Manage Watch List

<-- Go back to Main Menu
 
Contents:

About Managing the Watch List
Detailed Instructions for Managing Watch List
 
About Managing the Watch List
Being able to manage the Watch List is a very nice feature that is unique to The Hot Mix.  If you understand the purpose of the Watch List you will grasp this concept a lot easier.  So I recommend you review the details of the Watch List in the Playlists section of the help.  The purpose of managing the Watch List is to easily add new songs to your Library without constantly refreshing your Library which if you have alot of songs could take up to 10 mins to completely scan.  The Watch List enables you to have a separate folder dedicated for new song additions.  Once the song is in the directory it is automatically scanned and added to the Watch List.  Once added to the Watch List you can then Manage it.  Cool huh?
 
Detailed Instructions for Managing Watch List
First off lets assume you have songs in your Watch List.  If you do not have songs in your Watch List you will not be able to perform management.  So lets say you just ripped a CD and you ripped it to the Watch List.  Now if you go into The Hot Mix if you haven't already The Hot Mix will automatically scan your files in the Watch List for new songs or removals.  Your new songs should show up in the Watch List.  Now lets click on the "More" menu and click "Manage Watch List".

Now you should have the main Manage Watch List screen up.  If you don't have songs in the Watch List the Message Center will display accordingly.  Ok so lets review the interface of the Manage screen.  First off you have two lists.  The one on the left is the current songs in your Watch List and the one on the right is the list of songs that are going to be "Managed".  So lets find the songs in the left of the newly ripped CD.  Once you have found the first song you now select it and click on the ">" button to move the song to the Manage list.  You can do this multiple times for each song in the ripped CD.  Also if you'd like you can use the ">>" to add the whole list to the Manage List.  If you would like to remove a song from the Manage List you can use the "<" button to removed an individual song or the "<<" to remove them all back to the Watch List.

So you have all your songs you want to manage in the "From" list.  Great now lets review the small label that may say "CONFIGURE THIS" or it will have a folder name of where the root of where the songs will be moved and organized.  This can be changed in the "Config Options" dialog under Song Settings.  You can set a path for where you want your managed songs to be moved to for organization.  I recommend you set this to a folder in one of your Media Paths so the songs will show in your new refreshes of the Library.

The next options is the drop down list of how to rename the files being managed.  Here is a overview of the available switches you can use.

Track = %track%
Title = %title%
Artist = %artist%
Album = %album%
Genre = %genre%

Now those are the switches used to mark how you want things to be organized in the end of the move.  So for example the most common option would be this:

"\%genre%\%artist%\%album%\%track%. %title% - %artist%"

If you had a song that had this information in the MP3 Info:

Track = 7
Title = You Shook Me All Night Long
Artist = AC/DC
Album = Back in Black
Genre = Classic Rock

would in the end be organized like this in the Organized folder set in the "Config Options":

C:\My Media\Organized\Classic Rock\AC/DC\Back in Black\01. You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC.mp3

As you can see it is renamed and folders are made and it is organized so if you browse through your hard drive you can find the songs easily.  This makes it so all of your songs are not in just one folder and named something really stupid.  It organizes them nicely.  This is a great practice.

Now you can select from the drop down different ways of organizing the end result.  Also you can make your own Song Organizers.  Read below on how to do this.

Now you don't like the default Song Organizers. Ok so I made it so you can change this.  First open up My Computer and go to your Location Profile Root.  If you do not know where this is you should because you set it in the Location Profiles dialog when first setting up The Hot Mix.  Also I recommend that if you are not familiar with folder directories and the below directions do not make sense to you that you find help of a friend or visit our forums to post a question and get a detailed answer.

Ok now your in the Location Profiles directory.  Enter the folder of what profile you would like to edit the Song Organizers.  For this example we have a profile name "Club Kicker".  Now enter the Club Kicker directory.  You will not see 3 folders and 2 files.  Just below the files "Right-Click" and select "New" then select "Text Document".  Now after you have this new text document you will need to name it to "movesongorganizers.lst".  Make sure you have the option of "Hide extensions of known file types" unchecked under Folder Options | View tab.  This allows you to name the newly created text document to something other than ".txt".  Which as you can see it needs to be named ".lst".  Now you have this file created lets open up the file in Notepad.  Once you have the document open it should be totally empty.  Now lets make our own Song Organizers.  With the above switches we will make new ones that are different.

Lets make one like this:

\%genre%\%album%\%artist%\%title% - %artist%

Now type that in and save the file.  If you put more than one Song Organizer in you need to separate them by a Carriage Return which is basically your "Enter" key on your keyboard.  You can put as many custom Song Organizers in the document as you want.  Now to get these to show up in the drop down under Manage Watch List you will need to shutdown and open back up The Hot Mix and load the profile of which you changed the Song Organizers for.  As for this example it would be the Club Kicker profile.

Now that you have the concept of Song Organizer down we can move onto how to actually Manage the songs.

Once you have the songs you want in the "To" side (Right side) you can now click the "Start" button.  Now after you click Start The Hot Mix will ask you if you want to begin moving files.  You can either do yes or no.  No will of course cancel.  Yes will begin.  Now during the move process The Hot Mix will scan playlists and play records for this song and change the path accordingly in the file.  This way you will not have any song in any of your playlist that will have an invalid path.  While it is moving through the list it will remove that song from the "To" side.  If The Hot Mix cannot move the song for some reason it will leave the song in the list.  Some of the reasons for The Hot Mix not being able to move a song would be songs with no Title or Artist filled, Other, Unknown or Blank Genre field, Album field is empty, or the current song being moved is in either of the players.  If the song has all this information then it will be moved with no problems and automatically added to the end of the Library list.  After moving is complete you can then go to your Library and all the way to the bottom will be the moved songs.  If you are moving a large amount of songs I would recommend not being playing any songs and let it do its operations.  If you'd like you can still work with The Hot Mix while moving is in progress.  The Hot Mix will let you know if moving is still in progress and notify you in the Message Center when complete or still running.

That's it!  Very basic and a neat little feature for you to use.