Singles and Classical directory structures?

[dtw5]

Can you help? I am a newish user of a VortexBox appliance and view my music listings with Logitech SqueezeBoxes.

Before committing to dBpoweramp I would like to make sure it will do what I need please.

I judge that about a third of my CD music (Singles and Classical) cannot just be ripped directly by the VB. I had thought it would be quicker to let the VB rip everything then delete the duplications and adjust the listings afterward. That might be possible but I have been told there is an easier way and I would like your opinion before spending hours discovering what you must already know.

Proposal - Singles:
Pre-selecting the wanted tracks would be far too labour-intensive. Instead delete post-rip so somehow I end up with a series of 'albums', called Singles A to F, Singles G to L, etc. with about 30 tracks on each (or one giant 'album' with all my singles on it) as follows:

1. Rip the umpteen CDs in full with the tracks all auto-identified by something (what? dBp?).
2. Copy all the resulting music files to a single folder (in Windows or can dBp do this?).
3. Use Windows Find/Replace or equivalent to remove the track number pre-fixes (01_, 02_ etc.) so that the tracks will fall into alphabetical order by song title.
4. Delete all repeats (except other artist's versions).
5. Assemble the music as flac files and use something to name the final 'albums'; (dBp? mp3tag?).
6. Export the results to the VortexBox.

The SqueezeBoxes should allow a view of these (tracks?) in alphabetical order by song title and/or artist.

Classical:
Pre-selecting the wanted pieces is much less of a problem as there are far fewer duplications.

VortexBox doesn't seem to want to list albums by composer. Similarly I have many film soundtracks listed as Various Artists rather than the film title. These need correcting somehow and I have very many more soundtrack CDs that I will have to deal with, either pre or post-rip.

Are these CDs better dealt with by dBpoweramp with the albums re-tagged (is that the correct term?) so music can be shown by film or composer? The music files could somehow pasted back into the VBA.

Is dBpoweramp sufficiently point-and-shoot to make all this do-able?

What do you think? Bearing in mind I've already got DNS problems and other baffling issues to deal with, plus I'm a novice, any comments would be gratefully received.

Thanks in anticipation.

[Spoon]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

See 'PerfectTunes' in the beta section of this forum, it has a dedup function which can detect duplicates even if not named the same.

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Thanks Spoon, I did see 'PerfectTunes' and it looks quite interesting. The deletion bit, auto or not, is just a small part of my enquiry.
I suppose I could just buy dBp and plunge in but for various reasons, I really need to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
Can anyone who has needed to do the same as me or similar please give me some advice with the 'how-to' and if dBp is appropriate?

[Spoon]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

You can try dBpoweramp free for 21 days, a full trial.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Hey dtw5,

I just tried to send you a PM, but received an error message that your either don't accept them or can't yet receive them. I suspect the latter....most forums seems to limit messaging until a user has some minimum number of posts. It's usually 5-10, but you may want to check and see what the policy is here.

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Thanks for finding me.

I suggested an email to avoid all that, after bumbling around I found that the default was "Only from Contacts and Moderators" so I switched it to "All members", hopefully it's OK now - I had a good look but it wasn't there, it looks like you'll have to resend, sorry.

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Hi Brody,

Hotmail frequently misidentifies our ISP as SPAM.

Does anyone know if dBp can supress track numbers in flacs so the file name appears without a track number, just the song title?
If not, is there anything else that can (rather than deleting one by one). I'd just like to see the song title. I'll deal with 1,2, 3 by Len Barry when I get there.

[garym]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Hi Brody,

Hotmail frequently misidentifies our ISP as SPAM.

Does anyone know if dBp can supress track numbers in flacs so the file name appears without a track number, just the song title?
If not, is there anything else that can (rather than deleting one by one). I'd just like to see the song title. I'll deal with 1,2, 3 by Len Barry when I get there.

yes, you can use dynamic naming when ripping to have the file name contain whatever you wish. And if files already ripped and named, there are ways to dynamically change the file name in a batch way to include whatever you want. The file name can be, for example, trackname - artist.flac or trackname.flac or trackno - trackname.flac. Basically you can have the file name include whatever you want.

This said, what player/server are you using. Most players are not using the filename at all for display. Rather, it would be using the metadata within the file for display.

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Hi garym

That sounds encouraging. I went back to dBp to look for this, where should I look please, and is it a button I am looking for or a formula that has to be set?

Presumably this 'dynamic naming' is per CD, if it's per track I might as well cut and paste within the Windows file names.

I'm using Squeezeboxes out of Logitech Media Server on a VB. However how the player views this would only matter after I've finished eliminating duplicates with the help of Sort in Windows folders (so that the tracks' files fall into alphabetical order by artist or better still by song title). Unless dBp can do something like this.

At the end of the process, other than using something to name-tag the final collection/s so they are no longer associated with their original CDs, and the tracks are number-tagged in their new play-order (I don't think even that is that important), the rest of the metadata can stay as is.

It's to achieve points 3. and 4. in my original posting.

[garym]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

I too use squeezeboxes and a Vortexbox server. So ultimately, it's the metadata (tag info) that matters. File name is not relevant other than looking at the file structure in the folders (as you note, and I do understand the importance of having a directory/subdirectory/filename structure that makes some sense to the user when looking at the files in explorer, etc.).

Dynamic naming is a string you set up in the lower left side of the dbpa ripping screen. On the "naming" row, click the SET button to the right of the string. This takes you to the page where you set your dynamic naming string. The string is NOT per CD. It is something you setup to deal with all your ripping. (Note however that you can setup different "profiles" in dbpa, and each profile can have a different naming string.). In my case I use this:

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

This automatically handles how I want something named and the folders depending on whether it is a compilation, whether it is a multidisk set, and whether I have a value for ALBUM ARTIST or not. Note that the very end of the string has "[track]-[title]". This is the part that ultimately has a file name for me that has the track no as part of file name (e.g., 01-Come Together.flac). So in your case, you'd want instead "[title]" so that the file would be named: Come Together.flac. Or you could have "[title]-[artist]" then the file name would be: Come Together-The Beatles.flac.

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Thanks garym, could be getting closer here. If you'll allow, I'm going to answer this perhaps before I fully get it.

So this rule would be per CD batch, and I've heard of Profiles and can see how they could be applied here so that I could apply a profile per type of music I'm ripping.

I can follow some of your code by reading your explanation underneath but I would not like to have developed this from scratch. Is there a tutorial in dBp that clearly explains that, "In order to get this, you have to write that"?

This looks like it would be desirable for me too eventually, but due to your comments in your opening paragraph about Windows File Names, I have to make sure we are talking about the same thing before I run off and start coding tag changes that I do not fully understand.

The whole point of my enquiry is to facilitate the identification and elimination of all repeat track recordings (obviously except one, and any versions by other artists) from umpteen ripped CDs. The only reason I am looking at the files in Explorer is because I don't know how else to achieve my intent.

Manually pre-selecting the wanted tracks and ripping only those would be far too mind-blowing and so far I can't find a way of doing this with music taggers or rippers so it looked like I would need to use Sort in Windows as explained.

If anyone has a better idea, I would be truly grateful as it is beginning to look like, although mind blowing, doing this with a pencil and paper is easier.

Repeating what I must have said somewhere, what I am trying to do seems such an obvious and basic requirement that I find it difficult to believe that it has not been done before. I have a spooky feeling that I am trying to re-invent the wheel and somewhere there is a point-and-shoot solution for this already in existence.

Fingers still crossed.

[garym]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

I just learned by playing around with the dynamic naming string. You can see right on that page what it gives you (with the "madonna" example). Below that box, there are listings of the various variables you can use in the string. Trial and error is the best learning approach when it comes to digital music! (and I started a few years ago with ZERO knowledge).

With regard to your main goal (remove duplications), have you used PerfectTunes dedup option. Sounds like that would take care of 90% of your issues. I think your approach to naming files a certain way and using windows explorer to find duplicates is probably the WORST way to do this.

I'm struggling a bit to really understand what caused your issue. Are you saying that you ripped 1000s of CDs over the years and sometimes ripped the same CD twice so you have duplicates? Or are you saying you have duplicates because maybe you have several "best of the 1970s" CDs that may contain the same song. If the latter issue, I have that too, but don't really worry about it. I have about 10,000 CDs and quite a few best of the decade, or artist best of CDs, etc. All my rips are stored with each album within its own Subdirectory. I'm not worried about trying to make sure I don't happen to have the same song on an original artist CD, on their best of compilation, and also on some soundtrack. Each album(CD) stands alone and I want to have that complete CD, even if it contains duplicates. Because of the way LMS and squeezeboxes work (and in fact almost all music libraries), I can see album by album tag info without any issues. The only way duplicates would ever show up in a somewhat bothersome way would be when I do a SEARCH within LMS on SONG and it returns a bunch of the same song from different albums. But even this is not so bad.

If instead, you've ripped the exact same CD more than once, I would go in and find these and get rid of all but one.

*On the otherhand, if what you are saying is that you downloaded a bunch of random tracks from the internet ("in the wild") and now you have a giant directory filled with badly tagged, badly named songs, many of which are duplicates, then there's not much that will solve your problem. Garbage in, garbage out as they say. But if you ripped your CDs, I'm surprised they are not already organized in some useable way.

[garym]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

And to be clear, you ask why a tool has not been created to identify duplicates when in fact the tool is in beta use as we speak for the very purpose you seek.

(scroll down on this page and note the "dedup" discussion)

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/perfecttunes.htm

[dtw5]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

Hi garym,
Your 2nd para. made me splutter with laughter over my keyboard! It doesn't at all surprise me that I'm looking at the worst way of tackling this. But if it's not Explorer, what is it? Pre-rip or post-rip, there must be some way that doesn't involve cigarette packets and chewed pencils.

You're obviously a bit braver than I am when it comes to clicking buttons. I have so often been rewarded with complete lock-ups (swap the 'l' for a 'c' for a better idea of the trouble I've had) whenever I've tried anything in computing for the first time. If it says 'Set' that's what it's going to do, in concrete. They seem to use a different language from me.

Right, back to the subject. I did look at PerfectTunes superficially but it sounded like automatic removal and it only mentioned duplicates (what happens with 5 instances and 2 by other artists?). I shied away as I wanted a bit more control.

As for the 'cause', well, all this is in preparation for ripping. Nothing is done with the 'compilations' as yet, except for a few tests. OK not 1,000s but I do have 100s of CDs to rip that do contain the same song umpteen times over, there's no 'maybe' about it. I 'worry' about it because I have far too many CDs like 'Hits of the 60s' which, other than the content, have no artistic merit whatsoever.

I get your sentiment about wanting that complete CD and I agree, ordinarily the music tracks can stay in their CD/album format. Albums like American Graffiti qualify as a work of art but I can't apply that to all of what I'm ripping. Random compilations, newspaper freebies, plus samplers and even personal birthday CDs. Also quite a few pre-album singles and a few recordings that never made it to a pressing. There are many CDs that would add up to 4 or 5 instances of the same track - it really would be a mess and it would eat me up.

So, I feel I've got a good reason for being a bit anal about it but I do want to keep this in perspective. If it really is that difficult, I have to listen to the second half of your main paragraph about LMS etc. and take a bit of heart. That said, your remark about GIGO is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

I saw your link to the "dedup" discussion thanks, I'll have a look at that.

Thanks again garym, much appreciated.

[garym]

Re: Singles and Classical directory structures?

unfortunately, learn by doing is about the only way this stuff works. and the PerfectTunes "dedup" that I pointed you to is not "automatic" removal. It will show you the 2 (or 10) duplicates of the same song to the best of its ability then leave it up to you as to whether you want to hit the delete button on any or all of the duplicates. So you have complete control.

And again, once you are actually using this stuff, you won't "see" all these duplicates. Just because some "best of 1968" has a song, if you are browsing in LMS for a certain album or artist, you'll see only that album or artist. Think about my case where I have hundreds of live concerts from certain bands. I might have 400 instances of the same song by the same artist. But I'm never looking at these tracks in that way. Rather, I'm looking at the 12-26-1969 show by itself to play, and that's the tracks I see within LMS.

It might have been earlier advice to you someone gave: Rip a few things, scan them into LMS, and play around a bit. I can guarantee you one thing: You will learn things as you go along that you wish you had done differently in the ripping and tagging department. So the idea that you can perfectly set things up and then never adjust is not achievable. And with regard to the duplicate issue you are struggling the most with, I think you'll find that most music lovers that are even using the sort of software/hardware we both are using, are interested in keeping albums (including compilations) together and really don't bother with trying to delete duplicates. Storage is cheap and library managment programs (like LMS) are smart enough to keep all this straight.

Your primary goal should be to get good, secure rips of your disks with good tagging and artwork. Once you have this, everything else is easy.