Mediacurser stores all of meta-information about media in its own database, allowing it to be used with any file format, not just those supporting id3 or vorbis tags. It does contains tag support (via taglib) for several file types (notably mp3 and ogg vorbis), allowing them to be imported into the database with minimal effort.
In all panes:
Mediacurser supports two types of playlists: dynamic and static. Both are created by pressing 'a' when the cursor is in the playlist pane.
A playlist can be made dynamic from the edit menu ('e' key), and a dynamic playlist made static from the same menu. Note that doing so currently causes the loss of all playlist content - it is equivelent to deleting the playlist and creating a new one).
Static Playlists
A static playlist, as you might expect, contains exactly the media you put into it and does not change. To add items to a static playlist, first select the playlist in the playlist (leftmost) pane, causing it to be displayed in the lower right. Then, move to the upper right pane, select the media to add, and press 'a'. To delete media from a static playlist, select it and press 'd'.
Dynamic Playlists
A dynamic playlist is regenerated every time the database changes. Media is selected based on a search string (see Searching, below).
search_string ::= [!|NOT]<field>:]["]<filter>["]
['|'|'OR'|'&'|'AND']
[search_string]
Searching in a single field:
By default, all fields are searched. 'field:' searches only in a given field,
where 'field' a complete field name ('artist' or 'gid', for instance),
or one of:
i - id
f - filename
a - artist
l - album
t - title
c - comment
g - genre
y - year
# - track
r - rating
p - plays
m - mood
For example:
artist:eagles
Exact Searches:
Enclosing a phrase in double quotes searches for that string exactly:
artist:"eagles"
Inverse Searches:
'!' or 'NOT' inverts the search result for this filter string:
!eagles
Logical OR:
'|' or 'OR' gives the union of the results
eagles OR "Yo-Yo Ma"
Logical AND:
'&' or 'AND' gives the intersection of the results
eagles & t:hotel california
Grouping expressions:
Parenthesis can be used for arbitrary grouping, with the exception that a
field specifications (field:<filter>) cannot be nested inside one another. i.e:
artist:(eagles & album:hotel california) | artist:"Yo-Yo Ma"
is undefined; instead, simply use this:
(artist:eagles & album:hotel california) | artist:"Yo-Yo Ma"
More Examples:
The simplest possible (and most common) search is simply a phrase, i.e:
Some Song
To find all live recordings by two bands (assuming you put 'Live' in the
comment field for each):
(artist:band1 || artist:band2) && c:"Live"
To find all files under a given directory '/tvshows'
f:/tvshows/
or even simply:
/tvshows/
If the indicator is not visible, the playlist is sorted by the id property.
The editing screen is mostly self explanatory; note that any changes will take place immediately (no undo) - with the exception that pressing 'ESC' while editing a field will cause the field to revert to its original value.
Batch Assign
The batch assign interface allows meta information to be extracted from filenames. It uses the PCRE regex engine.
To use, simply type an appropriate regex into the 'extraction regex' field, assign groups to media fields (\1, \5, etc) and press 'Apply'.
Again:
DO NOT ALLOW mediacurser_httpd TO BE ACCESSED FROM AN UNTRUSTED NETWORK!
Do note that this is not from lack of care about security, but rather out of convience; for instance, the actual files can be accessed without a password - this allows you to copy a link into your favorite media player without any difficulty. Enabling better security would only make it inconvient (and pointless) to use in the intended fashion.
mediacurser_httpd runs as a daemon by default - to run in a terminal, supply the -n option.
The default address of the server is http://<hosting machine's ip>:8686/
The 'group id' or gid allow you to control a users access to particular files. The default gid for any media file is '0'; other gids must be assigned. (With the 'G' key, for instance.)
If there is a crash after scanning a new media directory, it is likely due to an ongoing problem with filename encodings - please send a bug report.
Resizing a terminal that is running mediacurser is problematic, and may cause graphics glitches. As a workaround, simply restart the program.