Need Advice Please. Organizing Needed

[jeran]

Hello all-

Just want to say first that as a long time frustrated iTunes user, I feel like it is Christmas this week as I stumbled on MusicBee and must have said, "No Way!" about 15 times as I installed and began using MusicBee. To anyone involved in making this truly unique and powerful application, thank you a million! It isn't much I know, but I donated a few bucks since I don't have a lot right now but will give when I can. This program is going ot save me.

That said, I have a situation that I am sure isn't unique and I am looking for advice as to how to go about organizing my music. I don't want to waste my time and screw it all up and I am only 3 days new to the program so I will need some detailed instructions if your advice is too technical.  So, I have a vast music collection that spans tons of genre's and this is all music I listen to and like, it is all in a folder "Music". I also have a vast collection of sound effects since I make YouTube videos and all of those are in many sub folders off the main "SFX" folder. So there is animals, airplanes, bombs, etc. I also have a huge collection of what I call "Sound Files." These include cinematic openings or intro songs etc. I also do a podcast and am on others shows at times so I have a folder called "Podcasts" full of downloaded podcasts I did or was included in.

Okay, so they are already well organized in folders and I am looking for advice as to if you were me, how would you organize this all in MusicBee? What I would like is to be able to sort by those four main category headers. (Music, SFX, SoundFiles, Podcasts) and then from there, have separate organizing genres within. So music would have r&b, rap, hip hop etc and SFX would have animals, airplanes etc. and SoundFiles, openings, news sound etc. and Podcasts could have my show, friends show etc. Basically, my files and folders are correct but not sure how to organize this in MB.

Also, I would love to be able to add tags quickly when listening if there is an easy way to do that. I know I am asking a lot I just hope someone has an easy method, like tag per folder in windows so anything under sfx will get that tag and then I click the column header and all is reordered by that header. I don't know. I just don't want to get it wrong then have a mess.  Much appreciation in advance for anyone who is willing to give me an idea. Thanks a million!

J

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

There are so many options here that you'll probably have to try some different things and see what works best for you.  Check out these pages (please forgive the mess, we're working on getting the wiki polished up but it's a little rough right now):
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Navigator#Music
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Auto-playlist#Auto-Playlists
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Custom_tags

What I think I would do in your situation is put Music in "Music" and everything else in "Audiobooks" (which doesn't do anything special, it's just a separate section of your library that is handy for keeping non-music from getting mixed up with your music).  Do NOT put your archived podcasts in "Podcasts"; it will mess up your organization.

Then you could use auto-playlists to separate out your podcasts, sfx, etc.  Set the playlist source to audiobooks, and use your file path to filter: "Path ... contains ... SFX".  (The Music node offers Filters, which function exactly like auto-playlists without some of the extra refinements.  But until Steven adds Filters for audiobooks, auto-playlists will get the job done.)

Hopefully you would realize not to turn on auto-organize, at least not until everything is organized in the library the way you want, but definitely beware.  It could mess up your whole file structure. Once you have your auto-playlists done, you can easily add a custom tag to mark your different collections so that if they ever accidentally got reorganized you could fix it just as quickly (that would also give you the column you want for sorting).

You do have the option of creating multiple libraries for your different collections, but if you need to switch back and forth often and/or quickly I would advise against it.  Auto-playlist and filter support is much more robust.

Hopefully this gets you started. 

[jeran]

Okay great...  thanks so much for the answer. 

I just have one other question. When I am looking at a podcast for example and I have a podcast name THEPOD and an artist PODBOY it shows the image for THEPOD just fine but in the artist thumbnail there is no image.  I have an image for PODBOY but where would I put it as it appears that clicking edit, brings up the edit options for THEPOD.  Appreciate your advice on the organization.

[jeran]

Nevermind.  I am a dope who can't see drop downs I guess.

Thanks

[psychoadept]

If you use Artists view or the Thumbnail browser, you can paste an artist picture by right clicking on the artist.  That way it is saved universally and not just for one track at a time.  (Edit: although it will not show in the track info panel that way, you can always display the artist image panel and show it there.)

[wobbly]

cool got some reading to do