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Scubacpa
11-22-2005, 10:53 AM
Somewhere along the line I mentioned that I had made a purchase on E-Bay for a 6 Disc CD set which was advertised as containing 975,000 midi files. I had promised to make a report when it arrived.

It arrived about a week ago and have spent a few hours with it. I can't verify the exact number of songs but it would not surprise me if it really is 975,000. Each CD contains about 20 to 50 zipped files, each zipped file has thousands of songs. So the quick math is 30 X 5,000 X 6 = 900,000 so the claim is probably correct.

However, there is absolutely NO organization or index or any other way to find a particular song. They are not grouped alphabetically (except of course within each zipped file). With a few excetptions the name of the zipped file contains no clue as to what's inside it. And (again with a few exceptions) once you do open a file there does not seem to be any logic as to why these were grouped together. I have just opened files at random and scanned for songs I recognized. The only way to really do it would be to unzip each file from each CD to one huge directory on a hard drive, and then via windows I would have them all alphabetically.

The other probem is that the names of the files are so long (the name contains the name of the song followed by a lot of useless information) the CVP does not recognize them so as I copy to a floppy or smart media card to play on the CVP I have to shorten the name. Kind of makes batch copying a chore.

I was expecting the first CD to have a file or database that had an alpha listing of the songs which would tell you which file on which CD contains it, or that they would have been grouped in alpha order and the zipped directories named aa-am, an-ao etc.

So ... bottom line ... It's pretty useless.

owensamuelson
11-22-2005, 11:44 AM
Gary,

You might want to check out the program called midicat. It helps to locate and orgainzer midi files on the PC.

http://midicat.net/

I also found a program called file renamer that might be useful.

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

Owen

Joe Harrington
11-22-2005, 01:58 PM
Scubacpa,

I bought the same thing. And...was quite disappointed. I opened a lot of the various zip's and found no organization what so ever. You're right...it's pretty much useless. Though I did find a couple that were worthwhile. Oh well, it was less than $20.00. No big thing. :confused:

Scubacpa
11-22-2005, 02:14 PM
There was one directory called Christmas which had a large number of Christmas songs (as well as thousands of non Christmas - who knows why?) so I pulled out about 50 Christmas songs and put them all in one directory on a smart media card. Now at Chirstmas time I can put the card in, set to random, and let the thing start playing as background music. So I figure I paid $20 for a Christmas albumn and toss the rest of it. That's just a little more than a CD of only 15 or so songs would have cost and it shows off the CVP. That's how I'm rationalizing it.

You could also say it's equal to 4 coffees at Starbucks! Or a 1/2 tank of gas.

Certainly not the biggest waste of money in my life!

dancaputi
11-22-2005, 02:19 PM
I didn't want to say anything before you got it. There are so many midi archives online that I don't see much value in having them on a CD unless you don't have convenient access to the web. I don't suppose any of those files are illegal copies of commercial midis? - that would be worth something (if you don't have a conscience :eek: ).

Nevertheless, if I were you, I'd get a batch unzip tool like PicoZip (trial version) and expand the lot to your hard disk. Then give MidiCat a whack. Unfortunately I don't think MidiCat will search through the zips otherwise you could leave it all on the CD.

You can go through all that trouble and then do this test: pick an arbitrary song and play it. If it sounds good, give yourself a pat on the back. Now go to the web and search for the same song. Chances are, you'll find that you wasted all that time.

- Dan C.

Scubacpa
11-22-2005, 02:45 PM
I'm afraid you are right so I'm not even going to waste my time.

wally
11-23-2005, 11:01 AM
Yeah, I agree with Dan. If you have internet access, then you have access to well over a million midi files. I like to use the music robot search engine (there's a tutorial for using it in the CVPUG Tutorials section). The search engine makes any song easy to find.

Scubacpa
11-23-2005, 11:55 PM
Just tried it. My teacher gave me "Born Free" as part of my lesson this week. It helps me to learn a song if I can hear it. I tried looking for it on the CD set. I'm sure it's there but after 15 minutes I gave up. I used the Music Robot search engine and found it in less than a minute. The pop ups do drive me nuts, but I guess it's a small price to pay.

Looks like the CDs are going in the garbage!

Andreas
02-14-2006, 04:16 AM
If you donīt want popups in your midisearch like on the musicrobot site, go to:
http://www.vanbasco.com/midisearch.html
http://www.midisite.co.uk/
or you go to this megasearch engine, where you get them alltogether
http://www.manythings.org/midi/search.html
;)