Ripping

Preparation

Before you put in your first CD, I recommend you turn off the thing that automatically launches iTunes when you put in a disc.

1. Go to Apple->System Preferences->CDs and DVDs
2. Change "When you insert a music CD" so it says "ignore". Alternately make it run kJams. But make sure it does NOT run iTunes.

Also, to Rip to MP3, make sure you've installed the LAME encoder.

Now, you must select the format you want your songs to be converted to when you rip, in the Importing Preferences pane:

First pick the encoder you want, then under that, pick the preset you want, or create a new one. You can edit the preset by pressing the "Edit…" button. kJams ships with several presets defined for each encoder, (or just one when only one really makes sense). You can pick the encoder and preset only once if you like, and never worry about it again, until you want to rip a different format. The four buttons, "New…", "Duplicate", "Rename…", and "Delete" apply to the preset files. Your presets are stored in the kJams preferences folder (~/Preferences/kJams/Import/).

Caveats

• In the "QuickTime Movie" encoder, under "Audio" settings, DO NOT pick audio types that aren't already set as presets. eg: Only pick Linear PCM, AAC, or Apple Lossless. If you pick any others, kJams won't be able to play them. I hope to fix this soon, but until then, these are your only choices.
• Meta info is stored only in MP3 (ID3 v2 tags) and QuickTime (QT Meta Info) files. If you export to any other, currently, no meta info is set.

Ripping

1. stick in your disc
2. enter all meta info (see below for how)
3. select the tracks you want
4. drag them to the Library

When ripping, the rip can complete before the encoding. eg: stick in a disc, select all, drag to your library. The rip will proceed at full speed, while the encoding goes along two at a time in the background. Shortly you will hear the "Boop-doop-blink!" sound, indicating the rip is finished. At this point, you can eject the CD. Note however that depending on the speed of your machine and your compression settings, the encoding may still be going on in the background. Open the Tasks window to see what's going on. If you quit kJams before the encoding is finished, it's a bit risky, because the only full copy of the song is in the cache, it has not yet been encoded and stored in your library. When you next run kJams, it will notice there are songs in the cache that haven't been encoded and it will start converting them, which you can see in the Tasks window. Although kJams is smart enough to pick up encoding songs that it didin't finish before the previous quit, it's best to let all the encode tasks finish before quitting.

How to enter meta info

1. Double click the CD
2. If the album is a compilation of artists (typical) then in the "Artist" field, enter "Various", else enter the artist's name
3. For "Album", enter the publisher abbreviation followed by the disc number, eg: "Sound Choice 4321" would be "Sc4321". This is the sortof standardized format for referring to a Karaoke album. If it's a regular CD you can just enter the actual album name
4. Make sure you enter a year, zero is NOT a valid year. If you're not sure, just set it to this year.
5. For Genre, you can type it in if you know it, or pick from the list. Best to pick from the list to make sure it is legal.
6. For category, it frankly doesn't matter. Pick something, anything. "Misc" is fine.
7. Press "OK"

Now that you've set the info for the CD, you want to set it for all the tracks.

1. Select all the tracks (select one, then go "Edit->Select All")
2. File->Get Info (⌘-I)
3. If the Artist is the same for all tracks on the disc, then enter the Artist name (in this example, "U2"). Most karaoke discs have various artists on the disc, in that case, skip this step.
4. The Album should already be set from the previous step
5. If the Genre is the same for all tracks on the disc, then enter the Artist name (in this example, "U2"). Some karaoke discs have various Genres on the disc, in that case, skip this step.
6. Set the year
7. Hit "OK"

If there are a subset of songs that have the same artist, select only those songs, get info, and enter the artist, this sets the info for all the selected songs. Repeat as necessary for all groups of songs that have the same info, eg: genre.

Now that you've set the info that is the same for all tracks on the CD, you want to set it for all individual tracks.

1. Select track # 1 only
2. File->Get Info (⌘-I)
3. Enter the song name
4. If the artist is unique for this song, enter the artist name too
5. Press the "Next" button and repeat the process 'till you wrap back around to the first track.
6. Press "OK"

Now that you've entered the info for the disc, please submit it to the "freedb" so that others may benefit. Select your CD and go to Advanced->Submit CD Tracks to freedb…