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[jpdspin]

First, I would like to say hello to the members of the forum...I'm a newbie. I did read and look at the basics stuff before my first post.
First thing first.
So, my music is on a HD. like some people, it's not very tight and I've decided it was the time to do this right for me.
I did a list of what I need and what is important for me. Logically I thought that it would be a good thing to start with a spring cleaning.  Before I continue, English is not my natural language, so sorry for my spelling, second, if the questions I ask have already been answered, feel free to refer me to the topic . Again thank you.

MC will be used for music only, I have probably around 700 gig of music. A partial cleaning over time have already been made

Before I jump. What should I do in terms of preparation and cleaning before importing to MC and what would be more efficient to do in MC.

Plan A: Cleaning
1- get rid of all the files under 128.
2- get rid of all the doubloon and being able to chose the best quality files.

Would it be easier to do this in MC with the smart list. Is it possible to erase the file on my HD from MC

Plan B: organizing
Important for me:
Artist-Album-Track-# in order- artist remix and cover Art, I'm a visual guy. The year and disc company...not really important.

1- I would like to be able to classified my music by big family of genre that is important for me. I saw that it is possible to make special fields in MC but, should I do it on my hard drive first? here's a example. I would like to put all my french music in a folder, so when I want to listen to french music' I have it all. Doesn't matter if it's rock, blues, reggae, etc...and if I look by genre I could find the French artist in Rock like all the others.

For that purpose, should I do it in MC. Creating, in the tagging process, my own classification « family» before genre.

2- should I have in my HD, my music file more consistent, so it's all: Artist - Album and inside that file Track title - # before I import all of it to MC or I can organize the file in my HD from MC. Point is to have my Hard drive cleaner and lighter.

3- is it better pre-tag and to find cover art for all my music via Mp3tag before. So my tagging have a better chance to be well organized in MC. Or MC is a more efficient tool to work with.

In summary, what I should do before I import my collection?  Remember that I would like to have a HD in good shape. Do you think it a waste of time? And should just take care in making a good library in MC.

Thank you.

JP.

[~OHM~]

First off Welcome to MC and Interact.

all the years I have been using a computer for music playback I have learned a few things. Although MC is very powerful and does a superb job of organizing and grouping your files in side of MC or while you looking at your files with MC it does not move your files or organize them in windows for you. (well it can but that's another post) once you close MC down and start looking at the mess you made in windows explorer.

so I will start with your Plan B.
this is in windows and has nothing to do with MC

this is what I would do. and have done
I would; have a main music folder, for this post lets call it Main Folder....inside of that main folder I have folders for each artist (Shawn Phillips) (now i went with first name first, one can do whatever one likes) inside of Shawns folder are all the albums I have by him in their own folders. to keep them in order of release I choose to add the release date of the album (cd) such as 1971 Second Contribution inside of this album lies the files. this file system as proved to be very helpful with my HUGE collection! Mind you I'm 70. Cover art is very important to me, so also in that folder I keep the art for that album. Any additional art just lies in his Shawn Phillips folder....now inside of MC the TAGS are very important to keep things looking good! I pretag all new music with mp3tag before it gets put in the artist folder. MC is set to find changers and in no time it shows up and at that time I analyze. There are lots of things auto import can do, I'm sure you are aware of them. I only allow build thumbnails, update for external changes and fix broken links....good luck

P.S.
As far as using genre folders DON'T do it...MC will do all this for you, It's very simple to search by genre in MC. when you get that far just ask for help. if you truly haven't discovered it yet you will kick your self because of it's simplicity

Your plan A is a good Idea but MC is great at doing that so much faster than you ever could in windows.

My collections is so important to me I have 5 backups....lol....

Before you even start doing anything get rid of WMP it will mess everything up and destroy your hard work!!

[RoderickGI]

As far as I am concerned, MC does everything you asked for very well, and there is no need to use any other tool, except for identifying your music by AcoustID and adding extra tags from an external source. I use MusicBrainz Picard for that. MC can do it, but the database used (YADB) often isn't as complete as with MusicBrainz Picard. YADB is good when ripping CDs though, I find.

How you structure folders really doesn't matter in MC, except for backup or selective copying to other devices, or if you are going to use something other than MC to play your music, in which case you need to take into account the other player requirements.

For example, MC already has a [Language] field, and if you put "French" in there for all your French music, MC could easily show you just your French music and no other, using a View. It could also, for example, synchronise only your French music to an external device, such as an iPod. You could structure your folders by [Language]/[Artist]/[Album] for example, but there would be no need.

Even if you structure your folders some preferred way, then change your mind later, MC is the best tool to move files around and restructure folders. Read this Wiki article: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Rename,_Move,_and_Copy_Files

Also search around the forum for discussions on the functionality, often known as "RM&CF". It is very powerful functionality, and with great power, comes great responsibility, so be careful using it, and test on small groups of files before applying to your whole library.

So no, I don't think you should do anything on your HD before importing your music into MC. As long as you have decent tagging on your files, any inconsistency in folder structures can be fixed from within MC. If you don't have good tagging now, you may wish to use MusicBrainz Picard, or mp3tag, or some other tools to populate tags before importing, but honestly, I find it easier to work with MC checking what I need to fix, and then look up files that don't have tags using MusicBrainz Picard externally.

Note also; importing your music into MC does not move the files at all. It just indexes them. So if you import them all, look around and decide you want to improve things externally before continuing with MC, you can easily do that and then just start again with MC, importing into a new clean Library (database).

Enjoy the journey that is JRiver Media Center!

[~OHM~]

I don't disagree with any thing RoderickGI says....But who wants a sloppy looking arrangement of files in windows? not me. yes MC can do all of it. some find it easy and some not so much... it all boils down to how comfortable you feel using those 2 powerful tools within MC. I put out my 2 cents as I was in your postion about 6 years ago but I did already have my windows file structure down....Good Luck

[dtc]

I would recommend some structure to the folders, although I would not try to be too exact.

In my case, I wish I had a separate folder for classical and another for everything else. Non-classical I order by artist, but classical by composer. It would be nice to have consistent folder structures for each each those.

I also have a separate folder for another person who uses the system. We share the music, but she likes to be able to see just her music. I do that in MC by having a view with her filepath as a rule for the view.That saves having to do a special tag just for her.

I also have a separate folder for vinyl I have digitized. On import (manual) I have a rule that recognizes the vinyl folder and sets an appropriate tag. You could do the same for your French music. That saves having to do the tag manually for new imports.

If you have a big collection of French music, you might put that in a separate folder, for your convenience.

These types of separations can be convenient once the library gets very large.  I don't look at the folder structure very often, but when I do it is nice to have some organization. But I would still put tags in the library to do most of the  the selections.

[JimH]

In my case, I wish I had a separate folder for classical and another for everything else. Non-classical I order by artist, but classical by composer. It would be nice to have consistent folder structures for each each those.

You could easily do this with the MC Library Tool called Rename, Move, and Copy.  Try a few before you do very many.

[RoderickGI]

But who wants a sloppy looking arrangement of files in windows?

I would recommend some structure to the folders, although I would not try to be too exact.

I recommend structure in the folders storing music as well. For all the reasons mentioned, and most importantly for this one.

These types of separations can be convenient once the library gets very large.

You do not want to end up with, at worst case, a single folder with 22,453 files in it! Windows would have trouble with that, and that would certainly impact your enjoyment of the music.


No. What I was saying was that no matter what state your folder structure is in, I believe it would be best to import the music into MC, work out the rules you want to use for your folder structure, make sure that all the tags required to support those rules exist, test the rules on a small subset of music, and then MC can do the mass update and file moves for you in a very small amount of time, using the RM&CF function, for your whole library.

That would save a lot of time consuming work trying to do it in Windows Explorer, and once the rules are established, it can always be done consistently.

[jpdspin]

Well' that's what I call a community!!!
Wow that is quit fast and generous...It's all about passion.
Thank you very much.

So this is my new plan:

I will learn more about MC, try and do some small tests, to see how it react in general.

Study "RM&CF" and do some test before...to organized my folders in MC. My idea off general genres and practical folders is important for me. I play music, so I have a lot of tracks for that purpose. So it is easier for my work. But I hear you all when you say learn and enjoy the efficiency of MC to do that.

- From what I understand, I should be able to create a field name...for example Electro mid, another electro low in the tagging, then recall all those electro mid and move them together in a folder in MY hard drive with RM&CF ?

 I will tag and do the cover art with Music Brainz Picard, or MP3tag or MC.
 - But should I do it before? does it mater? If I do it after, is there going to be some over wright that I don't know of ? I imagine that MC ask you before when there is a change ?
What is going to happen when I'm going to import all my music folder in Auto-Import ? is it going to wright over and change some cover art or date, TAGS ? SORRY I'm a little bit paranoid because, that happen quit often with Traktor and mp3tag without saying anything.

- Should I convert my waves in Flac for all thoses reasons...tags and organization  ?

- Should I save a copy of the cover art in the folder to ? is it overkill ?

last two questions....

- If i wish to get rid off all the pour files,  I would be able to select them in the bite rate column and then delete them directly in my Hard Drive ?

- For the doubloon, same here, I will be able to delete the file from MC ?

Again thank you. I will start this week to do some tests and learn more and more about MC.

@Tao: I will Get rid off WMP without any hesitations.

JP.

[Spike1000]

- From what I understand, I should be able to create a field name...for example Electro mid, another electro low in the tagging, then recall all those electro mid and move them together in a folder in MY hard drive with RM&CF ?

In my opinion you're getting into too much detail here. A a simple folder structure of "Music files/'Artist'/'Album'" is sufficient. Use your tags to create custom/innovative views in MC rather than trying to group files on a HDD based on tags; that way lies madness  The power of MC comes from its database and its views based on the data in that database and that comes from the tags not from the location of the files on the HDD.

- Should I convert my waves in Flac for all thoses reasons...tags and organization  ?

FLAC files certainly are very flexible as they have all their tags embedded in the file themselves so can be re-imported into MC and all the metadata comes with them. I believe wav files have limited embedded tag support. FLAC files are smaller and are still lossless. ..  I don't have any wav files in my collection.

- Should I save a copy of the cover art in the folder to ? is it overkill ?

All my files have cover art embedded in them; the majority of my folders have a 'folder.jpg' too, it's not essential, it's been put there automatically (ie I don't go out of my way to put it there) it does no harm to leave it there. MC picks up the cover art embedded in files themselves and/or the folder.jpg so it just works. The only thing I do do is to ensure each file has cover art embedded in it.

- If i wish to get rid off all the pour files,  I would be able to select them in the bite rate column and then delete them directly in my Hard Drive ?

Create a view that gives an overveiw of all the sample rates and use that for house keeping.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,110589.msg764440.html#msg764440

This maybe useful to you too
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,110818.msg765902.html#msg765902

Spike

[RoderickGI]

What Spike said, plus;

- Should I convert my waves in Flac for all thoses reasons...tags and organization  ?

You will get massive differences of opinion here, based on perceived quality of playback. But I'm with Spike, FLAC is best for collection management, and I think equivalent in sound quality.

- If i wish to get rid off all the pour files,  I would be able to select them in the bite rate column and then delete them directly in my Hard Drive ?

Yes was the answer. As Spike suggests, you can create a View in MC to highlight the poor quality, low Bitrate files, and then delete them individually or in bulk if you wish. MC gives you the choice to just delete their record from the Library, or to delete the record and the files from the disk.

- For the doubloon, same here, I will be able to delete the file from MC ?

Duplicates (doubloon) management can be a bit of a can of worms; difficult to work out what to keep, particularly when you have some duplicates you want to keep, such as a studio recording, plus a live recording. But if you duplicates are just lower Bitrate versions of the same song, selecting what to delete is easy. As above, deletion in bulk or individually is easy.

[blgentry]

When I first started using MC, I was looking to remove low bit rate files from my collection and a few other tasks.  I started looking around for tools to do this and came across a post that said something like:

"I've learned that it's easiest to do everything in MC.  As you start to look around, you'll see that almost everything you want to do to your collection is already built in to MC.  So I always start there first and only seek an outside tool if I can't figure out how to make MC do it."

I'm paraphrasing, but that was the message.  I've found that this is overwhelmingly true.  MC does a LOT if you take the time to use it in the ways it was intended.

Good luck to the original poster.

Brian.

[dtc]

There are two features you should be aware of,if you are not already, that might help you in your cleanup, organizing and tagging,

First, you can create your own tags/library fields and use them throughout MC.  There are a wealth of existing tags, but if there is something you want to use for your organization for which there is no obvious tag, then you can create your own. For example, I want to know the source of my files (e.g. CD, HiRes Download, Vinyl, MP3 Download, Internet Radio). i created a tag Media Sub Type Audio which is limited to those values only and set the tag for each new album or download. You can use that tag just like you would any other in MC. To create tags - Tools - Options - Library & Folders - Manage Library Fields. On the the bottom left you can Add New Fields.

Second, you can create a Smartlist which can be used to play music or you can use them for library maintenance. They allow you to set rules for selecting tracks, based on the tags. For example, you could set up a Smartlist for all audio with Language French. Or another for all audio with bitrate less than some value. For example,  I have a Smartlist to show me any audio where the cover art is not stored in the file (Image File Not Inside File) and one that lists any audio where Media Sub Type Audio is blank. I access those every so often just to check on missing tags or cover art. You can do the same thing with views, but it is nice to have these administrative tasks hidden from everyday use. You could also use a Smartlist to select the files you might want to move, rename or delete.  Smartlists are listed under Playlists in the left hand tree. Right click on Smartlists to create a new one.

In the case of my digitized vinyl, I have it all stored in a folder names JRiver Music - Vinyl. That way I can set up a Smartlist that looks for a file path that contains "vinyl" so I can find any vinyl albums quickly. That was useful when I created my Media sub Type Audio field. It was easy to select all the vinyl tracks so I could then set the tag to Vinyl.

MC has a wealth of tools available. It is an extremely powerful management tool once you learn all its capabilities.

[MusicHawk]

Lots of excellent advice. One more tip: The standard fields Keywords can be used for all kinds of tags that don't need to be isolated, just available for, say, selecting in a smartlist or view. I use it for such random things as "beatles", "motown", "piano", "jazz", "movie" (song), "cocktail", "party", etc, etc. If I want to then select or view songs with "piano" and "jazz" and "dinner" I just do so, very simple.

I'm not suggesting you toss all tags into this one field, just pointing out MC's database power, so no need to over-complicate a library with many fields unless they need to be isolated. In the few cases where I realized a separate field was better, I simply created the new field, then selected from the entire library for the desired value in Keywords, then had MC add whatever I wanted to the new field. Vice versa works too.

The same applies to folder structure. MC doesn't care. So do it only if you care, and organize it for other purposes (since MC doesn't care). After many variations (using MC for about 17 years), I simply have folders A-Z, and in each are all the artists of that letter, because my files are all named artist-title. 90,000 songs later, still works fine. (My songs are about 50/50 from albums or not, so while I use the Album field (and an ID field) to identify it, I don't need to use Album folders. But this isn't right or wrong, it is simply an example of how MC's database capabilities are the essential tool. Realize that almost every aspect of tags and organization can be changed later, if you have stored the data somehow. Have fun.

[jpdspin]

Ok couples of things pop's in my mind.

wav versus Flac. It's goes with what I learn all around, so converting wav to flac is now part of the plan. I just had to do some more testing with trakor and everything looks ok.

Folder naming: this is the situation in my HD.
I have a main folder name Source Music. In this folder the sub folder are the [ Artist ] - [ Album ].   in that sub folder are the Track. This is mainly the set-up. Well that's the way I've started to classify thing years ago. Probably half of the HD is in that form, for the rest...assorted style.
So here's the thing, when I have only one Track ( 60% album, 40 % track ) That make a lot of folder and it's not really useful I'm beginning to think.
So Starting to understand a bit more the concept off tags I Could simplify things and use MC to find all the music made by a artist and reclassified those files in a new sub folder using RM-CF call [ Artists ]. I would keep the Various Artists album out of this game and place all of them in a sub folder call Various Artists.
Reading all your comments, come to say Keep it simple, well at the start for a beginning.

Having this assorted nomenclature, is part of the cleanup I would like to do. Just a minimum to homogenized the content of my HD. After a while, when I will have more knowledge in MC, I'll see what I will do with the structure.
It's a good thing to validate before investing to much time.

Last night was my first test to learn about the beast. So I select IMPORT-SINGLE FOLDER- check: audio-image-data. analized audio, ignore special files.
Around 60 000 files after 2:30 hour, 1200...files analyzed.
So clearly if I don't want  to see my laptop blow away, I will need to find a better strategy to import my music to the library. By batch or all of it without analysing them and re-analysed after...step by step.
I will do more test tomorrow night.

Again thank you all for your help to the newbie here. I'm just trying to do it the right way for me and sharing this passion at the same time.

JP