Org and multimedia (tips?)

Org and multimedia (tips?)

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hi all,

I've been trying for a while to use Org also to store and org-anize the
data of my music and video files, so that I can conveniently access them
via helm-org-ql and play them using EMMS. I was wondering if anyone is
trying this too, and thought maybe it would be nice to share tips and
hacks.

What I do is quite simple and rudimentary. For example, I have all my
music files stored on a hard drive on my Raspberry. As a media server I
use GNUMP3d, which is pretty clunky and outdated, but it works fine and
is very easy for me to administer. GNUMP3d serves a local web page with
the list of titles and artists. I convert that web to an Org node using
org-web-tools (https://github.com/alphapapa/org-web-tools), and some
extra elisp to clean up inconsistencies and format everything so that
each artist/title is a sub-tree. The process is not quite fine-tuned: I
have to see how labels and properties could be added automatically:
music gender, year, etc. I have also defined a new type of link to be
able to play the content (*.m3u) via EMMS[1], and I have also added a new
action to helm-org-ql. Finally, in another section I am also storing
links to radio stations, TV, single songs (captured with org-capture),
etc. I have also found 'sacad' useful for downloading the cover art
(https://github.com/desbma/sacad).

This is my system for organizing my media files in Org. If anyone is
interested, I can expand on specific details. And here, a couple of
screenshots:

https://i.imgur.com/NKybgPV.png

https://i.imgur.com/DtfoyZl.jpg

[1]
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
  (org-link-set-parameters
   "url-media"
   :follow (lambda (path) (emms-play-url path))
   :face '(:foreground "chocolate" :weight bold :underline t))
#+end_src

Best regards,

Juan Manuel

Re: Org and multimedia (tips?)

[Max Nikulin]

On 18/03/2022 05:44, Juan Manuel Macías wrote:
> 
> What I do is quite simple and rudimentary. For example, I have all my
> music files stored on a hard drive on my Raspberry. As a media server I
> use GNUMP3d, which is pretty clunky and outdated, but it works fine and
> is very easy for me to administer. GNUMP3d serves a local web page with
> the list of titles and artists. I convert that web to an Org node using
> org-web-tools (https://github.com/alphapapa/org-web-tools), and some
> extra elisp to clean up inconsistencies and format everything so that
> each artist/title is a sub-tree. The process is not quite fine-tuned: I
> have to see how labels and properties could be added automatically:
> music gender, year, etc.
org-web-tools is an interesting project, but if you have access to files 
it should be easier to extract all meta information directly using e.g.

     exiftool -json file.mp3

or another tool suitable to particular format. It seems emms has 
interface to various tools.

P.S. You may try to adapt common LISP implementation of ID3 parser 
https://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-an-id3-parser.html

Re: Org and multimedia (tips?)

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Max Nikulin writes:

> org-web-tools is an interesting project, but if you have access to
> files it should be easier to extract all meta information directly
> using e.g.
>
>     exiftool -json file.mp3
>
> or another tool suitable to particular format. It seems emms has
> interface to various tools.
>
> P.S. You may try to adapt common LISP implementation of ID3 parser
> https://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-an-id3-parser.html

Maxim, thanks a lot for the ideas. I take note. The reason for using
org-web-tools is that the web page that GNUMP3d serves is extremely
simple, with an alphabetical list of artists, titles, and links to the
.m3u to stream. The list is easily reusable in Org. In the end I managed
to write a function to create in each node a property drawer with
album title, date and artist, accessing each m3u and obtaining the
information with ffprobe (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/1ALe4Ah.png).

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: Org and multimedia (tips?)

[TRS-80]

Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been trying for a while to use Org also to store and org-anize the
> data of my music and video files, so that I can conveniently access them
> via helm-org-ql and play them using EMMS.

I mean, I love Org just as much as anyone else on this list, but it does
not strike me as the right tool for this job?

In my mind anyway, I think first -- especially since you are storing
your files on an SBC on the network -- about some network based music
player like mpd or Mopidy (there are others, too).

There are many interfaces to those, including some in Emacs (maybe even
within EMMS, if I am recalling correctly).

But then you can also access your music from outside Emacs, too.  And
without needing to hack something up / re-invent the wheel in Org.

However, if you like to hack something up in Org instead, by all means,
continue!  :)

Cheers,
TRS-80