Karaoke Forums

Try this one then -

You are a salesman and you get paid commission once a month on the items you sold that month.

You sold 10 Model XYZ Wonder Widgets last month. $1,000.00 commission on each one sold.

You open your pay check expecting to see $10,000 in commission but it says $0.00 commission

You march to accounting and ask what the heck the problem is -

Acct - Oh, we discontinued the Model XYZ yesterday.
You - Yes, but I sold 10 of them last month - you owe me $10,000 in commission
Acct - I'm sorry, we have no record of that in the database.

You go upstairs and complain to your boss.

Boss - Oh Hey, I was just about to call you up here. I'm in the middle of your performance review here and I notice that your commission rate is very low over the past year. I'm afraid We are going to have to let you go.
You - What? I've sold over $200,000 in commission on the Model XYZ in the past year.
Boss - We no longer carry the XYZ, We just added XYZPlus model this morning.
You - But my commission this year was over $200,000 on the XYZ alone. I sold more XYZ's then everyone else combined. How can I be at the bottom of the sales list?
Boss - Sorry, we don't have any record of that in the database.

This is what happens when you set cascade delete relationships between tables incorrectly.
A well designed database would just mark the XYZ as no longer available. It would no longer show up in the current products list but all information regarding it's past would still be preserved and readily available.

I suggested to Bob (months ago) to simply (?) gray out the inaccurate file paths so that you know that they won't work. I did not get a yes or no from him........ so maybe.

It's possible with the right database and commands as JustKaraoke turns red any file that has changed from available to unavailable. Bob doesn't always take suggestions as they are: Just Suggestions, too well. His products are by far very good but some can be improved. Like I would love to suggest making it easy to add various naming conventions into the database when importing the songs into the database.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I seem to have a pretty decent relationship with Bob. Feel free to PM me suggestions and I will gather them and submit.

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-Chris

Danny, There are 11 naming conventions for import. What do you need that he hasn't offerered?

Wait a second, I could have sworn that karma had the ability to create a custom import template, am I mistaken?

Karma can import from a variety of naming conventions as well as ID3 Tags.

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-Chris

I think that what he may be referring to here is having the built in capability to take a directory containing multiple different file name conventions and having the program automatically decipher and/or rename the files to your chosen format before adding them to the media list.

It would be cool, and you could get close - real close. - but it would be slow and there would always be weird ones that you would still have to fix manually or write special handlers to fix.

Karaoke Version for instance would need special handling -

Here is the process you would have to go through just to see if it is possible to automate the KV brand renaming.


Example:

Conchita_Wurst_Rise_Like_A_Phoenix(MP3+CDG_Karaoke)_424470.zip

1) Can this filename be parsed automatically?
No - This file has 6 underscores _ but other KV song files will have different numbers of them depending on the artist and the number of words in each title. The computer has no way of knowing where to split the artist name and the title for each song.
We're dead in the water already.

But wait! . . .

The actual mp3 and the cdg file names that are in the zip file are different then the zip file name.
These files DO have consistent (space hyphen space) delimiters that would allow the computer to know where to break them apart

Conchita_Wurst_Rise_Like_A_Phoenix(MP3+CDG_Karaoke)_424470.zip - zip file contains -
Conchita Wurst - Rise Like A Phoenix - 424470.mp3
Conchita Wurst - Rise Like A Phoenix - 424470.cdg

We can successfully get artist/title/id by unzipping each zip file and working with the names of the actual mp3 & cdg files.


2) Can the computer determine the brand and a unique ID?
Brand is not shown anywhere in any of the KV filenames.
Nope - can't directly get the brand here
Can we figure it out indirectly? hmmm
text after last delimiter (space hyphen space) is a number followed by the .file extension
Is this consistent for all KV downloads?
browsing all my KV downloads it appears that yes the number is always last (at least for the KV I own).
Does any other brand put the disc number last with no brand identifier?
Not that I have found in my database.
Result - We cannot be sure that somewhere, sometime, some company will also ship files with the last field a number and no brand name, but for now we will go ahead and assume it is a KV.
We can semi-mostly confidently? tell the computer now that if all of the text between the last hyphen and the .file extension is a number it is a KV Brand

So now we have our DiscID - We will add a KV at the start so that we will be able to tell it is a KV when we look at it in the file list.

KV424470

But Wait!
We have a song(disc) number but no track number. Some of the KJ programs require a track number.
Browsing through my KV catalog I believe that the numbers in each different song are unique so let's just call each of them a cd and say that the song is track 01 of that particular imaginary CD.

KV424470-01 Alright! - we have a branded - DiscId and TrackId

On to the Artist and Title!
Conchita Wurst - Rise Like A Phoenix - 424470.mp3
Conchita Wurst - Rise Like A Phoenix - 424470.cdg

3) Artist Name -
After checking all my KV download files it appears that the format is always Artist/Title/DisID so . . . WE KNOW THE ARTIST NAME!
But wait -
Do we want first name last name or last name, first name?
Do we want ,The at the end of group names ie
Beatles
Beatles, The
The Beatles(Never choose this one as you will end up with 30 pages of The when sorting your media list)
Do we want ALL CAPS?
Jeez this is getting involved!
The ONLY way you can come close to automating this for both the artist AND the title is to create a compare table that contains every possible combination of artist and group name along with your desired output.

Find Replace with
Beatles Beatles, The
Roy Orbison Orbison, Roy
Conchita Wurst Wurst, Conchita

for now we'll just leave the artist and title as is.

So now we have our DiscID-Track, our Artist, and our Title

Let's put them together in the "standard" naming format
KV424470-01 - Conchita Wurst - Rise Like a Phoenix

Rename the file
Add the file to the media Database
Next file please

Easy Peasy! . . . . right

Even while typing I already see one scenario that would blow this routine.

We're assuming that if the last delimited field is a number that it is a KV brand file in Artist/Title/DiscID format.
What if the song was SF225-06 - Teardrops - 411 a DiscID/Title/Artist format and the artist was 411 . . . boom . . . oops
This is the kind of stuff that makes it so difficult to do a "simple" automation.

right click the zip file
click "rename"
spend 10 seconds renaming the fine
problem solved.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

I solve the issue by renaming them as I download. Not cumbersome at all. I do this even while I am running a show, just do a SAVE AS and change the file name on the fly.

I see dsm's point though i feel the issue should be resolved by Karaoke Version and not by a 3rd party utility. KV should have an industry standard naming convention. Silly French people....

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-Chris

Pardon'


Chris you are VERY welcome. The more handy I can make the wireless the more it will reduce my "non show" time. Adding an outlet to the side of the speaker will be one of those handy things I am referring to. I can't wait to see where this will go.

Exactly! Click download, save file as and fix it right then & there! Easy peasy!

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Sorry I got it wrong. I was thinking about karafun, not Karma. I like the mp3 tag way cause I unzip most files I download unless I'm downloading from JustKaraoke's Store as it drops into the database on it's own after correcting the naming convention.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Solved for the moment perhaps, but not future proofed.

The cdg and mp3 files inside the renamed zip won't match the name of the zip unless you rename them also. If you decided at a later date to go with an unzipped media database you would have to rename the cdg & mp3 file once you unzipped them..

Yes you can do all 3 manually in 15-30 seconds per song file but . . . . just sayin' - that automation thang would be cool!.

You can buy any computer made in the last 5 years and it will handle leaving your files in .ZIP format without causing any performace issues.

Or.....

KJ File Manager will rename the files in the ZIP package to match the .ZIP file name.

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-Chris

Yep . . . I leave all mine zipped. Just thinking of those who want to be "Bob" approved by unzipping! 8>)

My process:

1) Rename .zip files to the naming convention I prefer using Bob's KJ File Manager.
2) Unzip using KJ File Manager which renames both underlying .cdg and .mp3 to my naming convention on the fly.
3) Write MP3 Tags with KJ File Manager.
4) Zip files using KJ File Manager or MP3+G Toolz.

I'm not a fan of Bob or the service he provides, but I definitely like the software he provides.