Organizing MP3's - advice sought from other **** retentives
Posted by: throbnorth on 25 November 2003
I seem to have accumulated quite a large assortment of mp3's, through hardly any fault of my own. If I'd really been going for it, heaven knows how many I'd have. As it is, they amount to quite a few gigabytes. At the moment they hang out in 'My Music' in an assortment of bitrates, often titled seemingly by illiterates, their tags all of a heap and generally in a right mess.
What I seem to need is twofold - firstly some sort of practical philosophy - i.e. do I have folders for new stuff / stuff that has been checked / stuff that I want to keep but is badly titled / stuff I like but has been encoded badly etc. A system, really.
Secondly, a program to enable me to manage my collection smoothly. Being a long term fan of Collectorz.com products, and possessing both the peerless Music Collector and Movie Collector [which is amazingly good, BTW - anyone who is beginning to acquire substantial numbers of DVDs should check it out] I naturally have downloaded the evaluation version of MP3 Collector, and it seems as though it could do the job. Maybe there's something better?
This looks to be one of those things where you could waste an enormous amount of time if you don't get the underlying principles right, so I'd be keen to know how you manage. [BTW, I'm sure with a Mac & iTunes everything could be accomplished in a trice, but having neither, I'd prefer if owners of same could stay up their end of the playground for the time being. Nothing personal.]
throb
Posted on: 25 November 2003 by Peter C
Folders in the MY Music Folder
Try using the Band Names
Posted on: 25 November 2003 by throbnorth
Sorry Peter, that's far too simple for me - I alphabetise my socks.
throb
Posted on: 25 November 2003 by andy c
Have you tried putting them onto cd?
If you use Nero or a similar prog it automatically converts em to cda's.. (Compact Disc Audio)
Also apply the one month rule to downloaded music - If u ain't played it on your PC for a month get it on cd then delete the fiel left on your pc.
Nero also allows you to do compilations...
Posted on: 25 November 2003 by Andrew L. Weekes
Mine are simply organised in folders: -
Artist / Band -> Album Title -> Track Title.
You can then use something like 'MP3 Tag Tools' to automatically update the mp3 tags based on reading the folder / file structure.
It's an idea, anyway!
Andy.
Posted on: 26 November 2003 by garyi
Put them in itunes and create playlists, you can organise them any way you want then.
Posted on: 26 November 2003 by John Channing
[BTW, I'm sure with a Mac & iTunes everything could be accomplished in a trice, but having neither, I'd prefer if owners of same could stay up their end of the playground for the time being. Nothing personal.]You have obviously missed the fact that iTunes is now available on the vastly superior PC platform. Just go to
iTunes and get a free copy.
John
Posted on: 26 November 2003 by matthewr
throb,
As well as tag fixing and tag editing, most tag editors -- including I dare say MP3 Collector -- will do 'rename from tag' type functionality but I am not aware of any which will create the appropriate directory structure for you. If you want to try something different to MP3 Collector, there are a bunch of Organizer/Renamer tools at
http://www.wma-mp3.com/ One of them might do it I suppose.
On the other hand you could argue that a physical directory structure is not really that useful. I which case fix the tags, get the files renamed corectly and stick it all in a single directory and rely on logical views of your collection via your media player and/or MP3 player. This is, incidentally, exactly how media players work -- they rarely actually physically create folders on the hard drive and the structure is doen in software via internal indexing and cataloging.
Note you can rename the files to have the full tag info in them -- typically <artist>-<album>-<track#>-<trackname>.mp3 -- which makes it easy to deal with them as files via Windows Explorer regardless of whether they are in the usual directory structure or not. With such a naming scheme you could also go ahead and reorganise them into folders although its arguable whether this is worth the effort.
BTW With correctly tagged and named files it would be trivial to write a program to re-organise your MP3 colletion into an appropriate directory structure. This is what Geeky nephews are for should you be fortunate enough to have one.
Matthew
Posted on: 26 November 2003 by JeremyD
I'm not much of an organiser but the program I use for editing tags has useful organising features for those who want them:
Dr TagHowever, I do have some non music files that I need to reorganise and rename from time to time, and I use the scary sounding but harmless Renamer version 5.0 beta 3 for the latter. I just went to the author's website and found
Renamer v6.0--J
[This message was edited by JeremyD on WEDNESDAY 26 November 2003 at 16:43.]
Posted on: 28 November 2003 by matthewr
Posted on: 28 November 2003 by throbnorth
A closer look at MP3 Collector makes me think it is a bit too sophisticated for my needs. Those Dutch guys are sooo thorough. [I don't mind this in Music Collector, which I've been with since about version 2, but I'm not prepared to put in the time getting to grips with their rather dry manual for my scraggy lot of MP3's]
This is where I eat humble pie. iTunes seems to be just what I'm looking for. It's early days yet, but on first acquaintance Mr Jobs doesn't seem to have put a foot wrong, and it appears to be what I'd hoped MusicMatch would be when I first came across it.
Having just got a new car which doesn't have a cassette, [and thus won't let me use my Minidisc] but does seem to be prepared to play CD-RW's, burning playlists of odd bits & bobs, Kazaa'd flotsam I'm auditioning and the odd ripped CD single is very attractive. iTunes has become my default music player for the time being, and I have to say that for music at least, it seems to outgun Media Player quite comprehensively. Even the radio bit is fuss-free. I don't know what MP3 codec iTunes uses, but with a bit of tinkering in Preferences, it seems respectable enough. Free too, which is impressive for cheapskates.
I think you're right Matthew, in that a physical directory structure outside the organiser [iTunes or whatever]is not needed. Maybe just a quarantine folder outside the main My Music directory to check that tracks are complete/playable/not total rubbish. I only have the vaguest idea of what tagging is all about, so I think I need to do some further research before I start tinkering.
throb
