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Section 7. Jukebox-Specific Features This section discusses the Dudebox Explorer features that are specific to the Jukebox.
The toolbar of the Jukebox Editions look like this:
Before continuing with this section, make sure you have read Section 4.4 regarding how tags and handled and used by the Jukebox. It will make your understanding of this section much more comprehensive. Recall that all the audio files on your Jukebox are stored in a single folder using internal ID numbers. The Jukebox presents the files to you in virtual views constructed out of the tag information associated with these files. For reasons of simplicity and familiarity, this is also how Dudebox Explorer presents the contents of your Jukebox. The following are the main Dudebox Explorer folders for navigating and viewing your music library:
All the library folders listed above share the same right-pane view configuration when opened in Dudebox Explorer. The view is divided into columns, each of which can be sorted by clicking the column header once, and reverse-sorted by clicking the header again. The displayed columns, in order, are:
The display format of the "Name" column can be fully customized. Go to the "Jukebox" tab in the Configuration dialog. Here you can define a template string that tells Dudebox exactly how you would like it to construct the display name from the available tag information. You simply type out a string of text into which you can embed various "tokens" which will be replaced with the appropriate tag data for each file. The tokens recognized by Dudebox are:
You can insert whatever other text you want to be part of every trackname. The following is the default format string and an example of the kind of filename it would produce: %A - %L - %N - %T If your computer is on the slow side, you can improve the display speed in Dudebox by turning off all columns except for "Name", if you don't need to see them. Go to the "Jukebox" tab in the Configuration dialog and uncheck the "Show All Columns (slower)" option. In future releases, we will add the capability to have each tag field broken out into its own column. 7.2.3 Tag Editing and Library Management If you took our advice in Section 4.4.3, you fixed up all the tags in the music files on your computer before transferring them to your Jukebox. That way, once they were transferred, everything would already be in order and easy to find. Of course, we recognize that sometimes you may need to make adjustments, perhaps because you have tracks on your Jukebox already that did not have all of their tag data correct at the time of transfer. To address this need, Dudebox offers the ability to edit the tag information associated with your music library. There are three main methods of editing tags:
Finally, please note that the Jukebox is not case-sensitive, but it is case-preserving. What this means is that if you try to change a tag field and the only difference is the capitalization of some of the letters, the change will not stick. You need to change one of the letters entirely, making it a two-step process. For example, to change an artist field from "britney spears" to "Britney Spears", first change it to "Brittany Spears", and then change it again to "Britney Spears". 7.2.4 Library Search (DudeboxSQL) Dudebox Explorer features a built-in database engine called DudeboxSQL that gives you powerful search capabilities for your music library. To perform a search in Dudebox, open the top-level "Search" folder. Dudebox will popup a dialog. Type in a query and click "Search". The results are then displayed in the Search folder. To run another search, just right-click anywhere in the blank area of the right pane and select "New Advanced Search...".
The query syntax is simple yet powerful. The Advanced Search dialog displays a list of the valid fields on which you can search and a list of valid operators for more complex queries. When writing a query, strings must be single-quoted but numbers should not be. String comparisons are not case-sensitive, and substrings will match when using the equals = operator. Here are some basic examples: Find all tracks whose artist name contains 'band': For more sophisticated searches, you can use some of the logical operators. For example: Find all tracks by artist 'prince' shorter than 3 minutes (190 seconds):
Playlists are a crucial part of enjoying your Jukebox. This section describes how to use Dudebox Explorer to create, edit and delete playlists. To create a new, empty playlist, right-click on the top-level "Playlists" folder, or open the "Playlists" folder and right-click anywhere in the blank area of the right pane. The select "New Playlist...". Dudebox will ask you to name the playlist. Type a name, then click "OK", and the playlist will be created on the Jukebox. To start a new playlist with some of the tracks in your music library, first select the folders and/or tracks you want from any library view folder. Then right-click on them and select "Add to Playlist" and then "New Playlist..." from the context menu. Type in the name of the new playlist and hit "OK", and Dudebox will create a new playlist by that name and put add the files you selected to it. You can also create a new playlist by merging two or more existing playlists together. Select the playlists you want to merge, then right-click and select "Merge". This operation creates a new merged playlist but also leaves the original playlists in place. Finally, recall from Section 4.5 that Dudebox can create playlists automatically while transferring files from your computer to the Jukebox. In Dudebox, you can add new tracks to playlists, sort them, shuffle them, manually reorder individual tracks and remove items from playlists. There are two ways to add new tracks to a playlist, drag and drop and context menu. To use drag and drop method, first select the desired tracks in the right pane. Then make sure your playlist is visible in the left pane and drag and drop the tracks onto the playlist. Alternatively, right-click on the tracks, choose "Add to Playlist" and then select the destination playlist from the menu. To sort or shuffle a playlist, right-click on it (or anywhere in the blank area of the right-pane when the playlist is open), and select "Sort" or "Shuffle". The "Sort" option sorts the tracks in the playlist by artist, then album, then track number, then title. To move individual tracks around in a playlist, select the track, hold down the "Shift" key on your keyboard, and drag the track to its new position. The dragged track will be inserted immediately before the track that is highlighted at the time of the drop. To remove one or more tracks from a playlist, select them, and then either hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard or right-click, select "Delete", and then select "Remove from Playlist Only". This removes the track from the playlist but does not delete it from the Jukebox altogether. To do both in one step, choose the "Remove and Delete Track" menu item instead. To delete one or more playlists, simply select them and hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard or right-click and select "Delete". Note that this does not delete the tracks in those playlists. The first item under the top-level "Playlists" is a special folder called "Playlist Index". This folder tells you exactly which playlists, if any, each of your audio tracks belongs to. By sorting on the "Count" or "Playlists" columns, you can also quickly determine which audio tracks have not been added to any playlist. 7.3.5 Playlist Troubleshooting Note that the Dell driver is not the most efficient at loading playlists. That means that when you first open the "Playlists" folder in Dudebox Explorer, you may experience a delay, during which time you should hear your Jukebox doing some hard disk activity. This delay is longer if you have more or larger playlists. Playlists of several thousand tracks could take on the order of 20 seconds or more to load. Sometimes, the Dell driver can have difficulties with playlists if your Jukebox has playlists that refer to tracks that you deleted from the Jukebox without first removing from their respective playlists. In the worst case this might prevent you from browsing your playlists in Dudebox. If you think this might be your problem, run an on-board cleanup routine on your Jukebox. You can also use the on-board controls on your Jukebox to clean-up or delete the offending playlists.
Dudebox Explorer's Active Queue feature allows you to play Jukebox tracks back on the Jukebox itself. When you do this, you must have speakers or headphones plugged into your Jukebox. The music will not play through your computer's audio system. If you want that, you should use Dudebox's TrueStream feature, which is described in Section 6. Before you start to use Active Queue playback, please note that you should stop playback before performing other operations on your Jukebox, including tag or playlist editing, or file transfer. Attempting these operations while playback is in progress can cause interference with edits or transfers. To use Active Queue, you basically queue the tracks you want to the Active Queue folder, then control playback using the buttons in the Toolbar. There are two ways to queue tracks, drag and drop and by context menu. First, select the tracks you want to play. Then, either drag them to the Active Queue folder in the left pane, or right-click on them and select "Play Track". The "Play Track" context menu has several options. The last two are related to TrueStream, for which you should refer to Section 6. The first two are the Active Queue items, "Play on Jukebox" and "Queue on Jukebox". The "Play on Jukebox" item replaces the current Active Queue contents with the tracks you have selected. The "Queue on Jukebox" item adds the selected tracks to those already in the Active Queue. In the Active Queue folder, you can rearrange the tracks, but only when playback is stopped. To move an individual track, hold down the "Shift" key on your keyboard and drag the track to a new position. The dragged track will be inserted immediately before the track that is highlighted at the time of drop. If you right-click in the Active Queue folder, there are also options to "Shuffle Queue" and "Clear Queue". Finally, to remove an item from the queue, select it and either hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard, or right-click and select "Remove from Queue". This does not delete the track from the Jukebox, it only removes it from the Active Queue. Once you've queued up the tracks you want to listen to, use the buttons in the toolbar to control playback. There are play and stop buttons, a pause toggle, and back and next buttons to move back and forth in the queue. If you want to skip ahead or behind multiple tracks in the queue, it can be somewhat tiresome to keep hitting the "Back" or "Next" buttons. What you can do instead is right-click on the track you want to skip to and select "Skip to this Track". To control volume and EAX effects, click on the "Volume/EAX" button in toolbar. You can toggle muting using the "Mute" button. While playback is active, the name of the currently playing track and the playback progress is displayed in the Explorer status bar at the bottom of the window. Note that in Windows XP the status bar seems to be turned off by default, so you have to check it to enable it in the Explorer "View" menu.
The Jukebox has a separate storage area for data files. Data files are stored using the same filename they had on your computer before transfer. You can transfer data files using all the same methods you would use for audio files.
7.6.1 Introduction to DudeboxSQL With its DudeboxSQL engine, Dudebox Explorer can generate sophisticated, customizable reports on the contents of your Jukebox. To access the reports feature, click on the "Reports" button in the toolbar and go to the "Content Reports" tab. To generate a report, you basically type an SQL query, select an output format, and then click the "Generate Report" button. Your report will be generated and your web browser will be launched so that you can view it.
If you are not familiar with SQL, it stands for Structured Query Language and is a decades-old standard for specifying database queries that is used in virtually all major databases. The DudeboxSQL engine embedded in Dudebox Explorer exposes your Jukebox's music library as a database against which you can run standard SQL queries. We realize that although using SQL might make generating reports very easy for database-geeks :-), many people are not familiar with SQL syntax. While it is beyond the scope of this document to give a full and complete explanation of SQL, we can give you several starter examples which should give you a good idea of how to build queries on your own.
For total beginners, the query field is pre-filled with a default query that generates a complete tracklist. To get back to this default tracklist at any time, click the "Make Default Tracklist" button at the bottom of the dialog. If you would like to know how to formulate a specific query you have in mind but can't figure out how by looking at these examples, send us an e-mail and we will try to whip something up. You can also learn more about SQL using the extensive SQL resources available on the web. The DudeboxSQL engine can generate its reports in 4 formats:
A related issue is the DRM "feature" in WMA files. When you are ripping CDs and encoding to WMA, whether with Windows Media Player or other software, be certain that you have the Digital Rights Management feature turned off. If you don't, the WMA files you produce will be DRM locked even though they are ripped from your own CDs. This ultimately means that once you transfer them to your Jukebox, you will not be able to get them off again. 7.7.2 How Locked Tracks are Handled in Dudebox Any files that are locked for any reason are displayed with a
After creating a recording on your Jukebox using line-in or the wired remote, it will appear as a WAV or MP3 file on your Jukebox along with the rest of your audio tracks. You can then use Dudebox to copy them back to your computer just as you would any other file. Here are some hints on how your Jukebox labels your recordings.
The Dell driver does not support control of the recording mechanism itself, so Dudebox cannot be used to start or stop a recording session. Likewise, Dudebox cannot be used to control the FM tuner on the wired remote.
From the top-level "Device Information" folder, you can view vital stats on your Jukebox. Two of these items, "Owner" and "Date/Time", can be edited from within Dudebox Explorer. The "Owner" is just the name displayed on the Jukebox in the Jukebox Settings menu. You might use this to avoid mixing up you and your friend's Jukebox, or keeping multiple units within a household straight. Or, if you lose your Jukebox and it happens to be found by a decent person, it could help him return it to you. To change the "Owner", right-click in the "Device Information" folder and select "Change Owner Name...". The "Date/Time" is the date and time stored on the Jukebox. As far as we can tell, it is only used for timestamping recordings made on the Jukebox (for models that support recording), and nothing else. To synchronize the date/time of your Jukebox with your PC, right-click and select "Synchronize Time to PC".
The Jukebox has built-in cleanup and maintenance routines. If you have a problem where you suspect file corruption or it seems like some capacity is missing from your Jukebox, you should try these routines. Take care not to reformat your Jukebox if that's not what you intend to do, because a reformat deletes all your music files. These modes are power-user features, so be alert when using them!
The Jukebox also has a "Reset" button, the kind that can only be pressed using a straightened paper clip. It is usually located on the side or bottom of the unit. If your Jukebox gets stuck while booting up, try using the "Reset" button. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Dudebox OmniTome 
gold lock icon in Dudebox Explorer. You cannot edit their tag information, and they will be skipped if you select them for transfer back to your computer. Locked tracks are also not displayed in Dudebox Xtreamer, since they cannot be downloaded or streamed.| Notmad | Anapod - iPod Software | Riorad | Deubox | Irivium | Cyclef | | Red Chair Software |  |