Re: [OT] (ish) MP3 library management...

["david_dabs" <david_dabs@xxxxxxx>]

Have you looked at mediajukebox,  I use this to manage all 13000 of my
music collection,  it has some good tools for ID3 tag changing and
the basic version is free - www.mediajukebox.com

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@h...>
wrote:
> Chaps,
>
> Spent a *huge* amount of time recently trying to clean up & sort
out
the
> quality of the tagging of my MP3 library (and I'm still doing it!)
>
> What becomes increasingly apparent when you go through this
excercise, is
> just how many duplicates turn up when there are more than a few
compilation
> albums in there.... there are some tracks that just *always* appear
on every
> single one of those "the best XXXX in the world.... Ever"
type
albums, and I
> keep noticing many many duplicate copies of tracks...
>
> Now, this arises primarily because the logical organisation of my
collection
> adheres to the original album paradigm, - i.e. I maintain a folder
structure
> as follows:
>
> Artist1\album1\songs.mp3
>          \album2\songs.mp3
>
> The aforementioned compilation albums obviously don't fit that
model, and so
> are organised thus:
>
> Various\compilation album name 1\songs.mp3
>           \compilation album name 2\songs.mp3
>
> and so on...
>
> Having so many duplicates is obviously very wasteful, so I'd like to
> eliminate them all, so that I only ever retain a single copy of any
given
> song. However, not having yet found a decent (SWMBO friendly)
alternative
> front end interface, the main method of searching & selecting
songs
is via
> Windows Explorer, and so the Windows filesystem is currently the
"database",
> hence the folder structure above is used extensively to select music
by
> artist & album....
>
> So something of a radical rethink is required....
>
> Myself & SWMBO are both quite used to the Artist\album search
& select
> paradigm, and I don't want to force her to have to change habits in
one fell
> swoop... (when/if I find a decent database front end that we both
like, and
> that looks good on a TV, then I'll start to "encourage" her
to
change...) so
> I'm looking for suggestions...
>
> One idea that I had was to create an M3U playlist file for every
compilation
> album, then move all the MP3 files up one level, as follows:
> Various\songs.mp3  so there would be a "Various" folder with
no
sub-folders
> for albums beneath it, but bazillions of assorted tracks (but at least
> there'd be only 1 copy of each!), then use the M3U files if/when we
want to
> play by album... - anyone got any other ideas?
>
> I would like to get the issue of the front-end sorted out as well
though, so
> I'm looking for a nice, TV-friendly, SWMBO-friendly database driven
> interface, that uses Winamp as the player, has decent playlist
management
> features, and good search & select facilities... - any
suggestions?
>
> Eventually, I'd obviously like to abstract the underlying filesystem
>from
> the user interface, so it won't matter where the files are stored,
but for
> the time being, that's just the way it has evolved over time... I
very much
> like Keith Doxey's jukebox front end, but that's not something that is
> "available" per se, but as a starting point for the search
& select
tools,
> it gives a pretty good idea on where to set the bar...
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Paul G.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Sign-up for a FREE BT Broadband connection today!
> http://www.msn.co.uk/specials/btbroadband