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Topic: Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question (Read 12011 times) previous topic - next topic
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Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Which is the absolute best way to organise music so it all falls into complete proper alphanumeric, chronological (if possible) order? Note that I'll be encoding all music as one FLAC file per CD, including separate Cuesheet file. Since I'll be writing all of these files to a CD-R or recordable DVD, I'll be putting it into many directories. Is this the best way (note the bold parts; "yyyy" is the release year; ### is the CD number (if the album has more than one CD) with leading zeroes, actual number of them depends on how many CDs the album is)?:

(for a regular artist album) C:\Archive\Audio\Music\Albums\Artist Name, The\yyyy\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files)

(for a Various Artists album) C:\Archive\Audio\Music\Albums\Various Artists\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files)

Also, is there some central music release database that contains the actual release DATES of every album ever released? If so, instead of just yyyy, I'd use yyyy-MM-dd (like 2000-06-14) (is this possible when using Exact Audio Copy to go straight from CD to single FLAC+CUE file?), so that every album is in full chronological order.

Thanks for all suggestions given here. The reason why I prefer to use a directory for practically everything is because I'd rather keep file names short, so the names fit onto a recorded CD or DVD.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #1 –
welcome

First note - There is no absolute "best" way to organize - everyone has there particular reasons for doing it one way or another - I asked many questions on the same topic and I realized that since there are no standards you create your own standard. And because for every standard there always seems to be a least one which does not fit into your organization standard you have to evolve and modify your standard.

To start off with I'm assuming you are using windows - so your first problem is that your directory level is too deep
"C:\Archive\Audio\Music\Albums\Artist Name, The\yyyy\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files)"  - has 9 subdirectories - in windows you have up to 256 charcters which you are going to fill up pretty fast if you do that structure. On top of that you will probably have lots of trouble burning to CDR with that structure since the limit is 8 IIRC for Joliet
Mine is more'
C:\Music\Artist\Artist - year (XXXX) - Album\xx - Title

There is no database that has "everything", AMG (All Music Guide) has probably the most information about most music but it is far from 'everything', and the release date can be wrong as well so there you go, the real problem is that release dates make very little sense in terms of yyyy-mm-dd unless you want to include that information in the comment section - the reason is that release dates can be very specific to your CD - several CDs are released on different dates in different countries, even different years for the same album.
I think the year is sufficient for most cases. Since you will want to standardize as many albums as possible it is far more likely that you will find the release year for your album instead of the actual release date

It should be possible to do that in EAC but for the reasons above I would suggest just doing the xxxx (year)
Also - If you are saving to flac then I suggest you get the dvd burner - you will be filling up CD-Rs pretty fast using lossless

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #2 –
Quote
welcome

First note - There is no absolute "best" way to organize - everyone has there particular reasons for doing it one way or another - I asked many questions on the same topic and I realized that since there are no standards you create your own standard. And because for every standard there always seems to be a least one which does not fit into your organization standard you have to evolve and modify your standard.

To start off with I'm assuming you are using windows - so your first problem is that your directory level is too deep
"C:\Archive\Audio\Music\Albums\Artist Name, The\yyyy\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files)"  - has 9 subdirectories - in windows you have up to 256 charcters which you are going to fill up pretty fast if you do that structure. On top of that you will probably have lots of trouble burning to CDR with that structure since the limit is 8 IIRC for Joliet
Mine is more'
C:\Music\Artist\Artist - year (XXXX) - Album\xx - Title

There is no database that has "everything", AMG (All Music Guide) has probably the most information about most music but it is far from 'everything', and the release date can be wrong as well so there you go, the real problem is that release dates make very little sense in terms of yyyy-mm-dd unless you want to include that information in the comment section - the reason is that release dates can be very specific to your CD - several CDs are released on different dates in different countries, even different years for the same album.
I think the year is sufficient for most cases. Since you will want to standardize as many albums as possible it is far more likely that you will find the release year for your album instead of the actual release date

It should be possible to do that in EAC but for the reasons above I would suggest just doing the xxxx (year)
Also - If you are saving to flac then I suggest you get the dvd burner - you will be filling up CD-Rs pretty fast using lossless

Just my bold section will be going onto the DVDs. I'll be putting lossy versions of all audio onto CDs for portable use and the lossless ones will go onto DVD+Rs for archival. I'll be archiving about 500 (really less (around 300-350) but, I want room for more) CDs so, what size hard disk drive(s) should suffice if every CD was 81 minutes in length?

I'm well aware that there is no "best" way to organise music files, as many people have different ways. However, since just the bold portion of the directory structure will be going onto the DVD+Rs, would 6-level deep directories be good? I can probably cut off a directory if I do ...\Album Name, The (yyyy)\... and another if I do ...\Album Name, The (yyyy) (CD ###)....

Is that 256-character limit for the whole path or just a single folder and file name? I'm using Windows XP Professional and my hard disk is formatted in the NTFS filesystem.

Thanks for any more information regarding this issue...

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #3 –
You can relax the filename length restriction to 31..or use multibyte instead of ISO which seems to be much more lax. In the case of organizing files, I use:

My Music\(Language)\(Artist)\(Album)\(Album) - (Disc#).(Track) - (Artist) - (Title)

Sample:
F:\My Music\Audio\Japanese\林明日香\もう一度あなたに会いたい\もう一度あなたに会いたい - 1.02 - 林明日香 - 言葉一つ.mp3

I put title before artist so that they stay in order when there are various artists., this way I can keep the same naming scheme for filenames so that I can use a mass tagger w/o changing its parse settings

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #4 –
The best way of file organization is always the way that suits your needs best.

My music archive is being organized in a more conservative way ...

I use upper directories from "0-9" up to "Z" with the information "Artist - Album" as subfolders and "Tracknumber - Title" as filenames ... anything else (Year, Genre, used Encoder) is for tags only in my opinion.
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #5 –
Quote
The best way of file organization is always the way that suits your needs best.

My music archive is being organized in a more conservative way ...

I use upper directories from "0-9" up to "Z" with the information "Artist - Album" as subfolders and "Tracknumber - Title" as filenames ... anything else (Year, Genre, used Encoder) is for tags only in my opinion.

I used to use genres but, so much music crosses even metagenres like Pop, Rock, Electronic, etc. that I've stopped doing that and just do ...\Albums\Artist Name, The\Year\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files).

In case you (or anyone) is interested, there is an international standard language code list somewhere of alpha-2 codes for languages. English is "en", Japanese is "ja", Greek is "el", German is "de", etc. I believe there exist a full list of language (NOT COUNTRY!) codes at http://www.geocities.com/jusjih/ . This is the best choice, as computers and technology are international industries and it makes more sense (and takes less space) to use codes for language & country names when trying to sort in a directory, that way it sorts the same way, even if the OS was translated into other languages (the characters 0-9, A-Z, and the underscore (_) are international). I was once thinking about organising my music up by language but, I have music that crosses lingual boundaries on some CDs (eg. say if you have French and Greek language music in one CD. Where should it go?) so, that won't work well.

Thanks for all help so far! Keep it coming (if you wish or can)!

PS: I may settle on X:\Albums\Artist Name, The\Year\Album Name, The\CD ###\(files). Oh, as a final note, what's most efficient to put in as a file name? I traditionally just put Album Name, The (which can sometimes be too long for the CD or DVD disc) but, if anyone else has any ideas, reply. I was thinking about putting just CD ### as the file name for multi-CD albums but, that would cancel out all single-CD albums as well (    )...

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #6 –
Quote
You can relax the filename length restriction to 31..or use multibyte instead of ISO which seems to be much more lax. In the case of organizing files, I use:

My Music\(Language)\(Artist)\(Album)\(Album) - (Disc#).(Track) - (Artist) - (Title)

Sample:
F:\My Music\Audio\Japanese\林明日香\もう一度あなたに会いたい\もう一度あなたに会いたい - 1.02 - 林明日香 - 言葉一つ.mp3

I put title before artist so that they stay in order when there are various artists., this way I can keep the same naming scheme for filenames so that I can use a mass tagger w/o changing its parse settings

I use Joliet (110-character file names w/ Nero 6?) for burning CD-Rs through Nero Burning ROM...

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #7 –
Quote
in windows you have up to 256 charcters which you are going to fill up pretty fast if you do that structure.

This information is slightly incorrect. You are allowed 256 characters for EACH directory (or file for that matter), and you can have up to 256 nested directories (yes, each of which can be 256 characters long).

A couple of suggestions based on my "standard"...
if an artist has more than one release in a year, you can keep chronological order by doing something like 1975a and 1975b.
also, i do something different for multi-cd albums... i append the cd# to the track number, so i end up with 101 102 103 201 202 203 ... this way, it's all in one folder (convenient) and still in order. however, i have to do this manually, as the cd ripper has no idea how many discs are in an album.

anyway, here are some examples of how i have mine set up

(i keep everything lowercase because the internet is full of ppl who can't agree on casing. as i'm running linux, i have scripts that i've written to do everything for me, and i can change cases with a simple function call. also, as linux is case sensitive, it helps me find music faster if i don't have to capitalize anything)

music/rush - 1975b - caress of steel/05 - rush - the fountain of lamneth.mpc
music/rush - 1998 - different stages/212 - rush - yyz.mpc
music/used - 2002 - used/02 - used - the taste of ink.mpc
music/various - music world sampler/04 - lennon - brake of your car.mpc

(trivia: "caress of steel" was the second rush album released in 1975... the first was "fly by night")

as you can see, i include the artist name in the file name as well as the directory, even if it's not various... this is because i don't tag my tracks at all, and my player displays just the file name of the song.

also, if a band name starts with "the", i ignore it, but if an album or track name does, i keep it there (unless the album is named after the band, because then it looks silly)

anyway, that's my naming convention. if you still like all the subdirectories and everything, i suggest you combine the year and album name directories, simply because you will almost always have one directory in each year (especially if you want to use my method of 1975a to keep chronological order) ... so it's just a bit redundant to have to go through 2 directories every time when you only need 1.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #8 –
Quote
Quote
in windows you have up to 256 charcters which you are going to fill up pretty fast if you do that structure.

This information is slightly incorrect. You are allowed 256 characters for EACH directory (or file for that matter), and you can have up to 256 nested directories (yes, each of which can be 256 characters long).

A couple of suggestions based on my "standard"...
if an artist has more than one release in a year, you can keep chronological order by doing something like 1975a and 1975b.
also, i do something different for multi-cd albums... i append the cd# to the track number, so i end up with 101 102 103 201 202 203 ... this way, it's all in one folder (convenient) and still in order. however, i have to do this manually, as the cd ripper has no idea how many discs are in an album.

anyway, here are some examples of how i have mine set up

(i keep everything lowercase because the internet is full of ppl who can't agree on casing. as i'm running linux, i have scripts that i've written to do everything for me, and i can change cases with a simple function call. also, as linux is case sensitive, it helps me find music faster if i don't have to capitalize anything)

music/rush - 1975b - caress of steel/05 - rush - the fountain of lamneth.mpc
music/rush - 1998 - different stages/212 - rush - yyz.mpc
music/used - 2002 - used/02 - used - the taste of ink.mpc
music/various - music world sampler/04 - lennon - brake of your car.mpc

(trivia: "caress of steel" was the second rush album released in 1975... the first was "fly by night")

as you can see, i include the artist name in the file name as well as the directory, even if it's not various... this is because i don't tag my tracks at all, and my player displays just the file name of the song.

also, if a band name starts with "the", i ignore it, but if an album or track name does, i keep it there (unless the album is named after the band, because then it looks silly)

anyway, that's my naming convention. if you still like all the subdirectories and everything, i suggest you combine the year and album name directories, simply because you will almost always have one directory in each year (especially if you want to use my method of 1975a to keep chronological order) ... so it's just a bit redundant to have to go through 2 directories every time when you only need 1.

Well, the track artist/titles in file names would be of almost no use to me, as I'm encoding all of my FLACs in single-file mode with a separate CUE file for the FLAC (FLAC can't hold the CD-TEXT titles within its built-in Cuesheet)...

About that a/b/c thing after the year number, maybe it's better to do something like ...\2000-0001\... for the first release of this artist's material (because one letter only works for 26 releases per year)? (I used four zeroes to distinguish it from an ISO 8601 date (yyyy-MM-dd; yyyy-Www-D; or yyyy-DDD; http://www.geocities.com/jusjih/ for more information about the absolute best numeric date format. It's the international standard and it can't be confused with MM-dd-yyyy or dd-MM-yyyy. No other format has the year first)) (which I have plastered all over everything I write ANYTHING in)

About tagging, I'll be tagging evrything so, I really don't need much information in the file name itself at all (as it's all in the directory path and tags)...

How many sub-directories won't matter much to me (as long as it's under nine, beginning at Albums\...) because I could easily just use Winamp 5.01 to do Add - Dir, look for the artist name's directory, and click OK to get all of the material I have for that artist.

In closing, thanks for the idea about chronological order enhancement! 
 

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #9 –
Quote
do something like ...\2000-0001\... for the first release of this artist's material (because one letter only works for 26 releases per year)

wow, you're expecting more than 26 releases in a year from one artist? two is rare enough as far as i know. heck, most bands i listen to barely put out one in every three years.  perhaps you could explain why you'd need the ability to have 9999 releases in a year? i'm just curious... and also trying to save you a bit of a hassle heh

personally, i think 2001a 2001b looks much neater.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #10 –
After years of searching for a perfect way to organize music, I found the ÜberStandard to be fulfilling after som time getting used to. I don't like storing artist names like "Vai, Steve", plus I find the year to be impoartant information. My dirs look like this:

music\The Artist Name\Year - Album (EP/Single) (Disc #)\## - song title.???

Perfect for me.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #11 –
Quote
After years of searching for a perfect way to organize music, I found the ÜberStandard to be fulfilling after som time getting used to. I don't like storing artist names like "Vai, Steve", plus I find the year to be impoartant information. My dirs look like this:

music\The Artist Name\Year - Album (EP/Single) (Disc #)\## - song title.???

Perfect for me.

I don't sort artist names in van Dyk, Paul format either, because I don't know if every artist I have material of is an alias or a real name. I only use the commas on artists like The Beetles (would be sorted under Beetles, The).

I would use methods similar to what others have shown me with the year in parenthesis, etc., but, my main goal is to keep directory names as short as needed. The overall path would be longer if I did, say, ...\Albums\Artist Name, The - Year - Album Name, The\(files) rather than ...\Albums\Artist Name, The\Year\Album Name, The\(files). Just count the characters and see.

I may use the parenthesis for singles and Expanded (or was that Extended?) Plays such as ...\Future Sound of London, The\1993\Cascade (EP)\(files) or ...\Alphaville\1992\Big in Japan (CD Maxi Single)\(files).

By the way, is the proper form to put when you have a CD Maxi Single is CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi Single, CD Maxi-Single, 5" CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi-Single, CD-Maxi, or something else?

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #12 –
Quote
Quote
do something like ...\2000-0001\... for the first release of this artist's material (because one letter only works for 26 releases per year)

wow, you're expecting more than 26 releases in a year from one artist? two is rare enough as far as i know. heck, most bands i listen to barely put out one in every three years.  perhaps you could explain why you'd need the ability to have 9999 releases in a year? i'm just curious... and also trying to save you a bit of a hassle heh

personally, i think 2001a 2001b looks much neater.

Well, I could've used a 2- or 3-digit number but, others could confuse something like that with an ISO 8601 ((yyyy-MM-dd, yyyy-MM, and yyyy-DDD would apply here) truncated or otherwise) date. I share my music with other as well so, I try to keep things as clear as possible for all while keeping everything as sorted as possible...

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #13 –
My structure for music is made in the idea of as little clicks as possible. Therefore:

My Music/(Artist) - (Album) [special info] (year) - CD 1,2/Track# - Tracktitle

Example:
My Music/Death In Vegas - The Contino Sessions [Ltd. Edition] (2000) - CD 2/01 - Death Thread.mp3

But I have to admit, that it might be interesting to have the (Year) FOLLOWED by the (Album), so its sorted in a more logic way.

Still even this system doesn't accomplish my dreams. In a perfect world I would have a more VISUAL sort of storage: like a CD rack or so. I never know what to play next because everything is so damn straight - need to see the covers and arrange my music as I want -  disregarded the "Explorer"-structure.

Is there any good software which could read the albumart (I know, it's quite unpopular but I always insert the Amazon Large View) and where you might sort your collection in a non-linear way?
Musicmatch Jukebox does read the albumart BUT:
1. it has to reload every time you start it: Long process
2. you are not able to reorganize it.

So...any suggestions?

Btw: My collection is compressed mp3.


JD

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #14 –
Quote
By the way, is the proper form to put when you have a CD Maxi Single is CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi Single, CD Maxi-Single, 5" CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi-Single, CD-Maxi, or something else?


As you pointed out: Keep the titles as short as possible. Why not just say Single or even invent a abbreviation, such as [MS] or . I use [Single]
The full and correct descreption would be in the Tag.
I still have a problem what to do with special symbols (?,!,etc.) in titles.


JD

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #15 –
Quote
Quote
By the way, is the proper form to put when you have a CD Maxi Single is CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi Single, CD Maxi-Single, 5" CD Maxi Single, CD-Maxi-Single, CD-Maxi, or something else?


As you pointed out: Keep the titles as short as possible. Why not just say Single or even invent a abbreviation, such as [MS] or . I use [Single]
The full and correct descreption would be in the Tag.
I still have a problem what to do with special symbols (?,!,etc.) in titles.


JD

Yeah, I guess just ...\...(Single)\... would be best.

With the special symbols, in my case it doesn't really hurt because I rip every album to a single file but I usee where you are coming from here. Here's some examples of what I did:

Robert Rich - Trances/Drones went to ...\Robert Rich\Trances-Drones\... (as it's pronounced like "Trances, Drones").

Various Artists - Euphoria: Chilled Out: Mixed by Solar Stone: CD 1 went to ...\Various Artists\Euphoria\Chilled Out - Solar Stone\CD 1\....

If the artist is multiple artists separated by just a solidus (/):
Artist 1/Artist 2/Artist 3 goes to ...\Artist 1, Artist 2, Artist 3\....

I've had no problems with having an exclamation point (!) in an artist, album, or title name when in a directory. I believe this symbol has no problems with the file system (never tested it, though). The question mark (?), as well as other symbols that aren't allowed (not many, though) would post problems for me if they were a part of an artist or album name (not tile name, only because all of my CDs are single files), as they can't be in a file or directory name.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #16 –
These work well for me:

/music/Artist/Year - Album/Tracknumber - Artist - Track
/music/Various Artists/Year - Album/Tracknumber - Artist - Track

Examples:

/music/Tori Amos/1992 - Crucify (Import)/04 - Tori Amos - Crucify (LP Version).flac
/music/The Doors/1985 - The Best of the Doors (Disc One)/02 - The Doors - Light My Fire.ogg
/music/Various Artists/2001 - She - A Female Trip-Hop Experience/10 - Bitstream Dream - Buddah's Patio.ogg

This keeps artists in alphabetical order, albums in chronological order, tracks in order,and there's enough information in the filename to identify a track.  Also, tracks are only 3 directories deep from the top of the tree.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #17 –
Quote
These work well for me:

/music/Artist/Year - Album/Tracknumber - Artist - Track
/music/Various Artists/Year - Album/Tracknumber - Artist - Track

Examples:

/music/Tori Amos/1992 - Crucify (Import)/04 - Tori Amos - Crucify (LP Version).flac
/music/The Doors/1985 - The Best of the Doors (Disc One)/02 - The Doors - Light My Fire.ogg
/music/Various Artists/2001 - She - A Female Trip-Hop Experience/10 - Bitstream Dream - Buddah's Patio.ogg

This keeps artists in alphabetical order, albums in chronological order, tracks in order,and there's enough information in the filename to identify a track.  Also, tracks are only 3 directories deep from the top of the tree.


It's not in full alphabetical order. Artists, like "The Beetles" are never indexed under "T" but, "B". "Disc One, Two," etc. should be changed to "CD 1, 2," etc., as they'll sort right that way. Furthermore, it's best to keep a single FLAC file & CUE file which contains CD-TEXT entries for artist & track titles within the album, as well as where each track and index begins. Many CDs have tracks which "blend into" each other. Some even have indexes within tracks, as well as an ndex before the start of the first track (Track 01 - Index 00). I'll include examples below.

Update: 2004-01-07 20:39 UTC - Here's an example CUE file that contains all of the examples I pointed out above:

PERFORMER Enigma
TITLE "MCMXC A.D."
FILE "Enigma - MCMXC A.D..wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Voice of Enigma"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Principles of Lust: A. Sadeness, B. Find Love, C. Sadeness (Reprise)"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 02:22:10
    INDEX 02 06:31:05
    INDEX 03 11:16:32
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Callas Went Away"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 14:06:05
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Mea Culpa"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 18:33:70
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Voice and the Snake"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 23:37:27
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Knocking on Forbidden Doors"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 25:17:25
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Back to the Rivers of Belief: A. Way to Eternity, B. Hallelujah, C. The River..."
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 29:48:62
    INDEX 02 32:09:65
    INDEX 03 36:15:25

As you can probably tell, the disc's first track begins at 00 min 00 s 25 frames but, the disc itself doesn't. There's an Index 00 containing silence before the first track. Sometimes, this Index 00 can have audio in it on certain CDs. If you just extract by track, you would never get this audio and would never end up making a exact copy of the disc's contents.

Secondly, tracks 02 & 07 have more than one Index. Track 02 itself is called "Principles of Lust", where its Indexes are called "Sadeness", "Find Love", and "Sadeness (Reprise)". Track 07's CD-TEXT TRACK entry has hit the 80-character limit that's present in every single entry of CD-TEXT, therefore it was cut off. The name of the track itself is "Back to the Rivers of Belief", whereas its indexes are named "Way to Eternity", "Hallelujah", and "The Rivers of Belief". On the CD cover, the entries are shown as in the CD-TEXT entries (Principles of Lust: A. Sadeness, B. Find Love, C. Sadeness (Reprise) for Track 02 and Back to the Rivers of Belief: A. Way to Eternity, B. Hallelujah, C. The Rivers of Belief for Track 07). One should also note that CD-TEXT entries containing only one word or character are not in quotation marks (" ").

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #18 –
Since I could not decide on a directory structure, I chose a flat directory.  Actually it is a little more than flat, I have 1 level of sub-directories that are numbered.
/001
/002
/003
/.....

Each one contains enough FLAC files to fill the directory to a max of 4.7GB.  I actually rip my music to a holding place and have a script that moves the files into an open directory or creates a new one if all directories are full.

This makes it super easy for me to back things up to DVD.

Now then to actually find music, I have another script that makes sym links (using linux) to the files in a directory structure of my choosing using the embedded tag info of the FLACs.  I actually currently have two trees I like.  /genre/artist/album/tracknum-title-artist  and  /genre/album/tracknum-title-artist

The later is easier to find whole cds of multi-artist cds.

Note I do not rip my music to single FLAC files per CD, cause well most digital music players do not handle those very well.

edit: Note my structure is not unique, I read about it in a linux mag. column for mp3 and just wrote scripts for my own use and modified things a bit.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #19 –
Quote
Since I could not decide on a directory structure, I chose a flat directory.  Actually it is a little more than flat, I have 1 level of sub-directories that are numbered.
/001
/002
/003
/.....

Each one contains enough FLAC files to fill the directory to a max of 4.7GB.  I actually rip my music to a holding place and have a script that moves the files into an open directory or creates a new one if all directories are full.

This makes it super easy for me to back things up to DVD.

Now then to actually find music, I have another script that makes sym links (using linux) to the files in a directory structure of my choosing using the embedded tag info of the FLACs.  I actually currently have two trees I like.  /genre/artist/album/tracknum-title-artist  and  /genre/album/tracknum-title-artist

The later is easier to find whole cds of multi-artist cds.

Note I do not rip my music to single FLAC files per CD, cause well most digital music players do not handle those very well.

edit: Note my structure is not unique, I read about it in a linux mag. column for mp3 and just wrote scripts for my own use and modified things a bit.

"most digital music players don't handle those well"??? What do you mean by this? Just scanning through the big album-length file or DJ mix/concert? Oh, read this little proposal that I wrote to iRiver regarding a change in the design of long file navigation:

iRiver, you make some fine portable audio devices and I've enjoyed the possibilities of firmware upgradeability in the past but, since I purchased this IMP-150 player in November 2002, one thing I and others tend to find irritating with all portable audio devices is that if you have long (above 30 minutes or so) files like DJ mixes or live perfornances on a disc and you want to get to the middle of it, the only way to do it on the iRiver products (and pretty much any portable device) is by holding a Fast Forward or Rewind button down for a very long time, even if the search speed is set to 6x. Try, for example, to search for the middle of a 300-minute file. Note how long the button must be held down for. At any time, it's not hard for your finger to get tired or it slips, etc. and you are either back to the beginning or at the next file. Very irritating. Since iRiver's products are firmware upgradable and they support their customers, there is chance for a change if enough people request it and they believe it's a logical choice. Here's three proposals for some suggestions for a change:

1. Allow the user to select a time interval by which when the Fast Forward or Rewind button is pushed, the player will jump either back or fourth in the file. An example would be: Set it to 5 minutes and now, when you hit FF or REW, the player will skip 5 minutes ahead or behind in the file. If there is less than five minutes left at the end of the file, the player should just jump to the next file. If the player hasn't advanced past the 5 minute mark, it should just jump back to the beginning, as it already does during a file. This is one of the best choices because it allows the user to skip through long file regardless if the file has a Cuesheet file (*.cue) accompanying it, which would be an ideal situation for live performances and long single tracks but, would still work well for albums, as you can finally skip easier through it. Other users have suggested per cent-age skipping is a good choice as well. For albums, a Cuesheet solution, as described below, will be better but should not be required.

2. Allow the user to make use of a Cuesheet file (*.cue) to jump to individual tracks within a file that contains a whole album. The system should be set up just like the Winamp plug-in "MP3CUE", which does NOT require they Cuesheet file to point to the exact file in question but rather, just requires that both the media and the Cuesheet file have the same file name (eg. Artist Name - Album Name.mp3 & Artist Name - Album Name.cue) and both files must be in the same directory. This solution, at full utilisation, can allow the user to jump to individual tracks within album and indexes within a track; and allow reading of CD-TEXT entries for CD and track artist, album, and songwriter names. An example Cuesheet file looks like this:

PERFORMER Enigma
TITLE "MCMXC A.D."
FILE "Enigma - MCMXC A.D..wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Voice of Enigma"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:00:25
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Principles of Lust: A. Sadeness, B. Find Love, C. Sadeness (Reprise)"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 02:22:10
    INDEX 02 06:31:05
    INDEX 03 11:16:32
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Callas Went Away"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 14:06:05
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Mea Culpa"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 18:33:70
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Voice and the Snake"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 23:37:27
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Knocking on Forbidden Doors"
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 25:17:25
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Back to the Rivers of Belief: A. Way to Eternity, B. Hallelujah, C. The River..."
    PERFORMER Enigma
    INDEX 01 29:48:62
    INDEX 02 32:09:65
    INDEX 03 36:15:25
   
As you can see, this particular file has CD-TEXT album artist name and title name, as well as track artist and title names. It also has Indexes within each track, for skipping to the individual sub-compositions within a track. The particular file name for this Cuesheet is "Enigma - MCMXC A.D..cue" and the MP3 file is the same name. These files are located in the ROOT\Albums\Enigma\MCMXC AD directory. You should also take note that any artist, album, songwriter, or track title that have only ONE word are not in quotation marks ("). For files with accompanying Cuesheet files, allow the user to either select navigation method 1 (described above) or method 2 (Cuesheet navigation). When using Cuesheet navigation, allow the user to skip to each track or, if indexes are present within that track, each index within the file as well.

3. Allow the user to Fast Forward or Rewind WITHOUT holding the button down.

All three of these possible options should be options via a sub-menu in one of the 6 main menus (logically the General or Control menu). The priority of these should be easiest to hardest. I believe it is easiest to add proposal number 3 first, as it is simpler than the others. It's second-easiest and the most useful to add proposal number 1. It's hardest to fully add and utilise proposal number 2, as it's possible to display a lot of information (including, but not limited to: disc artist, title, songwriter, and catalog number; track artist, title, songwriter, and ISRC number; file, disc, track, and index elapsed or remaining time with frame (one 75th of a second) accuracy) on any given file via the Cuesheet and how much of the format is utilised.

In closing, I kindly reccomend that iRiver look over all of this information and decide the best route for the future of long file navigation. Thanks for your continued support and excellent products. I always reccomend everyone I know who likes portable audio to buy iRiver.

PS: Anyone with long files and an iRiver portable audio device (any iMP-x, iFP-x, iHP/iGP-x, or iDP-x) would benefit from this solution.

What do you think?

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #20 –
Ok see what I mean by most players do not handle cue sheets very well.  If you like listening to the whole CD each time or have a player that can handle cue sheets, doing that is fine.

However most players due not.  I know ripping to a single file yeilds a better copy of the original CD, but how much better is it really?  Does it justify the added hardshift placed on handling your music?  I am not asking you to answer these questions, cause well only you can answer them for yourself.  I personally do not see the added benefit.

Oh and some players have their memory and HD access based on a target song file size, and when you drastically exceed that they have issues, original Nomad Jukebox is one such player.  Also making playlists with single files per album becomes a little bit harder.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #21 –
Quote
It's not in full alphabetical order. Artists, like "The Beetles" are never indexed under "T" but, "B".

Bah...I've gotten a little too used to directory listings and forgot all about "real" alphabetization.  The only time I ever give this any thought is when I go over to my CD rack (which is rare) and think everything is out of order...

Also, I understand why you prefer a single file and a cue sheet.  I still feel the embedded cuesheet and the utilities to handle them haven't fully matured, but in time they should and  eventually choosing one over the other will be purely a user's preference.  I played around with them once or twice, but I've stuck with individual tracks out of habit/comfort.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #22 –
by the way, i just added an app to add a Zero (0) if needed, to song file names that are not tagged, so:

1.xxxx
10.xxx
11.xxx
2.xxx
.....

becomes

01.xxxx
02.xxx
....
10.xxx
11.xxx

you can read the anoucement here

PS: is a FREE (GPL) app.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #23 –
I organize my Folders F:\Music\Artist\Album\SongName.xxx.

The main disadvantage to this system that is you have an album with multiple artists than you'll have a whole bunch of different folders for one CD.  To combat this, I pull albums together with a M3U playlist which only stores relative file paths so the music directory can move to another drive for example and still retain integrity.

Playlist are stored in F:\Music.

Organising of audio files (perfect paths) question

Reply #24 –
Quote
Quote
It's not in full alphabetical order. Artists, like "The Beetles" are never indexed under "T" but, "B".

Bah...I've gotten a little too used to directory listings and forgot all about "real" alphabetization.  The only time I ever give this any thought is when I go over to my CD rack (which is rare) and think everything is out of order...

Also, I understand why you prefer a single file and a cue sheet.  I still feel the embedded cuesheet and the utilities to handle them haven't fully matured, but in time they should and  eventually choosing one over the other will be purely a user's preference.  I played around with them once or twice, but I've stuck with individual tracks out of habit/comfort.

I never embedd my Cuesheet because of the exact reason regarding maturity. It's strange that Cuesheets have been around since 1995 (www.goldenhawk.com) yet, many people are just jumping on them now (as of 2002--present)...

I have a lot of club mixes and DJ sets so, I'm used hearing a single continuous piece of music from beginning to end as one big file...