More > JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows
Organizing My Media
glynor:
--- Quote from: DanoRoo on February 15, 2013, 08:12:52 am ---Sorry. I do have one more question. In the Beethoven example, the first filename in CD1 is: Piano Sonata No. 2 in A, Op.2, no2 - I
What would be the appropriate tags for the filename? It isn't the artist, nor is it the album. Looking down the list of tags, I don't see one that is appropriate.
I also want to mention that when I imported my files into MC, I did exactly as you suggested in your tutorial. Tools > Configure Auto-Import, then I pointed MC to my files, but before I began importing, I checked the "Analyze Audio" and the "Write file tags when analyzing audio, getting cover art, and applying folder-based tags" boxes. But, MC only processed about half the files, then stopped. All my files are in MC's library, so I'm assuming it must the the analyzing process that got hung up. I tried to start the process again, but it would not process the remaining 4 or 5 thousand files.
--- End quote ---
I'm pretty busy today (only have a few minutes right now while I wait for some video to render on my other workstation), but I have time for a few little things, relatively briefly...
If it were me, I'd just use [Name] to capture that. A question, though... The track number isn't in the filename anywhere? I hope so, or they're all going to be out of order, and you'll have to adjust the [Track #] manually. If so, I can teach you a trick with Playlists (below). Perhaps the no2 - I is part of this? I don't know enough about classical cataloging to comment intelligently.
Again, hopefully you just omitted whatever part of the filename would cause the tracks to sort in-order (the [Track #] part), because that's important. You DO NOT have to worry so much about "extracting" the [Track #] field from the filenames, though, because as long as you can make it "view" them in order somehow (by sorting by Filename or some other field), you can then select the tracks in MC, right click and choose: Library Tools > Fill Track Numbers from List Order.
This will add Track numbers to each file you have selected, counting up from 1, in whatever order you happen to be viewing the files on screen at that particular moment. A handy tip is if you ever need to do it "manually", just make a new blank "normal" Playlist and add the files to the list. Then, click and drag them up and down until they're in the right order, and then right-click and do the Fill Track Numbers command. Afterwards, you don't need the playlist anymore and you can delete it. I do this occasionally for things where the Track Numbers are difficult or impossible to get. Pull up Amazon or Wikipedia in a tab with the album track listing up, and just match the order by name by clicking and dragging, then "apply" it with the "fill track numbers" thingy.
You can add your own fields, if the default ones aren't good enough. That same place in Options where you could look at all of the pre-defined tags? You can use to define your own custom ones. So, maybe you want an [Opus] tag that's an Integer field? Sure, make one. Easy-peasy.
click to embiggen.
The pre-defined ones are nice because they're "standards compliant" and you'll have to do less work defining custom views. So, in my case (for this reason), I'd use "Beethoven, Ludwig Van" as my [Artist] tag, simply because that's how I'm most likely to want to "browse" for those files, and if it is grouped in with Beyonce and Aphex Twin (obviously separated by [Genre]), I want to just be able to browse my artists list and not have to make a special Classical genre view.
But, I don't have a massive Classical collection. Someone who meticulously collects dozens of different versions of Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis might be much better served by making a few custom tags and a "special" Classical-only view to use for browsing them, and an [Opus] tag to make sorting them and searching them simpler.
So, if you wanted to use that same filename, and capture the Opus field that you just made?
[Name], Op.[Opus], [Comment]
The last part would capture the rest of the filename in the [Comment] field.
If you want to then, later fix the [Name] tag to match the whole thing again (as that will "break it up). Just select the files in MC, open the Tag Action Window and edit the Name tag. Then type:
=[Name], Op.[Opus], [Comment]
Or, you could just use:
=[Filename (name), 0]
Which inserts the full file's name, minus the extension (that's the ", 0" part).
Either of those would re-assemble the original filename back into the [Name] field using the fields you already have. Using "=" at the beginning of editing a tag, works much like an Excel function, and allows you to do "operations" and "math" using the other fields and MC's powerful expression engine.
Or, you could just do "another pass" in the Fill Properties from Filename tool. Open it up once and get the Opus tag and everything filled. Then, open it again and use just [Name]. It doesn't overwrite any fields other than those you specify in the template. Everything else is left alone, so you can do it "over and over" to the same files, to massage them into the shape you really want.
And lastly?
When you're all done and all of the files are "good" with beautiful tags and everything?
You can do the "reverse" of Fill Properties from Filename to "push" all of your tags back out to the filenames and folder names via the equally powerful Library Tools > Rename, Move, and Copy Files tool.
nwboater:
Tagging classical music can be easy or complicated. There are many schemes depending on how you want to view your files. You may find some useful information if you do a search on "tagging classical". One thread that will appear is this one http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=71829.0 that I started a while ago. There are many links in it with further information. Some of the responses were very helpful to me. With very little work I can now quite easily locate most any classical work I am looking for. And the search can be by multiple methods. That for me is a huge advantage to the MC database structure over organizing by folder.
Have fun!
Rod
glynor:
Also.... I don't know why MC got stuck importing your files. It could be:
1. One badly corrupt file on disk (which won't play in anything anyway) that is causing it to "get stuck" on that file and be unable to continue. Usually it figures these out and skips them, but occasionally it can hang MC up (or even make it crash) if there are badly hosed files in an imported directory. Try to look at the "edge" of where it stopped, and see if any of the files look weird.
2. The audio analysis could be stuck, and in any case, it takes a long time and is CPU intensive. I'd turn it off for now, and then just turn that on once you get everything set up. The audio analysis is handy to have, but not necessary for the "early phases" of setting MC up.
3. Same goes for Build Thumbnails. This can be pretty disk intensive and can make importing huge numbers of files very slow. That's why I recommended the defaults.
4. The bottom option about applying tags, allows MC to write tags to the files automatically when it imports them (things like the audio analysis and whatnot). That's fine (and that is absolutely turned on at my house), though, as I mentioned above, you might want to keep it off until you get everything set up.
JimH:
I added one thread to the wiki a while ago:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Classical_Music
DanoRoo:
You guys are awesome! Thank you so much.
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