In order to get some order into my thousands of files, I have been using several tools and techniques over the years. I've decided to share them here so others can benefit from them as well.
I'll keep adding stuff, but I'd rather have it out than to languish as a tab buried among its sad peers, hibernated by the browser and waiting to be loaded again some day.
Also feel free to add your own tips, or mention why you do certain things differently.
ToolsAll tools are free, but you are either welcome to donate towards their further development or kindly asked to acquire a license (Advanced Renamer), which is totally worth it in my opinion.
Mp3tag (Windows + MacOS (Beta))https://www.mp3tag.de/My go-to tool for editing tags from sound files, not only MP3, but FLAC, AAC (.m4a), WAV. Make sure to enable the option that you get a context menu entry for files and folders, as it will enable you to access Mp3tag more quickly.
Add images as tagsIn order to do that,
1. Right-click an entry,
2. choose "Extended tags",
3. Choose the star icon in the upper right corner,
4. Select the image file. Note that you can add more than one image file, HOWEVER every single program I've used displays the last image as the one displayed, resulting in some back photo or label being displayed instead of the front cover.
5. Don't forget to click "OK" to save this change.
You can also remove images within the tags, clicking on the red "X".
Copy entire "sets" of tags apply them to other filesThis is especially handy when you have one album in two formats, and only either of them has tags. In order to do this,
1. Make sure the files are in the correct order, optimally by sorting by track number, or by filename, in case the filenames have the track numbers in them at the beginning.
2. Press
Ctrl+A to select all tracks,
3. Press
Ctrl+C to copy the tags,
4. Go the the Windows Explorer and mark the other file group,
5. Right-click those and choose "Open in Mp3tag". Now you should have opened the other files without the tags.
6. Make sure the new files are in the right order, in that case the filenames have to have the right order as you don't have tags in these files yet,
7. Press
Ctrl+V and confirm that you want to overwrite / paste the tags.
Numbering tracksMp3tag lets you convert values from one category to the other, such as tag > filename (Alt+1). You can append the track number to the beginning of each track, so the files will be shown in the correct order in the file explorer.
Adding titles from the filename to the tagsAnother thing you can do is to "import" filenames into the tags, such as when files don't have tags. Press Alt+2 in Mp3tag to convert filenames to tags.
When renaming files, press "Tab" to go to the next file.
Press
Ctrl+S to save all changes.
AppleScripts for iTunes (MacOS)https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.phpUse 600+ scripts to manage your music collection.
MediaMonkey (Windows)https://www.mediamonkey.com/A music library management tool worth going ape for. Use many user-generated scripts to add features such as sorting, skins, visualisations, and more!
Everything (Windows)https://www.voidtools.com/Basically a live search like Spotlight from iOS, you type something and the tool immediately shows you all matching files. You can also save searches into a file, and open it on another machine, enabling you to search through another machine (and check for instance, whether you already have something there).
Advanced Renamer (Windows)https://advancedrenamer.com/Very powerful renaming tool that lets you rename both files and folders. You can use regular expressions ("formulae" if you will for renaming stuff). You can rename files in several steps, in the vein of "first add this string to the beginning of the files, then add a number starting with 01 to the files, and then replace X with Y". You can preview the renaming, you can revert ANY renaming you have done EVER with this program, as it saves your renaming jobs by default. Providing of course, that your renamed files are still in the same place. How cool is that?
FastStone (Windows)https://www.faststone.org/My go-to software for organising and also slightly editing images. It has a great Lanczos2 filter for sharp downsampling of images. You can also rotate images slightly, which is very handy.
MediaInfo Lite (Windows)https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/mediainfo_lite.htmlMedia-analysing tool. Right-click any media file and get quick info about codec, bitrate etc.
Lossless Audio Checker (Windows, MacOS, Linux)https://losslessaudiochecker.com/Scan your FLAC for signs of upscaling and upsampling, in which case the FLAC was the result of a source of worse quality.
Spek (Windows, MacOS, Linux)http://spek.cc/Spek shows you the spectogram of an audio file (frequency range).
Audacity (Windows, MacOS, Linux)The go-to audio editing tool most of you will already be familiar with, however there are some handy shortcuts I've only recently discovered.
·
Ctrl+1: Zoom in
·
Ctrl+2: Zoom out
·
Space: Play / Stop
·
Shift+Arrow keys: Same as with text elsewhere on Windows, this is how you mark sections of the audio.
·
Left Arrow: drop marked section and put the cursor to the beginning of the marked section (for checking start of a tune)
·
Right Arrow: drop marked section and put the cursor to the end of the marked section (handy for checking fade-out)
·
Shift+Left Arrow: expand marked section to the left end (such as when you missed a slow fade-in)
·
Shift+Right Arrow: expand marked section at the right end (such as when you missed a slow fade-out)
·
Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow: narrow marked section at the left end (such as when you marked too much background noise before the track)
·
Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow: narrow marked section at the right end (such as when you marked too much background noise after the end of the track)
·
Shift+Mousewheel: Scroll horizontally·
Ctrl+Mousewheel: Zoom in and outAlso make sure to set a keyboard shortcut for
Export Selected Audio in Audacity Settings (
Edit > Preferences > Keyboard.
When saving a file, you can just press
Enter instead of swapping to the mouse to confirm.
MethodsMostly still to be written... Tool-specific methods I have put under the respective tools.
1-200 instead of 001-200 (Windows 10)Ever since some update, Windows 10 recognizes these as consecutive numbers, so you don't actually have to put zeroes in front of them anymore. I don't know about MacOS, but they usually have features years ahead of Microsoft... I have recently changed my numbering to drop the zeroes in order to be more in line with the actual releases.
Comment tags (Windows, MacOS, Linux)Many modern file formats allow for tags, among them also comment tags. I use this to add some info, such as the catalog number, ripping source (CD, LP, which one etc.), or to add credits from the original ripper (Jack etc.).
Use your keyboard, not your mouse: specific keys and keyboard shortcuts (Windows; other OSes similar, but not 1:1)F2 is for renaming a file.
Pos1 is for going to the beginning of a file list, or file name (depending on which mode you're in),
End to the end (who'd have thunk)
Enter for confirming the new filename (in renaming mode), or for opening a file.
Shift+Arrow keys will select several (consecutive) files at once. It will also select text (consecutive characters). Combine with
Shift to select entire words.
Ctrl+Left Mouseclick will enable you to select several files at once, the difference to
Shift being that you can omit some files and freely pick those that you want to select.
Ctrl+X: Cut
Ctrl+C: Copy
Ctrl+V: Paste
Ctrl+Z: Undo action (renaming a file, deleting a file (works only with trashcan), moving a file). It even works when you're in the process of renaming a file and forgot what its name was after you typed over the original name.
Discogs tips· The Advanced Search offers some nice fine-grained control, you can track possible cover versions etc. by providing a track name and a year, among other things.
https://www.discogs.com/search/advanced· Compare different editions of a record at the bottom of an entry, you might find much more info about a record by choosing another pressing, such as the arranger, or track lengths. That other pressing might have provided more info, or, more alternatively, the person adding the entry was more thorough in transferring every info.
Saving image files (Windows, probably other OSes as well)You can bypass the tedious right-clicking and path-giving procedure with drag-and-drop. Simply
· Left-click the image you want to save
· keep the button pressed
· maneuvre to the place where you want to save the image (window doesn't have to be visible, you can even rest your cursor on a taskbar icon to switch to that particular window)
· let go of the mouse button.
