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Important notice:
Customers who has bought Helium Music Manager or upgraded their version on or after the 1st of December 2007 will get Helium Music Manager 2008 for free. You will NOT be given any serial number at this point, though. Serial numbers for version 2008 will be sent out once the beta period is finished and the full version has been released. The beta version will run for 30 days from the installation date, allowing you to use it fully within this time period. We will be releasing updates in good time before your version will expire, meaning that you are able to make the full switch to version 2008 already, if wanted.
Below follows some of the most important news in Helium Music Manager 2008. Please note that these are only a few of the changes in this release.
General
• Support for Visualization Plug-ins. Helium Music Manager now supports Winamp 2/5, Sonique and Windows Media Player Visualization plug-ins.
Visualization plug-ins can be docked into Helium Music Manager’s Right Sidebar, be shown in full screen or in a free floating window.
• A new freely dockable Album Picture frame which displays embedded album pictures of selected files, or album pictures for the currently playing track.
• Five new custom tag fields which can be named freely. These fields are fully supported in the database as well as on tags.
• New Track Filter supporting three user defined filter columns, allowing easy access to filtering.
• Possibility to select different double-click Track List actions when a track is playing or not playing.
• Support for the AMIP plug-in.
• Support for the CDG karaoke plug-in.
• Possibility to configure which words multiple artists should be split on (&, with, and etc.) in tag editors.
Synchronize Device
• The Device Synchronization wizard has been heavily updated for Helium Music Manager 2008. The tool now has full support for portable devices supporting the ‘Plays For Sure’ protocols as well as all kind of USB enabled devices. This enables users with Creative, iRiver, Mobile Phones and USB devices to easily keep their contents up-to-date. Full folder based synchronizing is of course still supported. Apart from supporting portable devices, the Device Synchronization tool now comes with support for:
- o Full control over the filenames and folder structure on the target device using a system similar to the File Rename Wizard.
o Possibility to select which file types to synchronize (portable devices only).
o Possibility to convert (transcode) music files on the fly whilst synchronizing them. This is useful so that files of file types that a specific device cannot handle can be handled without any extra effort.
o Possibility to synchronize images (Portable Devices only).
Internal Player
• The Internal Player’s user interface has been slightly changed; you can now quickly toggle whether the Auto Enqueue should be active or not, toggle if a visualization plug-in should be shown or not, as well as toggle if you would like to repeat the Active Playlist or not. Subtracks can be accessed by clicking a small icon that will be shown when they exist.
• Party mode support: Party mode is a special mode in Helium Music Manager which restricts what a user can do. As the name implies, this mode is ideal for use at partys, mainly to prevent users changing the Active Playlist, starting unwanted tools etc. Party mode works at two levels and is password protected.
• Possibility to click on the genre to instantly change it.
Convert To Format
• This is a new tool which enables you to convert files from any format that Helium Music Manager supports to WAVE, MP3, FLAC or Ogg Vorbis.
CD Ripper
• Automated ejecting of the disc after the ripping is performed.
• Possibility to automatically download the associated album picture.
• Possibility to fully control the format of the output filenames and folder structures using a system similar to the File Rename Wizard.
• Several improvements to the meta-data editor such as automated extraction of multiple artists and possibility to switch contents between different fields.
• Possibility to select which plug-ins should be used to download information for the actual audio CD as well as album pictures.
Printable Reports
• The Print Report tool is a new tool which comes with ten reports especially designed for printing. There are CD Cover reports, album reports and track list reports. All reports can contain pictures of selected albums. The reports can be sent to your printer, PDF Files, HTML Files, Excel files and Word (RTF) files. The Print Report tool is a simple and quick alternative to the Create Report Wizard and doesn’t require any complex template designs to enable nice printing.
Burn Data CD
• A completely new tool which enables you to burn your audio files to data CDs with Helium Music Manager. The Burn Data CD tool enables you to create full folder structures, adding filetypes other than audio files as well as adding of folders/files directly from your Database and/or from a Playlist. The Burn Data CD tool has full support for CD/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-RW discs.
Auto Enqueue
• New auto enqueue mode: Gets similar tracks from Last.fm.
• The active Auto Enqueue rule will be executed if the Active Playlist is empty when play is clicked.
Active Playlist
• New Columns:
- o Rel. Year
o Rec. Year
o Popularity
o Mood
o Situation
• Possibility to dock the Active Playlist to various screen positions.
• Possibility to set focus to the playing track by a simple click.
• It is possible to control if crossfading should be used when double clicking a track in the Active Playlist.
Export/Import Player Data
• The Export/Import Player Data is a new tool which enables you to export and import player data (Play counter, playing history and rating) between two different databases. This tool is ideal for use if you have one Helium Music Manager Database at your work and one Helium Music Manager Database at home and you would like to keep the playing data in sync.
Action Tool
• The action tool has been massively updated. Instead of processing each task and applying the changes, all tasks will be run at once and the final result will be written to the files. The following new tasks has been added:
- o Append to field - which allows you to append text before or after the current contents
o Replace text in field - which allows you to replace specific text with another
Tag Editor
• Automated extraction of multiple artists is now available.
• Support for 5 completely new custom fields.
Tag Editor (Spreadsheet Mode)
• Automated extraction of multiple artists is now available.
• Support for 5 completely new custom fields.
• Possibility to switch various contents with each other.
Album Browser
• The selected double-click actions are now used in the Album Browser.
Music Library
• The five new custom fields can be selected under the User Defined node.
Thumbnails View
• Possibility to multi-select Albums with Ctrl and Shift.
• Possibility to use most tools on multi selected albums.
Kind regards,
Intermedia Software
