Album Artist / Artist..?

[mville]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

since the browsers work by file tag info and not folder info, maybe it isn't that important what the file structure is, other then having the files categorized by artist name or composer name, etc. so that individual tracks aren't scattered all over or in one huge file. I grew up from dos so I still think in anal file organization mode most of the time.

Correct. I organize my folder structure for two main purposes. First, I want a separate folder for each album, that contains all the tracks for that album. Second, if I need to make any edits to albums, I want to be able to navigate easily/quickly within the File Explorer.

Also, if I were to use the get tag info from files in the browser and I had the composers files by last-first, it would probably reverse all the tag composer names, right? And I really don't want that, so I should probably I should just stick to the two main folders of classical and non-classical and just have composers and artists as you outlined above

Any player/server software that makes use of tags and their respective sort tags, will sort using the sort tag, but will display the non-sort tag.

As long as you populate Artist and Artist Sort, Composer and Composer Sort etc. you will not have any problems.

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

I tried this out last night and it works great, thanks again so much for the help and suggestions. It does make me feel better to have some organization to the files.

[IF][genre],=,Classical,_Classical\[IFCOMP]_Various Composers[][IF!COMP][tag]composersort[][],_Non-Classical\[IFCOMP]_Various Artists[][IF!COMP][album artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

The only change I made was to add the underbars in front of the folder names to keep them near the top of the folder tree list. Thanks mville, this would be a good one to add to your excellent thread on scripts.

Just curious, I bought a CD on Amazon and it wouldn't load in my computer's 4 year old HP DVD/CD deck at all. The deck light flashes and then it stops and the computer can't see it at all. I thought it was defective so I returned it and bought another one.. same problem. I then tried it in a portable CD player and an older stereo system CD player and it played fine, although it sounded distorted. I'm wondering if it has some sort of blocking technology built into it. All my other CDs so far have been fine. I tried holding shift when loading it with no luck. I also tried Redfox Clone CD with no luck either. The CD that won't play is by Teldeck Germany 2001 Rachmaninov Piano Concerto *2 Helene Grimaud piano and Ashkenazy conducting.

Hmm.. I wonder if this is a DVD Region issue? Thing is, if you change the region you can only do it a couple of times and then you're locked into the last region chosen. I have 4 changes remaining. I may just record it from my stereo deck using a digital fiber cable into my sound card instead.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

My guess is, that this CD is copy protected. Have a look, if there are any hints.


Dat Ei

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Didn't see any indications of the case or disk, don't know... do you think it could be a region issue since it's from Teldec in Germany?

[mville]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Didn't see any indications of the case or disk, don't know... do you think it could be a region issue since it's from Teldec in Germany?

The audio CD format is not region locked, like some DVDs are.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

In the late 90s and early 2000s several CDs have been published with a copy protection. Those CDs couldn't be played on PCs, or only with a special player which was included on the CD, or only with a distorted sound. Some CDs had a hint for the copyprotection on the cover, most claimed to be Audio CDs, even they were not at all.


Dat Ei

[schmidj]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

I have several LG BD rom players/ DVD/CD burners (of the same model) that when (apparently) the content of the CD is some particular length, the drive doesn't even think there is a CD inserted, it never recognizes it. I actually first discovered this when I went to burn a bunch of copies of a CD I produced for a project. Put blank media in, fine, burnt CDs, then tried to read them and now the drives wouldn't even think there was a disc inserted. (no matter what program I was using to play the CD. I thought I had bad media, tried some different blanks from a different manufacturer with the same result. Put CDs in a (non computer) player, they played fine. Connected a different drive to computer, that worked fine also. Thinking original drive bad, but three identical drives all failing at the same instant, not likely...

Tried burning something different, 'bad' drives worked fine. Now getting suspicious, I went to LG's support download page, found they had revised firmware for drives, loaded it and drives now played the previously unrecognized CDs fine.

BUT, I've subsequently discovered that there are still certain length or possibly content (partly full, not full length) CDs that the LG burners won't even acknowledge as being loaded in the drive. Very strange. Obviously a firmware issue in the burner. I'd never have thought that the content of the CD could affect the ability of the drive to recognize there was a CD inserted. Apparently the burner is unable to read the TOC under some circumstances.

The lesson here, again, is if you are serious about this business, have several drives by different manufacturers available. If a CD won't read, or fails to load, or whatever in one drive, try a different drive. God knows, these things cost only around $15 or so new, you can afford to have an assortment. Get a quality SATA to USB adapter (I use Sabarant) to connect the extra drive(s) to USB ports on the computer.

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Good idea and I might do that, but so far, this is the first time this has ever happened to me. I'm going to see if I can use my home stereo CD player, which has high quality output to play it back through a optical cable to my sound cards optical input. I think that should work.

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Having lived with this for over a week I've made a few changes for the Classical section.. I decided that having the folders with composer names as last name first is really not an advantage and in fact just confuses things in Media Monkey when I look at the listings under Location vrs. Catagory, so I changed all the folders back to regular first name last for composers and I altered the ripping script from mville as follows:
[IF][genre],=,Classical,_Classical\[IFCOMP]_Various Composers[][IF!COMP][tag]Composer[][],_Non-Classical\[IFCOMP]_Various Artists[][IF!COMP][album artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]
This now puts the composers in folders under the _Classical folder with the regular first name and last name and compilations by album title under _Various Composers.. as long as I have the genre showing classical when I rip.

I retained the main folder arrangement under My Music of _Classical with sub folder of _Various Composers and _Non-Classical with a sub folder of _Various Artists. That's working OK, but I'm finding that I would like to add sub genres/folders to the rip script for Classical and so far I'm not having much luck.. Or somehow just having the sub genre classical tags stay intact from the CD and still end up under the _classical folder would be OK.

I'm considering having more divisions by either time periods or by music type, not sure what would be best... probably by music type since many CD tags show them.
But this really doesn't solve the problem I'm running into with the tags attached to the CDs.. many of them are not tagged just Classical, they may be tagged as Symphonic, or Chamber, or Concerto, Opera, Orchestral, etc.
In my script set up I have to remember to change any of these to Classical, or they will end up in the folder under _Non Classical !

Should I set up separate sub folders under my _Classical folder for these sub genres or just not worry about it, call them all classical until ripped, then go back and change the tag genre to more accurately reflect the type of music? I am realizing now how complicate this can get. And to set it up for each sub genre to go to a different folder might get really complicated as well.?

Actually, somewhat of a problem with non classical as well, but since the tags are retained in the above script (if they are anything other then classical) I don't have to change them unless I want to. They all end up in the _Non-Classical folder or its sub folder of _Various Artists and their CD genre tags are retained for browser searches, such as Jazz, New Age, Pop, Rock, etc.

Any help again and experiences, solutions will be appreciated.

[mville]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Neither Genre (sub-Genre) and Styles are well documented/defined in the metadata databases, so to organize your library by Genre, sub-Genre and Style means a lot of editing for you, pre/post rip.

Also, this will only work well in your folder hierarchy and your client software/folder if you are consistent. The decision as to what degree you tag your audio library is yours.

FYI, I have all my music catalogued under 42 Genres, 2 of which I use for Classical (Classical and Opera). I have tried to have additional sub-genres under the Style tag e.g. I might have Genre=Classical and Style=Choral, but I have to say, as much as I want my library to be perfectly catalogued, I have not used Style very much as I couldn't be bothered due to the amount of work involved.

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

By "catalogued," I assume you mean tag catalogued, not catalogued in 42 different sub folders?

There is an add-on over on MediaMonkey called Xporty (click here) that creates folders and sub folders for genres, but it's going way out to an extreme organization level. The creator, Funnyfish, even wrote a 100+ page manual on his theories of organization... pretty serious guy.

I think my final solution will be to have two scripts, one for popular and another for Classical.
For Classical I'm going to create a new sub folder under Classical called _Other Genres, or something like that. When I rip a CD that is tagged Classical it will automatically go in the sub folders under Classical by composer name, as before. If a compilation it will go in the folder called _Various Composers with sub folders by album name as before. The new action will be that if the CD uses any other Classical genre such as Opera, Chamber, etc. it will go in the _Other Genres folder by composer name with a sub folder called _Various Composers by album name.

For Popular I will use a popular rip script and I think I will just keep the currant method of it creating sub folders by Album Artist name and then Compilations in the existing _Other Artists sub folder with sub folders by album name.

What do you think, mville?

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

I posted on this yesterday but it didn't show up for some reason:
I've been thinking about this and I think I came up with a folder system to simplify things a bit (for me) and also allow tags to be kept when ripping my classical music. I'm going to use two different rip scripts, one for classical and one for pop, etc.

The one for classical will create sub folders by composer name under a _Classical folder for anything with a classical tag and if it is a compilation it will put it in a sub folder under it called _Various Composers with the album names in folders under it. This is my currant system. The new part is this: If the classical CD has a different tag, like concerto, symphony, opera, etc. the tag can be retained whether it goes in either folder

For non classical, It will use a different script that works as before by putting rips in the _Non Classical folder with sub folders by album artist and if they are a compilation it will put them in a sub folder under it called _Various Artists with sub folders by album name

I do have to use two different scripts, but I like that I can retain any classical tags

So, this will be my folder structure:

Music
_Classical
Antonio Vivaldi
Albums
Fredrick Chopin
Albums

_Various Composers
The Best of Bach
A Touch of Class

_Non Classical
Bob Dylan
Albums
Adele
Albums
_Various Artists
Windham Hill Sampler
The Best Memphis Blues

[garym]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

I posted on this yesterday but it didn't show up for some reason:
I've been thinking about this and I think I came up with a folder system to simplify things a bit (for me) and also allow tags to be kept when ripping my classical music. I'm going to use two different rip scripts, one for classical and one for pop, etc.

The one for classical will create sub folders by composer name under a _Classical folder for anything with a classical tag and if it is a compilation it will put it in a sub folder under it called _Various Composers with the album names in folders under it. This is my currant system. The new part is this: If the classical CD has a different tag, like concerto, symphony, opera, etc. the tag can be retained whether it goes in either folder

For non classical, It will use a different script that works as before by putting rips in the _Non Classical folder with sub folders by album artist and if they are a compilation it will put them in a sub folder under it called _Various Artists with sub folders by album name

I do have to use two different scripts, but I like that I can retain any classical tags

So, this will be my folder structure:

Music
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]...[/COLOR]_Classical
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]Antonio Vivaldi
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]Albums
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]Fredrick Chopin
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]Albums

[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]_Various Composers
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]The Best of Bach
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]A Touch of Class

[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]...[/COLOR]_Non Classical
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]Bob Dylan
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]Albums
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]Adele
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]Albums
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"]......[/COLOR]_Various Artists
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]Windham Hill Sampler
[COLOR="*FFFFFF"].........[/COLOR]The Best Memphis Blues

makes sense

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

Except for the "color=fff.." thing... I couldn't get the indent function to work, so then tried dots colored white, and that didn't work either, so edited the post again as you see it above, with no tab spacing/indent.. how did you get yours to work earlier?

[doane2u]

Re: Album Artist / Artist..?

So, after some struggling with getting this to work I got these two scripts to work.. I think they are OK:

Classical Only with Compilation choice Note: Path is set to Music\_Classical\

[IFCOMP]_Various Composers[][IF!COMP][tag]Composer[][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]


Non Classical Only with Compilation choice NOTE: Path is set to Music\_Non-Classical

[IFCOMP]_Various Artists[][IF!COMP][tag]Album Artist[][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]