Phathack Media Manager

PhatHack Media Manager

GraceNote Edition

v1.0
User Documentation

Table of Contents

Technologies and Licensing Page 4

PhatHack Media Manager Background Page 5

General Introduction Page 6

Supported Operating Systems Page 6

System Requirements Page 6

Feature List Page 6

Basic Concepts Page 7

Watch Folders Page 7

Managing Media Page 7

Dynamic Playlists Page 8

Help and Support Page 8

Application Startup Page 9

User Interface Quick Reference Page 10

The Application Toolbar Page 11

The Media Filtering Toolbar Page 11

The Media Sources List Page 12

Device Context Menus Page 12

Media Category Context Menus Page 14

Media Item Context Menus Page 14

Options and Configuration Page 15

Accessing the Options Screen Page 15

Available Options and their Meanings Page 16

General Options Page 16

Encoder Settings Page 17

Media Player Settings Page 18

PhatSort Settings Page 18

Kenwood Keg / PhatBox Configuration Settings Page 19

Configuration Settings Storage Page 19

Modifying the Library Path Page 19

Adding Media Page 20

Importing Local Media Page 19

Importing Playlists Page 21

Table of Contents (continued)

Managing Playlists Page 23

Creating Playlists Page 23

Creating a New Playlist from Scratch Page 23

Generating a single playlist from Selected Media Page 23

Auto Generating Playlists from Selected Media Page 24

Editing Playlists Page 25

Using the Playlist Editor Page 25

Adding Media to the Playlist Page 26

Removing Media from the Playlist Page 26

CDDB Lookups and Tag Editing Page 26

Cover Art Lookup Page 27

GraceNote® Disc Submission Page 27

Committing the changes Page 27

Deleting Playlists Page 28

Modifying the Playlist Order Page 28

Transferring Media Page 29

CD Ripping Page 29

Transferring Media Page 31

Performing a media transfer Page 31

How configuration options affect media transfer Page 32

Multi-stage devices (Save & Eject) Page 32

Editing Media Page 33

Using the Tag Editor Page 34

Removing Media Page 35

Additional References Page 36

Thanks Page 36

Technologies & Licensing

PhatHack Media Manager makes use of, or contains references to, the following technologies, manufacturers, groups or individuals:

/ BASS, Copyright (c) 1999-Present Un4seen Developments Ltd.
/ BASS.NET API: Copyright © 2005-Present by radio42, Hamburg, Germany
Author: Bernd Niedergesaess (). All rights reserved.
BASS.NET is the property of radio42 and is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties.
/ Music and video recognition technology and related data are provided by Gracenote®. Gracenote is the industry standard in music recognition technology and related content delivery. For more information, please visit www.gracenote.com.
CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and music and video-related data from Gracenote, Inc., copyright © 2000 to present Gracenote. Gracenote Software, copyright © 2000 to present Gracenote. One or more patents owned by Gracenote apply to this product and service. See the Gracenote website for a non-exhaustive list of applicable Gracenote patents. Gracenote, CDDB, MusicID, MediaVOCS, the Gracenote logo and logotype, and the "Powered by Gracenote" logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Gracenote in the United States and/or other countries.
/ Copyright ©, PhatNoise, Inc. – All Rights Reserved. All trademarks, service marks and trade names, including without limitation, PHATNOISE, PHATNOISE CAR AUDIO SYSTEM,
PHATNOISE MUSIC MANAGER, PHATNOISE MEDIA MANAGER, PHATBOX, SSA/VOICE, DPGT and DMS are proprietary to PhatNoise, Inc.
/ Copyright ©, Kenwood USA, Corp and PhatNoise, Inc. – All Rights Reserved. All trademarks, service marks and trade names, including without limitation, KENWOOD, EXCELON, MUSIC KEG, are proprietary to Kenwood Corporation.

This application is licensed under the FREEWARE license agreement, and therefore is available at no cost.

PhatHack Media Manager Background

First conceived in January 2007 and formerly named vDMS manager, PhatHack Media Manager began life as an alternative application for Microsoft® Windows with the explicit aim of managing the media on a PhatNoise® PhatBox or Kenwood® Music Keg.

Whilst such functionality already exists within products such as PhatNoise Media Manager ©, the author personally felt the user experience was affected by a number of defects that were not being addressed. In July 2007 PhatNoise Inc., then a subsidiary company of Harman Kardon, disappeared from public view and without any formal notifications, the PhatBox ® was discontinued.

Several Alpha releases of the application were made to the public through the author’s own website (http://phathackmm.com) whilst being worked on during his spare time.

Over this period the author grew more and more frustrated with the likes of Microsoft ® Windows Media Player and NullSoft® WinAMP and decided to make the application more generic, allowing it to be targeted to multiple user-bases, specifically:

· PhatNoise ® PhatBox and Kenwood ® Music Keg owners

· CarPC Owners

· MP3 Player Users

The application architecture was modified several times over a 3 year period before the final feature set was decided, and realised for the first official release in July 2010, after lengthy input from various Alpha version users.

General Introduction

PhatHack Media Manager is an application designed to allow you to import, organise, tag and transfer media amongst supported devices.

Supported Operating Systems

PhatHack Media Manager has been confirmed to work on the following operating systems:

· Windows XP (all)

· Windows Vista (x86, x64 all versions)

· Windows 7 (x86, x64 all versions)

We have not yet tried other operating systems, but if you want to try it out and let us know the results please feel free!

System Requirements

The target machine must have the following installed:

DirectX 9 or above
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (Service Pack 1 and advantage, but not necessary)
Windows Installer 3.0

Feature List:

· Manage your media library in a playlist fashion

· Multiple file formats supported including: AAC, FLAC, MP3, MP4, OGG, WAV, WMA

· Transcoding on-the-fly (during transfer)

· Album voice announcement support

· Voice announcement dictionary (perfect control over TTS voice announcements)

· Mostly skinnable User Interface

· HTTP Audio stream support (ICECast/Shoutcast/Windows Media Server)

· WinAMP visualization support, including full screen option

· CD Ripping direct to device (ASPI)

· PhatRIP - multi-pass CD extraction

· GraceNote CDDB Lookup Support

· Playlist and tag editor

· Multiple Import Methods (iTunes ®, Playlists, Media Center, Directory scans)

· PhatNoise DMS support

· PhatSort Integration (for DMS only)

· Dynamic playlist support (useful for DMS SSA/VIOT modes only)

· Bulk normalization

· 7-level Media View modes: Playlist, Album, Artist, Genre, Year, Decade, Recently Added (Import Dates)

Basic Concepts

Before starting to use PhatHack Media Manager it is important to understand some of the terminology used in the application, and the concepts that were used to derive the application functionality.

Essentially PhatHack Media Manager is a device management utility allowing you to easily store and transfer media between devices. Throughout the application you may see reference to 'Media Device'. Within the context of the application, 'Media Device' applies to any logical or physical device that can be used to store media (audio/video). Examples of these devices are, and not limited to:

Local Computer Folders (Logical)
CD or DVD drives (Physical)
MP3 Players(Physical)
'Card readers' (Physical i.e. SD, XD, Flash)
DMS Cartridges (Physical - PhatBox / Kenwood Keg)

Unlike traditional media management utilities, PhatHack Media Manager does not require you to scan all disks containing media. It allows you to import and manage media at your own pace and store it in whatever way you like. To this end, the application has a concept known as 'Watch Folders'.

Watch Folders

Watch folders allow you to create a virtual media device linked to a physical path on your computer (or indeed Network Share). A virtual media device in this context is a device that has its own configuration options and can be used to import media, and transfer media to and from another 'media device'.

Managing Media

At present only audio based media is supported through the application.

Each Media Device is assigned its own database into which media can be ‘imported’. Importing is the mechanism of adding media to the library, either by scanning media from specified locations or transferring it from another Media Device.

Once available to a Media device, media can be viewed in 7 different ways, by switching the 'Viewing Mode'. The viewing modes currently available are:

· Playlist

· Album

· Artist

· Genre

· Year

· Decade

· Recently Added (date)

Dynamic Playlists

In this version of the application, a dynamic playlist is a playlist that is automatically generated, and maintained by the application through the importing of media.

Rather than forcing users to create and manage their media through playlists, when initially importing the media, the application will find empty slots in a dynamic playlist and fill them.

If the dynamic playlist is full, controlled by the application configuration, then a new Playlist is created.

As Dynamic Playlists are solely generated from the process of importing media, you are still able to create, edit and maintain your own playlists separately.

Help and Support

PhatHack Media Manager is a community driven, non-commercial project, currently maintained by a single developer. Therefore phone-based, real-time support is not currently available (or planned).

We appreciate that at times there may be questions or problems that you might need help with and are glad to offer support in one of the following ways:

1. The PhatHack Media Manager Community Forums

Visit http://www.phathackmm.com, become a registered member, and post in the relevant section of the forums.

2. The PhatHack Community Forums

Visit http://forum.phathack.com, become a registered member, and post in the relevant section of the forums.

3. E-mail: send any questions or problem reports to:

4. IRC: We offer ‘real-time’ support for anyone using IRC, or via the web. To connect to our support channel via the web, click on the following URL (or enter it into your browser):

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=phathack-mediamanager&uio=Mj10cnVlJjQ9dHJ1ZQfa

If you run an IRC client, please connect to irc.freenode.net and join the channel #phathack-mediamanager.

NOTE: IRC real-time support is only available between the hours of 7am and 4pm GMT, Monday to Friday

Application Startup

To start PhatHack Media Manager click on:

· Start

· All Programs

· PhatHack

· PhatHack Media Manager

It can be launched by clicking on the 'PhatHack Media Manager' shortcut:

Whenever you start PhatHack Media Manager it runs through a simple startup process, containing several stages, and displays the current progress on the splash screen whilst doing so as illustrated:

The PhatHack Media Manager Splash Screen

Startup Stages

The application runs through the following stages, at startup:

· Determines the state of the screensaver of your machine (for full screen visualization playback purposes)

· Processes and executes any command lines (see command lines section for more information)

· Starts remote control support (as in Media Center type remotes - not implemented as yet)

· Loads the audio libraries

· Determines the supported audio extension types

· Validates the application paths (configuration, library etc)

· Sets the startup volume

· Plays the PhatHack startup sound (if not disabled by the options)

· Initializes the TTS (Text To Speech) engine

· Configures the internal transcoder options

· Loads the available application skins

· Activates the current skin

· Loads the track popup overlay skin

· Scans and initializes the Media Devices/Folders/Libraries

User Interface Quick Reference

The main user interface remains one of few screens within the application that do not support skins.

Once the application is loaded, you are presented with main user interface as illustrated below:

The main user interface consists of the following key areas:

The Application Toolbar: /
Media Filtering Toolbar: /
The Media Sources List: /
The ‘Categories’ List: /
The ‘Available Media’ List: /
The Information bar: /

The Application Toolbar

The application toolbar is the main point of entry for performing various tasks.

In order the buttons on the toolbar are:

Caption / Image / Function
Exit / / Allows you to close PhatHack Media Manager
Playlist / / Allows you to perform various playlist based tasks
RIP CD/Transfer Files /
/ Allows you to transfer media between devices
(Image and caption alters according to the selected device)
Media Player / / Launches PhatHack Media Manager’s build in media-player
Swap Skin / / Allows you to swap between user interfaces
Tools / / Allows you to access various built in tools
DMS Utilities / / Allows you to perform various DMS specific functions
About / / Allows you to display information about the application and/or associated technologies

The Media Filtering Toolbar

The media filtering toolbar allows you to modify the criteria under which the application will display the media that is currently available (having been imported) into the application, for the selected device.

Caption / Image / Function
View Media By / / Allows you to select the method of displaying the available media
Filter / / Allows you to enter text that the application will use to show you media matching what you have entered, across the various media tags

The Media Sources List

The media sources list will show you any supported media devices that are currently available on your computer. The following is a list of the supported devices, along with an appropriate image of each