DJGold

jbrown157 · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 10:05 am Post subject: Organizing digital music library

I'm finally in the process of ripping my library... it's gonna take a while! I am currently organizing it the same way my CD case is (alphabeticlly by artist), but am eliminating the "album names" because I think that info is unneccessary. I suspect there is a better and more convienent way to organize a digital music library. How do you digital veterans do it? :?:

Jumpin' Jeff

Most organization should be handled by the software. It shouldn't be necessary for you to organise it seperatly by location.

With Ots, I do very little organization. Each album is it's own file. I dump them all in the same folder. I do some seperation however....

I place all my subscription music in a seperate folder from all the non subscription stuff.

The question is what will work for you.

CJ Greiner · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:07 am Post subject:

For the sake of the operating system, you don't want many thousands of songs all in one folder. (5,000 used to be the practical limit for Windows)
Even since XP has been updated and doesn't have the same limitations, it will still help if you can break down your collection a little.

Your music files should have all of the information you need in the tags for each file, including: Artist, Song Title, Album, Year, BPM.... etc.

Your DJ program should be able to search your entire song collection by the above information in the tags and show you the song you're looking for -- no matter what folder it's in. All you have to do is tell you DJ program which folders contain your music collection.

I have many folders grouped mostly by years/decades/eras (based on how I purchased my music collection in groups of years), and I also have specialty folders such as Wedding Ceremony (classical), Hawaiian/Hula, Shag/Beach, etc.

Whenever I get a new CD from TMCentury, I rip the entire CD then drag the contents to 4 different folders:
Christian
Country
Recent - AC CHR URBAN
Recent - ROCK DANCE

The only reason I don't put them all in one folder is because I'd easily have thousands of songs just from TMCentury -- and I want to avoid the problem mentioned above.

All of these folders are sub-folders under an "Audio" folder (I have Karaoke and Video as well).

If I'm searching for a song not using my DJ program, then I can simply go to that audio folder and use the Windows search utility to search all of the sub-folders at once for whatever I'm looking for.
_____________

You'll find that everyone has a different system -- it all comes down to how you want to access your music, what makes it easy to find and organize, and how you store it on your hard drive(s).

You'll want to find a system that works for you that makes it easy to put the songs you rip into it's proper folder. If you make it too complicated, then you're just creating more work for yourself.

_____________

Above all: Make sure you accurately tag your songs now as you rip them -- it's a PITA to go back later and add information to each individual file.

dokai · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:09 am Post subject:

I break mine up by decades, and then by genre inside each decade. Here's (kind of) what mine looks like:

50's-
|_ Ballads
|_ Dance
60's-
|_Ballads
|_Rock
|_Soul
70's-
|_Ballads
|_Disco
|_Pop
|_Rock

and so on. Within each genre, the songs are listed "Artist - Song.mp3".

I keep mine categorized like this because it makes it easier to find a request when someone asks "Got any disco?" or if I'm looking for ideas of what to play next and I want to go in a particular direction. It also makes it easier to rebuild my DJ software, which mirrors the format above. If I want to re-install from scratch, I just configure my software the same way as the file structure - makes life a lot easier.

It also makes my music collection "portable", as in I could change my software from PCDJ to Virtual DJ (for example) and still have a structure inherent to the FILES, not just the database contained in PCDJ. The database info in PCDJ would NOT transfer to Virtual DJ. For that matter, I don't know of any DJ software that will import a database from some other DJ program, but some may.

Lastly, if PCDJ dies on me, having that structure allows me to even use Windows Media Player to play the music WITHOUT having to go searching for everything individually. Again, because the categories are intrinsic to the file structure, the fact that Media Player doesn't recognize tags or have a database doesn't matter. It'd suck for OTHER reasons, but at least I'd still be able to find stuff. :lol:

DJ Teddy Bear · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:20 am Post subject:

Most rippers will do the file organization for you. As far as the DJ software goes, the more important thing is assigning good genres to your most popular stuff so you can look stuff up that way when you suffer a brain fart. Eventually, you will probably expand upon that by building playlists (a.k.a. wait lists / request lists) that can also help cure brain farts.

But your comment about album names? You will regret it. Can I assume you are planning on typing all that data yourself rather thanusing CDDB? Since it's so simple to assign the album name to all tracks at once, do it. It's just as easy to assign the artist to single artist CDs. Personally, I use CDDB, but then proofread and fix errors before ripping.

But you DO want the album name. If for no other reason than to select the correct version of something you have dups of (or to select the dup when purging the extra copy). Additionally, every once in a while, your brain fart will be the "can't remember the title or artist, but its on the _____ CD" variety.

dokai · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 11:21 am Post subject:

A couple of other things...

Don't forget to normalize your music so that the songs have similar volume levels. I use MP3 Gain, which is free and works great. I typically use AudioGrabber (also free, and it supports CDDB) to rip the CD to mp3, which creates a folder for the CD based on the CD name. I then run MP3 Gain on the contents of that folder, normalizing the songs. Once the songs are normalized, I file them in their appropriate folders based on year and genre, then delete the empty "CD name" folder when the last song has been moved.

If your ripping software allows you to rip to .wav before converting to .mp3 and SAVE the .wav file, you may want to do that. MP3 isn't the end-all and be-all of compression algorithms, and if you ever decide to move to .flac, for example, you'll be glad that you saved the original .wav files instead of having to go back and rip everything over again. It takes up a lot more disk space, but disks are cheap and you're NOT going to want to have to rip everything over again. :crazy:

jbrown157

Thanks for the pointers guys. I do appreciate your help. My New Years resolution is to get all this stuff ripped. I hope to have it done by the end of January (may be overly optimistic!). I have a lot to learn and I think it will be quite a while before I am ready to be 100% computerized. Right now my focus is on ripping and I want to make certain that I do it correctly. It sounds like the method I use to organize them is relatively unimportant as long as there is some kind of a format.

I am currently using PCDJ Red VRM to rip and am doing so under the assumption that once I scan the tracks it creates tags (using freeDB), registers BPMs and normalizes the tracks. It seems to be doing everything that I need it to do. The ripping process is relatively simple, so unless there is some huge advantage to using another program (like audiograbber), I'll probably stick with what I'm doing.

About album names... I am retaining the album name in the individual song tags. I'm just not filing the music by album name. I am creating files for each artist and dumping all of the corresponding tracks in that file. That's how my CD case is set up and I'll still be able to browse the files like I do with the CDs.

Even though I have used PCDJ silver on my laptop for a year for drops, themes and specialty music, there is a lot more to learn with Red VRM and maintaining a large music library. I've already learned a lot... I just hope it isn't just enough to get myself in trouble! :wink:

TheBartman47

If you haven't tried Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for ripping yet, you might want to give that one a try before you do any more. This program by far blows away any other ripping software I've ever seen. Built in normalizing too.

dokai · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:56 pm Post subject:

Unless the VRM version is different from standard "Red", PCDJ isn't "normalizing" like you're thinking it is.

PCDJ makes a notation inside its database indicating how much the volume needs to be adjusted for each song, and then does it automatically for that song every time you play it from PCDJ. However, if you play that same file using some other software, like Media Player, or some other DJ software you decide to move to later, the file plays at whatever level it was originally recorded, i.e., with no normaliztion. In contrast, MP3 Gain makes the volume changes to the file itself, so that it plays at the specified volume level regardless of the playback software in use.

Again, that's the way PCDJ Red used to work, and I haven't purchased the VRM version, so I may be operating on old information.

Jumpin' Jeff

That would be called non destructive normalization. More apps should do this. Glad to hear PCDJ is moving in that direction. Must have got the idea from Ots. :lol:

It's not a bad method. it keeps the original, original! Unaltered! IMO, that's a good thing.

dokai

Jumpin' Jeff wrote: That would be called non destructive normalization. More apps should do this. Glad to hear PCDJ is moving in that direction. Must have got the idea from Ots. :lol:

MP3 Gain is non-destructive. You can analyze the file, adjust it -6db, close it and re-open it, then adjust it +6db, and you have the exact same file you started with. Of course, a lot of pc DJs will laugh at us for discussing which mp3 utility is destructive vs non-destructive, when mp3 is by definition a destructive "lossy" format. I just wish more lossless formats were supported by DJ applications.

Quote: It's not a bad method. it keeps the original, original! Unaltered! IMO, that's a good thing.

It also creates a "vertical market", in that you can't use the files with any other program without having to give up proprietary features, making it less likely for you to "jump ship" to another program unless you're willing to start over from scratch. Of course, that seems to be a policy that OTS uses in other areas as well. NOT a good thing, IMO. I know a lot of guys like OTS, but I like being free to move to another application if I want to without having to re-rip thousands of songs.

Jumpin' Jeff · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:36 am Post subject:

I have nothing against your opinion. It's yours! ;)
You don't like it, and I do. :)
Yes it it lossy, but there is nothing wrong with having the absolute highest quality lossy file on your system, untouched by distructive forces such as normalization, that the only way to retrieve is to go back and re rip it from the lossless CD format.

Jack is using PCDJ Red VRM however, so we shouldn't get into that. 8)
He can use whatever is comfortable to him.

MusicDoctorDJ · Joined: May 30th, 2004 Posts: 476 Location: Denver, CO

I recently purchased MAGIX MP3 MAKER 10 DELUXE and have been experimenting with the mp3 ripping process.

I haven't switched to PC DJing (yet), but just want to be ready when that time comes!

What I'm wondering is if there is any way to use our Visitrax database for the mp3 files since it should be a carbon copy of the CD collection!

DJ Teddy Bear · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:23 am Post subject:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed or is on topic, but...

Keep the database and/or player software organized. Do not worry about the location of the actual data on your hard drive.

You will rarely need to know where the song is located. Plus, most, if not all, player software has a button/keystroke/menu option, that will show the folder/file on the desktop and/or show the folder path to the song.

dokai · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 3:39 pm Post subject:

DJ Teddy Bear wrote: I'm not sure if this has been discussed or is on topic, but...

Keep the database and/or player software organized. Do not worry about the location of the actual data on your hard drive.

You will rarely need to know where the song is located. Plus, most, if not all, player software has a button/keystroke/menu option, that will show the folder/file on the desktop and/or show the folder path to the song.

That only helps you find the file location when you already know what file you want. It doesn't help you when you get a request like "Got any old disco?" unless you put it "disco" into "genre" field of the database that's built into the software you're using. Then if you switch to another application, all that info you entered disappears. Some applications don't even let you re-install the application without wiping out the database.

CJ Greiner · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 3:55 pm Post subject:

Isn't there a Genre field in the mp3 tag?

TheBartman47 · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:39 pm Post subject:

It's still good to organise folders by types and such because you don't want all your files in one folder. Windows doesn't sit to happy when you start getting a few thousand files in one folder. Break it down into several sub categories.

dokai · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:12 pm Post subject:

CJ Greiner wrote: Isn't there a Genre field in the mp3 tag?

I believe there is, but even so, all applications don't support it. If everything breaks, I can still fire up Windows Media Player and play songs off my hard disk, and find the files I want because they're organized in the file structure.

Besides, like Bartman said, you don't want all your music in one huge folder anyway. Too much of a performance hit.

jwg · Joined: September 15th, 2004 Posts: 1089 Location: Erie, PA

There are multiple possibilities using a program like Tag & Rename and (e.g. PCDJ).

You can copy the contents of one field to another field in T&R. For example,
Year to year, Genre to PCDJ comment, play time to PCDJ version etc.

I'm sure the other software out there has various columns (genre, time, year etc.) With tag & rename, you could batch copy from one field to another.

Professor Jam

jbrown157 wrote: I have a lot to learn and I think it will be quite a while before I am ready to be 100% computerized. Right now my focus is on ripping and I want to make certain that I do it correctly.
I hope to see you at the 2006 Computer DJ Summit in October.. It's the only industry event dedicated to computer DJs.

Advance registration promotions are now being offered:
http://www.computerdjsummit.com/2006_summit.htm