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Topic: Proper way to backup music? (Read 4080 times) previous topic - next topic
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Proper way to backup music?

I just spent 3 days organizing my music.  iTunes obviously screwed up a lot of the ID3 tags.  I went through everything by genre took forever but it was worth it.  Now everything is all organized although I still need to get some album art for some rare stuff.

What is the proper way to backup my music from now on?  I won't be using iTunes anymore besides making playlists for my iPod.

Is it as simple as copying the music folder or is there more to it?

Is all the song information and album art stored inside the ID3 tag or is some stored in Foobar itself?

I don't want to have the same problem in the future if I get a new computer or transfer my music and find genre "?" or tracks with no titles and not numbered.

Thanks all!

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #1
Metadata is always stored in tags in the file.

Playcount information (for which you need an external component) is stored in the database, but can be written to tags if you desire.

Replaygain corrections are also stored in tags.

Quote
I don't want to have the same problem in the future if I get a new computer or transfer my music and find genre "?" or tracks with no titles and not numbered.


This won't happen.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #2
you might find itunes stores it's artwork internally and you won't be able to view it in foobar2000. there is no quick way of checking in a default configuration of foobar itself because the default art panel only works for the selected track.

but if you add a 3rd party library viewer such as facets and configure it to display an album pane with album art enabled, you should be able to see at a glance how much artwork is inside your music folders (or embedded inside your files). if you find it's all missing, you'll have to extract it from itunes somehow. but that is something i don't know about because i wouldn't touch it with bargepole.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #3
i feel that faceets is a bad recommendation for this task, because, for whatever reason, it just does not show every available cover
i never bothered to investigate which covers are not shown, but i guess embedded ones are sometimes causing trouble

hence, my recommendation is the following: esplaylist in layered view

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #4
heh, i use esplaylist myself but i suggested facets because i thought it was easier to configure. i didn't know about the issues you describe.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #5
Quote
I don't want to have the same problem in the future if I get a new computer or transfer my music and find genre "?" or tracks with no titles and not numbered.


This won't happen.


Isn't there software prone to overwrite tags without called for and without warning? (Windows Media Player still does that?)

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #6
heh, i use esplaylist myself but i suggested facets because i thought it was easier to configure. i didn't know about the issues you describe.

well, this doesn't seem to be a common problem as the lack of 'z0mg! where R my coverz????!!!!11' post suggests - i actually saw a mentioning of this issue only once...
anyway, i thought 'better safe than sorry'

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #7
Personally, I make a nightly backup of my music and other files to another HDD using rsync.
If you're using foo_playcount, you'll want to also backup \%appdata\foobar2000\index-data, which is where the playcounts are stored if you're not writing them to the audio files.

Rather than worry about whether or not some tracks contain embedded album art, I automatically remove any embedded art and load art via an external cover.jpg file. Keep in mind with this method that you are limited to an image file no larger than 8 MB.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #8
to add album art I select the whole album > right click > tagging > attach pictures > front cover.  then add it from where it is located on my computer.

I am using columns ui and facets.  I have it set up so when I go to a genre or 'library' view I see all the albums with the art.  However I noticed when I copied a few songs to my iPod they had no art.  The reason was I think only a few songs from that album actually had the art attached.  So I went back and selected it all > attach pictures > front cover.  I am not sure how that happened, maybe iTunes screwed it up.

It is a long process to add album art over again so I want to make sure it doesn't break.

Yes playcount to I will back up I am using playback statistics.

I don't know what replaygain is?

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #9
Google will help you with that.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #10
Google will help you with that.

I don't get it?  So it makes all my tracks the same volume?  That's terrible.

I have some vinyl rips and now I know why they are so quiet.  I have to crank up my volume just to hear them.

Why does anyone like that?

Maybe if your having a party and theres music on you don't want the next song to go super loud.  But if the music is quiet that is just bad.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #11
The purpose of ReplayGain is that you don't have to adjust volume after each track or album. If the music gets too quiet with ReplayGain just increase the volume once and it's fine. I don't see what's your problem with that?

 

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #12
I don't get it?  So it makes all my tracks the same volume?  That's terrible.
Many, many people disagree and could provide very good arguments against this supposedly being “terrible”.

Quote
I have some vinyl rips and now I know why they are so quiet.  I have to crank up my volume just to hear them.
Here you’re implying various things:
• ReplayGain is affecting your files despite your having no idea what it is until now
• ReplayGain would make all files sound as quiet as your quietest file
• The fact that your rips are quiet is caused by someone other than yourself, or whoever else you acquired them from.
• ReplayGain, when applied deliberately, wouldn’t be likely to increase the volume of these rips, thus solving the very same problem that you are, for some reason, blaming on it.
None of these assumptions have much chance of being correct. The second one, in particular, is patently false. That would have been obvious from careful reading of the documentation about ReplayGain.

Proper way to backup music?

Reply #13
I don't get it?  So it makes all my tracks the same volume?  That's terrible.


Check the difference between album mode and track mode. Using the former, you preserve the relative volume settings within an album.

Also, if you merely write tags, you can reversibly edit everything. Or just tell your player to playback without volume adjustment. Just try it.