updates that appear before it.

-SHORTDISPLAY

This displays the title, artist and album, tab separated. If it is specified before update options it displays values before the update. If it is specified after or between update options it displays the value after the updates that appear before it.

-NOUPDATE

This suppresses writing the updates to the file. It can be specified anywhere in the options list.

-TITLE title

Update title on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-ARTIST artist-name

Update artist name on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-ALBUM album-name

Update album name on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-YEAR year

Update year on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-COMMENT comment

Update comment on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-TRACK track-number

Update track number on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags.

-GENRE genre-name

Update genre on both ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags. If the name supplied is not one of the supported ID3V1 names, the ID3V1 tag value will be left unchanged. There is a list of supported ID3V1 names in the tables section of the html help.

-ID3V2TAG frame-id value

Update ID3V2 tag.

frame-id is one of the following

XXXX for frames that take no language or description
XXXXlll for frames that take a language
XXXXllldddddd for frames that take a language and a description
XXXXdddddd for frames that take only a description
APICxxddddd for picture frames

Language code is always exactly 3 lower-case letters.

Picture type is two hexadecimal digits.

Description can be any length. If it includes spaces it must be quoted. It must not be a multi-line value.

Data can be a string or @filename to read from a file

For pictures @filename must be used and the extension of the file must be a recognized image file type (jpg, jpe, jpeg, bmp, png, gif)

If values include spaces or newlines they can be quoted. Multi-line values can be used in Linux, Cygwin or Unix. With Windows, multiline values cannot be used on the command line. To supply multi-line values in Windows either (1) use @filename and store the value in a file or (2) Install Cygwin and run the program from the Cygwin command line.

If any values are specified as empty (i.e. two quotes with nothing between), the frame is deleted from the tag

When updating files, any existing frames not explicitly updated are left unchanged.

All text values are trimmed (blanks, tabs, new-lines are deleted from the front and end).

The PRIV frame cannot be updated, except to delete it. The program does not cater for updating binary data in this case.

-SYNCHRONIZE

This copies values from id3v2 tags to id3v1 if they are present in id3v2 otherwise copies id3v1 values to id3v2. To synchronize updates performed in the same run this should be at the end of the options list. It is performed in sequence with the other operations.

filename

File name of mp3 file. Wild cards can be used to update multiple files, or several file names can be provided on the command line.

Mp3lame Command

jampal mp3lame [ -recode|-recode-even ]

Converts files in a directory to mp3 using lame or re-encodes mp3 files. If you use no input option, it encodes all wave files in the current directory that have extension wav. It encodes to 128K mp3.

In order to use this command you must have lame installed. Lame may not be available with your installation. It is free software and can be downloaded and installed.

This command checks the number of CPUs in your system and runs many files at one time, so that if you have two or more CPUs it can finish in the shortest time.

When either of the recode options is used, the ID3V2 tag is copied to the new file after the recoding is done.

If the songs were in a library, you should delete them and re-add them to the library after doing this.

Mp3lame Command Options

-recode

Re-encodes mp3 files in the current directory, but only if they have higher than 128K bit settings. It puts the re-encoded files in a subdirectory called recode.

-recode-even

Re-encodes all mp3 files in the current directory, regardless of their bit settings. It puts the re-encoded files in a subdirectory called recode.

Files

~/Music/library/default.jampal, ~/Music/library/playlist.jampal, ...

The default library and playlist that are created the first time jampal is run. Other libraries created by the user are put here unless the user requests otherwise.

~/Music/library/default.jmp, ~/Music/library/playlist.jmp, ...

Tab separated text files that contain the song details for each song in the default library and default playlist. Also files for other libraries created by the user.

~/.jampal/jampal_initial.properties

Customization settings for the GUI program. These are set by the ’Options Customize’ menu in the jampal user interface. These should not be directly edited.

ZZAlbums.txt

This file is placed in each Disk Directory by the cleanup command. It is a text file with each Album name in sequence, one per line. Using the -reorder option you can use this file with the cleanup command to reorder albums.

~/.jampal/jampal.conf

Default settings for directories and program locations. To change where files are stored or certain programs are found (e.g. OpenOffice), edit this file. If you want to use the same settings for multiple users you can move this file to /etc/jampal/jampal.conf. Each user’s own file in ~/.jampal/jampal.conf will take precedence over the one in /etc/jampal.

Environment

mp3lib_skip

When running cleanup, set to a 3-digit number to cause the program to skip some numbers when naming directories.

Diagnostics

Library needs to be saved: file-name

This means you have made some updates to the library through the GUI but the library has not been saved. The file name of one song that has been changed is listed. Go to the GUI and select the menu item "Library, Save", or else close the GUI. This could also happen if the GUI was terminated unexpectedly. In that case, re-open the GUI and either save the library or close the GUI again.

See Also

tagbkup(1)

Web

http://jampal.sourceforge.net

Table of Contents

• Name
• Synopsis
• Description
• Cygwin Under Windows
• Open Command
• Open Command Options
• Cleanup Command
• Cleanup Command Options
• Playlist Command
• Playlist Command Options
• Playlist Environment Variables
• Fieldcodes Command
• Fieldcodes Command Options
• Playlistcd Command
• Playlistcd Command Options
• Envelope Command
• Envelope Command Options
• Duplicates Command
• Duplicates Command Options
• Tagbkup Command
• Tagbkup Command Options
• Tagupdate Command
• Tagupdate Command Options
• Mp3lame Command
• Mp3lame Command Options
• Files
• Environment
• Diagnostics
• See Also
• Web