 |
|
| Cyclef Explorer | Store | Support | About Us |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Section 4. Transferring Files to Your Xclef Transferring files to your Xclef device is probably one of the most important, if not the most important, functions of Cyclef Explorer. This section describes all the methods and options involved in the transfer process. A typical basic transfer involves three steps. First you select some items to be transferred and choose one of the transfer initiation methods. Second, Cyclef processes your selection to generate a final set of files to be transferred. Third, the actual transfer occurs.
The first order of business is selecting what to transfer. Cyclef Explorer supports several methods for selecting items and initiating the transfer. In this method, simply select any files, folders, or shortcuts and drag them to the Cyclef Explorer window. You can drag items from a second open Explorer window or from the Desktop. Valid drop targets in Cyclef Explorer the Audio Tracks and Data Files folders. By "valid drop target" we mean that you can either drop onto the icon representing the folder, or anywhere in the blank area when the folder is opened in the right pane of the Cyclef Explorer window. For those who would like to transfer from computer to Xclef using just one window, you can open your right pane to a folder on your computer, select some items, and drag them to a valid Xclef drop target folder in the left pane folder tree. Send To is a Windows built-in facility that allows you to right-click on a file, folder, or shortcut and use the context menu to "send" the item to a particular destination. The Cyclef installer registers your Xclef device(s) as destinations in your Windows Send To menu. To use this method, select some files, folders, or shortcuts, right-click, and open the Send To menu. Then select the Xclef destination to which you want the files transferred. Please note that the way Windows' Send To mechanism is designed, it cannot accomodate large numbers of selected files at once. If you want to transfer more than a half dozen files at once, use one of the other methods instead. Send To can only be used for a few files at a time.
In this method, select some files, folders, or shortcuts on your computer and then use either the Windows Explorer menu, the right-click context menu, or a keyboard shortcut to "copy" the items to the Windows Clipboard. The keyboard shortcuts for copying are Control-Insert and Control-C. Then go into a valid drop target folder in Cyclef and use either the Cyclef Explorer menu, the right-click context menu, or a keyboard shortcut to "paste" the items. The keyboard shortcuts for pasting are Shift-Insert and Control-V. Once you've initiated the transfer using one of the methods above, Cyclef will begin processing the items you selected to construct the final set of files to be transferred...
Selecting files for transfer one-by-one can be tedious. Cyclef Explorer includes a number of features for making it easy to transfer large and customized sets of files. 4.2.1 Sub-Folder Searching (Folder Recursion) When you select a folder for transfer using one of the methods in Section 4.1, Cyclef will recursively search that folder and all of its subfolders for files to add to the transfer set. If you have all of your music arranged in folders by albums or artists under C:\Music, for example, you can transfer all of your files by just dragging and dropping the C:\Music folder to Cyclef. You can disable sub-folder searching so that Cyclef only transfers the files you directly select. Go to the "General" tab in the Configuration dialog and check the "Turn off recursive sub-folder searching" option. By default, Cyclef Explorer transfers MP3 and WAV files as audio tracks. Other file types are considered data. Cyclef supports options to exclude particular file types during transfer. For example, say you have all your music files stored in C:\Music but these folders also contain JPEG files for album cover art. When you copy C:\Music to your Xclef, you want the music files to be transferred but not the cover art files, since there's no way to view them on the Xclef. You can instruct Cyclef to ignore data files you've selected them and only transfer the music files. Go to the "General" tab in the Configuration dialog and check the "Always skip..." options to exclude particular file types. Cyclef Explorer supports many playlist formats: M3U, PLS, B4S, BPL, WMP, RMP. When Cyclef encounters a supported playlist file amongst the files you've selected for transfer, it will process it as follows. The playlist is scanned for valid references to audio files on your computer. References to files that do not exist on your computer are ignored. Files that can be found are added to the list of files to be transferred to your Xclef. Files that already exist on the Xclef are skipped. Only files that are not already on-board the device are actually transferred. For further discussion of how duplicates are determined, see section 4.2.5. If you have one of the Xclef models, Cyclef will also reconstruct your playlist on-board the Xclef. 4.2.4 Windows Shortcut Handling Cyclef also supports Windows shortcuts. If a shortcut is found directly in the transfer selection or as a result of the sub-folder search, Cyclef follows that shortcut whether it points to a file or another folder. Shortcut loop-detection prevents Cyclef from bouncing infinitely between folders that directly or indirectly refer to one another. This feature can be helpful if you have, say, your music files stored in several different folder structures. You can create one folder containing shortcuts to all of your other music folders. Then all your music can be easily transferred by selecting just the folder with the shortcuts. When Cyclef encounters a file that already exists on the Xclef, the file is skipped and not re-transferred. Two files are considered duplicates if their Artist, Album, Track Number, and Title tag fields are identical. Cyclef Explorer keeps of log of the decisions it makes when building the set of files to transfer. This includes information about how sub-folders were searched, how playlist files were processed, and how shortcuts were followed. If you are wondering about why some files were included but others were not, you can likely find the answer in the filelist build log. This log is useful for diagnosing problems as well. After a transfer is complete, click on the "View Logs" button in the Transfer dialog. Then click the "Filelist Build Log" button. Or at any time, click on the "Reports" button in the Cyclef toolbar, select the "Transfer Logs" tab, and click on the "Filelist Build Log" button to see the log for the last transfer.
Once Cyclef has constructed the final set of files to be transferred, the Cyclef Transfer dialog appears. At the top of the dialog are two progress bars that indicate transfer progress on the current file and overall progress across all files, respectively. Below that, the "Cancel" button allows a transfer to be interrupted. Normally, the file being transferred when the button is clicked will complete, and then the process will abort. Any files already transferred to the Xclef will remain there. They are not deleted after a cancellation. When the transfer is over, either by cancellation or completion, the "Close" button becomes active. You can use either this button or the "X" button in the title bar of the dialog to close the window. If you want the transfer dialog to close automatically when the transfer is complete, check the "Auto-close dialog after transfer completes" option on the "General" tab in the Configuration dialog. If there is a transfer in progress and you wish to add more files to the transfer queue, simply drag and drop them to the transfer dialog itself (not the target folder). Also, it is important to note that you should not initiate other operations like tag editing while a transfer is in progress. The middle part of the dialog provides summary statistics that are updated in real-time. Once the transfer is complete, the "View Logs" button becomes active, allowing you to view the various logs Cyclef has generated as a result of the transfer process. The transfer throughput meter shows you how fast data is being transferred to your Xclef device. Note that the units are in megabits not megabytes. There are 8 bits to a byte. There are also estimates of time elapsed since the transfer began and time remaining until completion. These two values are currently only valid when transferring to the Xclef, and not when transferring back to the computer. The two other buttons in this section are related to Club Red Arena, which is explained in more detail in a section below. The "Compare to Other Users" button brings you to the Cyclef Arena statistics page, while the "Post Your Results" button lets you post your achieved transfer throughput along with some information about your hardware setup to the Cyclef Arena database. These buttons become active after the transfer is complete.
This section the very important issue of tag handling. It is especially important for Xclef owners to thoroughly understand the information in this section. 4.4.1 Introduction to Tag Metadata Anyone who has worked with digital audio files knows that metadata tag information can be a powerful tool for keeping a music collection well-organized. Such tag information is embedded inside music files along with the audio data and typically includes information fields such as:
These tags are commonly referred to as ID3 tags. ID3 is the tag standard used with MP3 files. The WAV format was created well before digital music became popular, so WAV files do not support tag information. Tag information is typically embedded into an audio file at the time of its creation. That is, when it is first ripped and encoded from the CD source. Ripping and encoding software often connects to online tag information databases such as CDDB or FreeDB to automatically fill tags in newly created tracks. Note that this only works when first encoding because CDs have special unique ID numbers. After an audio file has been created, this automatic database lookup is no longer possible because every encoder is slightly different and people choose different encoding options and bitrates. So although two MP3 files might sound identical to a human ear, if the underlying data bits are not exactly identical, a computer cannot tell they are of the same song. For this reason, we recommend that people ripping and encoding their own audio files from CD make sure that they enable CDDB-like features to automatically fill tags. Many files you download from the Internet will have missing or even wrong tag data. For these files you will have to use tag editing software to fix the information. 4.4.2 Cyclef Tag Reading and Generation When transferring a file to a Xclef, Cyclef must read the tag information from the source audio file on the computer and pass it along with the file data to the Xclef. This section describes how Cyclef does that. ID3 Tags ID3 is the tag format for MP3 files. Cyclef is capable of reading both ID3 V1 and ID3 V2 tag formats. For each file, Cyclef will first attempt to read the V2 tag. If it does not exist, Cyclef will read the V1 tag. Filename Parsing If the tag information cannot be read from the audio file, Cyclef attempts to guess the tag information by parsing the name and path of the file. Filling-In Missing Tag Information To successfully transfer a file to the Xclef, Cyclef must provide at least the Artist, Album and Title, because these are the fields the Xclef uses to uniquely identify an audio track. If Cyclef cannot either read all three of them from the tag or guess them from the filename, they must be filled in manually by you or filled in with boilerplate information. Normally, if Cyclef cannot fill the three fields for a file during transfer, it will pop-up a dialog box asking for you to manually fill in the information. Cyclef Explorer has several options to alter this default behavior. They can be found on the "Xclef" tab in the Configuration dialog. First, Cyclef can be configured to skip files whose tag information cannot be automatically determined. Check the "Auto-skip files with incomplete ID3 tags" option to enable this. You can examine the transfer log afterwards to find which files did not transfer due to incomplete tags and fix them later. Second, Cyclef can fill the missing fields with boilerplate text. Check the "Auto-complete ID3 tags with missing fields" option to enable this and provide the text you want Cyclef to fill with in the box below it.
This section describes how Cyclef Explorer handles the importation of PC-based playlist files, such as those generated by MP3 player software like Winamp. 4.5.1 Playlist Processing and File Transfer Cyclef Explorer can import playlists from your computer to your Xclef. Simply drag and drop (or use any of the other transfer methods) a playlist file to the Xclef. Cyclef Explorer supports several playlist formats: M3U, PLS, RMP, WPL, B4S, BPL. When Cyclef encounters a supported playlist file amongst the files you've selected for transfer, it will process it as follows. The playlist is scanned for valid references to audio files on your computer. References to files that do not exist on your computer are ignored. Files that can be found are added to the list of files transfer to the Xclef. Files that already exist on the Xclef are skipped. Only files that are not already on-board the device are actually transferred. For further discussion of how duplicates are determined, see section 4.2.5. 4.5.2 Automatic Playlist Creation Cyclef can automatically generate playlists on-board the Xclef even when you are not transferring playlist files. At the end of each transfer, Cyclef asks if you wish to create playlists that match the sub-folders that Cyclef found during the transfer set construction process. If you answer yes, these playlists will be created. This can be useful when you have created folder structures on your computer's music collection that you want reflected as playlists on your Xclef. By default, Cyclef will not create or change a playlist if one with the same name already exists on the Xclef. If you want Cyclef to overwrite existing playlists during import, enable the "When importing, overwrite existing playlists with the same name" option on the Xclef tab of the Config dialog.
This section describes the Advanced Transfer Management features, which gives greater control over the transfer process and allows for greater automation. While the tag reading mechanisms described above should suffice in most situations, sometimes you need a bit more control. Cyclef includes a feature called Advanced Transfer Management (ATM) that gives you just such control over the tag and transfer process. This feature is only applicable to Xclef models because Xclef II-series and MuVo devices do not use a tag database. To enable ATM, go the "Xclef" tab in the Configuration dialog and check the "Enable Advanced Transfer Management" option. Once this option is checked, the next time you open the Configuration dialog there will be an additional tab named "Advanced Transfer" with additional options to control ATM. When ATM is enabled, you will see a new ATM dialog appear after initiating the transfer but before the file transfer actually begins. You use the ATM dialog to specify every aspect of the transfer before it begins so once it does, it can proceed without further intervention from you. The features of ATM are divided into three tabs which are described in the following sections.
After you have finished going through the tabs and are satisfied with the transfer settings, click the "OK" button at the bottom of the window to proceed with the transfer. To cancel the transfer, click "Cancel". This tab allows you to review and edit all the tag information Cyclef has collected and plans to send to the Xclef along with your audio files. The main list box displays all the files that are part of the transfer. Each of the tag fields is displayed in a separate column. Items marked with a red 'X' are ones for which Cyclef could not fill the minimum required fields of Artist, Album, and Title. You need to fill in those fields for those items or they will be skipped during the transfer. Items marked with a green check have all the necessary information for a successful transfer. While you don't need to edit items with green check, you can still change the values for the non-essential fields to your liking. Before you begin the transfer, scroll through the list and make sure all the files you intend to transfer have green checkmarks. When a file is selected in the list box, the full path of the source file on the computer is displayed in the smaller box above. To edit the tag information for a particular file, right-click to bring up the context menu. To edit the tag information for more than one file at a time, select multiple files (using the "Shift" or "Control" keys), and right-click to bring up the context menu. The menu has these options:
You can also reorder files in the list by dragging and dropping. This might not seem useful at first (since order of transfer is irrelevant for the Xclef), but combined with the "Auto-Fill Track Numbers" feature this can be helpful. For example, if you have an album's worth of files which for one reason or another does not have track numbers assigned, you can drag and drop them into the right order, then auto-fill the track numbers in sequence. Note that when you change the tag information here you are not editing the tag embedded in the source audio file on your computer. The tag data you are editing is an independent set that is to be transferred to the Xclef. If you cancel the transfer at this point, the tag information you have edited simply vanishes. If you do want your edits written back to the source audio files on your computer, Cyclef has a feature called Tag WriteBack, which is described in its own section below. The Data Files tab displays all the non-audio files that Cyclef found during the transfer set construction process. To skip a specific file or set of files, select them in the list box and hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard. To skip and not transfer any of the data files for this transfer, simply check the box labeled "Check here to SKIP all data files". This is not a permanent option, and only applies to the current transfer. This tab displays all the playlists that Cyclef plans to create on the Xclef after transfer. These may be playlists created to reflect playlist files that are part of the transfer, or automatically created playlists to reflect sub-folders. Simply uncheck the proposed playlists that you do not wish to be created. Or use the "Select All" or "Deselect All" buttons to quickly choose all or none of the playlists. By default, Cyclef will not create or change a playlist if one with the same name already exists on the Xclef. If you want Cyclef to overwrite existing playlists during import, enable the "When importing, overwrite existing playlists with the same name" option on the Xclef tab of the Config dialog. ATM has several associated options. Changes to the options in this tab are permanent, and apply to the current as well as future transfers. Automatic Tag Generation These are the options that govern how Cyclef parses tag information from the filename when embedded tag information is not available. The first option is the list of characters Cyclef will use to break the filename into individual tag fields. The default list contains just a hypen "-". You can specify your own list, using spaces to separate each character in your list. Here is an example using the default list: C:\Music\Britney Spears - Oops - 02 - Stronger.mp3 The filename is broken into the following pieces: "Britney Spears", "Oops", "02", and "Stronger". Cyclef starts from the right side. The first item is taken to be the track Title, which here is "Stronger". Next, Cyclef looks for a numeric field. If one is found, such as "02" in this case, it is used as the Track Number. If not, the Track Number is set to zero. Next, Cyclef looks for the Album, and finally, the Artist. Often, a filename may not include the Album name and Track Number: C:\Music\Britney Spears - Stronger.mp3 In this case, there is no numeric field so the Track Number is skipped. And because there aren't enough fields to support both an Artist and Album, the left-most field is assumed to be the Artist. Some people prefer to have Artist and Album information encoded as folders, so that the file names only contain track information: C:\Music\Britney Spears\Oops\01 - Stronger.mp3 In this case, you want to check the "Use folder names when filename has too few fields to fill tag" option. When this option is enabled, the folder names of "Britney Spears" and "Oops" will be used for the Artist and Album, respectively. Finally, when there are not enough fields to support an Album, you can customize the text with which Cyclef fills the Album field. The default text is "Single". Tag WriteBack Normally, the tag edits you make in ATM are used only for transfer to the Xclef and do not affect the original source files on the computer. If you want these edits to be written back to the original source files, enable Tag WriteBack. When Tag WriteBack is enabled, there are two additional options. You can choose to have Cyclef write back either ID3V1 tags, ID3V2 tags, or both. Note that writing back ID3V2 tags can be slow, especially on large files, since write V2 tags can potentially involve rewriting the entire file on disk. These options do not apply to WMA tags.
4.7.1 Introduction to One-Touch Synchro Cyclef Explorer's One-Touch Synchro feature is a one-way, non-destructive synchronization transfer. The basic concept is to select a folder on your computer that contains your music collection. What Synchro does is keep your Xclef up to date with the contents of that folder. So, whenever you download new music to that folder or rip new songs from CD, just run a Synchro and bring your Xclef up to speed. One-Touch Synchro does not transfer files back to the computer or otherwise propagate changes made on the Xclef back to the computer. For safety, it also never deletes files. Future releases of Cyclef Explorer will introduce more sophisticated two-way syncing and mirroring capabilities. To configure One-Touch Synchro, go to the "Xclef" tab in the Configuration dialog. Type in or use the "Browse" button to select a folder location on your computer for synchronization with your Xclef. To initiate "Synchro" operation, just click the Synchro button in the Cyclef toolbar. 4.7.2 Multi-Folder Synchronization You can also have Cyclef synchronize from multiple folders on your PC. To do this, create a new folder on your PC and configure Cyclef to use it for One-Touch Synchro. Inside this new folder, create Windows shortcuts to each of the real folders you want to be part of the synchronization. Cyclef Explorer knows how to read these shortcuts and will follow them to each of your specified folders. Voila! Multi-folder synchro.
The Last Transfer folder is available in all editions of Cyclef Explorer. After each transfer is complete, the Last Transfer folder displays all of the files just added to the Xclef. The contents of this folder are replaced after each transfer. Note this folder is just a view, and that any operations you perform on items in this folder actually affect the file on the Xclef. So if you delete a file through the Last Transfer folder, it will be deleted from the Xclef, not just the folder.
Cyclef Explorer generates various detailed logs during the transfer process. These can be useful when diagnosing problems in transfer or understanding why a certain file was or was not transferred.
Club Red Arena is an online database run by Red Chair Software as a service to Cyclef users as well as the larger Xclef user community. Xclef owners can use Cyclef Explorer to upload information about their hardware configurations and achieved transfer throughput to the Arena database. The Cyclef Arena area of our website provides real-time updated statistics on typical transfer speeds for each type of device and connection and what kind of CPUs, operating systems, and firmware revisions people are using. Our hope is that the Cyclef Arena database is not just a fun way to compare speed results with other users, but a genuinely useful source of information for diagnosing problems and determining optimal configurations for use with Xclef devices. The Cyclef Explorer transfer dialog provides direct links to visit and upload to Club Red Arena. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Cyclef OmniTome 
| Notmad | Anapod - iPod Software | Riorad | Deubox | Irivium | Cyclef | Help and Support | Red Chair Software |  |