[madoues]

Hi,

I am new to MobileSheets, but can see a huge potential for me. I have been wanting an application such as this for many years. I even tried on my own with excel spreadsheets, but I am not experienced enough to do a proper job. So I am very happy to see this application and want to put in the time to set it up correctly.

I have batch imported several songs in txt and pdf format; many have more than one version.
I was under the impression that importing would put the different versions under on song name to prevent having several songs with the same name. After, I could make corrections to the ones that did not import as I intended. However, this did not happen, each version has it's own song name.

My intention with the songs was having many versions, perhaps one chart for vocals, one for piano, having some with staff, others with just lyrics and chords, etc. But all of them would be under one single song name.
Is this not the way MobileSheets was intended, or am I missing sonething?

Another thing that happened is that I imported a batch of audio files and for some reason the app lost the information, even though the files are still present in the MobileSheets folder along with the other files that I have imported. Only, the database does not recognize that the audio files are there any longer.

Any tips will be aprrecaited..


Cheers,
Dan

[Zubersoft]

Dan,

Are you using MobileSheets or MobileSheetsPro? You listed importing txt files, so I have to assume you are on MobileSheetsPro, not on the original MobileSheets.

As for your question, you can add multiple files to one song, but in order to do that, you have to use the song editor. So you would import one file, then edit the song that was created and add multiple files to that song. The problem is that you can't currently mix text files with any other file type due to the dynamic nature in which pages are laid out (the number of pages can change depending upon the text display settings).

What you have described is more akin to a feature that I'm going to work on adding at some point, namely the ability to have multiple versions of a song. Each version of a song will have its own files and properties, but you can choose which version of the song to load. In setlists, you can choose which version of the song you want to add to the setlist. This is probably what you were looking for, correct? In order to support your method of importing, I would have to add an option under Settings->Import Options where you can choose to group files with identical names (other than the exception)into a song with multiple versions.

As for your problem with batch importing, that definitely concerns me. Batch import audio creates new song entries with blank pages but associates the audio files with those songs. I just want to double-check that you realized that's how that works. If you were expecting the batch import audio to associate audio files with existing songs in your library, it's not actually designed for that. You have to edit each song in question, go the audio tab, and add the audio files you want to.

Mike

[BRX]

If you were expecting the batch import audio to associate audio files with existing songs in your library, it's not actually designed for that. You have to edit each song in question, go the audio tab, and add the audio files you want to.

Well, could be a nice additiion for the CSV Import. Have a field in the CSV with the name of the audio file (or multiple), put the audio file in the same place as csv and PDF and import as usual? I imagine that wouldn't be too hard to implement (though I must admit I have no clue about programming).

I think another thing is difficult to do but I suggest it anyway. Since I'm prepping my tablet to be a big archive I will have lots of versions of the same song. It would be nice if MSP recognizes identical song titles (maybe even checking identical composers) and displays only the one title which can be expanded/collapsed for the other versions (only in the song tab).

[madoues]

Thanks for your replies.

I guess I need a bit more experience and also allow some time for Zuberman to add a few features.
But I realize also that even though all the features I would like are not implemented as yet, they may likely be in the future.

One of my next tasks will be to import some of the PDF fake books using csv import, but there again, each song can be in Eb Bb C or Bass.
I play sax, flute and keyboards, so I need all versions except Bass. Also, in audio files, one can have an mp3 to have other people listen to in a band setting when working on a song, in addition to audio backtracks (with drums and bass for example) if one is playing alone or as a duo.
So, the main index, if you will, is the song name where all these files should reside. The program is really close to all this already, the big challenge I guess being that you need to be able to bulk import all this with minimal intervention from the user.

Thanks again, I may have more questions as I get more familiar with the program.

Cheers,
Dan

[doubleJ]

If you were expecting the batch import audio to associate audio files with existing songs in your library, it's not actually designed for that. You have to edit each song in question, go the audio tab, and add the audio files you want to.

This is an old thread, but I expected the same thing.
I specifically named all my files to match, assuming that the batch option would join them.
To my surprise, they created duplicate songs.
Can you give a logical reason why this wouldn't be default behavior?
Thanks...
JJ

[Zubersoft]

That isn't what batch import audio is designed to do. That feature was added because users requested that I provide a way to create songs containing only audio with a blank page. So it pulls in all the audio files, creates songs for them and adds the blank page. The feature is not designed to basically batch edit a series of songs and update them to add matching audio. If you had matching audio files in the directories when the PDFs or other files were first imported with Import->Local File, or Import->Batch Import, then the audio files would have been automatically adding to the songs (assuming you enabled "Automatically add matching audio" in the settings). 

Having said that, if you just use Import->Batch Import and you avoid duplicate songs, it will add matching audio for songs that already exist in your library. So you can achieve what you are looking for by using the batch import feature, just not the batch import audio feature.

Mike