[lilwheezy75]

i have all of my music on my macbook from 4 years ago when i purchased it first. Im looking to integrate my music into media center.


i started off my taking my whole music library, copying it to a hard drive tehn importing it into the media center library. I was left with a ton of music without artwork, in a huge mess, in media center. Im assuming because it has itunes metadata rather than WMP?


whats the best way to get my music integrated and organized into media center, coming from itunes. I would like my full albums with artwork to be displayed under albums, and single songs not included and elsewhere (because i dont generally get artwork for these songs and they clutter the albums section)


I saw MCE tunes but the trial only does 20 songs, so testing this on my cd's and single songs is limited and im not ready to shell out 30$ in case it doesnt do what i would like.

 

[Servicetech571]

MCE default music library is awful unless everything is tagged exactly correct. I use Music Browser to go by folder. Artwork is hit/miss.

 

[ratite]

Have a look here for tagging software.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/browse...re/Tag-Editors


When I want to clean things up I use Mp3tag 2.47a


edit: I just took a look at TagScanner 5.1.594 (on the above page) and it looks very promising for cleaning up a music libary.

 

[lilwheezy75]

If I do tag editors, do I need to have my music in proper folders? My library is a mess and there's many artists folders, many with sigle songs. This doesn't sound like it will be fun.

 

[lordhutt]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lilwheezy75 /forum/post/19553697


If I do tag editors, do I need to have my music in proper folders? My library is a mess and there's many artists folders, many with sigle songs. This doesn't sound like it will be fun.

If you need to tag I have been using Tag and Rename for years.

Awesome program
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm


And I would put everything in proper folders. There is no reason to leave it a mess. Whenever you get new music... put it in proper folders and tag it. If you have to tag an entire library of music at once then yes that is going to suck. But once its done its done... and maintenance on new files is quick and easy.

 

[lilwheezy75]

what is the best method of organization if i redo this all? should i use tag and organize or equivelant then go to folder organizing or organize then tag and rename?


also do i want to do 1 folder for the artist, then a folder for the album with songs in it, what would i do for single songs i have downloaded that are not part of an album. I have alot of singles from radio or mixtape collections.

 

[olyteddy]

FWIW I've got over 14,000 songs (I'm a big live music collector) in just two or three folders. All perfectly organized by WinAmp. I can sort by song title, artist, album, track number, etc. and I can find any song in less than a second. All my music is stored 'TITLE - ARTIST - ALBUM' and I make sure the tags are right before I add them to the library.

 

[lilwheezy75]

so what do i have to do to get my collection like yours? tag first organize after? is there a program of sorts taht may do this for me?

 

[ogormask]

I am using that tagscanner right now on an extremely large and extremely unorganized library. I used the renamer function to rename the actual mp3 files. So far it seems to be working but it seems to be getting the album name from the folder name. So I cant tell. I am trying to figure out a way for it to rename the actual folder name because thats half my problem.

 

[olyteddy]



Quote:
so what do i have to do to get my collection like yours? tag first organize after? is there a program of sorts taht may do this for me?

If you don't have tags in your files, you can again turn to WinAmp and use the 'AutoTag' function. It 'listens' to the song then compares it to the GraceNote data base. Not 100% accurate so I'd do them one song at a time and it also has a lot of 'Greatest Hits' hits instead of the original exact album. You might need the $15 'Professional' version for the auto-tag to work.


PS: Another reason I use WinAmp is the great visualizations...

 

[lilwheezy75]

if i use music browser, can i set it up similarly to to media browser and make directories, say one for albums that way i can browse just my full albums with artwork?


My biggest problem is actually getting the music into media center in a fashion thats easy to browse.


i was considering mcetunes but i understand it does not work on win7...

 

[ogormask]

There is a music plugin that works exactly like the browser its just the browser cant play music. you just turn on the plugin and add your default directory(s) and then you can browse them in the same interface it just adds your music folders.


but just a warning on large amounts of files it screeches to a stop. When my folder was added it took about 5 minutes to just start media browser and then another 5 at least to even begin browsing anything. It was horribly slow but this was like 350,000 songs or something I cant remember what was in that directory.

 

[lilwheezy75]

gotcha ill have to consider cleaning my library. if i do this what is the preferred method. Artist-album-songs?


here is what my current library looks like and i want all those blank spaces gone! lol its really disturbing me

 

[ratite]

Do: Artist\\Album\\Song


I don't get it (please don't take offense) If you don't have at least that basic structure, how the hell do you expect to have a media player organize and tag it for you. I see posts like this all the time, not just for music but for movies also. Like, I have a bunch of MKV movies in one folder how can I tag/organize them. You know they are illegal downloads.

 

[lilwheezy75]

not that i expect it to organize it for me. i was asking how do i get it to do so. i never had to worry about organization outside of itunes untill now.

 

[frankspin]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lilwheezy75 /forum/post/19574122


not that i expect it to organize it for me. i was asking how do i get it to do so. i never had to worry about organization outside of itunes untill now.

Definitely do the Artist\\Album\\Track-Songtitle method


Use a program like MediaMonkey to help properly tag and download the artwork for everything. Load up the library in media monkey and then go album-by-album of right click->check w/ amazon. Anything you can get with MM, I'd then try mp3tag and use that to check against Musicbrainz. I did this once, a couple years ago, and it took me a amount of time to do but it was comforting knowing it was all proper.


Do not have it do a full automated scan of everything or else you may end up with mislabeled albums/artists/songs because you gotta remember some albums might have 5 or 6 different versions.

 

[shaxs]

Is there a program that will listen to the music and using the internet rename and edit the tags to the appropriate entries and rename the file properly?

 

[lilwheezy75]

ah ive got three conflicting answers, one said title/artist/album, another said album/artist/song, and then another says artist/album song.


im wondering about the folder structure, not the actual title of the song.

 

[frankspin]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lilwheezy75 /forum/post/19575046


ah ive got three conflicting answers, one said title/artist/album, another said album/artist/song, and then another says artist/album song.


im wondering about the folder structure, not the actual title of the song.

Proper folder structure and title of the song go hand and hand. To properly use the tools were suggesting you need to have the title properly done in the file name. You can't just have random files strewn about in one big folder you have to properly organize them into some structure.


most people will do one of the following:

Artist\\Album\\Songtitle

Artist\\Album\\TrackNumber-Songtitle

Artist\\Album\\Artist-Album-TrackNumber-Songtitle

 

[lilwheezy75]



Quote:
Originally Posted by frankspin /forum/post/19575124


Proper folder structure and title of the song go hand and hand. To properly use the tools were suggesting you need to have the title properly done in the file name. You can't just have random files strewn about in one big folder you have to properly organize them into some structure.


most people will do one of the following:

Artist\\Album\\Songtitle

Artist\\Album\\TrackNumber-Songtitle

Artist\\Album\\Artist-Album-TrackNumber-Songtitle

Great i appreciate that. I started to organize album/artist/file but did not get far i will begin to do it as you stated.


If i organize these correctly will that fix the organization problem im having as shown above?