Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jan 06 - 11:45 AM

(now, the newest version of The Godfather says it can 'find duplicates'. I'm not sure what that means yet.....)

I guess I need to explore it a bit.

I already have dbPowerAmp and MediaMonkey, which both have VERY nice database/organizer functions....
*sigh* "A man with a good watch always knows what time it is....a man with two watches is never sure."

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jan 06 - 11:37 AM

Here is The Godfather ...I have it, but hadn't gotten around to doing much with it yet...it seems to be a very fine 'local organizer' for your files, with tag renaming, sorting by extension, and a whole lot more.....but I don't see the ability John asks about...of comparing songs by their fingerprint.


I do remember seeing something about a project to do tune recognition, with several types of input parameters....including typing a 'code' that represents the tune. I'll see if I can find it.

(we had a brief flurry a couple years ago with a program that was supposed to recognize a tune by humming or whistling it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: pavane
Date: 01 Jan 06 - 09:31 AM

Just a thought - does it would only match two copies of the SAME performance, in different encodings? Or is it REALLY a tune compare? Would it match different performances, in different keys, tempos and arrangements?

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: Nick
Date: 01 Jan 06 - 06:52 AM

John

Image comparer exists as do others

If you try the following google search - identify duplicate music - you'll find a number of music comparers though I have no idea if they work or are any good!

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Dec 05 - 10:06 PM

Most of the programs that are equipped to get track data from the web have the ability to identify a particular "performance" from data deliberately placed in the track info (data) on a CD. For it to work someone has to insert the data in each track.

This program apparently doesn't have to have any "data." The program "listens" to a tune, and says "sounds like" another tune, compares at a detail level, and makes a list of duplicates based only on the audio signals. The second program "listens" to a tune, picks out "characteristic phrases" and makes a "sample" based on the most characteristic musical content.

Note the claim that it works with streaming audio where no pre-packaged data is transmitted.

For those numerous "can somebody identify this tune" type questions, the program could immediately pick out another tune (possibly named) that "sounds like" the one in question(?????) What's not known from the report is how "loosely" two music samples could be "the same" for the program to match them up. Maybe that's a next step yet to be handled.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: mack/misophist
Date: 31 Dec 05 - 08:29 PM

It has been rumored that windows media player has something like that. Bill swears it isn't true.

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Dec 05 - 07:32 PM

Yeah Clinton, but where's the link, and what does it really do?

I've thought for some time that one of the media players should have something like this built in; but haven't seen anything. With all the "face recognition" and "fingerprint search" software around, it seems like waveform signatures would be a natural step. There are lots of organizers that can work by file name, but none I've heard of that compare the music itself.

And given Mickey's recent history, if the program's really any good those two guys will quit and form their own company within six months.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 31 Dec 05 - 07:02 PM

Godfather... easy as that...

"software that cleans up music collections on home computers"
Fuck that! Like I want Bill Gats sticking his nose into what I have or don't have on my PC... it's none of his business!

Subject: Tech: Organize Music Files - (someday)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Dec 05 - 06:45 PM

A sidebar item in a recent magazine reports on an "interesting" program. Since sidebar articles aren't archived on the web, I'll post the entire blurb.

No commercial software available – yet, but it may be of interest to know that someone's working on a better way of keeping track of all your music files.

<quote>

Sampling Songs
Digital fingerprints make for easier searching
Technology Review August 2005

RESULTS: Microsoft researchers have developed software that can automatically identify audio files—including streaming audio—by extracting and encoding short sections of them to form "fingerprints." Christopher Burges and colleagues have developed two new applications for this audio-recognition technology: identifying duplicate files in a large collection of audio files and creating "thumbnails" 15-second-long, recognizable snippets of each file. The software found duplicates in a database of more than 40,000 audio files with a 1.2 percent error rate. In another test involving 68 songs. a panel of users compared thumbnails made with the Microsoft software with snippets of the songs beginning 30 seconds in, and rated the Microsoft thumbnails more likely to contain the titles, choruses, or other distinctive features of the songs.

WHY IT MATTERS: Today's digital-audio libraries are growing in size, and users must manually sort through them to find and remove duplicate files. Microsoft's method of spotting duplicates could make for easier and faster consolidation of large song collections. Many online music purveyors also offer their customers previews of songs. Currently, those
previews are created (either manually – someone listens to the song to find a recognizable chorus, then makes the song snippet – or via software that samples only a predetermined segment of each song, which may not contain readily recognizable material. The new software are can automatically find the defining part of a song when extracting a thumbnail, making the thumbnail a better indicator of the song's identity.

METHODS: The duplicate detector extracts a fingerprint for each file and puts it into a database. To compare two songs, it considers the location from which the first song's fingerprint was extracted and looks for a matching fingerprint in the same vicinity in the second song. If it finds a match, it identifles the two as duplicates. After analyzing all the songs in the database, the detector presents the user with a list of duplicate songs.
The thumbnail generator compares fingerprints within a file. If it finds similar fingerprints at different points, it identifies them as the song's chorus or some other characteristic feature. If fingerprint analysis doesn't find a clear repeatlng feature, the software can analyze other aspects of the song, such as patterns of sound frequencies, to pick out a characteristic section. The software then extracts the 15 seconds of audio surrounding that section as the thumbnail.

NEXT STEP: The researchers are working with Microsoft's product teams to commercialize this technology. Potential applicat ions might include software that cleans up music collections on home computers,

Source: Burges, C., et al. 2005 . Using audio fingerprinting for duplicate detection and thumbnail generation. Paper presented at the IEEE Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing, March 18-23, Philadelphia PA.

<endquote>

I should say that this program isn't available yet. Maybe one of our free/shareware users can tell us where they got one just like it for free, … perhaps????????

And maybe one that will do the same sort of thing for duplicate images?????

John