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1

Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 02:53:50 PM »

Just as an aside, why is it important where your files are located and what they're named.  Isn't the point of tagging and using a library manager to avoid needing a perfect folder and naming structure to get library information?

That could be one reason to use a library manager, but it's not the only one and is not mine.

There are several reasons why I keep the folder structure as diligently as I do. The main reason is that the library exists in multiple locations, and it is much easier to check and keep backups consistent if the folder structure is consistent as well. I don't have any music files directly on my PC, they are all on an external hard drive. All the music is in the directory "music", which basically has two subdirectories "ALAC" and "FLAC", and within these two folders, everything is grouped according to "Album Artist" "Album" "Tracks". There are no other files in the directories, no image files or log or text files. That means, when an album is renamed  in the library manager, the folder is also renamed. That has several advantages:
1. It makes it easy to control and keep all backups consistent. I can just right-click the ALAC folder on my disc and the ALAC folder on my NAS and see the exact same number of bytes and the exact same number of files, so I know the backup is perfect. This has already helped me several times over the years to notice if a backup for some reason was inconsistent or did not get all the files.
2. Any copy of the music directory is a perfect copy and can replace any other existing copy. A few years ago, the "core" hard drive with my music collection crashed on our stone floor. Fortunately, I could just buy a new hard drive, copy all the files over from a backup, and everything was 100% as it was before.
3. I periodically check the files with PerfectTunes for accuracy, so that's easy as well if they are all in one folder.
4. The files on the NAS are accessed from a variety of programs. A hifi streamer, a few players on my smartphone, file managers, etc. A clear directory structure is very useful for navigation there. On the NAS are not JUST music files, but the music files are all in one folder with subdirectories, and all music playing devices are referred to that one folder.

Last but not least, when I started to rip my CD collection and buying high-res files, I started organizing them as well. So my files were "orderly" from the beginning. It was then the logical step to put them all into the same folder. I never had a loose collection of files spread out over different directories that I started to manage one day with a library manager. My collection was "consistent" from the very beginning, and so I just have a natural inclination to keep it that way. I admit, I enjoy that the files on all hard drives/NAS exist in the exact same spot. Makes many things easy. Relative playlists can be used on any drive from any program. I often use file managers so consistency helps there. All my computer files  are more or less in orderly directory structures.





In any case, frankz and hiccup, your insightful responses have certainly helped me get a better grip on MusicBee and how to proceed. Very much appreciated.

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Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 02:30:22 PM »

Absolutely true.
But you spoke of being consistent in also showing the disc number if there is only one disc.
And yet, for this naming template you don't want to show the disc number for single-disc albums...  ;-)

Indeed, quite right. That is simply because iTunes is inconsistent, and I guess I am trying to "import" some of that inconsistency to MusicBee. I would be happy and fine if ALL tracks would start with "1-01" instead of "01" even when it's a single disc album, it's just that iTunes doesn't do that. And I just want to keep the number of files MusicBee edits when taking over to the necessary minimum.

Personally, when I see 'disc#1' in my library, it tells me there are more discs.
If there aren't, I don't want to see 'disc #1'.

Ah, before I forget, one more reason I have this consistency: Almost always files that get ripped or added to the collection need to be re-tagged, so there is consistency throughout.

If the disc number is "1 of 1", it means, there is one disc. Period. If the field is empty, it can mean there is just one disc, but it could also mean that the tags of a multi disc album are missing. That happens sometimes, that people tag an album "Album Title Disc 1", "Album Title Disc 2" and don't insert any disc numbers... so when I then change the album title to "Album Title", the tracks mix and mingle where they shouldn't. So when ripping a CD, I habitually insert the disc numbers, no matter how many there are.

3

Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 02:12:52 PM »

…all albums have the disc# tag populated, the use is simply consistency throughout. So even if its a single album, it says "disc 1 of 1".

I would call that wrong and unneeded, not consistent ;-)
Consistent (in my opinion) would be to only have disc numbers for albums that are actually multi-disc releases.
For single non-album tracks in my library, I also don't tag them with 'track# 1'. That would not make sense.

I know that lots of people tag their music according to various parameters, and that's all fine. :-)
I have all the disc number set, and overall I have found that missing tags are more problematic than redundant tags (if they are consistent and correct). So I can quickly see if a track belongs to a single album or is a multi-disc album. I don't think I have any tracks that don't belong to an album.... If I did, the single track would be an album to itself. :-)

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Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 02:05:30 PM »

Short question: if I ever edit one of the old files in MusicBee, say, change the album or track titles, will it then also change the actual directory and file name? (I would assume so, as that's what I hope it would do).

If you turn on the setting in the green box giving MB full automatic control of your organization, then yes.  Your library will be auto-organized according to the template used as soon as you turn this on (which sounded like something you didn't want initially but maybe I'm wrong).  Then, going forward, any changes you make to tags that are referenced in your template will result in file name / location changes.

Maybe I just explained it way too complicated, I try to make it simple an clear what would ideally work for me, though you have already helped me quite a bit.
Ideally, I could setup my MusicBee library to the folder "ALAC", where it would not overwrite all the files at once, but should I then add files or make changes to old files, it should indeed change the file name and location as well. If that's not possible (which may well not be, because I obviously want two things that may be at odds with the options available), I will try to work around it somehow.
I would not even mind if all the files were managed by MusicBee, I am just worried about the countless hours it would take to rename 90,000 files in three different locations. :-)

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Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 01:48:54 PM »

Just on this point...you do not have to let musicbee reorganize your old files in order to have it organize any future files.



As long as you keep the setting in the green box off, it will not touch your old files (provided they're not in a folder set to monitor in the blue box).

To automatically organize your future files, you'd set your "holding" or "intake" folders (where you put new rips and downloads) in the blue box and then turn on the setting in the red box.

But you don't even have to do that.  I don't.  You can manually choose what to organize and when yourself by keeping the blue box empty and the setting in the red box off.

Oh, thanks. That's very helpful as well. MusicBee has plenty of options to dig through, obviously many more than íTunes.

All my music files are in a folder called music, and there are a two different subfolders: There is the directory "ALAC", which is for all stereo music files (and all these files are ALAC), FLAC (which are all multi channel music files, just a few hundred). (Note: The reason multi-channel and stereo files are separated into FLAC and ALAC file types and directories is just for legacy reasons, I know either format could do both.... I just kept it like that, so the file type automatically tells me if it's a stereo or multi-channel file.)
So I would set up the MusicBee library to the "ALAC" directory, but in your setup, it would only sweep and organize new files (when they are added to ALAC), but leave the old ones as are? That's great and already helps a lot.
Short question: if I ever edit one of the old files in MusicBee, say, change the album or track titles, will it then also change the actual directory and file name? (I would assume so, as that's what I hope it would do).
Anyway, thank you very much for such quick and expert replies. Great forum!

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Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 01:35:40 PM »

…But is that even possible?…

Welcome to the forum NPZwar.

Yes, that can be achieved.

For restricting the length of the title you can use the $Left function.

For not showing disc numbers for albums that are not multi-discs albums, I would assume these albums would not have the disc# tag populated at all to begin with. (what would be the use?)
And if that tag is empty, it will obviously also not be used for renaming.

Thank you, that's is very helpful. No, all albums have the disc# tag populated, the use is simply consistency throughout. So even if its a single album, it says "disc 1 of 1".

7

Questions / Re: Keeping Folders Organized (New User Question 3/3)

« on: March 29, 2024, 11:47:30 AM »

Greetings... I add to this thread rather than open a new one because it is certainly a related "problem" (or better said "question"), and like Alonzo I do consider myself the problem. :-)

I have some 80,000-90,000 music files, all ALAC. Most of them from my own CD collection (including many albums not available digitally or for streaming, such as many specialty label film score releases), as well as a number of downloads, including thousands of high-res files (from Qobuz, Hyperion, etc.).

I still use iTunes to curate the collection, mostly because that is the program I started with years ago and I have found if I use the (few) tags available in iTunes to tag my (mostly classical music) collection, it will work in any other system I set up.

All my music is on an external hard drive, and from there, it is copied to my NAS from where my hifi-system is playing it.

I am now considering ditching iTunes (which doesn't get updated anymore anyway) and moving to MusicBee (which has far more options and I really like it, though it requires a bit of a learning curve).

All my music files are sorted according to iTunes:
Album Artist/Album Title/Title (wich is (disc-)track-number title)

iTunes has the strange issue of shortening file names of music to 40 characters or less. I don't know why, but that's the way it is. I am now worried that if I switch to MusicBee and use it to organize my files, it will re-name the files according to the longer actual track titles. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so many files, plus the backup copy, plus the NAS (so all the files would have to be re-named at least three times, which would take a lot of time).
It would be easier if there were a way to set MusicBee up to use the same (or almost the same) name convention for files as iTunes. But is that even possible? I know I can set up MusicBee to name files "<Album-Artist>\<Album>\<Disk-Track-Nr.> <Title>, which would be great in principle. But iTunes uses "disc" only for multi discs albums (otherwise just track number) and as I said, "title" is never more than 40 characters.
I suppose it may not be possible to achieve what I want, because even though MusicBee has more options than iTunes, the latter just has some strange idiosyncrasies which may be difficult to duplicate.

Regards
Nick