Suggestions how to tag multi-disc set
Posted by: okli on 04 February 2011
Hi,
A friend of mine brought me The Capitol Edition of the Beatles CDs from US and now I'm wondering how to tag them best - it is a set of two boxes - Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - each containing 4 CDs and these have their own album names. So, I'd like to have them under common "Capitol Recordings Box" or similar parent tag, equal to my folder structure. Any suggestions how can I accomplish this with tags?
TIA,
Ilko
A friend of mine brought me The Capitol Edition of the Beatles CDs from US and now I'm wondering how to tag them best - it is a set of two boxes - Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - each containing 4 CDs and these have their own album names. So, I'd like to have them under common "Capitol Recordings Box" or similar parent tag, equal to my folder structure. Any suggestions how can I accomplish this with tags?
TIA,
Ilko
Posted on: 04 February 2011 by likesmusic
It depends how you view the set, and what you use to rip and playback.
Do you view the whole thing as one 'Album'? If you do, then change the Album tag to "Beatles Capitol Recordings Box" and set the disc number tag to 1/6, 2/6 etc,,,
Alternatively, if you view them as inidividual albums, rip them as individual albums but modify the Album Name .. Meet the Beatles (Capitol), Something New (Capitol) and so on .. or Capitol Beatles - Meet the Beatles, Capitol Beatles - Something New and so on .. this will avoid conflict with other versions of the same album. Choose a set of names that makes them appear where you expect in whatever you use to play them.
If you use the folder structure for browsing, then adapt it accordingly.
I'd go for the second strategy for your set, but I use the first for classical boxed sets.
Do you view the whole thing as one 'Album'? If you do, then change the Album tag to "Beatles Capitol Recordings Box" and set the disc number tag to 1/6, 2/6 etc,,,
Alternatively, if you view them as inidividual albums, rip them as individual albums but modify the Album Name .. Meet the Beatles (Capitol), Something New (Capitol) and so on .. or Capitol Beatles - Meet the Beatles, Capitol Beatles - Something New and so on .. this will avoid conflict with other versions of the same album. Choose a set of names that makes them appear where you expect in whatever you use to play them.
If you use the folder structure for browsing, then adapt it accordingly.
I'd go for the second strategy for your set, but I use the first for classical boxed sets.
Posted on: 07 February 2011 by okli
I've played a bit with the tags, but I think I'll stick with the folder view for now, because this give me the hierarchical structure I'm used to and does not require long names, which are cut in nStream. I thought I can build a hierarchical view with tags, but they are simply limited to flat structures and the only way to group something to my requirements is to name the containing albums with identical start names and get them shown in alphabetical order, as the second suggestion above - The Capitol Recordings Vol. 1 - Disc N - album name. and The Capitol Recordings Vol. 2 - Disc N - album name. This will group them in Genre / Artist container and will keep the original disc order. As I mentioned this could lead to "The Capitol Recordings Vol. 1 - Disc 1 - ..." texts in n-stream making the album name almost useless - with this set it is ok, but the problems start with classical music. I have to be careful to generate my folder structure from the tags (I'm using dbpoweramp and it can do this very well) and adjust it accordingly if I make changes to the tags, otherwise this could lead to inconsistencies between meta data in tags and folder structure and I'd like the folder structure to reflect the meta data. Another story are the online purchases...
Posted on: 07 February 2011 by likesmusic
You can, with some care, use your own Naming string inside dBpoweramp to vary the folder structure depending on the genre, number of discs, etc ..
Here's my current Naming string:
[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album]\[track] [artist][][IF!COMP][IF!EQUALS]Genre,Classical,[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][][][IFEQUALS]Genre,Classical,[Composer][]\[album]\[IFMULTI][disc] - [][track][] - [MAXLEngth]100,[title][]
Which gives me a classical folder structure of Composer\Album, but a non-classical folder structure of Artist\Album. To keep folder view in track order. this prepends the track number to the track name, and if it's a multi-disc set, prepends the disc number. I'm happy enough with this so far, but I don't use folder browsing much. I get the tags as correct as possible, and I don't care whether the folder structure agreees with the metadata - there's no need for it to.
Here's my current Naming string:
[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album]\[track] [artist][][IF!COMP][IF!EQUALS]Genre,Classical,[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][][][IFEQUALS]Genre,Classical,[Composer][]\[album]\[IFMULTI][disc] - [][track][] - [MAXLEngth]100,[title][]
Which gives me a classical folder structure of Composer\Album, but a non-classical folder structure of Artist\Album. To keep folder view in track order. this prepends the track number to the track name, and if it's a multi-disc set, prepends the disc number. I'm happy enough with this so far, but I don't use folder browsing much. I get the tags as correct as possible, and I don't care whether the folder structure agreees with the metadata - there's no need for it to.