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[TrevorW]

Hi Guys,
I have started to evaluate MC (installed and running MC 18) I have imported my music collection and see that I get a flat import with just filenames in the library.

THis was not surprising but I'd now like to work towards a final import and reflect the structure of my on disk media collection (which is generally whole albums)

I currently rip purchased CD's to disk with teh RIP program (winamp) setup to RIP to localdrive:\McWMusic\ArtistName\AlbumName\TrackName.wav

I can see (by others reference) that MC can be setup to map the hierachy of my folder structure to the relevant fields in MC but can't seem to find where to do the mapping, can someone help please.

Also I'd like to use the RIP function within MC and wondered if this too can be configured to perpetuate my existing folder structure.

I can see that more advanced mapping can be performed using something called regex. Can someone elaborate what this is and give me a kick in the right direction for reading.

I have a technical background, but spending too much time on this already so your help would be appreciated.

BTW - so far this seams a geat program. If I need to purchase to get this functionality before I finish eval then so be it.

Thanks

Trevor White

[glynor]

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78206.msg531771#msg531771

[MrC]

If you don't have good tag values, you'll see the flat structure.

To pull data from your folder path and file names, select the files and use the Fill Properties from Filename tool.  Add template fields that reflect your folder structure.

Use Tools > Options > File Location > Audio to set the base path, folder and filename rules to also reflect how you want new files named.

[csimon]

THis was not surprising but I'd now like to work towards a final import and reflect the structure of my on disk media collection (which is generally whole albums)

 can see (by others reference) that MC can be setup to map the hierachy of my folder structure to the relevant fields in MC but can't seem to find where to do the mapping, can someone help please.

As mentioned above, there is another current thread with exactly the same question - see the replies for that one for some hints. Basically, MC is best working with tags and metadata that is stored within music files so what you have to do is populate the tags from the directories and filenames that you are using, so that you are mapping the folder structure to MC's internal tagging system.

Also I'd like to use the RIP function within MC and wondered if this too can be configured to perpetuate my existing folder structure.

Yes - on ripping, MC will attempt to find basic tags from an online database and populate these for you, such as Album and Artist and Genre.  Obviously, you can configure where MC will put the ripped files and what you can do is to use an expression to build the pathname for the file using the values of these tags.  e.g. my pathname is set at \\MYFILESERVER\Music\A-Z\Left([Artist],1)\[Artist]\[Album]\[Track #] - [Name] which automatically creates files such as:

\\MYFILESERVER\Music\A-Z\M\Marillion\Misplaced Childhood\01 - Pseudo Silk Kimono.flac

I can see that more advanced mapping can be performed using something called regex. Can someone elaborate what this is and give me a kick in the right direction for reading.

See the example above!  Expressions can get quite complex but the example above is very simple. If you're familiar with expressions in spreadsheets for example then they are very similar. A complete reference to the "language" and functions available can be found in the Wiki at http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php?title=Media_Center_expression_language.

"Regex" stands for "regular expression" and the term comes from something that Unix and C programmers are very familiar with!

[glynor]

"Regex" stands for "regular expression" and the term comes from something that Unix and C programmers Perl-nerds and/also MrC are very familiar with!

T,FTFY. 

[MrC]

Guilty as charged.

Historical note: regular expressions are based on some work by a mathematician named Kleene back in the 50's who used the concepts to formalize something called regular sets.  They became more wildly used in some tools in early Unix systems.  Having learned to harness the power of this simple language, it is difficult (and frustrating) to work with systems (eg. Dos, Windows command shell, eh...hem, earlier MC versions) that have rudimentary and primitive pattern matching tools.  It's like going to back to days of stone knives and bear skins.