I am the proud owner of a new 8 gig Fuze–but I have not yet “introduced” it to my computer with Windows Media Player running. Why? Because I’ve been collecting audio files for nearly 10 years now–and many, many of them have incomplete tags. They probably were created before the tag format was standardized, or ripped using various software that didn’t create proper tags. So my WMP library is mostly just one big jumble.
On my own hard drive, the files are actually somewhat organized, into folders by artist–but my own folder system is not recognized by WMP, and the bulk of my files are listed under “unknown artist” when they show up in the library.
I’ve dragged and dropped a few files manually to the Fuze, but they only show up listed under “songs,” and in alphabetical order by original file name.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might wade out of this organizational nightmare and bring some sense to my file system, so that when I start putting more files on the Fuze, they are a bit better organized? Yes, I could laboriously wade through hundreds of files and manually re-tag them. No, I’d really rather not have to do that. Suggestions would be most welcome.
Actually, what I would REALLY like (listen up, Sandisk people) is an option added to the Fuze to organize files by a user-defined system of folders, as opposed to just by song, by album, by “favorites,” by genre, etc.
sorry to say, but most mp3 players now do not work in the folder / file method anymore. don’t get me wrong, I love browse by folder, and all my mp3 collections are voided of id3 tags, but these new mp3 players are solely based off id3 tags for organization. why? I don’t know, maybe because ipod set that standard.
and for some reason, the two DB cannot be mingled (folder vs id3 view / organizatio), or there is a reason why it is taking a long time to implement the two together. I myself would like a mp3 player that browses by folder view only and have only music play back feature. the old mp3 players were the best, where they would be searched and organized by folders set by the user, and would display the id3 tag; not depend on the id3 tags.
I am the proud owner of a new 8 gig Fuze–but I have not yet “introduced” it to my computer with Windows Media Player running. Why? Because I’ve been collecting audio files for nearly 10 years now–and many, many of them have incomplete tags. They probably were created before the tag format was standardized, or ripped using various software that didn’t create proper tags. So my WMP library is mostly just one big jumble.
On my own hard drive, the files are actually somewhat organized, into folders by artist–but my own folder system is not recognized by WMP, and the bulk of my files are listed under “unknown artist” when they show up in the library.
I’ve dragged and dropped a few files manually to the Fuze, but they only show up listed under “songs,” and in alphabetical order by original file name.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might wade out of this organizational nightmare and bring some sense to my file system, so that when I start putting more files on the Fuze, they are a bit better organized? Yes, I could laboriously wade through hundreds of files and manually re-tag them. No, I’d really rather not have to do that. Suggestions would be most welcome.
Actually, what I would REALLY like (listen up, Sandisk people) is an option added to the Fuze to organize files by a user-defined system of folders, as opposed to just by song, by album, by “favorites,” by genre, etc.
sorry to say but you will have to tag all your music. the player only organizes by id3 tag.
sorry to say, but most mp3 players now do not work in the folder / file method anymore. don’t get me wrong, I love browse by folder, and all my mp3 collections are voided of id3 tags, but these new mp3 players are solely based off id3 tags for organization. why? I don’t know, maybe because ipod set that standard.
I don’t think that’s the case; there are plenty of current mp3 players that allow browsing by tags and folders. The Sony 72x and 82x series just introduced, Archos players, Insignia players, the Trekstor Vibez (not sure about other Trekstor players), the Samsung P2, the iRiver E100, and there are probably more. It seems to me the trend is actually toward having both methods. The players with only tag browsing seem to be in the minority.
There are some tools that can help. Tag&Rename comes to mind. It’s primarily used to rename files based on the tag info, but it can also do the opposite. If you have a somewhat consistent file naming convention you can define a file name mask template that lets Tag&Rename pull the artist, album and track info form the file name and create the corresponding tags. Also, it can process individual files, whole folders or entire trees.
I haven’t tried it myself and I’m at work now so I can’t try it, but I think you can even pull the artist and album info from the folder structure (assuming you have \Artist\Album folder structure). So even if your file names aren’t consistent you might be able to get halfway there just from the folder name.
i had no idea there were that many mp3 players that had the folder feature. although I don’t get the previlage of using any of those players thoroughly, nor have the money to buy them all. I’ve had an Insignia player, but it didn’t have browse by folder. and since it’s just started happening, maybe sansa will have that feature in future products. I’m still waiting on the perfect music only player that will have a alarm feature. =D
Thanks… Actually, I did download and try Tag & Rename, but found it difficult to figure out, and I wasn’t in the mood for a learning curve, so I gave up.
Then I found a little thing called Fixtunes that seems to be doing the trick–with a lot of help from me, but it’s quite easy to use. The first 50 tunes “fixed” are free; after that, you have to buy the software. Which I promptly did. Slowly but surely, I am wading my way through the mess.
Fixtunes first searches for all audio files. It processes all the ones it can easily identify and tag–and moves them to a location designated by the user (in my case, everything is going to a “fixed music” folder on the external hard drive). Then you can run batch processes to look up all the unidentified songs in an online database. Songs with a probable match go into the “identified” category, and then you can verify (or edit) their information, mark them “fixed” and continue on your way.
So far… out of 1872 audio files, I have 370 “fixed,” 836 “identified,” 555 “unidentified” and 59 not yet looked up. The not-yet-fixed categories include a lot of files I am not going to bother with; some duplicates, some stray oddities that found their way in somehow, some stuff I once downloaded for my sister which I have no interest in keeping, etc.
Somewhere in the midst of this, I had to hunt around online and find out how to “flush” the Windows Media Player library and rebuild it, so that now it only looks to that “fixed music” folder on the external hard drive. And then I learned that some of those “fixed” files need a little further fixing, once WMP gets its hooks into them. But slowly, very slowly, I am building a new library that is organized by artist. I expect that sometime in the next decade, I will have those files transferred to the Fuze. Five minutes after I finish the job, I fully expect that Sansa will release a firmware update that allows a user-defined organizational structure.
Now why didn’t someone tell me 10 years ago I was going to need this??
Thanks… Actually, I did download and try Tag & Rename, but found it difficult to figure out, and I wasn’t in the mood for a learning curve, so I gave up.
Yeah, it’s a bit intimidating at first, but it is very powerful. Sounds like your solution is working though. As someone else mentioned, MediaMonkey also has some great tagging features (in addition to being a great library manager in general). Foobar also has good mass tagging.
But slowly, very slowly, I am building a new library that is organized by artist. I expect that sometime in the next decade, I will have those files transferred to the Fuze. Five minutes after I finish the job, I fully expect that Sansa will release a firmware update that allows a user-defined organizational structure.
Now why didn’t someone tell me 10 years ago I was going to need this??
You’re probably right about the FW :smiley:. Even so, you’ll be glad you bit the bullet and got your tags organized. Once you do it really opens up a whole range of possibilities that you just don’t have with filenames only. I won’t argue that folder navigation can be very convienient, but once you start using more advanced tag-based library management tools like MediaMonkey or even Winamp’s Media Library (both of which I’d strongly reccomend over WMP), you’ll wonder how you lived without it. Good luck!
How long does the free trial last? What do I get?
The free trial allows you to look up and identify up to 50 songs with FixTunes. After that, you must purchase the program. If you do not purchase FixTunes, you can still use the program to view your music and fix songs, but the look up and automated functions will not work. The program is fully functioning during the trial period. The reason we don’t offer a trial period based on time (i.e. one week) is because most users can fix and organize all their music in just a day or so. If we gave away a week for free, no one would buy it.
Media Tagger and mp3tag are also some good free tag programs. I find myself using mp3tag a lot, as I mostly have albums - it can look up albums from Amazon.com and tag your songs, including Album art. It can also extract album art from songs and by default puts it the directory’s folder.jpg.
@thoma wrote:
it was NS-DV series 4gb, not xG , the older one. the new ones now look kind of weird.
Yes, that’s the one. They just released a significant update for it, believe it or not. They gave it just about the same functionality as the newest model including file + tag browsing and bookmarks. They’re great with firmware but I couldn’t live with the sound quality, especially on the newer model.
I’ve loaded the MP3Tag program and have been playing around with the different tags trying to figure out how the Fuze organizes the files. I can’t figure it out. It sees to randomly sort the files.
My goal is to play Podcasts in order that they were created. The Fuze will always sort the latest one first on the list.
I changed the filenames to 1.mp3, 2.mp3, 3.mp3; Title name to A, B, C and Track tag to 1, 2, 3 but this doesn’t work. I can’t figure out what tag it’s using to sort the files.
Also, check out easytag. It’s very powerful for tagging files, as it can deduce the info from file and / or folder names. Especially, if you have a lot of files named in the same manner, it makes the job a lot easier.
Also, it can rename the files the way you want, using the tag info, or process the tag fields (remove UNNECESSARY CAPITALS or make the first letters of each word Capital etc.). Actually, it can do everything pretty much imagenable for a tag editor and automates the task as far it can be automated. Or at least, I can’t figure out any more features I’d like to add. It’s a bit slow at times, but I think this is because the tag file structure.
