What does Boxee expect to be in the music file?

[santiago79830]

I'm having some problems getting Boxee to play music. It says it is scanning the files, but it never seems to identify any. At first, I thought maybe this was because I had so many music files that it took a very long time to find them all.

I tried reducing the number of files to 20. Nope, that didn't do it either.

I then thought maybe it was the tags in the files (they're all mp3s). I tried using a program called "tunedit" under Windows to fix the tags, then moved them to the Linux machine hosting Boxee. That hasn't fixed it either.

The music files are in a local Linux file in my home area called "Music." I've gone into the local sources window, and told Boxee that this is where the music files are, and that I'd like them scanned. Boxee says it is scanning the files, but nothing seems to come out the other side: when I look to see what music files are available, it says it is still scanning, and there aren't any.

Since I don't see anyone else with a similar problem, I suspect I'm doing something wrong, or expecting something that does not exist. Does anyone have any ideas?

[darcilicious]

I'm not familiar with tunedit but I highly recommend mp3tag for creating good clean tags for mp3 files.

[santiago79830]

I'm not familiar with tunedit but I highly recommend mp3tag for creating good clean tags for mp3 files.

The only time I've used tunedit was this one. It supposedly can identify the music from the waveform, and then download all the tags, plus the artwork.

I was probably foolish to try an unproven (to me) program to do this. But I lack much more than a title and an artist for many of the selections.

I started acquiring music many years ago, and I have no idea (other than the title and maybe a guess about the artist) about the details. I've also used mp3tag with good results, but without much to put in, I'm not sure if the incomplete tag resulting would solve the problem.

But I infer from your comment that Boxee is expecting a vaiid tag with all the contents present. Is this the case? Knowing that much would tell me where I might best jump next.

[darcilicious]

Yes, proper tags should help.

Note that Boxee is LOUSY at dealing with embedded album art, folder.jpg might work better and it absolutely sucks at dealing with various artists compilations.

[santiago79830]

I checked the tags with a manual tag editor. It looks as though tunedit did a reasonable job of identifying things. Unfortunately, Boxee still cannot seem to scan the audio and identify it.

Since its had a good 24 hours to identify 20 musical selections, I think I'm forced to conclude that this part of Boxee doesn't work in my installation. My inclination is to quit fooling with it, and wait until Boxee does an upgrade, then try it again.

Unless, of course, I stumble onto something in the meantime.

[naxir]

I checked the tags with a manual tag editor. It looks as though tunedit did a reasonable job of identifying things. Unfortunately, Boxee still cannot seem to scan the audio and identify it.

Since its had a good 24 hours to identify 20 musical selections, I think I'm forced to conclude that this part of Boxee doesn't work in my installation. My inclination is to quit fooling with it, and wait until Boxee does an upgrade, then try it again.

Unless, of course, I stumble onto something in the meantime.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a boxee update on linux. I will note that I have a pretty extensive music library of MP3s and boxee had no issue finding them.

[santiago79830]

...namely that the function does work in Boxee Linux, and there is some problem with my installation. With no more clues than I have, I'm reluctant to dig deeply into things.

I'd expect it to be easier to port the latest and greatest Boxee to Linux, since that's basically where it starts. There may not be a Linux update, but if not, I'd be even more concerned about Windows and the Mac. But time will tell.

[santiago79830]

OK, I finally got this thing working.

The Local Music pointed to my Music directory (which was, I believe, the default). For some reason, when I would tell Boxee to scan it daily, it would agree. However, when I came back, it had reset the scan frequency to "never." As a result, Music was never populated.

I tried deleting the pointer to my Music directory, then reinstalled the pointer, and told it to scan daily. For some reason, this worked, and I suddenly had access to the music files.

I'm passing all this along, in case someone else happens to have the same problem.