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Topic: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system (Read 1794 times) previous topic - next topic
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Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Over several decades of maintaining music on a number of devices with an assortment of players, and sometimes trying to import the library of one player with another, thereby ending up with a rat's nest of directories as much as five deep, and multiple redundancy for much of the music.  I have just switched to foobar2000 as my primary player, and as part of that, I have finally managed to get all that music in one folder, and then asked foobar to import it. I was kind of hoping that foobar would rationalize and unify this chaotic assortment of often nested collection of music, the way iTunes will if you are lucky, but I was not too surprised that it didn’t. But I was surprised that importing my main folder did not import any subsidiary folders below the two-layer artist/album hierarchy. I keep noticing that particular music is missing, hunting for it using the windows desktop, and then importing the folder where it is, but I am sure I do not have all of them yet. 

Is there a way to tell Foobar to import a folder with all of its sub-folders?

Can I tell Foobar to flatten my file structure to just two levels, merging folders with the same name and removing duplicate files?

If not foobar itself, is there a plugin to do this?

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #1
I haven't ever experienced an issue with directory depth but I'm not sure if you might happen to have some directories marked 'hidden' in their file properties, as foobar2000 will hide those (as a feature).

If it's not that, and the files in those directories are tagged correctly, then I'm not sure, someone else may know.

I use Mp3Tag to manage tagging and file structure but I know foobar2000 has a solid mass tagger component/addon available which likely can help with the organizational aspect.

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #2
Have you properly added your root folder to the Media Library via preferences? File > Preferences > Media Library > Add > Select your root music folder

Once that is done foobar2000 will index all the files and folders, and the file operations feature can move/rename your files to whatever file and folder schema you set up.

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #3
Have you properly added your root folder to the Media Library via preferences? File > Preferences > Media Library > Add > Select your root music folder

Once that is done foobar2000 will index all the files and folders, and the file operations feature can move/rename your files to whatever file and folder schema you set up.

I am not sure if I did or not --I may have used File - Add Folder. But my top-level library is listed under media library - Music Folders. In fact, I added it again, and now it is listed twice. Hope that is not a problem. Thanks for the link to file operations -- I have gone to the foobar wiki a couple of times, and always gotten overwhelmed before I found the answer I was looking for, so a direct pointer is very welcome.   Do you by any chance know if there is a Complete Idiot's Guide to Foobar2000 or some other form of gentle step-by-step introduction?

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #4
I haven't ever experienced an issue with directory depth but I'm not sure if you might happen to have some directories marked 'hidden' in their file properties, as foobar2000 will hide those (as a feature).

If it's not that, and the files in those directories are tagged correctly, then I'm not sure, someone else may know.

I use Mp3Tag to manage tagging and file structure but I know foobar2000 has a solid mass tagger component/addon available which likely can help with the organizational aspect.
I don't think they are hidden, but following your suggestion I have just unhidden them, which Windows lets you do recursively. I'll post back if that helps.

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #5
You should only add a folder once. Tracks will be referenced twice if you add the same folder twice, as it would if you added a folder and then added a subdirectory of that folder.

Yes, hidden files will be removed from reference, you need to un-hide them for them to all show up.

Also, if you happen to have any content in unsupported (by full install) formats, such as Monkey's Audio, you'll need to install the component for that for those files to show up.

 

Re: Importing and untangling a chaotic music file system

Reply #7
Hello

Choose "wiev by folder structure" (as the librarie wiev), put all songs from a specific Album in one folder(with the album name), do that with all albums... put those folders(now album-named) as sub folders in a parent folder of your choice(ex. Music). In preferences, add that folder(Music) to your library, apply! Now they should turn up as folders(with the name you gave them) in library wiever - right click on a folder, select: send to playlist.

Thats what i've done with my hundreds of LP rips - that ends up in total kaos on any other player than fb2k( i refuse to tag them all!).

Hope i could be of some help/T.  8)
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