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Organizing My Media

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crisnee:
I think you can use MC in a Windows file folder mode (so to speak). Choose File on the left hand side then keep click on the little arrow for the drive you're interested in and then the various folders. It's basically Windows in MC. From there you can look into using the left side of the screen to set up this thing better or to enter tags and eventually use MC to fuller potential. But this should be very similar to what you are doing without MC (if I understand you correctly).

Chris

glynor:
Okay, to take your first example...

F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\

I'm going to assume that the files are in flac format (though this doesn't matter), and are named something like this:

F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\1 - Paper Airplane.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\2 - Dust Bowl Children.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\3 - Lie Awake.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\4 - Lay My Burden Down.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\5 - My Love Follows You Where You Go.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\6 - Dimming Of The Day.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\7 - On The Outside Looking In.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\8 - Miles To Go.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\9 - Sinking Stone.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\10 - Bonita And Bill Butler.flac
F:\Music\Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]\11 - My Opening Farewell.flac

If not, and you have further questions after this, post some full example filenames and I'll try to get back to you.

First you need to make a view you can work with the way you're used to the files.  This isn't difficult.  There is already one there that will mostly work, and can serve as a template.

Prelude: Setting Up Auto-Import

I'm assuming you've already imported a bunch of files.  I don't know how you did this, but it works best if you use Auto-Import.  If you didn't do this before, you might want to do it instead.  That might make this task much easier, because Auto-Import does some magic to automatically recognize some tags and filenames that you might not have benefited from if you didn't use this system (if you imported them via Tools > Import > Import Single Folder, Drag-Drop, or File > Library > Import, for example).

If you need to start over, the easiest thing (since you're a brand new user) will be to just reset your Library to the defaults.

To configure Auto-Import to import your files:

1. Go to:  Tools > Import and then choose Configure Auto-Import from the dialog that appears.
2. Click the Add button on the right hand side of the dialog that appears to add a new folder.
3. Click the Browse button in the Folder Settings dialog, and find your F:\Music\ folder and pick it.
4. If you only have music in there, you can uncheck the file types other than Audio (just untick Image and Video).
5. Keep the Ignore special files option enabled, and click OK to include it the folder.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for any additional places where you store media on your computer.
7. Down at the bottom, under the Folders list, there are some options in the Tasks area...
8. Later, you can decide what you want to do, but the current settings should be adequate (and safe) to start you off.
9. Click Finish.

MC will scan your hard drive and import all the music it finds.

Setup a Basic Tagging View

Others will probably chime in (and you can search the forum for tips), but I'm just going to try to get you something basic you can use by default.  We'll start with a default Library.

On the left hand side in the Tree, choose Audio and then Files.

This will show all of the audio files in your Library, organized by folder.  There is also a pane for File Type.  This is probably, right now, actually pretty close to what you're used-to.  At the top, under Location, you can expand the "folder tree" as it is on your hard drive (click on the arrow next to F:), and see all of the files within in the list below.  The nice thing is, you'll notice, that all of the files show that are within each folder as you expand and select it.  It "narrows down" the choices, but shows all of the files "below" the current one.  You can also hold down the control key, and select multiple folders individually, and then the file listing will show the contents of those folders (and their subfolders) but not the ones that aren't highlighted.

This will become important later.  For now, we're going to add a few more panes:

1. Right click somewhere up near the label File Type up top (on the header of the File Type pane) and choose Add Category to Right.
2. In the dialog that appears, choose Artist, and then click Okay.
3. This will create a new Pane, to the right of the File Type one, for Artists.
4. Do steps 2-3 for Album and Disc # too, each time adding them all the way to the right.
5. Lastly, we don't really need the File Type pane for now, so remove it.  Right click on the File Type pane header again, and choose Remove this Category.  If you have plenty of room on your monitor, you can leave that there (it won't hurt anything).

Now, you'll have a view that looks something like this:


click to embiggen.

Hopefully you have some useful metadata showing under Artist, Album, and Disc #, but if not, that's fine, I'll show you how to get sorted.

glynor:
Using Fill Properties from Filename

So, first, I'm going to use the example of the Allison Krauss album.

In the better Files view we just made:
1. Open up F: under the Location pane and then the Music folder.
2. Then find the "Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane [24-96]" folder and select it.
3. This will show the files inside the folder in the list below.  Select them all (click down there on one of them and hit Control-A to select all).
4. Right click and choose Library Tools > Fill Properties from Filename.
5. In the dialog that appears, Template should be pre-selected.  If it isn't, pick Template instead of Automatic.
6. A note:  Automatic would have already been done on the files when you imported them, if you used Auto-Import.
7. Check the box for Directories, and type this in the box (just like this, with the dash and the brackets):
[Artist] - [Album] [24-96]
8. As you enter this, on the right side of the dialog (which is re-sizable if you need it), MC will show you how it is going to apply the tags if you hit OK now.  Right now, for each track, it should list:
Artist: Alison Krauss & Union Station
Album: Paper Airplane

See how I put the [24-96] in the text I had you use up above?  Basically the way the template system works is you use the file or folder name as-is, and you insert [Artist] for where you want it to extract the Artist name, and [Album] for where you want it to extract the Album title.  Anything else you enter is used "literally" as separators (and is ignored).  The " - " in your folder name will serve as the separator between the [Artist] and [Album] "tags".  The tags are all denoted using that same style [] around the tag's name.

Since I included the [24-96] part in the Directory template text, that part is "skipped".  If you wanted to include that part in the "Album title", you could just use this in the Directories box instead:
[Artist] - [Album]

9. Next, check the Filename box (if it isn't already).
10. In the Filename box put something like (this uses the examples I gave above):
[Track #] - [Name]

11. Now, the right-hand side should say (in addition to what it said before, using track 2 as the example):
Name: Dust Bowl Children
Track #: 2
Some or all of these might be labeled with [same as existing value].  This just means that when you apply the changes, nothing will be changed from the current tags for that item.

You can use the examples at the right (inspect them before you hit OK if you aren't sure what you are doing) to help you design your template.  It'll show you the "preview results" right there as you go.

Here's an example from my Library, with a bunch of fields properly filled in (they were all already properly tagged, so they all say "same as existing value"):


click to embiggen.

12. When you get it right, or as close as you can, click OK.

This will close the dialog and those files will all now be tagged properly.

Now, that just did that one folder.  The beauty is, that if you have other folders (hopefully LOTS of them) that have similar or identical "file naming schemes", you can select ALL of those files at once (like I said above, you can hold down the control key and select multiple folders under the Location pane), select all of those files, and then do the whole operation in one fell swoop.

It is always good (essential) to try a few out first as a test before you do a whole bunch.

I can't give you examples for your Track names, because I don't know the filenaming scheme you use, but here's what would work for your other example folders in the Directories template box:


--- Quote from: DanoRoo on February 14, 2013, 10:20:01 pm ---F:\Music\Beethoven\Beethoven - Complete Piano Sonatas - Eric Heidsieck\CD 4

--- End quote ---

[Artist]\[Artist] - [Album]\CD [Disc #]

Notice, you can apply tags twice if they're duplicated.  You'd have gotten the same results by using:
[Artist]\Beethoven - [Album]\CD [Disc #]

Now, that's going to give you this as the Album title: Complete Piano Sonatas - Eric Heidsieck

For just that one album, but assuming you have other albums that use a similar naming pattern, it'll work better to be less specific.  The tag "kept" is the one "further to the right" (I believe).

Another important point about that example, if you left off the "\CD [Disc #]" part, it wouldn't work at all.  The reason is that the Directories template system works from "right to left" across the directories.  That's why you don't have to put the F:\Music\ part in there, because the template never "gets that far".  However, if you left off the "\CD [Disc #] part, then your example folder would end up parsing something like:
Album: CD 4
Artist: Beethoven - Complete Piano Sonatas - Eric Heidsieck

And the initial "Beethoven" folder will have been ignored (because the template didn't "contain" enough folders).

Okay, so the basics are done.  But maybe you don't want that.  Eric Heidsieck is a pianist, so I assume he is playing the sonatas, so perhaps you want to capture that tag as well.  Fine, then use this:
[Artist]\[Artist] - [Album] - [Soloist]\CD [Disc #]

Since those things are nicely separated by dashes, they'll show up just fine.  Then, each of those files will also have a [Soloist] tag filled with "Eric Heidsieck".  Later on, when you make "browsing views" (similar to how we made this Tagging view) you can add a Soloist category pane, and then browse all of the soloists you have in your collection, independent of what particular piece of music they were playing, or who the composer was...

Or, perhaps instead you want to capture Beethoven as the [Composer] (another built-in tag) and use Eric Heidsieck as the [Artist].  That's fine.  In that case, use:
[Composer]\[Composer] - [Album] - [Artist]\CD [Disc #]

Hopefully this is becoming more clear.  Play around with the preview, and browse through the available tags.  You can see the full listing right within MC under Tools > Options > Library & Folders > Manage Library Fields.

Here are some final example Directories templates for the other folder names you provided:


--- Quote from: DanoRoo on February 14, 2013, 10:20:01 pm ---F:\Music\Reference - HDTracks Sampler

--- End quote ---

[Genre] - [Album]
or maybe
[Artist] - [Album]


--- Quote from: DanoRoo on February 14, 2013, 10:20:01 pm ---F:\Music\Steely Dan\1977 - Aja [MFSL UDCD 515] (FLAC)

--- End quote ---

[Artist]\[Year] - [Album] (FLAC)
or maybe
[Artist]\[Year] - [Album]
or even
[Artist]\[Year] - [Album] [[Comment]] (FLAC)

One thing about this last one...  If you have a bunch of folder names that are similar, but contain a bunch of "extra junk" at the end, it is usually best to just include it in the tag, so that you can do a bigger batch of files at once.  Later on, you can even do much the same thing as this "filename parsing system" to copy and extract information out of other tags (that's a much more advanced topic, but it can be done).  So, if you leave that extra stuff in there for now (or put it in the [Comment] tag, which is what I prefer to do when possible), you can come back to it later and not have to type things by hand.

Then, after you are done, you can easily clean up that tag by selecting all of the files, and editing it once in the Tag Action Window.  MC also has a powerful Tag Find and Replace tool (which can help clean up poorly formatted tags immensely) under Library Tools > Find and Replace.

Lastly, I should mention... In that first, Allison Krauss example, I intentionally excluded the [24-96] part to make another point.  You don't need to include this tag manually, because MC already knows that they are 24/96 files.  When you import files into MC, it analyzes them and fills many tags (including technical details about the files) automatically.  The [Bitrate], [Bit Depth], and [Sample Rate] are all certainly included (along with [File Size] and [File Type] and [Date Created] and all sorts of other things.

You don't need to include that as part of the Album title, because MC already knows (and can show and you can add panes for if you want) the Sample Rate and Bit Depth of ALL of your files.

I hope this helps.

glynor:
Once you get this done, you can go about setting up some flexible views that let you use and browse all of this metadata gold you've collected out of your files and filenames.

We can help with that too, though search around in the forums and the wiki for information on Customizing Views.  Play with it a bit.  You can always clear your Library if you get lost, and you need to... (though don't do this in a panic without asking because you'll lose all of your work!)

The last tip is that while you're playing around, you may want to turn off MC's tagging of files on changes.  Do this under:
Tools > Options > General > Importing & Tagging > Update tags when file info changes.

When this option is disabled, then MC just stores the information it collects in its own Database (called the Library) and doesn't save it back to the files.  Later on, you should apply the tags to your files once you get them sorted out the way you want to, but for now while you're learning, maybe turn that off for a bit.

When you do have to do something "manually" to get the information in, it is good to use a "big groups to little" approach.  You can make your batches smaller and smaller as you go as well, repeating the process with smaller sub-sets of files to get even more specific data out of them.

So, for example, if you are ever "tagging manually" a bunch of new imports or whatever.  Don't type the same [Artist] name over and over and do one album at a time.  Select all of the tracks by Sonic Youth (even the ones that already say something, right or wrong, in the [Artist] tag), and type it in once (it'll even autocomplete as you type for you if there is something matching in your Library already).  Then start selecting individual albums, but do the whole album at a time.  Then, if needed, add in [Disc #].

Never retype when you could have selected a bigger batch.  Never type in the first place, if you can pull the information from somewhere else (the filename, the existing tags, or another field).

Hopefully the stuff above gives you (and maybe someone else) a primer on all the ways MC makes getting the information out of your files, and into usable, flexible, functional tags as easily as is possible without making you type things by hand.  Everything can be applied in batches.  And almost everything can be automated or "queried" with a little elbow grease.

csimon:
 ;D

Give that man a beer!  Or something.

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