Organizing Your Music Files and Preparing Them to Play on Roksbox

There are two ways to play your music files on Roksbox. One way is to use a GUI program called MediaMonkey to organize your music files and supply detailed information and poster art. The other way is to use your video directory structure to provide the information to Roksbox for playing your music files. This section will discuss the MediaMonkey method. To use the directory structure method, go to Using Music Directory Structure.

We will use MediaMonkey to organize your music files. Download and install MediaMonkey. During the install, you can take the defaults except for the following options:

On the Additional Tasks screen uncheck Create a Quick Launch icon.
On the Select Associations screen, uncheck all of the boxes.

Continue with the install.

Start MediaMonkey and click OK on the Welcome window (this will give you the free version). On the Add/Rescan Folders window, uncheck all the boxes that are checked. Then browse to your Music folder and click the box to check it. Then click OK. If you get an Import Data window, click Cancel to not import other information.

After MediaMonkey has loaded your information, all of your music files will show up on the screen. The left side of the screen will show various organizations of your files. Click the plus sign next to Album to show all of your albums. Right click on your first album, then click Auto-Tag from Web. After it searches for information about your album, it will display its results. If the results it finds look correct, click the Auto-Tag button. On the Add Album Art window, uncheck Save image to tag, and check Save image to album folder. Leave the default file name of folder.jpg. Then check In the future, do not ask me, and click OK. When it's finished, click Close.

If the Auto-Tag from Web changed some of your Artist or Album names, you can change it to match your directory structure by right clicking on the Album, then click Auto-Tag from Filename. Select the Filename Format that matches your directory structure, then click OK.

Do the same for each album in your album list.

Click on the plus sign next to Artist & Album Artist and look at each artist and album to see if the information looks correct. You can make changes to any incorrect information such as artist name or album name.

If you have some albums that MediaMonkey did't find the album art for, you can manually search for it through a search engine, and save it as folder.jpg in the corresponding album folder. It will then show up in Roksbox.

MediaMonkey doesn't change or rearrange your actual files, it just reorganizes them within MediaMonkey.

After everything is organized the way you want it, click Library in the folder organization window. Then click File, Create Reports, then Track List (XML). Browse to your web server Music folder, then type music.xml in the File name field and click Save.


Creating Playlists

Roksbox relies on web server directory listings to identify your playlists. Some web servers either don't support directory listings, or have them currently disabled. If you don't know whether your web server suports directory listings, open a web browser, and do the following:


If you see a directory listing, then your web server supports directory listings. If you see an error message, or if it says it can't find the page, then your web server doesn't support directory listings, or it is currently disabled.

If your web server doesn't currently support directory listings, there is probably a way to enable it. Usually it is a matter of editing a config file and changing a parameter. Check with your web server documentation to learn how to change it.

Mongoose supports directory listings by default. However, if you are using Mongoose, and you don't get a directory listing, go to Start -> All Programs -> Mongoose web server -> Edit config. Add a line that says dir_list yes, then save and exit the file. Then shutdown Mongoose and restart it. It should now support directory listings.

There are three ways to create playlists for Roksbox. If your web server supports directory listings, chose Option 1. Otherwise, chose Option 2, or Option 3.


Option 1 - If your web server supports directory listings.

  1. Create a playlist in MediaMonkey.
  2. Click on the playlist, then click File -> Create Reports -> Track List (XML).
  3. Browse to your web server Music folder, then type whatever name you want your playlist to be called, with a .xml extension, in the File name field and click Save. Whatever you save your playlist as is how it will show up in Roksbox.
  4. If you want album art to show up in Roksbox for your playlist, create some album art, or copy it from somewhere else and put it in your Music folder. Give it the same name as your playlist name, except with a .jpg extension.
  5. Repeat this for any other playlists you want to create.
  6. When you are through creating playlists, start Roksbox and go to the Music option. Your playlists will show up under the category Playlists.


Option 2 - If your web server does not support directory listings.

  1. Create a playlist in MediaMonkey.
  2. Click on the playlist, then click File -> Create Reports -> Track List (XML).
  3. Browse to your web server Music folder, then type whatever name you want your playlist to be called, with a .xml extension, in the File name field and click Save. Whatever you save your playlist as is how it will show up in Roksbox.
  4. If you want album art to show up in Roksbox for your playlist, create some album art, or copy it from somewhere else and put it in your Music folder. Give it the same name as your playlist name, except with a .jpg extension.
  5. Repeat this for any other playlists you want to create.
  6. Since your web browser does not support directory listings, Roksbox will not be able to find your playlists. Therefore, you have to tell Roksbox what they are called. To do that, use a text editor to create a text file that looks like the following:

<playlist>your-first-playlist-name.xml</><poster>your-first-album-art-name.jpg</>
<playlist>your-second-playlist-name.xml</><poster>your-second-album-art-name.jpg</>

Use the same format for each additional playlist. If you don't have album art, use <poster></>. When finished, save the file as playlists.txt, and exit the file.

Start Roksbox and go to the Music option. Your playlists will show up under the category Playlists.


Option 3 - If your web server does not support directory listings.

  1. Create a playlist in MediaMonkey.
  2. Click on the playlist, then click File -> Create Reports -> Track List (XML).
  3. Browse to your web server Music folder, then type playlist1.xml in the File name field and click Save. Your playlist will show up as playlist1 in Roksbox.
  4. If you want album art to show up in Roksbox for your playlist, create some album art, or copy it from somewhere else and put it in your Music folder. Give it the same name as your playlist name, except with a .jpg extension.
  5. Repeat this for any other playlists you want to create, giving them names playlist2.xml, playlist3.xml, etc.
  6. When you are through creating playlists, start Roksbox and go to the Music option. Your playlists will show up under the category Playlists.


Option 3 has the advantage over Option 2 of not having to create a seperate text file, but you can't give your playlists descriptive names. In Option 2, you can have descriptive playlist names, but you have to create a seperate text file so Roksbox will know what the names are.

That's it. If you haven't performed steps 6, 7, and 8 yet, do it now, then enjoy your music with Roksbox on your Roku player.