Media Library

The media library provides a powerful, convenient way to browse and search your media and organize it into the playlists you created in the previous section.

To access the Media Library, click Media under the AutoDJ heading in the navigation menu.

Media Browser

To browse the media in your library, click the Media Library folder in the upper left-hand corner of the page. This will launch the media browser, which is organized into the following panes:

Playlist List

Displayed along the entire height of the left edge of the window, this pane lists all of the playlists you have created (as described in the previous section), as well as an entry for your media itself.

• To manage the tracks in a playlist (described under Managing Playlist Tracks below), click on one of the playlists in the list.
• To enable or disable a playlist, right-click on the playlist and select Enable/Disable Playlist.
• To return to your media library, click on the Media Library entry at the top of the list.

Artist List

Displayed in the upper-middle area of the window, this pane contains the list of all of the artists in your media library (or, if performing a search, only the artist matching your search criteria are displayed).

• To select an artist, click on its entry in the list. To select multiple artists, hold Ctrl or Shift while clicking. When an artist is selected, its albums are displayed in the Albums List (described below).
• To add all of an artist's tracks to a playlist, select one or more artist(s), then drag them with your mouse and drop them on the desired playlist.
• To rename an artist, right-click on its entry in the list and select Rename artist.

Album List

Displayed in the upper-right area of the window, this pane contains the list of all of the albums by the artists selected in the Artist List (described above). If no artists are selected, no albums will be displayed.

• To select an album, click on its entry in the list. To select multiple albums, hold Ctrl or Shift while clicking. When an album is selected, its tracks are displayed in the Tracks List (described below).
• To add all of an album's tracks to a playlist, select one or more album(s), then drag them with your mouse and drop them on the desired playlist.
• To access the context menu for the album, right-click on its entry in the list. The album context menu includes the following options:
  • Edit album details
    Edit the details for the album, including its title, album cover, and other details.
  • Remove cover image
    Removes the album's current cover image.
  • Re-index album
    Discards any customizations made to the album details and reloads the album details from its tracks' metadata. Also re-downloads the album's cover art using the current album data source settings.

Track List

Displayed across the lower portion of the page, this pane contains the list of all of the tracks in the albums selected in the Album List (described above). If no albums are selected, no tracks will be displayed.

• To select a track, click on its entry in the list. To select multiple tracks, hold Ctrl or Shift while clicking.
• To add the selected track(s) to a playlist, drag them with your mouse and drop them on the desired playlist.
• To access the context menu for the track, right-click on its entry in the list. The track context menu includes the following options:
  • Rename track
    Edit the title for the track.
  • Listen to preview
    Plays a short (several second) sample of the selected track.

Note that when you drag and drop an artist, album, or track onto a playlist, it is immediately and instantly added to that playlist. No further saving is necessary.

If the playlist's status is "enabled", the new track(s) will immediately become eligible for playback after the current song completes.

Options

To access the media library options, click the Options button in the upper-right corner of the page. The following options are available:

• Show album covers
  Toggles the display of album cover images next to each album in the album list.
• Browse by folders
  Switches from the Media Browser view to the Folder Browser view and back. See the following section for details about the folder browser.

Folder Browser

The folder browser provides an alternate interface to the media library, wherein tracks are organized by their pathnames on disk rather than by artists and albums.

To launch the folder browser interface, click the Options button in the upper-right corner of the page and select Browser by Folders.

• To expand or collapse a folder, double-click on its entry in the list or click the plus (+) or minus (-) icon next to its entry in the list.
• To select a media file or folder, click on its entry in the list. To select multiple tracks, hold Ctrl or Shift while clicking.
• To add the selected media file(s) or folder(s) to a playlist, drag them with your mouse and drop them on the desired playlist.

Searching your Media

Centova Cast includes a powerful search feature allowing you to quickly and easily locate specific artists, albums, and tracks in media libraries of all sizes. The search feature is located at the top of the page, above the playlist and artist lists, and is composed of the following fields:

• Keyword field
  Enter the word or phrase for which you want to search in the keyword field.

• Criteria field
  The criteria field is located to the immediate right of the keyword field, and contains the following options:

  • Artists
    Specifies that the search should match only the names of artists in your library.
  • Albums
    Specifies that the search should match only the names of albums in your library.
  • Tracks
    Specifies that the search should match only the titles of tracks in your library.
  • All
    Specifies that the search should match artist names, album names, or track titles.

• Genre field
  The genre field is located to the immediate right of the criteria field, and contains a list of the music genres found in your media library. By default, All genres is selected, which specifies that you do not want to filter your results by any particular genre. Selecting a genre will limit the search results to tracks of that genre.

  Note that Centova Cast has no control over the genres associated with each track in your library. The genre for each track is specified by the person who created the media file at the time at which the media file was created, and Centova Cast simply uses that information verbatim to classify the track by genre.

Playlist Track Manager

After creating your playlists (as described in the previous section) and adding media to them (as described earlier in this section), you will likely need to re-organize or remove tracks from a playlist at some point in time.

To display the list of tracks in a playlist, click on the name of the playlist in the playlist list at the left-hand side of the media library page. This will display the list of tracks currently assigned to the playlist.

Re-organizing Tracks

To change the sort order of the tracks in a playlist, select the track(s) to be moved (by clicking on the track title, optionally while holding Ctrl or Shift to select multiple tracks), and then use one of the directional buttons at the bottom of the page to move the track(s). The directional buttons include:

• Top
  Moves the selected track(s) to the top of the playlist.
• Up
  Moves the selected track(s) up one position in the playlist.
• Down
  Moves the selected track(s) down one position in the playlist.
• Bottom
  Moves the selected track(s) to the bottom of the playlist.

To more quickly reorder tracks, hold the Ctrl or Shift keys while clicking the Up or Down buttons. While the Shift key is pressed, the Up and Down buttons move the selected track(s) up or down 25 tracks. While the Ctrl key is pressed, the Up and Down buttons move the selected track(s) up or down 100 track(s).

Removing Tracks

To remove tracks from a playlist, select the track(s) (by clicking on the track title, optionally while holding Ctrl or Shift to select multiple tracks), then use the Remove button at the bottom of the page to remove the selected track(s) from the playlist.

Note that removing a track from a playlist in this manner only removes it from the playlist -- it does not delete the track. The track will still appear in your media library and you can still add it to other playlists if desired.

Saving Changes

After re-organizing or removing tracks from a playlist, the playlist must be saved or the changes will be lost. To save your changes, click the Save button at the bottom of the page.

Playlist changes will immediately take effect after the current song completes.

Discarding Changes

If, after re-organizing or removing tracks from a playlist, you decide that you wish to discard your changes instead of saving them, click the Revert button at the bottom of the page. This will destroy any changes made since the last time you saved this playlist, and revert the playlist to its previous track list.

---