CAVS

CAVS is a manufacturer of standalone karaoke disc players, jukeboxes, and streaming audio servers. Their hardware line includes the widely-used DVD-203G series which can play traditional CD+G discs, Video CDs, "Super-CDG" discs (which are actually DVD-ROMs), and external storage devices connected to its USB port, such as a hard drive or USB "key" drive.

Songs on external devices are stored in a series of folders, one for every disc 'ripped' into the system:

 SC08\         <- Folder with "Disc/Album" Name
   00001.MCG   <- graphics file for song #1
   00001.MP3   <-    audio file for song #1
 
   00002.MCG   <- graphics file for song #2
   00002.MP3   <-    audio file for song #2
   ...
   ENGLISH.INX <- encoded text for on-screen navigation menus
   list.txt    <- Text file containing song and artist info for each track

The "list.txt" file provides Artist and Title meta data for all songs in the folder where it resides. It is formatted like so:

 Song#|Song Title|Artist Name
 
 00001|My Best Friend's Girl|Cars, The
 00002|These Boots Are Made For Walking|Nancy Sinatra
 00003|She's A Lady|Tom Jones

Importing into kJams

1. Launch kJams and choose "Add To Library..."
2. Choose a CAVS disc folder containing MCG and MP3 files.
3. There's no step 3! kJams automagically detects the CAVS list.txt file inside the folder and uses its contents to tag all songs with appropriate artist and title names. It even adds genre information like "Musical" or "Duets" whenever possible!

Note 1: if you get asked whether to use "File Names" or "Tags", pick "File Names" but only because it is slightly faster, it doesn't really matter if you pick "Tags" or if you have it set to automatically always pick "Tags".

Note 2: If your discs were originally ripped using improper meta data or poor CAVS software settings, the resulting list.txt files can look pretty crummy; missing punctuation, truncated names, and ALL CAPS are common problems. kJams corrects as much as it can by filling in common punctuation and setting words in Capital Case. If you want better results, edit the list.txt file(s) before importing, or edit the resulting name fields within kJams after importing.

Note 3: Unless you "push meta data" or edit the meta data for every song in the import, then it's recommended that you also keep the list.txt file for future re-importing, in case you ever need to rebuild your kJams library from scratch. If you have edited or pushed all the meta data, then you can throw this file out.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CONTINUING CAVS USERS: If you plan to continue using your MCGs and MP3s with CAVS, it is strongly recommended that you create a backup copy in another location before using them with kJams. This is because kJams renames the files for any song whose info you modify within its list view.

For example, if you entered "Cars - Gary Numan" into the title and artist fields for unnamed song "00004", the 00004.MCG and 00004.MP3 files would become 'Cars - Gary Numan.MCG' and 'Cars - Gary Numan.MP3'. The new names of the files make them unusable with CAVS.

References

^[1] SuperCDGs can't be ripped directly; they first have to go through a rather laborious process using several PC-based utilities to create MCGs and MP3s. From there, you can proceed with the "Importing" instructions above. If you would like ti import your SuperCDG's, please contact Dave and I'll try to work it in :)