"When I bought my first squeezebox I was amazed by the brilliant concept of it and its sound quality. Although the Squeezebox Server interface is a great way to browse your music, it is not always 'available' as you need a computer to access it. In the past I would stand in front of my CD wall to determine what I wanted to listen to. Squeezebox Server makes browsing your digital music archive a lot easier but can’t (always) replace the 'stand before the CD wall' idea. Also it is often useful to show your music catalog to friends, to share with other or just for offline browsing. So, I thought it would be nice to have an off-line printed catalog which I could browse through on the couch. Squeezebox Server is not able though to create a catalog ready for print. So I decided to develop an application that would create one for me and make it available for others who would find it useful."

What does it do?
Album Catalog Creator (ACC in short) is an application which generates a HTML music catalog from your music library stored in Squeezebox Server.

ACC generates:

• A full catalog of your music collection including a Table of Contents, Album covers and Tracklistings
  The Images in the catalog are links to Squeezebox Server. This causes the catalog to only be viewable from a computer which has access to Squeezebox Server. To create a portable catalog for distribution or offline reading, select the 'Create internet explorer archive (.mht) file' option. This will create a single file which can be ported to other machine without losing the album art. Another (much better) option is to save the catalog as .pdf file. You need a PDF writer for this. Various free applications are available for this. Bullzip PDF creator is a very good one.

• A Quick Reference catalog
  As catalogs containing album art and/or track listings may grow very big, so will the amount of paper required to print it. For this reason a second catalog is generated containing only a Album, Artist and optional Genre and Codec.

Catalog samples :::
 Click to view larger versions

Full Catalogs
Catalog with album art, tracklisting and classic headers	Catalog with album art, tracklisting and right positioned album properties:	Catalog with large album art and left positioned album properties	Catalog with solid header background, comment filtered and grouped by  comment
Quick Reference catalogs
Quick reference catalog sorted by artist	Quick Reference Catalog sorted by Genre	Quick Reference Catalog sorted by Genre:
Table of contents

 Note: many combinations are possible to generate the catalog.

Feature overview :::
A highlight of the main features:

• Full catalog
  A catalog with album art and optional tracklisting and Table of Contents.
• Quick Reference catalog
  Don't need a very large full catalog with album art but only a quick overview of artists and albums? This single line per album catalog provides what you need. Lowest possible number of pages required but without album art and tracklisting included.
• Embedded Album Art
  ACC retrieves album art from SBS. SBS supports both file based album art as well as embedded album art. So if SBS shows the album art, so will ACC.
• Highly customizable
  What you want in your catalog and what you don't is highly customizable.
• Web based Catalog
  Catalogs are HTML standards based and can be opened using any web browser. For portability the catalog can be printed to PDF format
• Unicode (international character) support
• Remote Server support
  This will allow ACC to be executed from a Windows machine while Squeezebox Server is running remote on another platform and hence also on NAS appliances
• TPE2 tag support
• ARTISTSORT tag support
  This will allow sorting by surname (i.e Dylan, Bob) while displaying the full name (i.e. Bob Dylan)
• Export to CSV file
  This will allow importing in i.e. Excel
• Various sorting options
  Choose to sort by Name, Album or Genre. If you use a comment filter to include only a few specified comment tagged songs, you can even choose to group the total catalog list by Comment tags.
• Various filtering features
  This will allow you to narrow down the scope of the full catalog stored in SBS by selecting i.e. a (sub) folder of your music share, include or exclude comment field values, genres or from a specified date.

Screenshots :::

Main screen	Options screen	Advanced options screen

Installation :::
Installation is not required. Just unzip to a writable folder and double-click the .hta file to start ACC.

Note: ACC can not be executed from a network drive due to Microsoft restrictions. Run it from a local drive instead.

Usage and configuration help :::

ACC contains so called balloon tips (small question marks) indicating help is available for the item where it appears. By hovering over the question mark with the mouse help is presented. Using the balloon tips, most of your questions should be answered.

Local scenario: ACC running on the same computer as Squeezebox Server

Remote server scenario: ACC running on a different computer than Squeezebox Server
In this scenario you have your squeezebox server running on a Linux, Windows machine or dedicated NAS. Below are the steps required to configure ACC to use the remote server:

• Configure the settings in the Remote server option screen of ACC. Help is provided in this screen to help you trough the settings. In short, MySQL does not allow access to its database by machines other than itself. You need to enable remote access to allow ACC to access the database remotely. To do this you have to edit the my.tt text file which MySQL uses for configuration data. Again help is provided in the ACC remote server options screen.
• Install the MySQL ODBC driver on the machine you run ACC on
• If you have a firewall configured on the remote machine, make sure to allow at least TCP port 9092 from the machine you run ACC on to the server. Port 9092 is used for the connection to MySQL. Also add port 9000 for ACC to be able to retrieve the album art by a refering URL to the Squeezebox Server. Also configure the firewall to allow a network mapping to the share on the remote server if you want to use the ACC 'Starting folder' filter.
  
  Do you have a Squeezebox Server running on a ReadyNAS? Click here for additional help.
  

Technical information :::

ACC is a so called .HTA application. A .HTA application is a HyperText Application which actually is just an ordinary local webpage with scripts in it. The program can be started by double clicking the AlbumCatalogCreator.hta file

System Requirements :::

• Windows for ACC to run (Squeezebox Server is supported on all platforms)
  A .HTA application requires Windows with Internet Explorer installed. Internet Explorer is required to execute ACC but the generated catalog opens in the default browser. If Firefox is your default browser this is also supported as long as Internet Explorer is installed.
  If you have a Linux based NAS running Squeezebox Server or just run Squeezebox Server on Linux you can still use ACC. Simply start it from a Windows machine and configure it to access the remote Linux Squeezebox Server.

• MySQL ODBC driver
  Also required is the MySQL ODBC driver to be installed only on the Windows machine ACC is executed from. This enables ACC to access the Squeezebox Server MySQL database. Version 5.1 (32 bit) is required.
  
  The driver can be downloaded at:
  v5.1 : http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/5.1.html (use the MSI version)
  Note: If you are running a 64 bit version of Windows, make sure to download and install the 32 bit MSI driver version!
  
  
• Squeezebox Server (7.6 not yet supported)
  ACC retrieves data from the database created and populated by SqueezeCenter/Squeezebox Server. Don't have a squeezebox but want to use ACC to generate a catalog of your music. Squeezebox server 7.6 and higher uses sqlite as database where previously MySQL was used. This means that ACC needs to be modified however because sqlite does not natively support remote access it needs to be investigated what the best new approach is. Due to a very busy private schedule I expect to have more news on development in December.
  
  
• Modify Squeezebox server to allow remote access
  Actually this requirement is only necessarry when you want ACC to access a remote server. Squeezebox Server uses MySQL as database which is configured by default to not allow access from other machines then Squeezebox Server. So, if you want ACC to access the remote server you have to enable remote access first. This however must be performed manually (as ACC does not have access in this stage). Actions required are explained in the remote server option screen of ACC.
  
  

Known issues :::

• On some Windows machines the error 'safety setting on this computer prohibit accessing a data source in another domain'. This error is actually related to Microsoft Windows. Microsoft support is not really clear on solutions to this issue.
  
  The solutions listed below (not related to each other) have proven to be succesful for others:
  • Add the host running ACC to the trusted zone in Internet Explorer. Do so by adding http://localhost and http://127.0.0.1 to the trusted site zone. Ofcourse if you are using a remote server, add that IP number here also.
  • Allow "Access to data sources across domains" for the internet zone (internet explorer advanced setting)
  • Check if version 5.1 of the MySQL ODBC driver is installed

FAQ :::

Click here to access the FAQ.

Costs :::

Well, nothing at all really. But please consider donating if you really like this program and would like it to be supported for future SBS versions (some big SBS changes are planned rendering ACC incompatible).  Just click the Donate button below if you would like to express your appriciation (requires a paypal account).

New feature wish list :::

The following feature(s) have been requested by other users :
- Composer display (for classical music support). [Voted for by: 1 user]
- Linked Table of Content items [Voted for by: 1 user]

For new features to be implemented donations help and although it does not strictly mean they are implemented it is a way to indicate how important the feature is for you. In general, when it is a features that is of use to the majority of users there is a high probability that it will be implemented. For a feature to be implemented it has to be requested a number of times. To vote or request a feature, drop a mail on prive.frank@gmail.com or post a message on the slimdevices general discussion forum in the ACC thread.

Support :::

If you have any issues please report them on the slimdevices general discussion forum or send a mail to prive.frank@gmail.com

Download section :::

 
v3.4 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADDED        Additional header background colors
ADDED        Option to create CSV files (one for full catalog and one for Quickref catalog
ADDED        Option to show drop shadows to album covers
REMOVED      'Use alternative header background image' option