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[kensn]

Is there a way to analyze the audio of tracks before importing them into the MC library? I believe this would be quicker to do on a local drive than on my NAS.

Ken

[Saucepan]

If the files reside in a folder that doesn't get auto-imported, just navigate to that folder within MC and you can analyze them from there. Having said that, I don't think it works any faster or slower.

[glynor]

Why don't you just import them into MC on the local drive, get them tagged and analyzed and fixed and everything, and then move them to their final destination on the NAS from inside MC using the Rename, Move, and Copy Files tool?

If it is just because you don't want them to show in your "main library" area until they've been managed, that's easy to solve.  There are a couple of ways:

1. Simply limit the main library views to only files on the NAS.  If your NAS is mounted as drive M, then...
2. Right-click on Audio in the tree and choose Customize View.
3. Click on "Set rules for file display" under the Settings pane.
4. Add a rule where Filename does contain M:\ (or maybe use Filename does not contain C:\Users\kensn\new imports\ or something like that).

Or, if you want to be a little more sophisticated and not base it on file locations, you could do this:

1. Create a new library field (Tools -> Options -> Library & Folders -> Manage Library Fields) called something like "Approved" (or "Tagged" or "In Library" or whatever) with it's data type set to integer and edit type set to Five Stars (clever tip credit to AssadMawad).
2. Set the acceptable values of this field to 0,1.
3. Say okay to this and then Customize View on the Audio item in the tree again.
4. Add a filter where "Approved is 1".
5. If you add "Approved" as a visible column in your special "Imports" view(s) that you make (where the above stuff isn't filtered out so you can see it), you can quickly toggle this "1" on and off on files by simply clicking on the stars.
6. As rick.ca pointed out, you don't even have to show the full five stars in the column to use this trick.  You can squeeze it down so that only two stars are visible.  If you click the left one, it lights up and sets the value to "1".  If you click the right star, it tries to set it to "2" which is invalid, so it resets it to "0" (off).  Works great for toggling 0,1 "boolean" values on and off (a checkbox edit type would be better, but we don't have one of those options yet).
7. New items will auto-import with this field's value set to 0, so they won't show up in the main lists until you manually "approve" them by clicking the star.

Now, the audio view in the tree, and everything under it, will automatically hide anything that doesn't match these filters (whichever method you choose).  Either as soon as you move them, or when you click the star to set "Approved" to 1, they'll magically show up in the regular views in the tree.

I make a special Top-Level view called "Advanced" which has a few different special "management" views where things aren't filtered (or are filtered differently than normal).  For example, I have a view called Imports that only shows the "new" stuff that I need to deal with, and has the panes and columns set up to make this as easy as possible (the "File Path" type pane can be particularly useful in an "Imports" view).  Since this is under it's own top-level view, it isn't affected by the filters you added to your "main library" area (Audio, Images, and Video in the tree).  As I "manage" the files and put them where they belong, they disappear from this view (like crossing it off of a list, it gives you a feeling of accomplishment) and they appear in my main Library Views.

If you prefer, you can configure a particular sub-view not to "honor" their parents' filters in the Customize View dialog.  This allows you to have the "Imports" view underneath "Audio" or whatever in the tree (you just have to duplicate the other non-inherited filters that are used to make the view show only "Audio" files, for example).

[kensn]

Wow !!  Thanks for that response. I think I will set up a library just for my local drive. All the files I am currently ripping reside in just one folder on the desktop. So if I create a library of that folder, I should be able to manage that pretty easy. Tag, analyze, and move - then recreate the library on the next run. There should just be 4 or 5 albums in there at a time. I must say that all of your suggestions will be used to do some advanced sorting. Being new to MC I have been reading the forums and have used a few tricks to sort my media. I am just amazed at what you can do, and using posts like yours makes it much easier.

Thanks again,

Ken

[Alex B]

I separate library is a good solution.

You can also simply drag and drop the files to Playing Now and ananlyze & tag them there. If you want to play other, already imported files while you work with the new files, you can create a separate Zone for that (each Zone has its own Playing Now list).

To prevent the files to be imported you can disable the "Automatically import files when played" setting in Options > General > Importing & Tagging.

To see if a file is "imported" you can add the "Image (small icon)" column to Playing Now. If the file is imported the note icon is blue and if it is unimported the note icon is gold. You can also import files directly from Playing Now: select the files > right-click > Import Into Library.