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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Mac => Topic started by: srd2725 on September 21, 2015, 09:03:35 am

Title: Organizing my music library
Post by: srd2725 on September 21, 2015, 09:03:35 am
Hello everyone,

I just purchased JRiver and I'm finding it to be a very powerful tool! Here is my situation: I have a fairly large (~16000 song) music library. Some of it is organized, some of it isn't. I would like everything to be organized on the hard drive in the traditional Artist->Album->Song file structure, and I would like every song to have the same naming convention (ie, 01 Song Name.mp3)

Basically, I'd like to be able to have JRiver scan my entire library and rename/reorganize everything according to this naming convention.

Does JRiver have the capability of doing this? Or are there any third party tools I should use instead? I know iTunes is capable of doing this, but I have some file formats that iTunes does not recognize.

Thanks
Title: Re: Organizing my music library
Post by: blgentry on September 21, 2015, 09:14:15 am
Welcome aboard!

MC has a really powerful tool called Rename, Move, and Copy Files.  It can be used to do a lot of different jobs associated with it's three words:  Renaming, Moving, and Copying files.  It was definitely designed for mass song renames like you describe to keep everything very consistently named including a directory structure that you choose.

It's a big powerful tool.   Because it can be used in several different ways, it can be a little confusing when you first open it up.  Glynor (a prolific member here) has written a really good wiki article on how to use RM&C.  Here it is:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Rename,_Move,_and_Copy_Files

You will almost certainly want to use the Directories and Filename sections of the tool.  You can save your work as a template, so you can use it again later too.  Very nice feature.

Try it with a few files first and look at the Preview Panel before you press OK!  If you can't figure some of it out, ask here and we'll give you a hand.

Good luck.

Brian.
Title: Re: Organizing my music library
Post by: srd2725 on September 21, 2015, 09:17:52 am
Thanks for the reply! I will give it a shot this evening when I'm home from work.

Title: Re: Organizing my music library
Post by: flight16 on September 22, 2015, 12:55:31 am
I'm battling a 10 year old library of incomplete albums, disorganized tags and folders.  Here is how I am doing it.

I use the Rename, Move, and Copy Files feature and a certain directory structure.  I have an "Incoming" folder with everything I haven't processed, and a "Processed" folder that is my organized, tagged library.  I created two views in the Audio tree: "Incoming" and "Processed" (filter is based on file path name).  What I then do is:

1. Update tags, art, and other metadata on albums in the "Incoming" view.
2. When I'm happy with the album, I will right-click and run a Move to move the album into "Processed" and rename tracks/folders to conform to my standard naming template.  You can save presets, so it's pretty quick.

It adds a bit of structure to the chaos and works great.