I've just tagged ALL my music library...!

Soldato
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I've just finished tagging ALL of my music library, also renamed and set in a consistent folder structure. Consolodating all the odds and end tracks, deleting strange stand alone tracks i don't know how i acquired! Every tag is perfect down to the year of release, all with real album art saved as folder.jpg per album folder and embedded in every ID3 v3.2tag. Only thing i've left out is genre because its just opinion based...

I feel like i deserve a nodel prize, it took bloody forever but now its done its so satisfying to be able to find ANYTHING! As much as i'm not a fan of iTunes (all my mates use it so it makes sense for me to have it too so they can listen to my music when we party) cover flow is awesome when everything is perfect, as well as the album view too.

WMP11 looks great as well too! :D

May not be as much as some of you guys, "only" 18.35Gb (according to iTunes) and 3749 tracks but i can't begin to describe how unorganised it was.

I do not know why i'm posting this but i just thought i'd share as i feel i've finally regained control of my music! :)
 
Its a relief in truth, didn't think it would ever end... :(
I've put album art in, because i can see a lot of MP3 players using it in the future and i thought while i'm at it might as well, iTunes and WMP11 support it visually very well, i have foobar too, it's set to audio player as default and i have it as stripped down as possible. So i can use windows explorer to browse music and foobar to play. But if i want things to look nice i've got iTunes (for friends but i'm also warming to it) and WMP11 both set to look at my Library but both set up so they're not allowed to mess with it.
 
Yeah i've got a 5.5g iPod i picked up second hand that i can now actually use properly :D That was also part reason for doing this... Now i "just" need to put all the music on it now, no simple task itself...
 
Yeah get album art is good from iTunes, but it doesn't save the art to the ID3 tag itself so the iPod still doesn't have the album art. You need to embed the art in the MP3 file itself.

iTunes keeps its own database for album art, but you can force it (manually album by album! :() to save them to the tag, and thats what i've done with a few. Another problem is you need an account which is hassle (that i went through anyway probably worth it). Also the album itself needs to be on the iTunes store and a lot of mine weren't...
 
what software did you use OP ?

what sort of folder structures ? into artist then discs ?


i sorted all my albums out but i have 1000s of singles and ep s that need sorting out a bit :(

I've got rid of all my singles, creates too much fuss. All but a few singles that are out without albums.

I used Music Brainz Picard QT (different version and you can add an album art grabber too as a plugin).

Folder structure for albums is:
Artist\Album\Track No. - Title.mp3

For compilations its:
Compilations\Album\Track No. - Title.mp3 (but tag includes the right track artist)
 
I didn't have that many singles and a lot overlapped with my existing albums, but i'll keep in mind the singles folder makes sense i suppose. Just wrecks the look in i tunes coverflow (because you get so many more covers!). So i may just stick to only ripping/aquiring albums (when available).
 
Guess what? You made loads of mistakes. Night :p;)

You don't realise how much ***** you just caused me... Well you learn from your mistakes. Everything was perfect until i copied it all over to my iPod, apparently iPod doesn't like a mix of mp3's and m4a's in the same tagged album and physical folder, made a complete and utter medd of it. So i've had to go back and try and back track all the files that are m4a (turns out about 1.4gb's worth) and covert them to mp3, then retag those, insert them back in the right folder stucture. Then i realise iTunes is totally USELSS at updating itself, nuked the library had to import them all again, now i'm just nuking the iPod and putting them all back on from the library.

How much on something going wrong and me losing everything within the next hour? :p :D


:( No happy...
 
No worries i'm an OCD perfectionist myself :D 400 tracks to sync still on the iPlod before i get to see the damage i hope to god everything is right now. My computer library is perfect it seems, iTunes plays nice it's all down to my iPod now...
 
[DW]Muffin;10076755 said:
Bet it would look scweeht in Vista with all that album art

:cool:



Download trial, install and take a few screeenies.


I'm on vista, it looks cool, but its nothing to go upgrading over :p I'll scsreenshot some views in a bit :)
 
am I missing something?

when I rip using CDeX it goes off to the interweb and pulls down all the relevant fields for my tagging. Only thing it doesnt do is Album Art, but as its ripped properly, WMP11 does that whenever I play the song through there.

Yeah, without going into to much detail i didn't acquire all my music from my CD collection, its an accumulation of five of my friends music, they decide iTunes can do its own thing with music, and they have obviously go it from dubious sources so i won't go into too much detail, but you do not realise how unorgainsed it really was... :o Everything i do is kept neat and tidy though :)

Also i think WMP11 doesn't actually add album art, not sure though, it may act like itunes with a database instead... I also wanted all the tags to be just ID3 v2.3 compliant, and all other tags empty so my iPod didn't have a hissy fit too. From what i've read have v1 v2.x and maybe ape and flac tags as well as album art can cause problems with iPod sometimes...
 
What looks cool? It seems there were about 8 conversations above, which software we talking about?

I quoted him, Vista looks cool! :p

Software wise i used Music Brainz...

If you're a true OCD perfectionist you should have all your tracks in the same format in a high bit rate.

I'm working on this as my next "goal" but it's more an ear thing, when i hear albums that sound awful, or less than good quality i'll get rid and erm... "re-rip" :o them :) But for now just having them, and having them in order is good!
 
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Right sorry, there is no trial software Music Brainz PicardQT is free, probably the best mostly unattented tagger out there, i was talking about Vista Explorer looking sweet after i'd tagged and added album art, i quoted the guy asking what it looked like...

//Edit: Oh i see your confusion, i was asked to download a trail of vista just to take screenies... odd i'd never do that :p but i have Vista anyway
 
Rockbox really isn't that great for, its a good idea, but its support isn't great, it can be slow to respond on the iPod Hardware sometimes, and it doesn't look as nice as the official iPod firmware... For gaining being able to play some open lossless formats (maybe some games i don't care about) etc. I lose more IMO.
 
Wow, its imporves a HELL of a lot since i last played around with it... Is it still slow to react though? I remember that being a slight problem... Also you say it "can" be made to look good, does this require foobar-esque skills, because i just can't be bothered nor have the time really! One last thing, can i brick my iPod doing this? I'm quite happy with it in its working state at present ;)
 
Ooooh sounds good their website is still uselss though information is pretty thin on the ground, how much space does rockbox take up? And your saying i can just go back to "normal" iPod interface whenever i like? Sounds good actually :p
 
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