Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
How do you organize mixed artists compilations like certain soundtracks or albums like "golden oldies"?
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For each track in a mixed artist compilation or VA soundtrack I set the artist as whoever the artist is and album artist as VA. For the compilations, I check the Part of a Compilation tag and set the genre to Compilation. For soundtracks, I simply set the genre to Soundtrack. This seems to be iPod friendly.
As for how I physically store compilations/soundtracks on my file system, I do it as below. Most of my soundtracks are in Soundtrack Albums but if I have heaps of soundtracks by one artist (i.e. Ennio Morricone) then I have a folder for them in Soundtrack Artists.
Compilations & Soundtracks
|--Compilations
|--Soundtrack Albums
|--Soundtrack Artists
For the MB compilations, I set the album art as the MB logo.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noise
that doesn't sound pedantic at all. in fact, it sounds absurdly inefficient. you'd be much better off using tags for things like genre and year, then using a strong library-based media player like foobar for organization.
also, embedding artwork is redundant, and it only serves to increase the size of your collection. i assume you do it for the sake of your ipod - again, if you use foobar, then you can embed artwork on the fly while syncing.
or you can go balls out and flash your ipod with rockbox firmware. not only will it let you use folder.jpg for album art, but you can use your own directory structure for organization, and can do away with all 'syncing' apps. just copy files in disc mode.
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I organise according to tagging (genre tags + Foobar) as well as folder structure. Personally, I prefer the first approach but I also maintain a folder structure for the benefit of other people downloading music from me (since they obviously can't make use of genre tags when downloading music off our flat server). And yeah, for the structure by tags approach to work, it is necessary to use a strong library-based media player like Foobar as most others including WMP are laughably crippled by large collections.
I embed artwork in every song for the sake of my iPod but also in case people want to download individual songs from me. If each track has its own album art embedded then it doesn't matter if it is taken out of context. I ensure that my album art is < 400k (and usually 20-50k) so that the storage requirement is negligible (unless I'm dealing with grindcore albums haha).
I've been meaning to look into flashing my iPod but I think I'll wait until the warranty expires. I've figured out most of the vagaries of iTunes/iPods so it won't be
too much of a headache until then. One of my main gripes with iTunes was its unanchored shift-select but they seem to have fixed that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
I also include album type in filename (f.ex "1972 - Close to the Edge [Studio album]") and all that together made the transition to foobar and retagging albums a breeze, for example by automatically filling %album type% with the information from that directory. Not sure what the benefit is right now, but if somehow my tags get screwed, it'll be of use.  |
I forgot to mention that I do that too - I annotate album names with (Compilation), (EP), (Single), (Bootleg), (Live Album) etc...