Ugh, where to start! First time jukeboxer here, and I know NOTHING!

[Mattiekrome]

Hello everyone, looks like I have "moved away" from building my MAME cab to something a "little" more practical, a jukebox 

Reason behind this is because I have a GREAT set of DCM 10" floor speakers and a 600w Kenwood amp in the garage, and instead of letting them sit there and rot, I have decided to try to find something to do with them.

Ok, to get the easy stuff out of the way first.  I have a small MP3 collection that I have built over the last 10 years or so.  Of course all of them have had the ID2/ID3 tags stripped.  So basically all I have are MP3's with nothing more than a filename used as a title/artist. 

I would like to get all my MP3's in "good" shape, if that makes any sense.  I got an iPod a few months back, and couldn't beleive how cool it was to download MP3's from iTunes and get the artist, title, cover art, genre, etc to display on the iPod.  Now whenever I listen to my old non iTunes MP3s on my iPod and get nothing but a filename, I get depressed 

I want my MP3's to all be built like they had all been downloaded from iTunes, for consistency within my iPod and new jukebox.  So starting with nothing but a filename, what would be the best way to go about getting my MP3's in order.

I've seen some apps. that will take a filename and break it down into ID3 tags.  But when it comes to album art, genre's, etc does it come down to a manual process hanging out all night on wal-mart and amazon.com, or is there type of program that I can run the MP3's through to grab certain kinds of info?   Thanks! 

EDIT ------ (Forgot to add this) -------------------------------

Currently my MP3's are all in one folder.  I've seen some links on here for album cover art search apps, but from what I can see there has to be a certain file structure before this will work...

Also wondered where the album cover art is stored as it not actually written in the MP3 tags...  So really its two seperate files joined by some type of link or pointer?

[Barry Barcrest]

The album art can be embedded in the mp3 file. I use Tag & Rename as you can also tag the files from the filename as you mentioned. Tag&Rename can tag and get album art from amazon for you but you really need your albums in seperate folders for it to work the best.

[Space Fractal]

None of the software out here, as Im aware (includning my own) does not support embedded cover files, because they take very much space and take longer time to read.

- First use a software to tag them:
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm (Barcrest recommered).
http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/ (as I use).

When you have tagged them from the filemask you use. you can use rename files from id3, or like they named in both software to move your files in a better scape with directorys like this:

Artist/Album/TrackNumber - Title.mp3

which must users/software use. Some software can use diffecent type of styles, but all software should support the above file mask or using with ID3 tags alone.

If you have singles, there are also software out here to use artist/title only (Wincab which is most popular).

As Barcrest said, covers work best for one coverart per folder (using folder.jpg as name, which is Windows Media Player style, which for some reason is hidden). If you cant rename to folder.jpg, and Windows Media Player have hidden the file, and you must change Explorer to show hidden files and delete them. The may been some problems, why I dedicated to support cover.jpg as well (but many other software would show first cover found in that folder).....

[richms]

If you grab the mixer app from musicip.com it will let you tag your files based on what the music is, handy when you get some files off someone called track1.mp3, track2.mp3 etc etc...

[rovingmind]

albumartfinder for mac will embed the album info into the mp3 file, it works with itunes.  (not a mac head, its just that i'm doing this exact thing to my library and its currently on an ibook for portability)

My id3 editing is all done by individual file so it gets put in the way i like it.  I google album info and type by hand.  Of course i'm also being extremely picky about the way my album info is being displayed.  I havn't seen any software capable of doing it the way i want since most of my albums are  currently compilations. 

Itunes is working nicely for this since it can be set to automatically sort the music directory by artist.

[richms]

How are you handling the compilations? I lookup using the freedb lookup in foobar2000 but that doesn't populate the album artist field so I go and put VA or Ministry of Sound or whatever in there myself after tagging the title and artist fields from freedb. There are a few I have done that have had them the wrong way around but thats a quick fix with a formatting script.

[rovingmind]

How are you handling the compilations? I lookup using the freedb lookup in foobar2000 but that doesn't populate the album artist field so I go and put VA or Ministry of Sound or whatever in there myself after tagging the title and artist fields from freedb. There are a few I have done that have had them the wrong way around but thats a quick fix with a formatting script.

I leave the album artist field blank, type in the song artist field by hand, rename the album if its a set that uses multiple discs so that each disc shows as an individual album again by hand, basically i rewrite the id3 tags for every song by hand, alot of cut and paste.  Itunes has a nifty check box if its a compilation album.
I add in the song number itself and strip out the 1 of 2 albums fields and the of "X" song fields

by getting it to display as a single album itunes stores it in its own single folder instead of stripping the songs out and sorting them into the artist folders.  With album view i can see how they are displayed.  Once i get them to view the way i want i use AlbumCoverFinder to pull the album art from the web.  It pastes the file into every song in the album.  If it cant i grab a single album image and paste it into just the first song of the ablum. 

I still havn't decided what jukebox program i'm going to run yet. 
I'm rebuilding my song files for Mobile Music first, with a jukebox as a secondary consideration.  My goal is to have NO loose songs not tied into albums.  Any "loose" singles get listed in a Various Album but not as a compilation that way they still get filed by artist.  For those i post a single picture of the band from google searching into the first song file.

[Space Fractal]

How are your filemask used with compilations?

do you use something like this:
 compilations/ALBUM/TRACK - TITLE - ARTIST.mp3
 compilations/ALBUM/TRACK - ARTIST - TITLE.mp3

 ARTIST/ALBUMS/TRACK - TITLE - COMMENT.mp3 (the last COMMENT whould used in MultiJuke and listed in Artist line)
 ARTIST/ALBUMS/TRACK - COMMENT- TITLE.mp3

MultiJuke should could use all these above formats (where you can create deficcent libraries in thier own list), and can show in singles as well (NOW! and such compilations, which is really singles, not albums).

You can even listed songs as singles, even filemask structor is act like album and leave real albums into thier own list.





 

[rovingmind]

i havn't gotten that far yet.  I'm still working on how they are displayed, at the moment i'm leaving the filenames alone.  Once i get finished i'll go back through and do that. 

for display purposes i prefer the compilations to be listed as a single album.  Some of them Are DJ collections, ultimate 80's 14 disc set and such.  I guess thats just my own preference. 

Doesn't Multijuke work on Pc hardware?  I havn't set up a jukebox program yet, i'm waiting till i get my song library closer to being finished.  I have more ripping to do and some records to copy.  Plus i don't have the hardware that will actually be running the jukebox program hooked up yet.

[Mattiekrome]

If you have singles, there are also software out here to use artist/title only (Wincab which is most popular).

Yeah, I forgot to add, 95% of my MP3's are singles.  I might have to check into wincab, since it still works with touchpanel screens. 

[Space Fractal]

Only Singles = of course Wincab 

rovingmind: I do not hijacking this thread about MultiJuke, rather to say it a Windows based software (until I release it to Linux)

[rovingmind]

yeah, it looks like a sweet app, i'll definitly be giving it a run through once i get my hardware together, Since this isn't my thread i'll shut up now

[richms]

Ah, ok, I use the presence of the album artist field to change how I display them, and leave the track artist in the artist field so that crap programs still show something correct when playing them (winamp, media player 10 and a couple of others) - the compilation tickbox in itunes seems to just drop a compilation tag into the tags which nothing else seems to support.

I have my rename script in foobar split into 3 directory trees depending on compilation or artist album

x:\music\VA\N\Now thats what I call Music\Disc 2\12. Radiohead - No Surprises.mp3

or

x:\music\full albums\H\H.I.M\And Love Said No\03. Buried Alive by Love.flac

Anything that I dont have a full album of (missing tracks of it or only one good song) I delete the album tags and track number and put it in

X:\music\single tracks\M\M.C. Hammer\Can't touch this.wma

So I really have 3 repositorys of music to look thru for things. I also keep the cuesheet and album art in the case of the first 2 (Were I have them), but not the loose tracks. I split it into folders based on the first letter since it gets really slow navigating with more then a few hundred directorys in a single directory. A couple of letters will have to be split by the second letter too if I get much more music since its already got too many folders in there to navigate quickly.

All the MP3s I remove the v1 tags and only have a 2.4 tag in them. Takes longer importing peoples messy music collections then re-ripping them myself sometimes it seems.

Foobar keeps quite a nice library that you can search on, but it includes embedded lyrics in that too which is why I have opted for keeping them seperately in the music folder as .lrc or .txt files.

[Space Fractal]

Use 3 libraries in MultiJuke:

1. Use EXPLORER for your compilations and use TITLE-ARTIST as filemask.

2. Use ALBUMS for your albums (x:\music\full albums :: NONE\ARTIST\ALBUM\TITLE)

3. Use SINGLES for your singles (X:\music\single tracks :: NONE\ARTIST\TITLE)

btw, tracknumber is not supported with . after the number, but it should show correct anyway, so no problems here.  Butit would show the tracknumber in the titleline instead of artistline, so you need to disable "show track number" in config/features, so it dosent show track number 2 places.

It can still show artist letters for SINGLES, since you can that in the settings.

btw lyrics is not supported yet, but I may put that in one of the next version (it on the todo list).

So this was completly why I developed my own software to support various type of libraries (because I have some thing likes these as well), and you do not even need to enable ID3, since it just whould slowdown, so use the above filemask.

Sorry If I hijacked the thread.

[rovingmind]

the compilation tickbox in itunes seems to just drop a compilation tag into the tags which nothing else seems to support.

Thats good to know, means i still have alot of editing to do though.  I'll have to start using a filemask as well as id3 tags sooner than i thought.

[DigitalFusion]

anyone ever used fixtunes?  seems like it would do the trick

(BTW - I am in somewhat the same boat as the OG poster, but a lot of my files have the ID tags, just no organization or album art)

[DigitalFusion]

DONT get fixtunes.  I went and paid for the license only to find out that it embeds the cover art into the MP3's, which is not compatible with any of the jukebox software available!

[rovingmind]

the compilation tickbox in itunes seems to just drop a compilation tag into the tags which nothing else seems to support.

More importantly for my current library, is that it keeps the compilation albums together as a single album instead of tossing the song files into the artists folders.  I'm focusing more on file structure for archiving as i add the id3 info.