CD Trustee Help File

Much of the text contained in this document is also available when you click on the Help buttons that appear on most CD Trustee screens. For those who don’t know what a “screen” is, we are talking about your computer monitor screen. A screen is also called a “window”. You are looking at a “window” right now. Pretty much everything you see in a program that runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system is a window. Why do you think “Windows” is called Windows? It’s not because Bill Gates cleans them!

When we talk about the “main CD Trustee screen” we are talking about the screen that displays all the artists, albums, and tracks in your database, in a hierarchical list. Once you purchase CD Trustee, this is the first screen you see when you start the program, since the “Welcome to CD Trustee” screen no longer appears once you enter your registration code to remove the 30-album limit.

Another term sometimes used is “Tab” or “Tabs”. In most cases, we are not talking about the Tab key on your keyboard. You know how the folders in a filing cabinet have tabs to make them easier to open? Some windows (like the CD Trustee Details screen) have similar tabs at the top. These tabs have writing on them that say Artist, Album, Tracks, Front Cover, etc. You can click on each tab to see the information associated with that tab.

Hopefully you know what a “button” is. These are the gray-colored rectangles you click on in a window to perform some function. Usually these buttons are gray, unless you changed the Windows color scheme. Of course there are also two or three buttons (or more) on your mouse, which are of course totally different from a button on a Window.

We hope you also know what a “click” is. This means pressing the left mouse button. Double-clicking means pressing that same button twice, and quickly. If you are not quick enough, you get two clicks, not one double-click.

Be aware that many features in CD Trustee require you to click your RIGHT mouse button on an object. This displays a pop-up menu, and you then click an item in that menu to perform the function described. If we say “click” we are always talking about pressing the LEFT mouse button once. We will use the word “right” if we want you to press the right mouse button, but generally will not use the word “left” when we want you to “click”.

A “field“ is a single piece of information, like an album or track title, an artist name, or the year an album was released.

A “record” is a collection of related fields. All the information about one album is contained in one record. All the information about one artist is also a record. All the information about one track is another record. Therefore, each album has many track records associated with it, just like each artist might have many album records.

Don’t confuse a record with a “file”. A file is a collection of records, similar to how a file cabinet contains lots of records. All of the text information about all of your albums is contained in only one file. That file is named “CDTrust.mdb”. It’s a very good idea to back up that file regularly.

These artist names, album titles, and track (or song) titles are arranged is a hierarchy, with the artist being at the top of this hierarchy. Each of these three objects is called a “node”. On the main CD Trustee screen, when you expand the artist node by double-clicking the artist name, you see all the album nodes beneath that artist. When you expand the album node, you see all the track nodes beneath that album. This is also sometimes referred to as a “tree structure”, since it is similar to the branches and leaves on a tree.

When corresponding with us, it will help tremendously if you can use the terms mentioned above when describing a program item or action. This will eliminate confusion and enable a more accurate response.

Using CD Trustee

Most windows in CD Trustee have a HELP button that displays useful information relevant to that window. Be sure to press those buttons to view more specific instructions.

To view the albums from any artist, click near the little plus sign (+) to the left of the artist name. Double-clicking an artist name does the same thing. Click on an album, then press the DETAILS button to view or change the information about that album or artist.

Click your RIGHT mouse button on an album, artist, or track to display a menu with several choices. Try it!

Click or type any letter of the alphabet to quickly position to the first line starting with that letter.

Pause your mouse pointer briefly over each of the buttons to display a tip describing its function.

Search for a song, album, or artist, or find albums meeting certain criteria by clicking the Find menu and the Filter menu. Easily move albums between artists by right-clicking an album and choosing Move from the menu that appears.

Start the process of cataloging your music collection by pressing the button that says: ADD CDs AUTOMATICALLY. Read the Help on that window for additional instructions. If you use a proxy server to connect to the Internet, you must select SET PROXY SERVER from the Options menu in order for Internet access to work.

Play a CD by inserting it into your computer, and press the PLAY CD button. If this CD is already in your database, the artist name, album title, and song titles will be displayed. If not, you can have it automatically looked-up on the Internet, and add it to your database with the press of a button. However, to look up and add many CDs at once, it is much easier to use the ADD CDs AUTOMATICALLY window.

The data found on the Internet is not perfect, and you should edit the results. It is especially important to review the artist names and the SORT BY NAME, to make sure artists are displayed in the order you expect. View the Help on the Artist and Album windows for more details. You get there by selecting an artist or album and then pressing the DETAILS button.

To print jewel case cover inserts or CD labels, display the details for any album, then click the Cover or Label tabs.

Look at each item on the File, Edit, and Options menus to discover other features.

About CD Trustee

CD Trustee automatically catalogs your music collection, just by inserting and removing each CD into your computer. It gathers the artist, album title, song titles, genre and other information from an online database containing almost a million CDs. Print reports of your collection to show friends and facilitate trading. Print jewel case inserts, covers, and labels. Search for any song, artist, or album. Catalog and play MP3 files.

For more information, refer to the CD Trustee web site at www.base40.com.

Music recognition technology and related data are provided by Gracenote and the Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service (sm). Gracenote is the industry standard in music recognition technology and related content delivery. For more information visit www.gracenote.com.

Gracenote is CDDB, Inc. d/b/a "Gracenote." CD and music-related data from Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service (sm) © 2000, 2001, 2002 Gracenote. Gracenote CDDB Client Software © 2000, 2001, 2002 Gracenote. U.S. Patents Numbers #5,987,525; #6,061,680; #6,154,773, and other patents issued or pending.

CDDB is a registered trademark of Gracenote. The Gracenote logo and logotype, the Gracenote CDDB logo and logotype, and the "Powered by Gracenote CDDB" logo are trademarks of Gracenote. Music Recognition Service and MRS are service marks of Gracenote.

Using the Gracenote CDDB® Service

CD Trustee uses the Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service (sm) from Gracenote to display artist, title, track, credit, and other information. This service is FREE. The first time you use the service, you must register with Gracenote to use it.

Sane Soft pays fees for you to use CDDB with CD Trustee, so the service is FREE for you to use. To register with the service, just look up a CD with CD Trustee. The Gracenote CDDB Registration Wizard appears automatically. Follow the screens for a "New Registration" to select a nickname and password. The remaining information is optional, but does help Gracenote provide better service. Once you register, you do not have to re-register, unless you want to change your registration information or settings. To change your Gracenote CDDB registration information, select "Change CDDB registration info" from the Options menu.

To see or edit the full Gracenote CDDB information for a CD, select "Get Disc Info" from the Edit menu.

Identifying CDs and Adding To Your Database

Start the process of cataloging your music collection by pressing the button that says: ADD CDs AUTOMATICALLY.

Most audio CDs do not contain any information about the album. They contain only a series of numbers indicating the starting position of each track on the CD. These numbers are used as a unique ID to identify the album to an Internet database.

When you insert a CD, this unique ID is saved in your database. CD Trustee can then look up (and save) the information about the album from the Internet database. This includes album title, artist, and song titles.

There are almost 1 million CDs in this Internet database, and it is constantly kept up to date.

Press the button that says: START INSERTING CDs FOR LOOKUP. You then need to put the first CD into your computer's CD-ROM drive. Once the disc spins up to speed, that CD's unique ID will be saved, and the CD will automatically eject, ready for you to insert the next one. Continue this process with all CDs you want to catalog. Do this in small batches of no more than about 50 CDs each and keep track of the order they were inserted. You will notice a counter that tells how many CDs are waiting to be looked up on the Internet.

When you are ready, press the button that says: LOOK UP CDs ON THE INTERNET. Once an Internet connection is present, each CD will be identified and added to your database. In some cases an exact match will not be found and you will be asked to choose from a short list of possible albums.

If your Internet access goes through a proxy server, you must select Set Proxy Server from the Options menu (on the previous screen) in order for Internet access to work.

IF ANOTHER CD PLAYER STARTS AUTOMATICALLY WHEN YOU INSERT A CD, you might want to disable AutoPlay.

To do this:

1. Double-click the My Computer icon.

2. On the View (or Tools) menu, click Options (or Folder Options), and then click the File Types tab.

3. Click the AudioCD type, and then click Edit (or Advanced).

4. In the Actions list, click Play, and then click Set Default.

To temporarily disable AutoPlay, press the SHIFT key when inserting an audio CD.

To reenable AutoPlay, repeat steps 1-4.

These instructions will vary depending on the version of Windows.

Here are instructions for Windows XP:

1. Double-click the My Computer icon.

2. Right-click on the drive icon for your CD drive, CD recorder, or DVD drive, and select Properties.

3. Choose the AutoPlay tab, and choose the desired action for each type of CD. In this case, choose Music CD, then click Select an action to perform, then select Take no action, or delete the "Play" action.

You can also turn off the Auto insert notification for your CD-ROM drive, although the method varies with the version of Windows. In some versions it is easier than others. To do this in Windows 98, RIGHT-click on your My Computer icon, select Properties, click the Device Manager tab, double-click on CDROM, double-click on the name of your CD-ROM drive, click the Settings tab, and remove the checkmark in the Auto insert notification box by clicking on it. Then click the OK button. You will have to reboot your computer before this change takes effect.

If instructions for your computer are not shown, search the web for “autorun” or “autoplay” and you should find instructions.

Backing up and restoring your database of albums

Your album data is saved in the CDTrust.mdb file, and is located in the folder where you installed CD Trustee, typically “C:\Program Files\CDTrustee”. The location of that file is also shown on the top line of the main CD Trustee screen. You should back-up this file any time you add or change album or artist information in CD Trustee. Just copy the CDTrust.mdb file to another location, preferably on another disk. In fact, make several copies, and store at least one at another location. What if your house burns down, or your computer and disks are stolen? What if one disk is bad and cannot be read? This is why you need more than one backup copy.

A simple way to back up your CDTrust.mdb file is to choose “Backup” from the File menu in CD Trustee. You are then presented with a screen that asks you to indicate the disk drive and folder to use for the new copy of your database file. This will create a file named “CDTrustBackup.BAK” on the disk drive and folder you choose.

Similarly, you can restore your database from a backup copy by choosing “Restore Backup File” from the File menu. By default, this option looks for the CDTrustBackup.BAK file created using the Backup option discussed above. Be careful using the Restore, and only use it as a last resort. If you indicate the wrong file name, you can accidentally wipe out your data. You can also restore your data by copying your backup file into the folder where you installed CD Trustee, and rename the file to “CDTrust.mdb”.

Any album cover images you save in CD Trustee are saved as .JPG image files, in the Pictures sub-folder of the folder where you installed CD Trustee, typically C:\Program Files\CDTrustee\Pictures. Each picture is a separate .JPG file, so if you want to back up these image files, you should copy the entire Pictures sub-folder to another location.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you copy the CDTrust.mdb file or picture files to a CD-R or CD-RW and then copy them back to a hard drive, Windows sets the file attribute property to be "Read-only" for these files. This will prevent CD Trustee from opening the database. You must remove the "Read-only" attribute, since CD Trustee needs to be able to write to these files. You can change this by right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer, then choose "Properties" from the menu that appears, then remove the check-mark in the Read-only box.

Opening and saving other databases

CD Trustee will automatically create a database for you the first time you install it. This database contains a few sample artists and albums. You should delete these samples. They exist only to show new users how the program works.

Most people will have no need to use the “Open” or “Save Database As” options on the File menu. These are only for those who need to keep two or more music collections totally separate. Think twice before you do this. It may not be necessary, and there are disadvantages. Even with all your albums in one database, you can still display or print reports containing only one music genre, for example. You can display or print reports containing all albums that are located in one location, or perhaps in one CD changer or jukebox, by specifying the Location on the Report Selection screen, or on Filter screen.

You can have multiple CD Trustee database files if you want. To create a new database, choose “Save Database As” from the File menu in CD Trustee. You will then be asked to specify a file name and location for the new database. The new database will contain all the data that is in the existing one, so you may need to delete all artists before using the new database. You must do this one artist at a time, so it is best to start with the sample database that only contains a few artists.

After you have saved a new database file, you can open that file by choosing “Open” from the File menu. CD Trustee will remember the last database you opened, and try to open that database the next time you start CD Trustee.

Please be aware that any album cover pictures you save are stored as separate .jpg image files in the Pictures sub-folder of the folder where you installed CD Trustee, typically “C:\Program Files\CDTrustee\Pictures”. If your new database file is located in a folder that does not contain a Pictures sub-folder, CD Trustee will use the Pictures sub-folder located in the folder where you installed CD Trustee. The only exception is if you open a database in a different folder that has a Pictures sub-folder, then open yet another database located in a folder that does not have a Pictures sub-folder. In that case, the first Pictures sub-folder will be used.

Exporting your album data

First, do not confuse “exporting” your data with “backing up” your data. They are totally different, and exporting your data will NOT protect you in the event your hard disk crashes or you accidentally delete your database. You cannot restore your data by using any export file.

Choose “Export” from the File menu in CD Trustee. This presents you with a standard Windows dialog box. Indicate the disk drive and folder where you want to create this new export file, and give it a file name. Below the file name box, there is a box labeled “Save as type”. This box has several choices, and these choices correspond to the type of data and type of file you want to create. You can choose to export a list of all the artists and albums, or a larger list that also includes all songs on each album. The larger list that includes song titles also includes much additional information about each album, provided this information exists in your database.

You can choose to create a standard text file or a “CSV” file that can be read by Microsoft Excel. Once you open this file in Excel, you can save it as a standard Excel file if you want to add formatting or make other changes.

You cannot import any exported file back into CD Trustee. It is possible to import data using Microsoft Access, but you need to totally understand the CD Trustee data structure, plus have a good knowledge of database tools. Sane Soft will provide this service for a fee. It usually costs several hundred dollars in labor charges.

The last option in the “Save as type” list box; “Artists, Songs, Genre, & Album Title” is also useful for publishing your list on the DJ Intelligence web site.

If you perform an export after filtering the records displayed (see the Filter feature), the export will include only the records displayed in most cases. There are some cases where the filter is ignored during an export, such as if you filter on song data and then export only albums and not songs.

Instead of using this option to export your data, you might want to save one of the CD Trustee reports to a file. See the Print Preview feature for further details on doing this.

Playing a CD

After inserting a CD, press the Play button or double-click any track to play it. The other buttons and the moving slider let you position to any point in a song. You can skip any track by changing the value in the SKIP column from No to Yes. This will be remembered the next time you play this CD.

If the artist, album, and track names do not appear, this means the disc has not been previously added to your database. A button will appear near the bottom of the screen to allow you to look up this disc on the Internet. After doing so, you will then see another button allowing you to add this disc to your database.

The other way to add this disc is to go back to the main screen and press the button that says ADD CDs AUTOMATICALLY. You can enter many discs at once this way. If you manually added song information for this CD, you can link this CD to that information. Just make sure the CD is inserted, then go back to the main

screen and view the Details for that album. Under the Album tab, you will see a button that says LINK ALBUM TO DISC (near the center of that screen). This button only appears for albums that have been manually added. Press this button, and from that point on, the player will be able to identify the song titles.

IF ANOTHER CD PLAYER STARTS AUTOMATICALLY WHEN YOU INSERT A CD, you might want to disable AutoPlay.

To do this:

1. Double-click the My Computer icon.

2. On the View (or Tools) menu, click Options (or Folder Options), and then click the File Types tab.

3. Click the AudioCD type, and then click Edit (or Advanced).

4. In the Actions list, click Play, and then click Set Default.

To temporarily disable AutoPlay, press the SHIFT key when inserting an audio CD.

To reenable AutoPlay, repeat steps 1-4.

These instructions will vary depending on the version of Windows.

Here are instructions for Windows XP:

1. Double-click the My Computer icon.

2. Right-click on the drive icon for your CD drive, CD recorder, or DVD drive, and select Properties.

If instructions for your computer are not shown, search the web for “autorun” or “autoplay” and you should find instructions.

Album Maintenance (Edit Menu)

Use this screen to view or edit information about your albums. This is especially useful if you need to change information in several albums, such as assigning Slot numbers, Locations or Ratings to many albums at a time, or to change the artist “Sort by name” field to change the order in which artists display on the main CD Trustee window.

If you change the "Sort by name" or "Artist Name" field, you only need to change it on ONE line, and it will change it for all albums by that artist. That change will not be immediately reflected on this window, but you will see this effect if you re-sort, or close and re-open this window. These fields are not really being changed “for all albums by that artist”. If you want to get technical about it, these fields do not exist for each album, only for each artist. They are changed on the Artist record, and this information is then related to each album by that artist. This is how relational databases work, to prevent redundant data.

To continue viewing the artist or album name while scrolling to the right, drag the small black box in the lower left corner of the table to the right. This splits the table into separately scrolling regions, so you can easily identify the album associated with the columns that are further to the right.

You should note that there is a column far to the right of the table that contains both the artist and album title. This field cannot be changed directly, but can be used to identify the row when you split the table as mentioned above.

Sort the album rows based on the value of various fields by clicking the field name in the “Sort by” box at the lower right of this screen.

When you make a change to any field in the table, that change is saved as soon as you click on another row or on any button. If you press the Esc key before moving off that field, the original value is restored.

You can temporarily change the width of any column by positioning your mouse cursor to the right of that column heading and dragging it to the right or left.

Genre, Location, and Media Type Table Maintenance (Edit menu)

You can add or modify the list of Genres, sub-genres, Locations, or Media Types. These lists are displayed on the Album details screen. You maintain these lists by choosing the appropriate option from the Edit menu in CD Trustee.

Search and Replace Text (Edit menu)

Use this feature to globally change all the text in every record in your database. Indicate the original text and the replacement text. You can change thousands of records with one click, so be careful.

Replace music file locations (Edit menu)

Use this feature if files have changed location on your hard disk from when they were originally cataloged. For example, you may have cataloged some MP3 files in CD Trustee, then later renamed the folder containing those MP3 files on your hard drive, or moved those files to a different folder. CD Trustee has no way to know you did this. In order for CD Trustee to truly reflect the new location of these files, you can use this feature to change the file names stored in CD Trustee. Just indicate the old folder name and the new folder name and CD Trustee will take care of the rest.

By the way, the term “Path” (mentioned on the screen) refers to the entire name required to find a file on your hard drive. For example, a file might be named “Like a rolling stone.mp3”. However, that file name is not sufficient to locate that file on your hard drive. You also must indicate the folder that file is in (for example the “MyMP3Music” folder, and the disk drive letter containing that folder (for example “C:”). In this example, the Path to that file is thus “C:\MyMP3Music”.

Generally, you will not be changing file names using this feature; just the file path. However, this feature will globally change any text you specify within the path or file name in all tracks in your database. For example, you can change the letter “a” to the letter “b”, in every file name in your database. Be careful!

Adjust Cover Print Positions (Front, Inside, and Back Covers screens)

Use this screen to adjust where this cover prints on the paper.

All measurements are in millimeters.

There are 25.4 millimeters in an inch. Fractions will be ignored. The original setting for both values is 0.

NOTE: Adjustments will be made on the actual printed page, but will NOT be reflected on the screen. Print an actual page to see the effects of your adjustments.

Generally, you will only want to adjust the print position to the RIGHT and/or DOWN, since it starts out printing in the upper left corner of the page. Moving to the left or up will usually move the print off the page.

Artist Details

To view the Artist Details screen, select an artist from the main CD Trustee screen, then click the Details button or press the F2 key. You can also right-click an artist name on the main CD Trustee screen then choose “Edit or View details” from the menu that appears.

The Artist Full Name is the name that displays or prints on reports for this artist. If the artist name starts with the word “The" (like "The Police"), put a checkmark in the "The" box to the right of the name, rather than putting this word in the artist name. This aids in proper sorting, and the artist name will still be properly displayed with “The" in front of the name.

The "Sort by name" determines where this artist (and albums by this artist) sort on the main screen and on most reports. If the artist has a Last Name, you generally want that name to appear first here, followed by the First Name. If you have "joni mitchell" in here, she will sort with the J's rather than with the M's. Instead, you should have "mitchell joni" in here. To avoid problems with upper and lower case letters sorting differently, all characters are forced to lower case in this field.

CD Trustee lets you move any album between artists very easily. On the main CD Trustee screen, click your RIGHT mouse button on the album, then choose MOVE ALBUM TO DIFFERENT ARTIST from the menu that appears. This is also an option on the Edit menu when you have selected an album. After you move the album, you can delete the old artist record if it no longer contains any albums.

Album Details

To view the Album Details screen, select an album from the main CD Trustee screen, then press the Details button or press the F2 key. You can also right-click an album on the main CD Trustee screen then choose “Edit or View details” from the menu that appears.

Pause your mouse pointer briefly over each of the fields to display a tip describing its function.

Most of the album fields are obvious. You might want to change the music Genre and Sub-Genre if you do not agree with how the Internet database classified this album. Choose the Genre first, then the Sub-Genre list will display the classifications within the main Genre.

If you manually added this album to the database, you will see a button near the middle of this window that says LINK ALBUM TO DISC. Pressing this button while you have a CD inserted will link that CD to this album in the database. This will allow the player feature of CD Trustee to identify the disc when you play it, and will automatically fill in the information if you want to submit this disc to CDDB. Once you successfully link an album to a disc, the button text changes to say UNLINK ALBUM FROM DISC. This lets you undo the link in case you made a mistake.

If you added this album by automatically looking it up on the Internet, the album is already linked to the CD, so these buttons do not appear.

Slot numbers should be the same length to sort properly. Use leading zeros like 0001, 0002, etc."

Be aware that the Slot “number” is really a text field, not strictly a numeric field. Therefore, it sorts as such. If you use numbers, make SURE you place leading zeros in the numbers, such as 00001, 00002, etc. If you were to just use 1, 2, etc, then you will find that "10" sorts before "2" in the "Albums by Slot" report, since the first character of "10" (the "1") sorts before the first character of "2". Make sure all slot numbers are the same length, i.e. the same number of characters.

Because the slot field is alphanumeric, you can devise all sorts of interesting schemes. For example, if you have 2 jukebox players, you can call the first player letter "A", and the second player letter "B". Your slot values can then be "A0001", "A0002", "B0001", etc. Just make sure you decide on a scheme that works well for you (now and in the future) before you start filling in the slot field for each CD.

Track Detail

To view the Track Detail screen, display the album details, then click the Tracks tab. You can also right-click a track on the main CD Trustee screen then choose “Edit or View details” from the menu that appears.

TO ADD NEW TRACKS: You must first press the “Insert track” button near the bottom of the screen.

Press that button once for each track you want to add. THEN you can add the track titles (and ratings, notes and lyrics if you want) for each track you added.

To delete a track, first click on that track in the grid on the left side of the screen, then press the “Delete track” button.

Here's a trick to re-number all tracks: Press the "Move tracks" button and then press the OK button on the next screen.

To re-arrange the track order, press the “Move tracks” button. This displays a screen where you can drag and drop tracks within the list.

You can change a track's title or duration on either the grid (on the left side) or on the Title or Duration text boxes (on the right side). You can change the track number on the Track text box on the right side of the screen only.

There is usually no need to enter the track duration (length of each song) when adding tracks, as long as you have the actual CD in hand. There is an easier way to do this automatically. Link the album to the actual CD, then CD Trustee will calculate the times for you. The track duration will be automatically filled in for you if you link the actual CD to this album by inserting it into your computer and then press the LINK ALBUM TO DISC button on the Album details window. This button only appears (on that window) when you have manually added an album. There is no need for it when you add an album automatically by looking it up on the Internet.

Any changes made here are saved immediately upon moving to another track, or by clicking another tab or closing this window.

Album Front and Inside Cover (album details)

To view the Album Front and Inside Cover screen, display the album details, then click the “Front Cover” tab.

The left half of this window displays the front cover image for a CD jacket cover, while the right half displays the inside jacket image. Printing these covers prints both images on one sheet of paper, so it can be folded in half and inserted into the front of a CD jewel case.

Many more song titles fit on these covers than are shown in the sample on the screen. Print an actual page to test.

To print the maximum number of song titles, check the box “Start track list on front cover”. This will print song titles on both the front and inside covers. You can then flip the paper over and print remaining track titles on the other side. On many printers this fits more than 180 song titles on a cover insert. This is useful for MP3 files. Printing of even more song titles will continue on additional pages, even if you don't check this box.

If you do check this box, any picture images will not be printed; only text. The value in this check box is not saved. You must select it before printing each time.

Any size image will automatically be resized to display and print at the proper size. The bigger the image you import, the better the quality of the printed picture, but larger images use more disc space and take longer to load. Images are saved in the PICTURES sub-folder of the folder where you installed CD Trustee.

There are web sites on the Internet that specialize in album covers.

Click your right mouse button on either cover image to display a menu of options.

Pause your mouse pointer briefly over each of the buttons to display a tip describing its function.

Album Back Cover (album details)

To view the Album Back Cover screen, display the album details, then click the “Back Cover” tab.

This window displays the back cover image for a CD. You can scan the cover and save the image for printing at any time. You can also print the text cover, listing the song titles and times.

Images are saved in the PICTURES sub-folder of the folder where you installed this program.

The rotated text that prints on the spines of the back cover can be modified by pressing the Spine Edit button when this text is displayed.

Click your right mouse button on the back cover image to display a menu of options.

Pause your mouse pointer briefly over each of the fields to display a tip describing its function.

If it exists, the track artist name will print next to the song title, even though this is not reflected on the screen display. Font size changes also occur when printing, but not on the screen display.

The font size will adjust automatically based on number of tracks. Font size 10 is used up to 22 tracks. If between 23-29 tracks, font size 8 is used. If more than 30 tracks, font size 6 is used. To force printing in font size 6, place a check mark in the “Print using small font” box.

The values in the two check boxes are not saved. You must select them before printing each time.

Misc. Details (album details)

To view the Misc. Details screen, display the album details, then click the “Misc.” tab. Additional album fields are shown on this screen.

The two User Fields can be utilized for any purpose you choose. You can then search on these fields using the Filter screen. You can enter a description above each value, to help you remember what you use these fields for.

Changes you make to the User Field descriptions are remembered, and those same values are used when you add new albums.

CD Labels (album details)

To view the CD Label screen, display the album details, then click the “CD Label” tab.

This window displays the round stick-on label for the CD. You can print ANY type of label, not just the ones listed. If your labels are not listed, simply choose any label type, then adjust the print position to match your label.

Select the label type and press the Print button to print the label. Adjust the print position if fine-tuning is necessary for your specific printer. Adjustments move the text up or down, left or right from the base positions for each label type. Don't select a different label type after making adjustments or you will change the print position again.

Only one label is printed at a time. Just the top label is printed. After printing one label on a two-label sheet, simply flip the page so the bottom becomes the top, and print the other label.

A maximum of two lines are printed for each song title. Exceptionally long titles will be cut off, since there is limited room on a label. Song titles will print in two columns for albums with 12 or fewer tracks, and in three columns for albums with more than 12 tracks.

Labels are too expensive to waste! Before printing any label, print to a blank sheet of paper first, place it on top of a label sheet, and hold it up to the light. This is the only way to be sure things are lined up.

Music Browser (album details)

To view the Music Browser screen, display the album details, then click the “Music Browser” tab.

The Music Browser is a small Internet browser that displays a web page containing links to web sites about the current album or artist. If the album is still currently available for sale, you should find a web site where the CD can be purchased online. Many of these sites have album cover images, and these can be copied to the Windows Clipboard and pasted into this program. However, it is often better to use your own Internet browser to access these or other sites specializing in album covers.

CDNow.com and Amazon.com have many album covers, but you can find other sites with a little searching.

You cannot copy the cover image on the first screen displayed by the Music Browser. For some reason they don't let you copy that, and it is too small for decent quality anyway. Instead, click on the Amazon.com link, which should take you either to that specific album or to a page for that artist, with albums listed there. Select the album you want (assuming it is still for sale), and click on the link that displays a larger image of it. Once that larger image is displayed, right click your mouse on the image, and choose COPY from the menu that appears. You can then paste it directly into the CD Trustee covers.

NOTE: It is often better to use your own Internet browser, rather than this small specialized browser. This CDDB Music Browser also displays advertising, which can be annoying.

Find a Song, Artist, or Album (main menu)

Select the “Find” menu from the main CD Trustee screen. You will see options for finding a song, artist, or album. Select the option you want, and type any part of the song, artist, or album name. CD Trustee will then immediately jump to the first entry that contains this text. If searching for text in a song title, a list of all albums containing the text you specified will first be displayed, and you can choose the song and album you want from this list. This album list only appears if the search text is contained in more than one song in your database. Otherwise you are taken directly to that song.

When searching for an artist name or album title, you can press the F3 key on your keyboard to jump to the next entry containing the text you specified.

Change CD drive letter (Options menu)

If you do not choose a specific CD drive, the program will automatically use your first CD drive. Specify a drive letter if you want to use a different drive. Otherwise you can leave it blank.

If nothing happens when you insert a CD to be looked up, try explicitly indicating the drive letter to see if this solves the problem. You may have a drive letter assigned to a drive that does not exist on your machine.

Change Font (Options menu)

You can change the font displayed on the main CD Trustee screen by choosing “Change Font” from the Options menu. This change only effects the main display, not text on any report or anywhere else in the program.

No matter which font is currently being used, this screen will always display “MS Sans Serif, Regular, Size 10” on the font selection screen that is displayed when you first open the Change Font window. Your font changes will be remembered until you change them again, but the Change Font window will still display only the default font mentioned above when first opened.

Filter (main menu): Limiting the Artists and Albums Displayed

When CD Trustee starts up, it always displays every artist and album in your database. Sometimes you may want to display only the albums in a certain music Genre, or all albums you have given a 5-star rating, or all your CD-Rs, or all CDs containing a certain song, or CDs recently added, etc.

Select the “Filter” menu from the main CD Trustee screen. Specify the criteria to limit the albums displayed by selecting values from any or all of the drop-down lists, or from the text search box. You can limit the albums displayed to a certain Genre, Media Type, Album Location, and/or Album Rating. Choose as many or as few of these fields as you like. If you choose more than one field, only albums that match ALL the fields you selected will be displayed. However, if you search for specific text the other selections are ignored.

Choosing a blank genre or a blank rating from the list will display all albums that lack information in those fields. This is very useful to identify albums that you still need to rate or assign to a genre.

You can search for text contained in any of the indicated fields. This will display only those artists or albums containing that text. If the text is found only in some of the albums by an artist, only those albums will be shown under that artist.

If the text is found in the artist name but not in any albums by that artist, double-clicking on the artist will then display all albums by that artist. All tracks contained in an album are always displayed, even if the text you search for is contained in only one track in that album.

Artist and composer name searches will also look for a song by that artist or composer in compilation albums, and display the artist and album containing that song.

Choose the “Lookup Session” field to display all albums added during an Internet lookup session. You can obtain a list of Session numbers by running the “Automatically Added Albums” report, or by viewing the log of CDs already looked up, on the “Add CDs automatically” screen.

Moving an album to a different artist

CD Trustee lets you move any album between artists very easily. On the main CD Trustee screen, right-click on the album and choose "Move album to different artist" from the menu that appears. This is also an option on the Edit menu as long as you have an album highlighted. After you move it, you can delete any artist record that no longer contains any albums.

Cataloging MP3 (and other) files

You can catalog MP3 files (or any file) in CD Trustee. Each file is listed as a track in an “album”.

Just press the “Catalog MP3’s” button on the main screen. Since these MP3 files must be cataloged under an “album” in CD Trustee, and since each album must be associated with an artist, you must first select the artist name under which to catalog these files, or else create a new artist. This artist name can be something like “My MP3 Files”, or anything you want.

You must then indicate the album name or create a new album. This can be something like “My Blues Songs” or anything else you want. You are then asked to select the folder or individual files you want to catalog under this album.

CD Trustee reads the artist and song name from the ID3 tags in the MP3 files, as long as this information exists in the file. If not, it uses the file name for the track title. You can force CD Trustee to always use the file name if you want. There is a check box at the bottom of the file cataloging screen that says: “Always use file names for song titles?” If you place a check mark in this box, only file names will be used. If this box is not checked, ID3 tags from MP3 files will be used for song titles if they exist, and file names will only be used if ID3 tags are not found within the file.

You can associate any songs listed in CD Trustee with any MP3 file on your hard disk, and play those songs by right-clicking on them in the main display, then chose “Play song” from the menu that appears. This will start up Windows Media Player or another program you have associated with MP3 files, and play that song. This option is only available if you have associated a file name with that album track. You can do this by adding MP3 files to an album, or you can manually type the file names into the Tracks detail screen.

PlayLists (main menu)

Select the “PlayList” menu from the main CD Trustee screen. This feature has many uses. It is not just for playing songs. Read below for details, and view all the menu options on the Play List screen.

A Play List is a collection of songs arranged in a specific order. You can create lists of songs from your albums in CD Trustee.

To play these songs, you must have a music file (an MP3, WAV, or WMA file) associated with each song

and accessible on your computer. However, this is not required to simply build a list of songs for other purposes, or to print.

Create a new Play List by pressing the “Create New Play List” button on the Play List screen.

Add a song to any Play List by selecting that song from the tracks listed below each album on the main CD Trustee screen. On that screen, right-click on a song name and a menu will pop-up. Choose “Add Song to Play List” from that menu, which will bring you to the Play List screen, then press the “Add Song” button. You must first select a Play List to add the song to, and this is remembered throughout the session or until you change it.

You can create an album containing all songs in a Play List. Simply choose “Create new album from Play List” from the File menu on the Play List screen. This is useful if you are cataloging a custom CD made from songs already cataloged, and do not want to type the song titles again.

To copy all sound files in a Play List to another folder, choose “Copy music files to another folder” from the File menu. This is useful if you want to burn these songs to a CD using Windows XP or separate CD burning software.

You can create Play List files to play outside of CD Trustee. Choose “Save Play List File as” from the File menu. That menu option is active once you choose a Play List.

Playing sound files on your computer requires a separate player (like Windows Media Player). The file types you play (MP3, WAV, and WMA) must be associated with Windows Media Player or with some other player you may have installed.

To print one Play List, select the Report menu on the Play List screen. To print ALL Play Lists, choose the Play List reports from the Reports screen, accessed from the Reports menu on the main CD Trustee screen.

To change song order, drag and drop song names in the list to a new position.

Print Preview your Reports: Run a report to see this screen.

You can view any page of any report prior to printing, and print any page or range of pages. Scroll through the report using the Previous Page or Next Page buttons, or with the Page Up and Page Down keys on your keyboard.

Expand the screen to full-size by double-clicking anywhere on the top title bar of the window.

Make the report any size by zooming in or out using the Zoom buttons. You can also zoom in and out using your mouse. Just double-click your left mouse button anywhere on the report to zoom in, or double-click your right mouse button to zoom out.

You can save any report to a file by clicking the “Save to file” button. You can then choose to save the report as an HTML file that can be viewed using any Internet browser (like Internet Explorer or Netscape). You can also save the report as an Adobe PDF file for use with that popular viewer that most people already have installed on their machine.

The buttons at the bottom of the Print Preview screen also let you scroll through pages of the report, zoom in or out, and view one or multiple pages of the report at the same time. A page counter near the lower left of the window shows the current page and the total pages. For example, if it says 2/10 this means you are currently viewing page 2 of a 10-page report.

Reports – Selecting Reports to Print or to Preview

Click on the Reports menu on the main CD Trustee screen. This displays the Report Selection screen.

First, select the report from list on the left. As you select each report, an example of that report is displayed to the right of the list, and each album included in the report is displayed in the Album Selection at the lower right of the screen. These examples are rough approximations of the report format. Preview the actual report to see an accurate picture of the report, with your actual data.

Next, select any criteria if you want to limit the report to include only a certain music Genre, Media Type, Album Location, or Album Rating. As you select any of these items, the actual albums that meet your criteria are displayed in the Album Selection on the lower right section of the screen, assuming that report prints lists of albums.

Finally, if you want to include or exclude individual albums, indicate this by clicking one of those choices at the top of the Album Selection part of the screen, and then place a checkmark next to each album you want to include or exclude in the report. These selections allow you to easily print just one album, all your albums, or any number you choose.

IMPORTANT: When selecting individual albums, make sure this is the LAST thing you do before printing the report. If you select another report or change the report criteria, all the checkmarks are removed, since each report may have other selection criteria already built-in.

Press the Preview Report button after making your selections, to view the report. You can then print the report if desired.

The “Songs by Artist” report will also show the album artist next to the song title, if the song is on a compilation album. You must have a checkmark in the compilation box (on the album details screen) in order for this to occur.

To view reports showing songs by a certain artist or composer, select the “Find” menu on the main CD Trustee screen. That menu also finds specified song titles and displays them in a report.

Set Proxy Sever (Options menu) – Accessing CDDB via the Internet

Are you using a proxy server to connect to the Internet? If you have a problem connecting to CDDB to register with them or to look up CDs, you may be using a proxy server. If so, you must set certain proxy settings in CD Trustee. CDDB requires this. You set these in CD Trustee by choosing "Set Proxy server" from the Options menu in CD Trustee. Your proxy settings may be shown on that screen, but you still have to type them into the boxes provided. CD Trustee does not do this for you automatically because in some cases the settings shown may not be correct. In a few cases you will need to supply a user name and password for your proxy server.

If you are sure you are not using a proxy, see if there are already some values set in these fields. If there are, note what these values are, then change them so the Proxy Host is blank, and the Proxy Port number is 0 (zero), and the user name and password are blank. Otherwise, specify the Proxy Host name and Proxy Port number you are using.

If this does not work, try putting 80 in the Proxy Port number, and leave the Proxy Host Name blank. Also try putting 8080 in the Proxy Port number, and if that does not work try 8880 in the Proxy Port number.

If you continue to have problems, contact your network administrator or your Internet Service Provider. The problem might be due to a firewall. Some programs such as ZoneAlarm might require you to give permission to CDDBControl to access the Internet.

How to contact Sane Soft, LLC

Before sending a question about using CD Trustee, please fully read this help file, and please take a look at the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) on our web site, at http://www.base40.com/cdtFAQ.html

If you have a question not answered here or in the FAQ, please send an e-mail to

E-mails are usually answered within 24 hours.

Our mailing address is:

Sane Soft, LLC

P.O. Box 935

Conifer, CO 80433

U.S.A.

Our web site is http://www.base40.com