Metadata Question

[Overdose]

I am soon going to be finishing ripping my music collection to a NAS. I have done my best to put the music into a sensible folder system for easy searching on the NAS.

When using a music player, however, does the music player use this folder heirarchy or the track/album metadata?

I have noticed that several albums are listed differently with surnames being either listed firts or last, seemingly at random. eg Robert Plant albums are seen as 'Plant, Robert' and 'Robert Plant', both are seen as separate artists so the total album collection is not listed in one place.

For dance compilations it's even worse, there is no consistency whatsoever.

Could anyone please explain how this works and how to better present/amend a large database of music?

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

When using a music player, however, does the music player use this folder heirarchy or the track/album metadata?

yes, programs use metadata. you could find some that give you an option to use folder tree or metadata but you'd better stick with metadata as all programs use this form of putting tracks in order.

I have noticed that several albums are listed differently with surnames being either listed firts or last, seemingly at random. eg Robert Plant albums are seen as 'Plant, Robert' and 'Robert Plant', both are seen as separate artists so the total album collection is not listed in one place.

I had the same problem with ripping. when your ripping program tries to find album info of given album the album info not necessarily must be in line with your way of naming albums. some people would name "Plant, Robert" and some "Robert Plant". it only depends what version the program would find in the internet database. anyway, what YOU have to do is to change artists names in album's preferences per your requirement and all albums of given artists will start to appear under the same heading.

For dance compilations it's even worse, there is no consistency whatsoever.

I know exactly what you mean. I found a way to overcome this obstacle by setting my own system of naming compilation albums:

artist name: this always would be "Various Artists".

album name: this would be the name of compilation i.e. "Bluenote Revisited" or whatever.

song names: these would be actual names of the tracks, followed or preceded by performer's name.

that way I have all compilation under one heading "Various Artiscts", where they appear in alphabetical order by their compilation album's names and I know who made the track exactly when the song title is scrolling when being played.

this is my way of setting things in order. you may find your own way round it. but at least now you know it's possible.

 

[Overdose]

Ok, thanks.

And I presume that there are some good metadata editors or sorting programs available?

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

And I presume that there are some good metadata editors or sorting programs available?

possibly. but I was always using file's properties from Windows right-click menu. if you select many files at one time you'll be able to change album author and album name (and some other common values like release year, genre) for the whole batch. this feature helps a lot but make sure you only select music files in the folder and not for instance album cover art work.

I don't know if you are using Windows or Mac but I presume procedure for Mac would be quite similar. anyway, in case you wouldn't know how to go round it... go to desired folder and select music files (most preferably all songs related to given album), right click and choose "properties" in the menu. then select "summary" tab and (possibly) "advanced" button and you can start making changes. once finished click "ok" or "apply" and common metadata values are changed for every file selected. simple! but I admit it's a chore. however, the reward is worth it when you browse your player's library and you see everything's in its right place

just one more thing. this tip only applies to Windows XP or newer.

 

[Overdose]

Mmmm, this is becoming a right PITA.

It's all well and good having music stored digitally, but not so easy to find it. I don't think Winamps multiple boxes make things easier.

My search for a good tagger continues.

 

[nads]

simple enough with a decent ripper.

all mine are ripped and filed and named at the same time.

just need to add art work later.

how are you doing what you are doing and what problemes are you actually having?

 

[Anonymous]

Have a look at MediaMonkey. You can select multiple albums and edit tag. Also look up from freedb and the internet, and after you're done automatically move albums to a directory structure derived from the tags. Be careful though, and make a backup before you start large scale manipulations, as changes are not easily undone.

 

[Overdose]

I am using EAC to rip the CDs. I have very nearly finished, but two examples of a potential problem are Robert Plant albums not all showing under Robert Plant, but some under Plant, Robert. When searching alphabetically, this is a problem.

Also, Platipus records compilations do not show up as Platipus, but various artists and it would take some kind of genius to remember which artist is on a particular compilation CD.

It might be that I also need to get to grips with Winamp and its search functions.

 

[nads]

in cases like that you can edit the data before you press the "copy" button. you dont have to take what it gives you as gospel.

Also Media Monkey can be good for correcting some Tags.

 

[Overdose]

Looking like I've got the metada thing down now, but boy, what a soul destroying job.

The next question may well be a music player related problem and not metadata..........

I am using Winamp and for the life of me, I cannot setup a library view that shows just the albums, with the album artists in alpha numerical order. All it seems to be able to do is show a list of artists in order, so I cannot then search by artist/album without digging through countless artists on compilations.

Total discs/albums 974

Total artists 2646

Total tracks 12964

So as you can see, it is far easier to search by album artist and not artist alone. Any ideas?

 

[Overdose]

[/quote]

I know exactly what you mean. I found a way to overcome this obstacle by setting my own system of naming compilation albums:

artist name: this always would be "Various Artists".

album name: this would be the name of compilation i.e. "Bluenote Revisited" or whatever.

song names: these would be actual names of the tracks, followed or preceded by performer's name.

that way I have all compilation under one heading "Various Artiscts", where they appear in alphabetical order by their compilation album's names and I know who made the track exactly when the song title is scrolling when being played.

this is my way of setting things in order. you may find your own way round it. but at least now you know it's possible.

[/quote]

And this is exactly how I'm going to go about it. Many thanks for your help and advice.

 

[scorps]

have a serious headache going on at the mo have been messing with my cd/mp3 collection over the last cpl of weeks loading it all into foorbar2000 for playing (other posts on this great program elsewhere thanks pjpro)

i have 4 folders that i use for storing my various tunes in including a lot of stuff i ripped in early days of computers as 128k mp3plus a lot of stuff that i have slowly collected over the years as various mp3 n flacs

the folders i use are 256k n over /256 n under/flac/and recently wav which was my cd collection which i ripped using windows media player

after spending that last cpl of weeks sorting n retagging all the files in the 1st 3 folders including all artwork where possible i fired it into my library for playing in foobar n joy oh joy there they all were with covers 601 albums of hardwork

so next came the wav folder which after a lot of messing could get cpl of albums to show reason i think although not entirely sure was the tags so i set about converting the wav back into flac using media monkey this worked nicely to an extent

when they were ripped it seems that the 1st track on each album was titled unknown artist unknown genre etc while converting them in media monkey i changed the tags so they had rite info in loaded into foobar n was still showing 700+ albums with 1st track missing and under artist on search there is unknown artist with all 700+ 1st tracks in it

so i set about changing all tags again this time using a prog called mp3tag which does multi tagging with all the fiesld u could wish

reloaded foobar but still same although each 1st track now had the rite data showing but was still classed as unknown artist n upon clicking through various albums in search they still have 1st track missing in all

so any ideas how i can change this as it beyond me

thanks in advance

pete