Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[brucemck2]

I've got approximately 10,000 FLAC files in my MC13 library, all on a single external hard drive (Drive "F")

I'd like to "split" the library so that my favorite 1,000 or so songs are on my local hard drive (Drive "C"). 

I would like to do this for two reasons: (a) when I travel I will have my favorites with me on my laptop, and, (b) my audiophile friends have told me the sonics are better off the local hard drive than they are off the remote USB drive.

Ideally all my cover art and ratings would move too, so that it would be "seamless" after the move -- when operating with only the local drive (Drive C) I'd have full access to all 1,000 songs, and when I plug in the other drive (Drive F) into the USB port I'd have full access to my entire collection.

Is there a simple way to do this in MC13?

[JimH]

Select a few files, right click and choose Library Tools, then "Rename, Move, Copy".  Check the directory box.

Do a few before you do very many.

[MusicHawk]

I do essentially the same thing. My goal is to have my major songs in folder "music" (certain genres and 4-5 star rating) in one place, and everything else in another "musicminor" location. I can then easily copy the "music" folder tree to a USB portable drive to use with my laptop, to my iPod, etc. with just one copy action.

My library is 80K tracks and growing and this helps me keep it under control. I end up with about 15K tracks in my major "music" folder. Adding cover art and library files it all fits on a 250GB USB drive just fine, though I'm closing in on this. USB 500gb drives are approaching $100 so I can step up when needed.

I branch my music files by using "Rename, Move, Copy" with a branching formula for the directory portion. Based on my selection criteria (genra, rating, whatever) the directory path is "music" or "musicminor". This directory formula is my permanent setting so whenever I add new songs they go where I want, and if I recategorize/re-rate a song it moves. (See below for my Rename formula.)

I keep cover art for all tracks in a separate folder and because that can be just one directory path, all those files must get copied, or none, depending on whether I want cover art when using the USB drive elsewhere.

I also have to copy to the USB drive the location of my library, to get the database including all my custom fields. To make this easy, I specify "music" as my library location. Considering "music" as the "root" of my library, this folder has all MC's library files, and a bunch of subdirectories, one for each genre, and within those folders for each artist. The other path "musicminor" doesn't have the library files but otherwise it also has subdirectories for genre and within those for artist. This is OK because "musicminor" is always combined with "music" to get the full library (but rarely, because it contains tracks I ripped and want to retain but don't care to actually listen to).

I do all of the copying via a backup program (SyncBackSE) because it lets me set up all the copying paths once then run as needed (manually). (I also run a scheduled backup of the same music files tree to another PC on my home network and use that as playback in my family room, which I prefer to using MC's server.)


By the way, there's no "sonic" problem with playback from a USB drive or any other drive, assuming you don't hear chattering or other problems that indicate the drive/connection can't keep up with the playback data rate. On the old laptop in my RV I had to set MC's buffering to 5 seconds, but now it works perfectly.


Below is the "Rename, Move, Copy" formula I use for directory and file name. Of course it's based on how I use library fields, but you can get the idea of specifiying a conditional path via the function isequal(). I use Rank instead of Rating to avoid the behavior of the Rating/stars field, and Artists is a custom multi-value field.

I use FixCase to force the directory and file name to lowercase to be compatible with Windows and Linux systems. The Mid() function is used to limit the folder length and filename so the entire path can be burned to CD/DVD as necessary.

RecVer is another custom field used to differentiate different performances of the same song by the same artist ("LIVE" or "VER2" or "REMAKE" or whatever), otherwise MC might complain that it can't rename because the file already exists. (Rename doesn't append (1), (2), like ripping and some other processes do.)

Notice the directory base path is drive letter M:, the location of my music folders\files on every PC I use. In some cases it is an internal drive and on others it is a USB drive. The portable USB drive I move to a laptop might be N: on the main PC while copying to it, but on every playback machine the music drive is M:. This let's MC's library work transparently without doing any find/replace steps. Once set up, it's really quite a slick system.

DIRECTORIES:

Base Path: "m:\"

Rule: "if( isequal([Rank],3,5),music,musicminor)\FixCase([Genre]\Mid([Artists],0,1),4)"

FILENAME:

Rule: "FixCase(Mid([Artists],0,20) - [Name]if(isequal([RecVer],unknown,8),,/ ~[RecVer]),4)"