My Media Library

The media library is just a digital library of music on your computer. You might think of it like a virtual cd collection. With the media library, you can shuffle tracks in real time, build custom playlists containing only the songs you want, and more.

When you access the media library, you'll be placed within the main menu. From this location, you have the following choices.

Each of the above items will be described below.

Browse Library

This option allows you to browse your media library. This browse list is based on the folder hierarchy. When you locate the media you wish to play, you can play the media in order, or shuffle it.

Listen to a Playlist.

After you've created a playlist. you can listen to it. A playlist. is a customized arranging of media based on your preferences.

Manage Playlists

Here you can modify, delete, or create playlists Just select the playlist. you want to work with, then select what action you want to perform.

Organize Library

This option allows you to move folders and files around to your liking. You can also play tracks, as well as delete tracks, or even folders. One feature of particular interest to many is the ability to import media. The “import media” link will allow you to brows through your media files on your computer and import media files, or folders that contain media files into the media library. Once your media is imported, you can stream your media either from home or away from home.

Shuffle

This simply shuffles all of your media library. Everything that is played back will be randomized. When your done with the media library, you can just go back to the assistant.

Play or Copy a CD

Make sure you have an audio CD in your CD-Rom drive before proceeding with the following directions. To play a CD, first open the My Media Library, and select the Play or Copy a CD link. If no CD is in the drive at this time, you will get a message that lets you know that a CD is not present. If this happens, just go get a CD, and activate the Continue Button.

How Did the Media Library Recognize That CD?

When you choose to play or copy a CD, the Media Library looks up the disc in a massive online database called FreeDB, which uses the CDDB format. This database contains the artist, album title, track titles, and sometimes the year and genre of each album. In addition to retrieving information from the database, you can also submit information about a CD. That's important, because FreeDB is maintained by volunteers. More on editing and submitting CDDB info later.

Inexact Matches

You may get a page with the following, "Listed below are the category, artist, and title of each CD in the online database whose signature is close to this CD's signature. Please choose the best match."

In order to explain this message you need to know what happens when you choose to play or rip a CD. When you choose play, or rip a CD, the Media Library looks for a CD album that matches the CD in your CD-Rom drive. If the match is exact, then you are presented with the page that lets you play, and rip a CD. More about this later. If an inexact match is found, this means that the Media Library could not match your CD with the CD album database online. In this case, you are presented with the inexact match message, and as a result, you can then select the albums that the Media Library knows about online. If the Media Library happens to give you album matches that do not correspond with the CD you have, you can choose the "none of these is close" option. On the next page you will have the ability of editing this information for future use. The good news is if the Media Library did get a match, you have only to select the matching album from the list, and then activate the continue button. So to recap, if you want to play/rip a CD, just select the album that most matches the one you have, then activate the continue button. If you don't see a match, then select "none of these is close, then activate the continue button so you can fill in the album information yourself.

Finally what we've all been waiting for! We finally get to the Play or Copy CD page! It's about time right? For the moment, we'll assume that your CD album was found in the online database of albums, and you selected that correct album. That being the case, you are presented with the CD title, artist, titles of songs/tracks etc. You move around this page with tab and shift+tab. When you tab you will hear something like the following. 1 New York state of mind. Remember to substitute your track names for the examples offered here. Tab one more tine, and you are presented with a Play this track link. If you activate the link, only that track will be played. You will get the old familiar media player. Because you played only that one track, you cannot jump from track to track. When you go back to the Play/Copy a CD page, you can then tab to the next track and play it if you wish. You may have noticed that each track name is also a check box. By checking the check boxes you are telling the Media Library what tracks you want to Play, Copy, or Rip, as some people call it.

Format to Use When Copying

Once you have tabbed through the entire CD, you get to the Format to Use When Copying list box. You may leave the option at the default setting. This Option allows you to specify the audio format the Media Library uses when Copying a CD to your hard disk. The mp3 format is probably the most widely used, followed by the ogg format. Wav is not recommended as it will take up about 10 to 15 times the disk space of either ogg, or mp3 audio formats.

The next button you get to is the select all button. When you activate this button, All tracks will be checked. At this point you can Copy the cd, or play the CD by tabbing to the buttons and activating them. You may also unselect all the tracks that are checked by activating the deselect all button.

If your CD did not match up with the online CD album database, then you can use the edit CDDB Information button to enter the album information for your CD yourself. This information will be entered into the online CD database for future use.

When you Copy a CD, it is placed within your Media Library! Also during the Copying process, you can tab through the page to see what is happening.

Create an Audio CD

Tip, before we go through the process of creating an audio CD, you may wish to start with a CD/RW, rather than a CD/R. This is because a CD/RW can be written, or rewritten usually over 1000 times. You can then do this over and over again without having to buy more CD/R's which can only be written to one time. Note, audio CD creation is only possible using the SA Mobile Network at home. In other words, Audio CDs cannot be created when using a U3 smart drive or PassKey.

When you choose the "Create an audio CD" option, you will be asked to select a playlist. The playlist. contains the list of tracks that will be burned to the cd. If you don't have a playlist. already created, the Media Library will ask you to create a playlist. first. If you create a playlist. first, remember to check the checkbox that says, "This playlist. is for a custom audio CD" before proceeding. If you forget to check this box, then the Media Library will think that the playlist. is for listening only.

If you already have a playlist. created, then the Media Library will ask you to choose the playlist. you want for your CD. Just tap enter on the playlist. you want to makeup your audio CD, and you will be on your way. If you want to makeup a different listing of tracks, you can create another playlist. for the CD.

After you select a playlist. for your CD either by creating one, or by simply selecting one that you have already created, the Media Library will ask you if you want to create a regular audio CD, or a radio mix CD. A regular CD is just a normal audio CD that you normally would hear, a Radio Mix is a CD in which the tracks are blended together. This is the affect you get on the Radio when one song just oozes into another song, with no pauses in between. Just tap enter on the audio CD you want. Note, if this is the first time you are creating an audio CD with the SA Mobile Network, you will be asked to wait while the driver is installed. This will only take about 30 seconds or less. A driver is a bit of software that gives the computer instructions as to how to use the hardware, in this case, your CD burner. Note if you are using a CD/RW as suggested above, you will be asked if you want to erase the current data on the CD. If you choose yes, any information that was on that CD will be gone forever!

If there is no Data on the CD, you are presented with several indicators that will keep you posted on the progress of the CD creation process. Just tab around the area to find out what is happening. This can take some time, and probably will not be fast.

When the Creation process is finished, you will get a message to that effect, and the CD will be automatically ejected.

Access My Home Media Library

If you are away from home and want to access your media library just choose the "Access My Home Media Library" option. When you do you will be able to listen to your media as if you were truly at home. You can stream the files directly from your home library. You can also organize playlists, shuffle your playlist, and browse your home library of media. When you choose to play media located at home, you will have the option of playing the media in low quality, medium quality, and original quality. In this way you can account for those unfortunate low-bandwidth situations. No matter what you choose your audio will always be available to you anywhere.