Uploading contents and creating catalogs

So, we have installed the Ampache streaming server. Now, we will learn how to upload our audio/video content and create our first catalog.

Getting ready

You will need audio and video files to be uploaded on your server and enough space to save all this content. I will be using podcasts from Ubuntu podcasts in the MP3 format.

Upload all content to your Ampache server and note the directory path. I will be using the podcasts directory under home for my user.

Open the Ampache server homepage and log in with admin credentials.

How to do it…

Ampache provides the admin page, where you can perform all administrative tasks, such as catalogue management, user management, and other configurations. We will create a new catalogue from the admin panel and then point it to already uploaded content:

1. From your Ampache homepage, click on the admin icon in the upper-left corner of the screen. This should list all administrative tools:
   
2. Now, click on the Add a Catalog link. This should load the Add a Catalog page:
   
3. Enter the catalog name. Use a name that describes your content. I will use Ubuntu podcasts.
4. Set the Catalog Type to local, as we will be loading content from your local filesystem.
5. Enter the path for your MP3 (or video) files, /home/ubuntu/podcasts in my case.
6. Click on the Add Catalog button. This will create a new catalog and import all content to it. The process will check for meta tags and try to collect more information about the content. It will take some time to process all the files and add details to the Ampache database:
   
7. Finally, click Continue to complete catalog creation and go to the catalog list:
   
8. Once catalog creation is complete, you can go to the homepage by clicking the home icon (first) in the upper-left of the screen and then clicking on the song title link. This should list all the files available under your catalog directory:
   
9. From this song list, you can play songs/podcasts, add or remove ratings, add them to playlists, and more:
   

How it works…

Catalog creation simply reads the content from the upload directory and adds the respective details to the MySQL database. The process tries to gather more details about content using information collected from meta tags and track titles or file names. This information is then used to group the content by artist and album. Note that Ampache is not tagging software where you upload random content and receive a well-organized media library. For Ampache to work well, you need to have properly tagged and well-organized content.