Tagging again ...
main question is, how can I tag my incoming music (mostly single tracks) fast and easy? I listen to a song and during this I categorize it into
- usage : each song has one or more use cases (e.g. Background Music Meditation / Dancing / Car / ...)
- emotion / mood: also a track can have one or more emotions (fear, happiness, ...)
The last years I used playlist groups and some views for this. But tagging was quite painful - I dragged the track to the Playlists section, then to the appropriate group and list. It is time consuming. And Dragging to a pane with a category type "Playlist group" didn't work well.
Inspired from glynor's post about meta data I recently switched over using fields, e.g. Keywords (and some other custom field (lists) for tagging. I thought that it would be easier to tag my incoming music, mostly single tracks, faster.
But I actually struggle with this:
I would like to (must) see all available keywords, even if I select tracks that actually don't have this tag. The idea is that I listen to a track and than drag it to the keyword (or use pane tagging an mark the check boxes).
http://www.tollmann.de/download/MC_Screenshot_20140110_01.PNG
But my view only shows the existing tag information if I choose the whole disk (location).
http://www.tollmann.de/download/MC_Screenshot_20140110_02.PNG
If I enter my import directory the tags are empty (of course, there is no content right now), but it would be wonderful if MC would show a list of available tags. I tried it via Manage Library Fields, but I can only enter 'Acceptable Values', it is not a preset function.
Your screen shot is similar to this one where the tree structure and the tag window are not shown.
[imgl]http://naturelover.smugmug.com/Other/JRiverscreenshots/i-wJggSDW/0/L/MC%2012%20-%20iTunes%204%20skin-L.jpg[/img]
From the Edit menu, click on "Tag" and the Tag window will be visible at the lower left corner of the MC window.
Changes you make to tags using the Tag window will apply to all the files currently selected in the file list to the right. If no files are selected, the changes will apply to all files listed on the right.
To view and edit all tags, click on the small symbol at the left end of the title bar of the Tag window. (Circled in red in this screenshot.
Click on "Show all tags" in the short menu that appears. (Circles in red in this snapshot.)
As Gappie pointed out, you can customize the columns that are shown in the file list in most views including the "recently imported" and "recently ripped" views and the device view for the CD/DVD drive.
MC has has great facilities for getting the tags right before you start the ripping process, as you import files or later after the files are in the MC library.
One of those facilities is to derive tag values from file and folder names using a template. Select some files, right click on one of them, select "Library tools" and then "Fill properties from filename".
Bill