Once downloaded, double-clicking on the file will
start the installation. It is a simple process, just
follow the on-screen instructions. Midi Harvester will
then be available from the Start Menu on your desktop.
Starting
the Software for the First Time
When the software is started for the first time,
you will be prompted for some information. If you have
purchased the full product, you will have been provided with a
License-Key, enter this code now. If you are
evaluating the product, leave the License-Key blank. We
also appreciate any further information that you provide as it
helps us better promote future products.
Upgrading
to the Full License
If you have been using the evaluation license,
but have used your 10 free searches,
you may wish to upgrade to the full license. To do this, click
the Upgrade to Full Version button. You will be asked if you have
been provided with a new license key. If you have, select Yes,
and enter it here. If not, choose No. You
will be taken to our secure web-site, through which you can
purchase the upgrade license which allows full-access to the
service. By following the on-screen instructions, your
software will be upgraded automatically, and you will receive
your new license key.
Searching
In order to start a search, you type in the name
of the artist, song or both, that you are looking for and press search.
If you are looking for files of a particular style, clicking style
enables you to enter a type of music. Again,
pressing search starts the process. If you look at the main window, it is actually
pretty self-explanatory.
If you are looking for a particular song, enter
the Title of the song, and if possible, the Artist's name.
This will give the software a better chance of returning the
file(s) you're looking for. If you are looking for Midi
files by a particular artist, just enter the artist's name and
hit search. You may be looking for a large number of Midi
files for a particular music type or style, if so, click
Style, and enter your style (e.g. Jazz / Country / Blues)
or choose a popular style from the list..
It is possible to control the accuracy of the
search by selecting the High Search Accuracy
option. If you find a large number of files for your
search, and most are not relevant, this may be useful.
Most of the time, however, you will probably not want to use
this, since it may reduce the number of files that are found.
Once you click the Search button (or press
Enter), the searching process starts. A full search can
take up to five or ten minutes, depending upon the number of files being
found, and your Internet connection speed. You can, however, stop it at any time, and even play and
save files while it is still searching.
The
Midi List
As Midi files are found, they are added to a
list. This shows the Title of the file, the web page from
which it came, optionally the URL of the Midi File, and the size
of the file (if it is known). By clicking on the grey
column heading, you can sort the files by any of these
attributes, in a similar way to how you can in windows explorer
etc. More information about sorting and filtering is given
in a later section.
Once you have downloaded or played a Midi file,
the size of it will be shown in the list. We have found
that the larger files tend to be higher quality than the smaller
files of the same song, though this is not always true. If
a Midi file cannot be downloaded, because of a broken link on
the web page it came from, the File Size column shows DLD
Failed.
Playing,
Saving and Deleting Files from the List
As Midi files are found, they are added to a
list. Clicking an item in the list displays 3 buttons
beneath the list. These allow the selected Midi file to be
played, saved to disk or deleted (if it is unsuitable).
You can also play a file by either, double-clicking on a file in
the list, or by pressing the enter key. The 'Delete' key
functions as you might expect, and lets you delete more than one
file at a time (press shift or ctrl to make multi-item
selections).
The
Midi Player
When you choose to play a Midi file, it is
displayed in the orange frame at the bottom of the main
window. The title of the file and the URL from which it
was downloaded is shown above the player itself, which is very
similar to Microsoft Media Player. Beneath the player
controls, are four labels which allow you to perform various
functions.
Save to Local File
As the name suggests, this simply lets
you save the file that is currently playing to your
computer for future use.
Visit Page for this File
Clicking this allows you to visit the web
page from which the current Midi file came. It will
automatically open a new Internet Explorer window.
Remove all other Versions
Once you have found a version of a title
which you are happy with, you can use this function to
remove all the others versions from the Midi list.
Remove all Files from this Page
If you find a poor quality Midi file, you
may wish to make sure that you don't waste your time
with more files from that website. Clicking this,
will remove all files which came from the same website from the
list.
Downloading
all Midi Files in the List at Once
Once you have a list of Midi files, you can
download them to your computer. You can either select the
file you want and click Save Selected File, or you can
choose to download all the files in the list at once. Download
All Files Listed in the List Menu is very useful for building up your Midi
collection, but depending on the speed of your Internet access,
and the number of files, it can take a while. Downloading
a hundred files using a phone modem could take 10 minutes or
so. Whilst downloading, a dialog box appears, informing you
of the progress. Clicking Cancel stops the process, but any files
already downloaded will be available on your computer.
Also, after downloading files, they become immediately available
to play from the list (the first time you play them, they must
obviously be downloaded, which can take a second or so).
Sorting
and Filtering the Midi File List
After having retrieved a number of Midi files,
you may wish to change the way in which they are
displayed. The Filter/Sort facility in the List
Menu allows you
to do just this. Selecting this brings up a choice of
ways to display the listed Midi files. You may for
example, want to show the largest version of each title near the
top of the list. This is achieved by choosing List
Largest of each Title First. As well as this, you can
also sort the list by clicking on the column headings in the
list itself.
MIDI
Rating System
When you start a search, MIDI Harvester now
searches it's own database to see if any tracks match your
search criteria as well as the usual Internet search. If there are any matching files, the Rated
Files window will be shown. From here you can play any
file, and add your own rating. If you search without
entering any information you will get a list of the 50 most
highly rated tracks. Though the number of tracks currently on
the system is under 200, with your help we intend to make this
MIDI database the largest and most useful resource on the
Internet.
When you play a selected file - either by
double-clicking or pressing the button - the file will be played
in the player in the main MIDI Harvester window. You can
add your own rating of this file by clicking the Rate File
button. We encourage you to rate every file that you play,
and may be offering some kind of reward scheme in the future for
the most active raters.
As well as rating files that have already been rated by other
users, the database cannot grow without people rating MIDI files
for the first time.
Whenever you download and play a MIDI file in MIDI Harvester,
you can add the track to the database by clicking Rate this
MIDI File. The Rate File window is shown below:
The Artist, Song and Style fields may be filled in
when this window is shown, but please check the details and change
them if necessary. MIDI Harvester makes a guess at this
information, but gets it wrong sometimes. In the comments
section, you may like to let users know that the MIDI file has no
melody, or that it's a different version from what they might
expect. After clicking Submit
the information will be added to the database.
If you download and play a rated file that doesn't
sound anything like the song you thought it should be, please
inform us by clicking the Report Inaccurate Info. button.
The
Options Form
In order to make the software a little more
flexible, there are a few options available. Clicking the Options
button opens this window.
Here you can update your License Key, User Name
and email address, should you
need to, and change some preferences for the software.
When you download the entire list of Midi files,
Midi Harvester needs to know the directory in which you want to
store them, you can select the default folder using this window.
If you wish to see the URL (address) of the
actual Midi file when it is listed, choose Show File URL in
List.
Normally when the title of a Midi file cannot be
identified, it is not listed. In some circumstances - such
as when you're looking for a very rare file - you may wish to
turn this option off to make the chance of finding one is as
high as possible. Similarly, you can choose whether or not
to display duplicate titles. If you are gathering hundreds
or thousands of files, you may want only one of a particular
title. Unfortunately, if you choose not to see duplicates,
there is currently no way of ensuring you collect the best
version of a file.
By selecting the third option, it is possible to
eliminate some of those annoying 'failed downloads' you will
encounter. This happens when a link from a web page to a
Midi file is broken. This option makes the assumption that
if one of the links is broken, that others will probably also be
broken. It removes all such links/files from the
list. Note that when this option is selected, some files may
be missed.
By default, MIDI Harvester shows all rated files
that match your search criteria. It is possible to limit
the Rated Files shown to only those with a high rating. By
changing the number in this option. Be aware though that
if you set this value too high, you may not see the rated file
you're looking for.
Search
Information
The progress of the current search is shown in
the top-left of the main window. This information
includes; the number of web pages examined, the number left to
do and the number of pages examined per minute. It also
gives a visual indication of the overall progress of the search,
and the number of Midi files that have been found so far in this
search.
