Add To Library…

Importing pre-existing MP3+G, Zip, QuickTime, MPEG, kar, midi

In the following explanation, I am going to use these conventions:
R - artist name
S - song name
L - album name
T - track number
/ - stands for "folder named <blaa>" where <blaa> is what follows the slash, eg: "/R" is a folder who's name is the artist's name

Okay. As you know, pre existing songs can be named a variety of ways. eg:

LEG086-07 - U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.zip
SC8397-13.zip
AH2003-03 - Pink Floyd - Time.zip
BL21-04_-_Every_Breath_You_Take_-_Police,_The
Adams, Bryan - Cuts Like A Knife - SC-1.zip

Now, the problem is, it takes a human to interpret these names. Some are laid out "L-T - S - R.xxx", some are "L-T - R - S.xxx", some could be "T S.xxx. Some songs have "pretty" names in the names of the folders enclosing the song! For kJams to "get it" about how to interpret them, you will need to pre-sort your song files into folders where the names have a similar format. EG: put all the files who's names are "L-T - S - R.xxx" in one folder, and all those with "L-T - R - S.xxx" in a separate folder. See, the kJams "Add to Library" function assumes that all files in a folder have the same name format, otherwise it would ask you to interpret every single file. So just pre-sort your library into sub folders.

Another thing to watch out for: Numbers. Numbers in the song title are illegal except for the track. To get around this, you can use periods or non-breaking spaces (option-space) next to the non-track number. EG: if your song is "03 25 or 6 to 4", (the first 03 being the track number), you should first rename it to be "03 25.Or.6.To.4", the periods could be real periods, or they could be option-spaces.

Another convention, for unzipped files, and sometimes for zipped files, is to use the folder heirarchy to store meta info. EG: "/R/S/L-T.cdg" is common, or even "/R/S/L-T - S - A.cdg" or "/R/S/L-T - A - S.cdg". This means there is a folder who's name is the artist name, inside that is a folder who's name is the song name, inside that are the MP3+G files or the zip files that match that artist/song (could be more than one). In this case, you should NOT sort them ingo "L-T - S - A" and "L-T - A - S" and "L-T" sub-folders because I've already gotten the song and artist info from the enclosing folder names, so you could have them all in the same folder. I just get the album and track off the file itself.

Here are examples from my library: In the above picture, i've created a "More Music" folder. This could be your external HD filled with songs. But inside that, i've created a folder called "zip standard", could be called anything, it just separates the zip files from the unzipped files. Inside "zip", here's the big secret: make new folders that correspond to the types of songs in your library. I found that I had these three types of names: LTRS, LTSR, and RSLT, I then sorted my entire library into these three folders. The following show examples of the other two folders:

Above is the "Album-Track-Song-Artist" group of songs

And finally, above shows songs with names like "Artist-Song-Album-Track"

Below, you can see I've also created a folder for unzipped files. The format should be similar to what you see here.

After you have sorted your library like the above, it should only take four clicks to import your entire library. You may want to trash your "kJams Library" folder to start fresh. Then go "File->Open / Add to Library" and choose your equivalent of the "More Music"folder. You'll get the interpret dialog, looks like this:

In this case, the correct interpretation is the first one, so you just click on the top box (the one with the correct interpretation). If you don't see the correct interp, the button at the bottom on the left will say either "Not These" or "More Choices", so click that to get more choices, until the correct one shows up, then click the correct one. Don't use the "Use for all items..." radio button.