Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2005/06 - Gruppe 09 - Design
Topic
MP3 Archive Visualization
Description of the Application Area and given Dataset
Application Area Analysis
The application area is the creation of a MP3 archive visualisation and its ID3 tags. This should contain information like the name of the artist, the year it came out, name of the album etc.
ID3 tags store information within the MP3 files. Originally ID3 tags held just the basic text-only information about a music file. They had a standard size and standardized information.
The most important and also special thing about this project is to create a useful visualisation, which can store lots of information in one place, without having to abstain from a user friendly interface.[Doug, 2005]
Dataset Analysis
In the following table, you can find the attributes which should be contained in a MP3 file.
These attributes are 1-dimensional.
A MP3 file contains only attributes with data.
| Attribute | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Track | Discreet | Track Name |
| Artist | Discreet | Artist name |
| Album | Discreet | Album name |
| Genre | Nominal | Type or category of music |
| Track # | Ordinal | The track's position on a CD |
| Disc # | Ordinal | The CD's position in relationship to other CDs in a series, such as a boxed set |
| Track count | Ordinal | Total number of tracks on the disc |
| Disc count | Ordinal | Total number of discs |
| Composer | Discreet | Composer of the track |
| Performer | Discreet | Performer of the Track |
| Year | Ordinal | The year the track was recorded |
| Size | Ordinal | The file size |
| Total time | Ordinal | The total time of the song |
| Date added | Ordinal | Date when song was added to archive |
| Play count | Ordinal | Number of time the song was played |
| Play date | Ordinal | Date of last play |
| Bit rate | Ordinal | Bit rate of song |
| BPM | Ordinal | Beats per Minute |
| Sample rate | Ordinal | Sample rate of song |
| Location | Discreet | File location |
| Kind | Nominal | Kind of file |
| Rating | Ordinal | Personal rating |
| Comments | Ordinal | Any comments you care to make about the track |
| Mood | Ordinal | The mood of the track |
[RealNetworks, 2005]
Target Group Analysis
Who should use this visualation technique?
In the past years media is getting much smaller, much better in quality, and also provide more space for our data. If you convert conventional audio files from CDs to the MP3 Format, you can afford to have your whole music collection on one larger hard drive. The business within the musich industry is taking over the internet. You are either able to download song, or listen to them directly through streams. So your favorite song is just a click away!
Because of the fact that this new art of saving your songs, albums and so on, does not contain the usually shipped cd covers which were a very good visualisation of the audio you are listening to, it has become very important to find a good solution for the visualisation of your music archive.
At this moment the target group are mostly the people who already use the MP3 format to store their audio data, but should expend soon to all the other music-lovers.[Netzwelt, 2005]
What are the characteristics of the target group?
Like we already mentined (2.1) the business with the music is spreading more and more towards the internet. So over the years there are going to be developed more and more solutions (e.g. for children, elders, amaurotics etc.) for the music market place. The target group is going to expand over the years.
Are there any known / often used Methods / Visualisation Techniques?
The most popular program for MP3 files is nowadays iTunes von Macintosh (Apple). This is mostly due to the big boom in the distribution of the iPod in the past few years. In order to manage the music archive, iTunes uses a XML (Extensible Markup Language). In this xml file, the metainformation is stored, independent from the proprietary audio format which e.g. use ID3 tags. The advantage is that the metainformation nevertheless can be edited, even if the audio files don't allow modificatoins to their tags. Besides iTunes contains a visualizer for different music genres and can encode (import) and decode (play-back) music in different audio formats, except for music samples which is bought in the protected AAC-format.
Purpose of the Visualisation
What should be achieved with the Visualisation?
Information should be displayed clearly and intuitinal. The user should have a clear view of the information, be able to orient him/herself, and always know that the information displayed is about a music sample.
Which tasks should be solved?
A solution should be found which can be suitable for young and old, but also for the power and "less"-listeners. The problem is that presentation mostly functions and in fact is very subjective. On the one side the user wants to have as much information as possible displayed, and on the other side one wants to see only the relevant data.
A good compromise should be found and developed.
Questions that can be solved using this Visualisation
- Which title is being played back at this very moment?
- Which interprets are available?
- Which titles are available?
- How many titles from a certain genre are available?
- Has the design been propertly developed?
- Is the view / information shown user friendly and straightforward?
Designproposal
Which kinds of Visualisation should be used?
- Search for genre and interpret
- Filtered search output should be displayed in an information window
- View (display) and selection possibility for the genres
- View (display) of the current title and interpret
- Scrolling list up & down
- View (display) for the interprets
- Colored distinction of the amount of titles through intervals
The main pannel stays clear until an artist or title is selected and afterwards gets filled with all the information.
Visual Mapping
- Dimension "MP3 Anzahl" --> visual attribute "colored square"
The amount of titles is characterised in terms of color, e.g. red for <100 MP3 files
- Dimension "Interpret" --> visual attribute "table"
Information should be displayed as a table
- Dimension "Genre" --> visual attribute "square"
Information should be displayed as a table
Description of Used Techniques / Applied Principles
- Details on demand:
(slide 57 of Info_Vis4.pdf handed out in the course 188.305 VO Informationsvisualisierung)
- Focus & Context: Tiled Multi-Level Browser
(slide 65 of Info_Vis-0-Defs.pdf handed out in the course 188.305 VO Informationsvisualisierung)
- File Structure to tree
(slide 21 of Info_Vis6.pdf handed out in the course 188.305 VO Informationsvisualisierung)
Possibilities of the Interaction
Through the selection of a genre, the user is able to select an interpret/title. This yields to display of detailed information and possibility of play-back.
- Information about the amout of the titles/genre
- Output of the information in the ID3 tags
- Navigation in the single windows with scrolls in order to get more detailed information
- Output for the filtered search results
- Player for play-back of the selected title
Mockup(s) / Fake Screenshot(s)
References
[1][Doug, 2005]Doug's Apple Scripts, Access Date: 22 November 2005, http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/id3tags00.php
[2][RealNetworks, 2005] RealNetworks Inc., Access Date: 22 November 2005, http://home.real.com/product/help/rhapv3_ts/en/Track_Info_Edit.htm
[3][Netzwelt, 2005]Netzwelt.de, Access Date: 22 November 2005, http://netzwelt.de/lexikon/ITunes.html