KayJayPro

But Wait

KJ Pro is not ready to accept your money yet!!!. So you can't get an account with them. I've told them to get on the ball and that they're losing money but i'm not sure why they're moving so slowly. I've enabled this feature for all users, so there is no preference panel to turn it on. When KJ Pro gets their act together and actually let's you pay them for their wonderful service, the feature will expire. If you wish to keep using the service, at that time you will be expected to pay a nominal subscription fee (i think $5/month?). Which, IMHO is cheap considering how much typing you save if you're ripping new discs every month.

Introduction

KJ Pro™ is a commercial database that contains a subset of meta data for just about every single karaoke disc that exists. That is, it contains entries that specify, for each CD, all the artist, album, and track title information. Presently there are over 331 thousand entries in the database. kJams incorporates access to this database so that, when you insert a CD, all you have to do is supply the correct "database ready" title of the disc, then the database is queried for the CD's meta info, so that you don't have to type it in.

Local and Remote Access

kJams will always attempt to find the information about a disc using a local copy of the database. If nothing is found, will then attempt to reach the database over the internet (if you have this option enabled). The Local database is entirely optional and many people will choose not have the local database installed, as it is quite large and does not automatically stay up to date like the internet database. It does come in handy, however, if you plan to play discs when you do not have access to the internet (eg: if you're a professional KJ and you're taking your laptop to a venue with no internet access). To install the local database, see below.

Getting Track Data for a CD

Any time a CD is selected in kJams, you can attempt to get the disc info using this database. Currently, when you go to the "Advanced" menu and choose "Get CD Tracks from KJ Pro...", kJams will then ask you for the "database ready" name of the disc. This means you first need to find the disc name that KJ Pro uses to reference the disc, and paste it into the dialog. When found, kJams will update the copy of the meta data that kJams keeps for that disc. Note you will loose any info currently stored for that disc.

1. stick in your disc
2. either the KJ Pro dialog will automatically pop up, or you can pick "Advanced -> Get Tracks from KJ Pro…"
3. now switch to your web browser
4. go to the KJPro web site
5. enter the disc number (do not enter any letters, eg: if you have Pocket Songs 1234, just enter 1234) into the "Disc #" field
6. if you do not see your disc, then it's not in the database.
7. if you see your disc, click the link to it
8. verify that this is, in fact, your disc
9. in the URL bar, you will see "DiscNo=" followed by the actual "database ready" name of the disc
10. double click on that, so that you have selected all the text that follows "DiscNo="
11. Edit->Copy
12. go back to kJams
13. paste it into the KJ Pro dialog and press return
14. that's it!

Assigning Metadata to songs in any Playlist

This also works for playlists with less than 30 songs in them. The songs MUST be in the correct track order and MUST contain every song in the album. Sort the playlist by "#" first (NOT by track number), and drag-reorder them to get them into the correct order. Then select the playlist and then go Advanced->Get CD Tracks from KJ Pro. Note, if the songs are in the wrong order, it will still "work" but you will have set the wrong meta data on the wrong songs!! Simply re-order the songs into the correct order, and re-get, and they should reset to being correct.

Scenario: So the metadata of your tracks is all messed up. Maybe you have a bunch of files with names like "Track 01.zip" or some such. You know the album name, so you can check the KJPro database for the information, and fix everything by hand, but that can be very time consuming, especially if you have multiple albums that need to be fixed. Perhaps you don't like the names that get assigned by any of the other databases accessible from the Advanced menu (TrackType, freedb, or MusicBrainz) or perhaps they do not have a listing for your album. Here is a (somewhat) simple procedure that will allow you to pull metadata from the KJPro and apply it to your tracks, assigning them the correct ID3 tags.

1. First, make a playlist with the tracks in the album you wish to fix. (Click the "+" button on the lower left of the browser window and then drag your tracks to the new playlist. To save time later, you may wish to drag them in track order.)
2. Next, browse the KJPro site to find the information for that album. Make sure that you have all the necessary tracks. You MUST have the same number of tracks in your playlist as KJPro lists in their database. If you do not, either get them, or if you can't, follow the suggestions in the Notes below.
3. If you do not have the tracks ordered by track number, and you have the track numbers, sort this playlist by track. Then select "Set User Sort Order" from the "Special" submenu under the Advanced menu. This will make the playlist "#" order correspond to the Track order. If you do not have track numbers, sort by the "#" field. (If you do not have the "#" field visible, right click on any column header and scroll through the pop-up menu to "#", and then sort.) Then drag each track to the correct position in the playlist corresponding to its track order as shown by KJPro. In either case, double check to make sure that you have all tracks listed, and that the order of the "#" field corresponds with the correct track order from KJPro. This is EXTREMELY important. If the tracks are not in the correct order, they will be incorrectly named, and you will have to sort it all out by hand. (See Notes, below.)
4. Did you double check to make sure the tracks are in EXACTLY the same order as on the KJPro site?
5. Select "Get CD Tracks from KJPro™…" from the Advanced menu.
6. Enter the album name into the dialog box that comes up. Make sure you type it exactly as you see it on the KJPro site. To be safe, you can cut and paste it. To save time you can type it in whatever format you use in your library (all caps, lower case, first letter caps, etc.. The way you type it is the way it will be assigned to the individual tracks.)
7. Click OK.

And there you go. All your tracks will be renamed to match the KJPro database.

Notes: As stated above, you MUST have the same number of tracks in your playlist as KJPro lists for that album. If you do not have all the tracks you need (say you are missing one of the songs on the album) you can create a dummy placeholder by going to the correct album folder in the Finder, duplicating a song (by selecting a song and typing CMD-D) renaming it something informative, like the name of the missing track or just "dummy track.zip", dragging it into your playlist, and then placing it at the position corresponding to the missing track. This dummy track takes the place of the missing track. After you have finished the metadata assignment procedure above, feel free to now delete this dummy track (or keep it around to use again later for fixing additional metadata. Just remove it from your Library, in the Finder drag it to a location where you can find it again, reimport it to your Library, and give it its own playlist in kJams.)

If for some reason you get the message "Disc not found" After you select "Get CD Tracks from KJPro™…" from the Advanced menu, Check to make sure that the blue "focus border" is around the browser frame. If it is and you still get the error message, this is a good indication that one or more of your tracks have become separated from the original file(s). Play each one until you find the ones that will not play, and re-link them to the original files in your Library.

If you mess up, and did not put the tracks in the correct order (was I not clear enough about how important this is?) do not freak out. Play each track to identify it, and assign it the correct track number from the KJPro database. Do not worry about any of the other fields. After all the tracks have the correct track number, sort by track order, and then select "Set User Sort Order" from the "Special" submenu under the Advanced menu. This will make the playlist order correspond to the Track order. Follow the steps above starting at Step 4, double checking the track order!

Installing the Local Access database

This section will be expanded when that option is available. Come back soon for more info.

Preferences

First you will need to purchase a subscription to the KJ Pro database. To do that, press the "Get Account…" button and follow the onscreen instructions. (presently this does not do anything, the option will be available soon). Enter your user name and code number into the provided spaces. If you do not check the "Use KJ Pro™ Online Database", then only the local database will be used, if it is found. This pref panel is not used at this time, the feature is turned on and the service is currently free. This may change at any time.