Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. | Rev A2, November, 2005 |
Before I got very far into the project, I looked at the Dell DJ features to see how they would fit with the way I wanted to work in the field. What I required was to be able to get to a particular species as quickly as possible after I turned on the player. I wanted to see a list of bird families which could then be selected to display a list of birds in that family.
The music library menu of the DJ allows tracks to be selected by several categories, also known as “tags”. I chose to use the “Artist” tag to define bird families (as well as the actual artist for music tracks). Since the DJ lists tracks alphabetically within each category, I needed a method of separating family names of bird tracks from artist names of music tracks so that I didn’t see “Polka Mania” listed next to “Pigeons and Doves” (I listen to Polka all the time<g>).
I solved this problem by prefixing bird family names by an arbitrary sequence number. This kills two birds with the same stone
Although Musicmatch supports an extensive list of tags, the Dell DJ only provides a few basic tags (and most other MP3 players will likely have a similar design). Consequently, I only considered the basic tags in deciding how to organize my libraries. The tags that I use are “Genre“, “Artist” and “Album”.
As mentioned earlier, I use “Genre” to separate libraries. Although this is really more for convenience when working in Musicmatch, it also allows me to separately list all bird tracks or all music tracks on the player. I use the “Album” category only for music tracks and for the “Raw Birds” library. In addition to using “Artist” to define bird families, I use Playlists to define species lists for specific locations and for client target lists. I might eventually use this feature to define lists of species by habitat type (when I get a spare minute perhaps).
© Copyright Stuart Healy | www.aztrogon.com | Page 7 of 25 |