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[davidalt]

I had my 6,000 classical CD collection, with many OOP and unusual releases, backed up to a hard drive using Lossless.
I find that ITunes categorizes my files poorly; searches do not show me all relevant CDs to play.

For example, if I search for one of my 50+ versions of Beethoven's Symphony #5, I might miss most of them because ITunes called it SYMPHONIE, SYMPHONY, 5, FIFTH, 5th, No.5, n.5, op. 67, opus 67, etc., and the conductor might be listed by first or last name, or even "von."
In some cases, the dork at ITunes entered the CD under the wrong artists altogether.
I can't reliably find anything, and I'm not tech-savy.

Will JRiver's $50 download software make it easier to comprehensively search my CDs? Even after so much has already been downloaded?
Thanks to all who have some experience to share.

[JimH]

Welcome to the other side.  Media Center will arrange the files according to the tags in them.  You can edit these tags.  They are easy to change.

You could experiment with the trial version to see for yourself.

[MrC]

Searching via the Search box in MC is very nice (and fuzzy).  So you're likely to find all such instances even when tagging strays a bit.

Give you have a large classical collection, you'll likely want to create some custom views.  There are some series classical users here, with great advice, so you'll be in the best hands.  For example:

   http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=45824.0
   http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Players/JRiver/Classical.htm

As JimH says, give it a try and start posting your questions.

[davidalt]

Thanks for both replies.
The prospect of re-naming tracks on 6000+ CDs is daunting, so before I dig into the trial version:
Does JR "know" that "symphony" is spelled several ways in various languages,
that an artist name might be first OR last, and
that a number might have a punctuation mark or letter next to it without a space?
If it can handle those, my little heart will take flight and I'm onto the trial version!

[MrC]

Sometimes when we worry, we ask the questions we know to ask, but not not necessarily the right ones (they can be based on faulty initial assumptions).

You're asking if you can get a handle on your large collection.  MC in general has the capability to do a lot of very impressive things; one of its strengths is in the handling of metadata and organizing views around the metadata.  So you can construct views and expressions to help present the data the way you want, even when it has variations.  Its all a matter of what you need.  Nothing about what you've said so far gives me pause.

FirstName/LastName discrepancies can be handled in various ways.  It is easy to automate producing FirstName LastName from LastName, FirstName, so this can be used to quickly handle these discrepancies (i.e. for grouping, sorting, etc.).

Don't worry about renaming files - that is a process that may follow getting your data viewed and organized inside of MC.  MC is all about the metadata, not the files on disk (though, their names can have some benefit).

Download the trial, import your media, and let's get to work on getting your views organized.

[davidalt]

Your reply began with a nice touch of psychoanalysis, proceeded to assure understanding my questions, concluded with assurance and generosity of spirit to a stranger, and displays a charming photo and byline on the left column!
I thank you and will do as you suggest.

[astromo]

There's been recent discussion on tagging classical music in a couple of spots, one being here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86996.0

With a month to trial the software and sensible use of the Wiki and the forum, I'd expect that the power of MC will sell itself.

Enjoy the journey..   

[FastKayak]

Just to offer a bit of reassurance.  And by the way I'm not too much of a classical music guy, however....   

MC's power is in what is known as the library.  This isn't your music or your movies or whatever.  Your music files remain as-is.  The library is built from tags, eg the descriptive information contained in your music files.  When Mr C talks about building views he means views beyond the standard views MC will provide.  Importing is the process of MC harvesting the tag information into the library.  Along the way it will know the location and file name of the file.  If your tags have Beethoven spelled 12 different ways MC will have 12 artists with those variations.  MC isn't magic so out-of-the-box it doesn't think of them as the same....but views you create sure can.

There is a good group of experts here.  You will be hard pressed to ever sump them.  And, if you stick with MC you will probably at some point come to think of it as the most capable piece of software you have ever used.  For starters there are users here with collections in the multiple hundreds of thousands of files.  MC will not break a sweat with a collection that big.

FastKayak / Larry

[glynor]

There is a good group of experts here.  You will be hard pressed to ever sump them.

I'd be hard-pressed to sump any of us.

Stump me, though?  That's possible, just takes a little elbow grease.   

[glynor]

I will add to what the others said above that:

The prospect of re-naming tracks on 6000+ CDs is daunting

There is no absolute magic here.  MC has a reasonably fuzzy search, and can do some of the things you're asking (though not all, by any means).  However, this central assumption... That it will be hard to "fix" those 6000 CDs so that there is some kind of "order" in the chaos?

That's based upon the fact that the way iTunes makes you do it (and the way it performs with a library that large) is so painful that the job is insurmountable.  It will take some work, but MC has some amazing tools to do exactly this: tame a big library of media files.

It also is a very, very nice player.  But I think you'd find most of us here agree that what it excels at above all other things is exactly that.  You can use it to make order out of that chaos, and prevent it from happening again in the future, and it provides some very efficient tools for the job at hand.

[davidalt]

Thanks you all for your interest and encouragement.  I'll try this... though even my grandchildren are better taking on these kinds of things better than I.
HAHA... I can't wait to see what this program does with metadata in Japanese!

[FastKayak]

Note:   The Japanese forum has never been posted in.  You could be the first!  Think of the glory.  But you can run the program with all the program text in Japanese.  Your tracks will feel right at home!

Good luck!

FastKayak / Larry

....inventor of the word sump

[dejwi]

One of amazing abilities in JRiver is an ability of mass tagging your indexed files. I've got several thousands cd myself dumped as flax files and media database speed and capability is best I've seen anywhere.
For example - when I was ripping CDs I was putting flac files in to few main subdirectories like classical, soundtracks, compilations, etc. Now in JRiver I was able to sort by directory, mark all the files in soundtracks and put the same tag on them. Or sort by artist or composer and clear up the naming conventions - eg. rename composer fields like j.s.bach, Bach, J. S. Bach to Johann Sebastian Bach in matter of minutes. For me it's still pure magic

[Vincent Kars]

The “problem” is most of the media players and tagging schemas are made with pop music in mind.

A nice option in JRiver is that it supports the composer tag.
If you populate this tag you can clean up by composer, gives you a far better overview.

Classical is part of the problem too. Often the title is a description:
Sonate für Klavier und Violine F-dur Opus 24 [Frühling]
Sonata No. 5 "Frühlings - Sonate"
The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Opus 24

all are valid but it will gives you a hard time to find all versions.

I solved this by making a custom tag Opus as almost all compositions do have an opus and/or a catalog number.
It is a horrible job but using the expressions it can be automated.
Wouldn’t be surprised if MrC can supply you with some nasty Regex to substract e.g. all BWV, D., KV, Op. etc.

Best of course is to switch to pop music, solves all these problems.
But unfortunately I can’t live without Schubert&Co 

[glynor]

I solved this by making a custom tag Opus as almost all compositions do have an opus and/or a catalog number.
It is a horrible job but using the expressions it can be automated.
Wouldn’t be surprised if MrC can supply you with some nasty Regex to substract e.g. all BWV, D., KV, Op. etc.

This is almost certainly the way to go.  I helped a friend get set up with MC a year or so ago who has a large classical collection (I don't like the term "classical" by the way, but that's another story for another day)... We did exactly this.

Made an [Opus] custom field.
Used the built-in [Composer] field for the composer.
Used the built-in [Artist] field for the performer (the orchestra, or whatever).
Used the built-in [Soloists] field for any important soloists.
Used the built-in [Conductor] field for the conductor.
Used the built-in [Album] field for the "friendly name" for the composition or album.

I think he's also using the [Places] and [Periods] fields for stuff, though I didn't do that for him.

Then, we just built a couple different views so he cold browse by:

[Composer]/[Opus]/[Artist]/[Album]
[Conductor]/[Artist]/[Album]

And he can search by any of the above.  I think he's pretty happy with it.  It was a bunch of work to enter the information in, but with the built-in Find/Replace and Move/Copy Fields tools, plus a few simple expression tricks I showed him, it was a "few weekends" worth of work, not a monumental task.

[MrC]

Wouldn’t be surprised if MrC can supply you with some nasty Regex to subtract e.g. all BWV, D., KV, Op. etc.

I gave you a free one once.  The next one will have a nominal surcharge, a restocking fee if you will  :-)

Seriously, I would be interested in creating a Scriptlet to populate desired "classical" MC fields, given certain inputs.  The meat inside the scriptlet will be much easier to manage / modify than a monster regex, because it can be done in smaller, more manageable pieces, and unlike MC, can operate on and assign to multiple fields (so you might have a title "The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Opus 24", and the scriptlet could pull and populate Opus, Work, as well as classical types, etc.).

If someone where interested in helping to guide me on the requirements, classic aspects, nomenclature, and test it out, I'll provide the scriptlet.

[Vincent Kars]

A very good description can be found here:
http://blog.musichi.eu/post/2874852211/the-zen-of-classical-music-tagging-part1-the-anatomy
http://blog.musichi.eu/post/3617245298/the-zen-of-classical-music-tagging-part-2-with-the

BTW the MusiCHI Tagger is what I use for tagging classical.

Your scriptlet should probably be interactive as it is about parsing unstructured data and in case of classical, exceptions are the rule.
A lot of compositions do have an opus. This might be a good starter.
However, Schubert does have opus numbers but almost all of the time D (Otto Erich Deutsch) is used.
Likewise Mozart is K or KV , Bach (JS) is BWV (Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis ), BACH (CPE) is Wq (Alfred Wotquenne) but the H (Eugene Helm 1989, a better catalog) is also used, etc, etc.

I can dump my tags in a playlist and send it, if that helps

[MrC]

Great info.

First requirements would be the requirements.  I write these things as I need them, or as others request them for their needs.  So really, it will be the first ones in the gate who get their needs met. :-)

What I don't have a feel for is what users have (input) and what users want (output).

The interactivity part is certainly possible; but it depends on what is needed.

Over time, its easy enough to build tables, exception lists, complete with context if necessary, to do a reasonable job.

By no means would it match what MusiCHI Tagger does, but would be free and useful for basic tasks.

[High-End]

Hallo mrc
All ripping sw tools asking the same internet sites for the tags. And beside pop they are rubish. I have a few 100 clissic cds and at the end of the day i corrected every cd manualy. Doing that it is always better to use a tool beside mc, itunes, ectr. I use mp3tag and it was a good decision.
You will also need a renaming tool...
Just my 2 ct.
H.e.

[JimH]

All ripping sw tools asking the same internet sites for the tags. And beside pop they are rubish. I have a few 100 clissic cds and at the end of the day i corrected every cd manualy. Doing that it is always better to use a tool beside mc, itunes, ectr. I use mp3tag and it was a good decision.

Classical CD's are a problem because there is no agreement among users on how to name them.

[Listener]

Classical CD's are a problem because there is no agreement among users on how to name them.

A recent example:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86996.0