Streamlining the browsing tree & multiple configs

[haggis999]

(21-09-2013 00:06)DavidHB Wrote:  Another conclusion from my digital photography work was that it is essential the correct data structure, software and hardware infrastructure in place before allowing the library to grow. If your experience is like mine, it is during the course of ripping and managing the first 100 or so albums that you learn what the 'correct' infrastructure actually is. I'm glad that I had mine in place before I committed to the purchase of the Akurate.

I couldn't agree more. I stopped ripping my CDs three or four months ago after ripping about 130 albums for exactly that reason (and also because I was investigating the ripping of DVDs and Blu-ray disks). You can't really evaluate HTPC solutions or the various options for UPnP/DLNA servers, players and control points without a decent quantity of media to play with.

Quote:I take your point about browsing long data elements (of any kind) on devices with limited screen real estate. I could install Kinsky on my Android phone, but I doubt that I will. A high resolution (Nexus 10) tablet is an essential part of my infrastructure.

In time, you might regret choosing a metadata approach that cuts you off from small screen controllers. I prefer to keep my hardware options open.

Quote:Are there circumstances where metadata-based browsing does not work? Well, yes. The obvious one is where tagging-type metadata is inaccurate, inconsistent or just absent. Getting the data right, even using the best software applications, is challenging and labour-intensive. Classical music throws a curved ball at the metadata writer from (I'd guess) at least one album in three. When, as from time to time it will, the tagging proves to be faulty, it is good to have the dear old omnipresent file system to fall back on.

If I find an oddball presentation of my music caused by incorrect metadata (as I do from time to time) I simply fix the metadata. This normally takes just a few minutes. I would never think of reverting to the file system just because of a metadata error.

Quote:And ripping and tagging always involve a great deal of file system use and maintenance, so it is as well to devote as much care and attention to this as to other forms of metadata input and editing.

If you set up dBpoweramp CD Ripper correctly then it will create the folder structure automatically. Once this was done, I found that I spent almost no time at all thinking about the physical disk storage aspect. I simply concentrated on getting the metadata right, a process I found to require manual intervention on almost every classical CD. The online databases are of very variable quality but I soon became quite slick at making the required edits to achieve a consistent approach.

Quote:Your comments about JRiver interest me. I agree that the cost is not exorbitant, but, looking at the media-rich but content-poor website, I find it hard to form a view as to whether JRiver does anything I need for which I do not already have a capable application. Certainly, it deals with aspects of media (video, for example) in which I currently have little interest. But if it can tag files more easily than, say, MP3Tag (which is very powerful, but presents the new user with a pretty steep leaning curve), I might be interested.

JRMC does far more than MP3Tag and also (inevitably) has a steep learning curve but the forums are very active and helpful. You can use JRMC for almost everything, including ripping, but I prefer dBpoweramp CD Ripper because it is the only ripper I have found to give me the choice of four online metadata databases. For this reason, I enter most of my metadata via dBpoweramp. Subsequent edits have been done in MP3Tag or (more often) in JRMC.

I think you get a 30 day fully functional trial of JRMC. It is now on version 19, so it has been evolving and improving over quite a long time. I was so impressed with its ability to display my CD collection that I paid up long before the 30 days were up. One thing I particularly liked was the very flexible 'panes view', which you can see in the attached screenshot.

JRMC is my tool of choice for rapidly reviewing my collection, making sure that all the metadata does what I expect and fixing any problems. It is also the application in which I sort out my custom Work tag. After saving any tag changes back to the FLAC files, all other media applications (such as MinimServer) reap the benefits.

David