I'm brand new to JRiver coming from iTunes and I have a few questions that I couldn't seem to find the answers to.
Welcome to Interact!
1. Is there a way to automatically copy files to an organized library folder? I've seen that once you drag files into the library, you can then select them and copy them to a specific directory, but not having to do that every time I add files to the library would be nice.
Well, yes and no. There is no way to
automatically organize the file structure, but this is not really a negative thing. When you select a set of files and right click -> Library Tools, you will find a powerful tool called
Rename, Move & Copy Files. This tool will let you organize and re-organize your file structure however you see fit based on the tags you've entered for your files.
This is a manual process, but that is usually better for workflow reasons. I don't want MC moving my files around and renaming them until I've finished fully ingesting them and tagging them. Often, valuable tag information can be automatically extracted from filenames and paths (using the related
Library Tools -> Fill Properties from Filename tool). If MC automatically renamed and moved your files upon ingestion, like iTunes does, then you'd be unable to extract that information from the existing file structure (because it would already be gone).
Also, the Rename, Move & Copy tool is smart, so you don't necessarily have to be precise with which files you select. It won't bother touching files that are already "correct", and will only adjust those that need changed. So it is often easy to just Select All and then use the tool to fix those files that aren't named/located properly.
Generally, I find the best practice is this:
* Have an "Incoming" folder, where all new media goes if you aren't ABSOLUTELY SURE it is already named properly. For example, rips don't need to go there because they will automatically be structured properly via the Options -> File Locations -> Audio -> Folder/Filename Rules, but downloaded files from Amazon or other sources probably DO need to go to this Incoming folder.
* Set up Auto-Import to monitor this location. MC will automatically find and import any files that show up in that folder.
* Have a separate storage location for your "permanent media" (this is M:\Music\, M:\Images\, and M:\Video\ for me, but you can structure this as you'd like).
* As new files are imported, get them tagged and all set the way you want them in the Library. Then use
Rename, Move & Copy to move those files over to the "permanent media" locations as you'd like. This way, you can have one set of "Filename rules" for Audio files, and another for TV Shows, and another for Movies. Since you apply the rules manually, you can easily select files based on their tags and quickly move them where you want them to live permanently. The tool remembers the last used entries, making it easy to have a pre-defined set of renaming rules.
* A useful tip for doing this is to make a new All Media Top level View that contains a File Location pane, a Media Type Pane, a Media Sub Type pane, and a few other panes to help you quickly sort the files into groups. That way you can easily show all of the files in your library under M:\Incoming\, but subfilter that to show only Video files that are tagged as TV Shows. Move them, then switch to Video files under M:\Incoming\ that are tagged as Movies. Move them. So on and so forth.
2. I didn't copy my entire library over yet so I'm entirely sure if this has any effect, but there are arrows with numbers next to them (1 names, 2 album, 3 album as well, 4 track number - 2 and 4 show up in file view, 1 and 3 in artist). I thought it had to do with organization order but it seems to organize regularly. What exactly do these arrows mean?
This is the sort order for the file listing. MC supports "complex sorting". You can change these by clicking on the list headers in the
reverse order of how you want them to sort. I don't actually like to do it that way, so I turn that feature off (you can disable it via
Options -> Tree & View -> Sorting -> Save changes on list header clicks). So, for example, if you wanted to sort your music files alphabetically by:
1. Artist
2. But then "inside" each artist sub-sorting by Album
3. inside each Album sub-sorting by Disc #
4. inside each disc by Track #
5. and then lastly if a bunch of Track numbers match, sub-sorting by Name
This is a common sorting pattern. To achieve this, you would click the list headings in this order:
1. Name
2. Track #
3. Disc #
4. Album
5. Artist
Each time you click on a new heading, it "sorts" by that heading "primarily" but keeps the remainder of the sort order intact. So, that's why you click on them in the REVERSE order of how you want them to end up. You click on Artist LAST because you want that to be the "top level" sorting field. This works okay if you just want to sort by 1-2 columns, but usually I find it is easiest to disable this feature, and to set up my sorting manually via the other mechanism. You can also define sort order this way:
1. Select a View in the Tree.
2. Right click on it, and choose Customize View.
3. In the dialog that appears, click the
Set rules for file display button.
4. In the dialog that appears, add a new Modifier in the lower "Modify Results" section. Change this modifier type to "Sort By".
5. In the box to the right click Add and then choose the Tags you'd like to sort by one at a time (you can do both normal and reversed sort orders this way).
6. As you add these different tags to the list, you can drag them up and down to re-order them.
7. When you are done, click OK twice to exit the Customize View dialog and enjoy your results.
If you do it this way and disable the Save changes on List Header clicks option, you can still resort a list on-the-fly by clicking on a list header, but your changes will revert when you switch views. This is actually nice because you can have a view with a complex sort pattern set up, and quickly switch it to sort by Filename or File Type or some other single-use item for just a minute, but then it is easy to get it back to the way it was by simply switching to a different view in the tree and then back again.
