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Poster: gmcgill Date: Jul 20, 2006 5:02am
Forum: etree Subject: Re: beginner questions

First a few tips on navigating the layout of the archive:

a. Simply go to the "browse all artists collection pages in the live music archive" (top of page in middle under the BROWSING AND FINDING SHOWS section when you go to the main Live Music Archive page)...or a little below that in the middle of the page you can click directly on "grateful dead" collection to get right to that collection if interested in them]

b. Click on this "browse all artists...." link and you'll see a listing of all the artists.

c. Choose any artist and you'll find yourself in the artist collection page. Click on the artist link at this point and you'll be taken to a page with certain options. Click on, for example, browse by date, browse by year. If you click on browse by year, you'll see a listing of all the years. Click on a year. You'll now see a listing of shows for that year. To the right you can click on sort by date, by relevance, by rating, etc. NOTE: if you want to see the show source (soundboard, etc.) in the summary listing, look to the lower right side of the screen and select the toggle for showing source.

1.Assume you want to download the followng show (I just picked randomly from GD):
http://www.archive.org/details/gd85-09-07.oade.georges.17078.sbeok.shnf

2. about the middle of the page there is a section called "Whole Item". Under this you'll see 4 items, 64kb STREAM, VBR M3U STREAM, 64kbs MP3 ZIP, and VBR ZIP.

3. The first two items simply stream to your computer (you can listen on various players, itunes, etc., but when done you won't have downloaded anything.

4. The last two options are for downloading a ZIP file containing all the individual song files. You'll need to right click on the highlighted link on the far right (this item shows the size of the zip file). Once you right click on the item, then click "save as" or "save target as" and you should be asked where you want to save the file. Make sure you save the file to a location on your computer where you know how to find afterwards. (Perhaps create a subdirectory off your C: drive for "live music"). Once you save the file to this location, return to the location and "unzip" the file. Here again, be sure to extract the files to the drive you've specified for storing the files. If you don't have a ZIP utility, GOOGLE ZIP files to find this.

5. Once extracted to your local directory, you should then use your music player program (real player, WinAmp, microsoft's player, itunes, etc.) to add these songs to your music library. From this point you should be able to save, burn to disk, transfer to IPOD, etc.

6. 64kpb vs VBR files. These are both MP3 files that will play on any MP3 player. However the VBR files are MUCH better quality (thus the larger size). For use on portable players, etc. I recommend the VBR files. Of course for lossless files (true CD quality) you'll want either the SHN files or FLAC files. These take much more room and time to download. (You might want the OGG files rather than MP3, but these OGG files are not as universal as MP3 with regard to players). If you want the SHN or FLAC files (much larger download), you'll need to either save each song file individually or use another program to facilitate automatic downloading. I myself use a FIREFOX browser with the "DownThemAll" extension added for automatically downloading these SHN and FLAC files with only a couple of clicks. Both these programs are free (just use GOOGLE to find). If you're not using a broadband connection, I probably wouldn't try the FLAC or SHN files. Also, you'll need some additional software to either play or convert the FLAC or SHN files to WAV files that you can burn to a regular CD. See the FAQs for Live Music Archive for info on this and links to various programs.

Enjoy

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Poster: David Hanson Date: Jul 20, 2006 7:42am
Forum: etree Subject: Re: beginner questions

ohmygoddess. Thanks for more than I asked for and just what I need, it will be enjoyed.

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Poster: DEADBUCK Date: Jul 23, 2006 7:55pm
Forum: etree Subject: Re: beginner questions

David,
Welcome to the LMA...I am sure you will find your time here fun and exciting...you should definitely hang on to those instructions...they are dern well written!