Help Organising Music Files

[joroma]

I use iTunes to organise my music library and have two user accounts with their own music libraries.

Over the years I have rebuilt the pc and copied music to different folders etc and now have largish music folders on different hard drives. I would like to locate all the music put it in one location and delete duplicate albums/tracks completely from my hard drives and leave it organised in one folder.

I can't see how to do this with iTunes. I have moved the two current iTune libraries into seperate folders and backed them up. I want to continue using iTunes when everything is sorted but cannot find a way of getting iTunes to sort all the music files on my pc and external hard drive.

My aim is to end up with one central music folder accessed by all accounts with no duplicates.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ascendancy]

Songbird can do this.

http://www.getsongbird.com/

 

[FatRakoon]

I have NEVER been able to understand why people need extra software to organise their Media?

I have always doen things the simple way and just have my stuff in folders properly.

My entire collection on my E: ( I use E: for Mediua only on all my PCs ) consists of a basic Folder structure like this :-


E:\ TYPE \ ARTIST \ ALBUM \ SONG.EXT

So, for example, I know that this will be a legal song

E:\MP3\HawkWind\Electric Tepee\LSD.MP3

I know this because I know that I have the song called LSD in MP3 format and its by hawkwind

I have... Hang on I will count...

Ok, I have 28.393 files in 2261 Folders and they take up 169GB

Those are my MP3s

I wont bother counting the Flac folders as I am still working through my CD collection, but there is still a few hundred folders done.

But the simple fact is, that I know exactly where each and every Media file that is on my PC... Every single one of them.

I know where it will be and I knopw exactl where it will be when I want to play it.

So, I have never understodd how peopel need software to do this whenits so simple?

 

[Hudzy]

It's easy when you start off organised, particularly if you deal with complete albums and not just random songs.

My collection is as organised as yours is now, but for years it was just random folders because of reinstalls, downloading odd tracks, not ripping properly etc.

My solution was to delete and start again with proper organisation and tagging since I didn't trust software to do it right, especially with some of the obscure stuff.

 

[FatRakoon]

Oh no, I never started off like this.

Well, not quite anyway.

When I had bought my first ever HD, it was for my Atari ST. Now, I had a PC before this, and it had a 20MBHD but that was incapable of things like MP3, so, it does not count, but my ST does.

After several years of owning this bugger I bought a 500MB and it cost me a grand ( Dont times change )

Now, I spent every minute of every day putting my entire floppy disk collection of files onto the Hard Disk... Dotn know if you remember or know anythign of Tracker Modules and Sequencer files , midis and so on, plus my programming code and so on and so forth.

Well, after a week or so, I had 3 odd sized partitions and so I decided to have the one big one instead... Dont know why I didnt think, but I wiped the lot... At the time I thought it was a great idea, but that taught me a great lesson.

Anyway, from that day on, I have always took a tiny bit of time out to think about what I am going put into my computers and where.

My C: has only windows and windows utilities.
D: has programs, games, drivers and systools that are not installed.
E: is Media
F: is backups of old My Docs etc, as well as programmign rubbish and other such junk.

N: is my NAS

M: points to the Media on my server, since the Server is using a pair of 1TB Drives, and my main PC only has a 320GB E: Drive, I am planning on moving the 2x1TB Drives to my NAS so I can use that instead of my server ( Eleccy bills )

W: V: R: are my DVDRW Drives.
Z: is my Virtual Clone Drive.

Again, sicne my first ever CDROM and on the Atari and the PC, with MSCDEX I used to have the CDROMS logically lettered, not just stupid D: or E:

Z: was a single CDROM
W: was for a Writer
R: then became a DVDROM
V: I also used as it was VIDEO ( DVDROM Again )
So, all my PCs try to follow some rule on these lines, and of course it depends on what Drives they have, 2 DVDROMS for example will be R: and V: but if one was a DVDRW it would be W: and R: or W: and V: and so on...

Its just how I am... I am extremely carefull on exactly what file is where on my PC

and I just know exactly where everything is.

Or at least thats the plan anyway, it does not work out that way 100% of the time.

 

[joroma]

I have NEVER been able to understand why people need extra software to organise their Media?

I have always doen things the simple way and just have my stuff in folders properly.

My entire collection on my E: ( I use E: for Mediua only on all my PCs ) consists of a basic Folder structure like this :-


E:\ TYPE \ ARTIST \ ALBUM \ SONG.EXT

So, for example, I know that this will be a legal song

E:\MP3\HawkWind\Electric Tepee\LSD.MP3

I know this because I know that I have the song called LSD in MP3 format and its by hawkwind

I have... Hang on I will count...

Ok, I have 28.393 files in 2261 Folders and they take up 169GB

Those are my MP3s

I wont bother counting the Flac folders as I am still working through my CD collection, but there is still a few hundred folders done.

But the simple fact is, that I know exactly where each and every Media file that is on my PC... Every single one of them.

I know where it will be and I knopw exactl where it will be when I want to play it.

So, I have never understodd how peopel need software to do this whenits so simple?

Now that is what I want to achieve

My problem is my start point is music in diferent folders added by different people also resulting in lots of duplicate songs.

I've got something like 20,000 tracks so am looking for a programme to find all the music, delete the duplicates and place everything in one folder, like you have, and delete the old files when they have been copied to the master music folder. I've tried Songbird and don't think that will do it. Media Monkey looks more promising but I still haven't got my head round how to do it!!

 

[FatRakoon]

Ok, do it by hand!

Its not going to be quick, but its easy as pie.. If a little mentally repetetive.

Have 2 folders. an unsorted and a sorted one, or, like I have ( and I still have many files in there ) an unsorted folder...

E:\MP3\UNSORTED\Artist\Folder\Track.MP3

and bit by bit, as I sort through it, I can then move the sorted stuff into the proper folder

 

[AbsenceJam]

So you have two separate iTunes library files or one library and two locations?

If the former then first drag everything into the other library.

Check the two boxes in the iTunes advanced tab (copy to folder and keep organised)
File > Library > Organise and check both boxes
Everything will be moved to one location, you can find duplicates by doing file > show duplicates otherwise there are various duplicate finding pieces of software.

 

[joroma]

I've got at least six folders of music on four different hard drives. Like I said much of it has been duplicated. The music styles vary from Dragonforce to Eva Cassidy as two teenagers and two fifty somethings have downloaded/imported their own taste in music. So each Users iTunes Library only has some of the music in it.

My aim is one iTunes All Music Folder with no duplicates and each Users Library linked to the one iTunes All Music folder. So where Users have common music in their individual library their is only one copy in the iTunes All Music Library.

 

[jack.mitchell]

Picard could help. I would suggest as above, I have a sorted and unsorted folder and have picard transfer the files over to the sorted folder when it tags them.

Jack.

 

[AbsenceJam]

Drag/drop everything into one library, consolidate it using iTunes, delete any duplicates and then make copies of the library files for each user, they can delete what they don't want. Or you could set different locations for each current one, consolidate them separately and then change them all to a new folder location and combine there.