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Advanced Options

These options are for setting more advanced functions within Helium Music Manager.

General

• Turn on extended logging will activate detailed logging (requires a restart). When active, Helium Music Manager may run slightly slower because many tasks are logged in detail. This mode is not recommended to use unless our support has requested you to use it to trace a certain task.

• Deactivate device checking upon start-up avoids checking for iPod and MTP devices during startup. This may speed up loading times, but if you plan to use an iPod or MTP device with Helium Music Manager, you should not select this option.

• The Restore Warnings button will restore all "Do not show again" warning messages to their default state.

• Clear temporary files on exit will clear files used by Helium Music Manager when exiting the program. Temporary files are created by the Tag Editor when editing files and the Music Browser when browsing your music.

• Partial refreshes after tagging will generate less refreshes to the different views after a tagging operation is completed. Please note that using this option may requires views to be manually refreshed by uising the Refresh option from the View menu or pressing the F5 key
• Thumbnail quality controls the quality that thumbnails (artist and album pictures) will be stored within Helium Music Mananagers database. 100 is the best and is strongly recommended.
• Number of album images
  This option defines how many album images Helium Music Manager should hold in memory at any one time. The higher the value, the smoother the browsing experience, but a larger amount of system memory will be used.

• Number of artist images
  This option defines how many artist images Helium Music Manager should hold in memory at any one time. The higher the value, the smoother the browsing experience, but a larger amount of system memory will be used.

• Number of images
  This option defines how many album images Helium Music Manager should hold in memory at one time for the coverflow view. The higher the value, the smoother the browsing experience, but a larger amount of system memory will be used.

• Avoid scanning the following drives (separate by comma)
  Set this option to exclude handling of drives in certain situations such as when scanning for drive icons (e.g. Music Explorer trees). Some drives such as memory card drives are extremely slow to access if no media is available, and therefore by excluding them a quicker start-up time is achieved.

Library

• Compress database on exit will compress the database by removing unused space when exiting the application. (Note: This applies only to Access Databases)

• Housekeep database on startup will clean redundant information from the Helium Music Manager database on startup. This setting can slow down the startup process a little bit when there is information to clean but this option is recommended to be enabled.

• Browse in online mode (Checking for existing files) will check if every file exists when the tracklists are read from the Library. If a file is not available it will be marked as "offline".

• Browse in online mode (Without checking for existing files) can be used as a hybrid mode between online browsing (Checking for existing files) and Offline mode. This mode will treat all files as online, but will not check if they exist or not when tracklists are read. This mode is faster than Browse in online mode (Checking for existing files).

• Browse in offline mode can be used for faster database browsing. Helium Music Manager will not look for files when browsing so all tracks will become "offline" and shown in italic style.

• Use the Tag Editors contents Tables  drop down list to be able to edit the lists in the field boxes within the Tag Editors. Select the table you want to modify from the drop down list (e.g. Composers) and then manually edit the list to add, edit or remove entries - one per line. Click the Apply button to apply changes made to the table.

• Click the Synchronize button to synchronize the contents that are used in the tag editors dropdown lists with data from your active Library.

Paths & External Applications

User Data Folder

The User Data Folder is used to set a certain folder where you easily can copy files to. The User Folder is available in the Send To menu from both the main menu and in the context menus that you reach by right clicking on files.

 External Applications

You can add shortcuts to any external applications that you would like to start from Helium Music Manager. External applications can be started with the selected music files as a parameter, so you can start virtually any application that will take music files as parameters. External applications are available from the Advanced > External Applications menu. You can also configure external applications to be run when you double click on items in the track list.

How to add an external application:

1. Click the Add button.

2. Type a description for the application in the Description edit box.

3. Click the Browse... button to browse for the application to be used as the Target.

4. Click Open once you have selected the application.

5. Add any optional parameters in the Parameters edit box.
   
   There are some parameter variables that can be used to launch an External Application with. These are described below:

   • %directory%
     This variable will be replaced with the entire path of the first selected file.
     
     Example:
     D:\My Music\Madonna\Immaculate Collection\

   • %filename%
     This variable will be replaced with the filename of the first selected file.
     
     Example:
     02 - Papa Don't preach.mp3

   • %files%
     This variable will be replaced with a list of all selected files, including the paths. Each file is surrounded by quotes (") and separated by a space character.
     
     Example:
     "D:\My Music\Madonna\Immaculate Collection\02 - Papa Don't preach.mp3" "D:\My Music\Madonna\Immaculate Collection\03 - Vogue.mp3"

   • %wafiles%
     This variable will make the application selected in the Target box to be run once for each selected file and replace the %wafiles% variable string of each filename, including paths. This can be good to use for applications that do not take multiple files as parameters (which means that the %files% variable cannot be used).
     
     Example (if two files are selected and Winamp is the Target):
     winamp.exe "D:\My Music\Madonna\Immaculate Collection\02 - Papa Don't preach.mp3"
     winamp.exe "D:\My Music\Madonna\Immaculate Collection\03 - Vogue.mp3"

   • %wait%
     This parameter will make Helium Music Manager wait until the application selected in the Target box terminates.

   • %refresh%
     This parameter will make Helium Music Manager update (synchronize) the database data for the selected files after the application selected in the Target box terminates. This parameter automatically includes the %wait% parameter.

   Note:
   When using the %directory%, %filename% or %wafiles% parameters, you may want to quote the parameters to make them work in your external application. Just type "%wafiles%" (including the quotes), for example in the Parameter box.  

6. Click OK.

Optionally click the Templates button to add one of the predefined templates for external applications.

Note: Parameters are optional and are not needed to normally start applications.

•  
  1. Select the application to edit from the list.
  2. Click the Edit button.
  3. Follow steps 2 to 6 from How to add an external application above.
  1. Select the application to be removed from the list.
  2. Click the Remove button.
  • Fill in the Address, Port, Username and Password fields, if necessary.
    Please contact your computer administrator to receive proxy settings if you are behind a proxy server.

How to edit an external application:

How to remove an external application.

Setting the default application
Select any external application from the list and click the Set As Default button to make the selected external application default. The default external application can be used as the default action when double clicking files in the track list.

Proxy

The Proxy settings are used by the plug-ins in Helium Music Manager when you are behind a proxy server.

Note: By default these edit boxes should be empty and the Port should be set to 0 (zero).

Helium Web Service

The Helium Web Service makes it possible to control Helium Music Manager over the network. In order to control Helium Music Manager's replaying, the Internal Player or embedded Windows Media Player needs to be selected as the player.

• Port - this is the port number used by Helium Music manager to provide the service.
  The default is 8080.
• Start Automatically when Helium Music Manager starts is self-explanatory.
• Start / Stop to manually control the Helium Web Service

Your computer's current IP address is shown. Please note that if you have multiple network connections that this just lists the IP address of the first connection.

The Helium Web Service is used by our products: Helium Remote and Helium Streamer.

Vorbis

This feature allows you to map Vorbis tags to Helium Music Manager tag fields.

• Tag Field - Individual Helium Music Manager Tag Fields can be selected from the pulldown.
• Field Names - For each Helium Music Manager Tag Field selected from the pulldown a list of associated vorbis tag fields is shown.
  So for example the Tag Field 'Album Artist' has the vorbis fields 'ALBUM ARTIST', ALBUMARTIST', 'H2_ALBUM_ARTIST' and 'WM/ALBUMARTIST' associated with it.
  You can remove or add additional fields to this list and re-order it as required. If you remove a vorbis tag then Helium Music Manager will ignore the tag.
  The priority is in top to bottom, meaning that if your music file has two or more vorbis tags present for the same Helium Music Manager Tag Field then the tag higher up the order will take priority.
• Active Mappings
  This shows how vorbis tags are mapped to Helium Music Manager tag fields. The priority is top-bottom order. This means that if two vorbis tags are present in a music file that map to the same Helium Music Manager tag, the first listed vorbis tag will take priority and subsequent vorbis tags mapped to the same Helium Music Manager tag will be ignored. Vorbis mapping is only performed when a music file is read.