Premise Apparently Premise Doesn't Like MP3 ID V2.4 Tags

[etc6849]

What would you switch too? I've looked and I can't find anything like Premise. I love the architecture as it can be made to work with just about anything. Homeseer sounds like an option, but I've heard too many stories of software issues. The mainstream integration vendors (AMX, Elan and Creston) seem to be against having an open platform; let alone sharing technical documents and software with an end user.

Premise has proven very stable for me thus far. That said, Control4 looks promising and is somewhat affordable. You'd have to be a dealer to get the professional software version though.

 

[Waynedb]

I must admit I don't really care about tags for my music files, I use Damon's Jukebox for picking files to play and it seems to work fine. I looked at some of my .flac files and some had full info showing and some just said folk.
I looked at the help file and found this on Premise reading tags.

1. Optional: Use the FormatString property to force Premise Server to supply artist, album, and track names/numbers based upon the filename and path of media files. This is a fantastic way to supply information for a media object if you have a database type collection of mp3's. Use % and a keyword to delineate the naming scheme of the filenames and folders. For example, if you had a central location that contained different folders for different artists which contained folders for each of their albums which contained the song files whose names are something like "01 - SongTitle.mp3", then you could supply a FormatString such as: \%artist\%album\%tracknumber - %trackname and Premise Server will supply the artist name, album name, track number and track name for each media object that follows that directory structure. If you have a mix of directory structures, simply use another FileProvider with a different FormatString.
   
   • Note: You must supply a FormatString before defining the path (step 9) so Premise Server can supply the names while the files are being loaded.

I never entered anything in the format string box and some files have metadata so I don't know if this helps or not.

 

[samgreco]

Well, this all started because I had some MP3 files that weren't playing. But in the process of making those work, we found that tags were not. So theoretically I am OK now. But really, I dislike iTunes and how it works, so I am considering switching my music format anyway. BUT lossless is important to me AND I still have a iPhone that I'd like to keep putting music on. That limits format choices somewhat.

Plain MP3s work everywhere and tagging would work in Premise, but I'd lose lossless.

I do have my music in Artist > Album > xx - Title format, so the lack of tags isn't a huge deal.

etc6849 - I really don't know what I'd switch to. Music playback is the most important feature to me. I have done VERY little on the automation side. In fact, I have a mix of UPB and X10 stuff and that's it. A few scenes, a schedule or 2 and Music. And I like the way mSense manages ins and outs and such. Except for Internet Radio...

 

[chucklyons]

thanks for the file, Sam.

A couple of questions: Why lossless and why won't it play via Premise? (I have nary a clue)
iTunes plays ? MP4? M4a? Mp3?
Internet radio? What is it? What has worked, what no longer works and how do you use it? (I have nary a clue)
Why limited automation? Time? Scripting?
I almost made the jump to the iPhone, BUT when I was able to look at my traffic map via Premise on my Windows Mobile....

 

[samgreco]

Well....

Lossless - Because I am real picky when it comes to music. My other life (read: don't make any money at it) is as a recording engineer/musician. Just the idea of compressing audio files when HD space is so cheap makes me nuts. And yes, I can hear the difference.

I forgot the contortions needed to make m4a or mp4 files play in Premise/Windows Media Player. You have to get WMP to play it, then premise will. It's a long drawn out process.

As for Internet Radio, I haven't tried anything for quite some time because there seemed to be a period of time when nothing would play, so I gave up. I'll have to try again soon. But there are lots of things out there like Pandora, Shoutcast, etc.

Limited automation: Time, lack of money, lack of scripting knowledge.

I got the iPhone almost 2 years ago because I needed a smartphone since I am a one man business and I needed to be able to not only get email, but deal with customer contact info and calendars for the business while is was out at client sites. And my Motorola Razr just wasn't cutting it There was a great deal out there at the time for refurbished iPhones. Sealed the deal for me. Now I wish I had gone for an Android phone

Honestly, now all my rippped music is playing in Premise. The lack of tag info is really not a huge issue. I just KNOW it's supposed to be there. But the original issue that started this thread is solved. Don't use UNC paths and everything works.

But I am finding that alot of my media consumption is moving to online sources and I'd like t o integrate that into Premise. The idea of buying a piece of hardware to play internet radio when my Premise server should be able to play them seems wrong

 

[Waynedb]

I use a Squeezebox receiver to play internet radio, sometimes I just use my iPod Touch in a dock. You might want to try setting up a squeezeplay software player and you can use the Squeeze server web app to control it. I have a web frame that I bring up the Squeeze Server web app in or I can use the Duet remote but the iPeng iPhone app is very good. The software player and server app are free.

 

[samgreco]

Wayne - I considered something like that. Can Premise mSense deal with it? Or do you just play that locally?

 

[Waynedb]

Wayne - I considered something like that. Can Premise mSense deal with it? Or do you just play that locally?

I have my hardware squeezebox set as a source on my matrix switch. I run two full time servers, SageTV and Premise, I could have the software Squeeze Play player running on my Sage server and feed the PC output as a source and Premise would switch it but the Info would not be available except through the Squeezebox server web app.
It may not be as nice as having a dedicated Squeezebox driver but you get all the info in a web frame or you could use the really good iPeng iPhone app.

I don't know if Premise would allow you to run the Squeeze play player on the HA server, Premise might tie up all the sound cards.