Song database

Siglos Karaoke Professional stores the list of the songs in your collection inside a database. The database contains the information about the songs, it does not contains actual song files, which need to be stored on the hard disc of your computer.

Siglos Karaoke Professional supports following file formats:

File extension	Description
.cdg	Also known as MP3+G. CDG files are usually paired with MP3 files. CDG file contains lyrics, while MP3 file contains audio of the song. To open a pair of MP3/CDG files you need to open CDG file only
.bin	BIN files contain both lyrics and audio of CD+G song
.zip	Karaoke ZIP files contain pairs of CDG/MP3 files
.cda	CD+G disc tracks
.kar, .mid	MIDI Karaoke
.avi	AVI video files
.mpg	MPG video files
.kma	MTU's Hoster files
.wmv	Windows Media Video files
.mp4, .mpeg, .mov, .webm, .mkv	Video tracks

To add songs to the database you need to run the song import process. Once the songs are successfully imported you may use them in your karaoke shows. You may also browse, modify, and remove songs in the database. It is also possible toexport the list of the songs in the database to print the song book.

 The database is kept in siglos.db file located in My Karaoke subfolder of your Documents folder. It is a good idea to back this file up from time to time, as if it is deleted or corrupted you will loose your song collection.

 

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IMPORTING SONGS

 

To start the import process select Manage database button on the playlist window, and then choose Import songs. You may also choose Import songs command from File menu.

 

 

First you need to select the root of your song collection (use Change button to do this). Then select file types you would like to import (see Supported file types for the list of supported formats). Include subfolders allows to scan all folders starting from the root folder. Switch it off if you want to scan a single folder only.

 

Siglos Karaoke Professional scans MP3 files it finds for ID3 tags containing song title and artist name (it also reads ID3 tags of MP3 files inside ZIP files, but it may significantly slow down the performance and is not recommended). If ID3 tag is not found, a parsing rule is applied to the file name. You may select a predefined rule or create a custom one. It is possible to use one of the four data fields (Artist, Title, DiscID, and Track). Choosing Ignore will cause the parser to ignore this part of the file name.

  

Import rule example If your song collection is named as this example:                 SC7541_02 - Gary Lewis & The Playboys - This Diamond Ring.cdg you need to select the following rule:                 DiscID_Track - Artist - Title The first separator should be '_' (underline), and following separators should be set to ' - ' (minus with spaces before and after).

Once you are done setting the import rule, select OK. Siglos Karaoke Professional will scan your disc (it may take a while for large collection of songs) and will report its findings in Song Import Results dialog box.

 

 Song Import Result dialog box contains all files Siglos Karaoke Professional has found, divided into three groups. First list contains files that either contained ID3 tags, or matched the parsing rule, and were successfully imported into the database. The second list contains the files that matched the file extension, but did not have ID3 tags, nor their names matched the parsing rule. The third list contains files already in the database.

 You may manually edit songs that were not matched -- to do this select the song you would like to edit, and then click Edit button. To add edited songs do the database click Add Selected button. Once you are done editing select OK. You will return to Song Database dialog box, which allows you to view and edit all songs currently in the database. Once you are done click OK.

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MANAGING THE DATABASE

To open the song database manager select Manage song database button on the playlist window, or choose Song database command from File menu. Song database dialog box will appear.

 

 Song database dialog box allows you to find any song in the database. The text entered in Search filter is matched against artist name, song title, and disc ID.  It has multi-matching capability, meaning that you may enter several match phrases. For example, entering ma he will display all songs that contain 'ho' and 'ca' strings (so the list of results may include Made In Heaven, Hell's Maid, Mayhem, and Last Day of May by The Heap) As you can see the searches are not case-dependent, and the order of the match does not matter.

 To view all the songs in the database click Show All button (it may take a while to display large databases).

 Remove button allows you to remove the song that is currently selected in the list of songs. You may select and remove more than one song (press CTRL key when selecting to select multiple songs, or press SHIFT key to select a range of songs).

 Edit button displays and allows to modify the properties of the selected songs. It displays Song Properties dialog box.

 You may change any of the fields. Once you are done select OK.

 

Import Songs button allows to import songs into the database.

 Export button allows to save the list of the songs in the database into the text or data file that can be used to create a song book.

 Delete All removes all songs from the database.

 Collections allow to define subsets of your song collection to use in Remote Queue. You may add currently displayed songs as a new collection, and then add or remove songs from the collection to fine-tune it.

 Tools button gives you access to additional functions:

 Validate songs checks if all the files registered in the database exist. If they do not exist you will be presented with three options:

·    remove the song from the database (use this option if the songs have been deleted from the hard drive)

·    keep the songs (use this option if you plan to replace the songs, ie. if you will reconnect the external drive)

·    look for the songs on a different drives (this option is useful if you have the songs on the external drive and the drive letter has changed)

 Re-import processes XML file created by Export function.

 Generate PDF with the list of songs allows to create a songbook in PDF format.

  

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EXPORT SONG LIST

Siglos Karaoke Professional allows to export the list of the songs from the song database. Such list can be used to create a song book. To export the list of the songs select Export button in Song database dialog box.

 

 Output file specifies the file song list will be written to.

 Output format allows to specify the format of the file. Siglos Karaoke Professional can create following files:

CSV	Comma-separated values You may use this file in any spreadsheet application (Excel from Microsoft Office, or free Calc from OpenOffice) to process this file and create custom song book. You should also be able to import it into song book software.
XML	Structured XML file This file format can be used in a custom application or in XML-aware software.

 

The output file contains all songs from the database. The data written include unique song identifier, artist name, title, disc ID, and file name.

 

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RE-IMPORT SONGS

If you would like to do some changes to the information in the database using external tools, you may export songs to XML format and then re-import them. This would work for batch renaming -- for example if you would like to change all occurrences of ELVIS to Elvis.

 XML file need to have the same structure as the one that Siglos exports.

 

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CREATE A SONGBOOK

Siglos allows you to create a list of your songs in PDF format that you may use to print a songbook or place on your website for your customers to download. To do this select Generate PDF with the list of songs command from Tools menu of Songs Database window.

 

 You may choose various options of the song list (which columns to include, how to name them, what songs to include and what order to use, and whether to display the page numbers). You can also define the text that appears on the first page of the PDF file. If you want to create something very fancy there you may use custom HTML box to do this.