Media Monkey Tips and tricks
Media Monkey Tips and tricks Posted on: 14.04.2012 by Maryellen Cancelli So Im gonna sit down and go through my files. I have way to many. Im gonna use Media Monkey as I have already started a few transfers with it testing out what I want. Still not there and looking for more info. Found a lot of advise to use it on searches, but no real tips on what people have done with it, so I thought this would be a good thread.My issues so far is a lot of "unknown" track names, artist or titles. So any way I do it I still end up with a large file of Unknown. Was going to do it with genre/artist/track but found so many B/S genre or wrong genre that its going to still not complete my main task. So I believe im gonna skip genre all together so that all tracks will go under artist and group all my doubles together. This way I can pick and choose witch doubles to delete. That is my main thing I want to do. So any suggestions would be welcomed and add any tips and hopefully we can get some good stuff to help us all out. | |
| Russ Gorry 11.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
I'm a musician, and as such, I have a rather extensive digital media collection (measured in hundreds of Gigs of data). Over the years, I have tried/used just about every tagging app and media player you can believe of on either Windows or Linux platform. For me, MediaMonkey has always been the clear front-runner as far as a tagging app that balances power and intuitive design of the GUI. However, every person is going to have a different level of comfort and a different level of need and expectation of what they want out of their tagging app and media player. To anyone reading this, I cannot stress this one point strongly enough. No matter what tagging app you go with, and no matter what media player you go with, one core principle will save you time and time again across the board. Organize. Have a plan, have a system, and never deviate from it. When it comes to the embedded metadata in audio tags, every media player is, in some way, going to use them differently than other players. That's a fact. Some players will list your audio by the "Artist" field. Others may ignore that field and use "Album artist" field instead. Some players will, by default, group albums under the various artist heading based on a "compilation" value in a field, while others may use "various" as the flag it's looking for. Some media players (specific attn to iTunes here) use a lot of wonky proprietary types of metadata structures because they felt some obligation to reinvent the wheel. It all comes down to knowing the minute details of what you're using, how it's structured, and what its specific capabilities are. The same way that different media players handle metadata differently, so too do the actual tagging apps. The surest way to get your collection out-of-whack is to keep jumping back and forth between tagging apps. All it takes is having one app that auto-saves tags without a confirmation prompt, on you're well on your way to word salad for tags. Also of note is that some players don't actually change tags at all when you edit information from within the player instead of using an outside tagging app. Many players have their own internal databases, and won't change the actual tags, but instead, just put the info in the internal database and form a symbolic link to it. There's nothing more frustrating that believeing your collection is perfectly handled and arranged, then syncing to a device that, upon attempting to read the track tags, returns half your stuff with no cover art, missing track numbers, jacked up album names, and a billion other things you thought you corrected months ago. Well, you did... it just didn't save to the tags, just the player's internal database. And that does you exactly no good once you're in a situation where you share media between computers and/or devices. My nickel's worth of free advice is this. Set aside a few hours and download every player and tagging app that you see mentioned frequently. Play with each one for about 15-30 minutes each. Figure out which ones feel comfortable and seem to meet your individual needs and expectations. Then go all-in and delete everything except the ONE player you like most, and the ONE tagging app you like most. No fuss, no muss, done. Use them and get your current library in order. If you're using a player or tagging app that offers the ability to auto-arrange your actual library files and file names, take advantage of it. There's nothing but benefit to be had by having your actual library and your virtual tag library BOTH ship-shape and sorted. And have a pre-sort / pre-edit system in place. NEVER EVER EVER (infinity evers on this one) download new media and just toss it directly into your default media library. Always have a second folder set up elsewhere that you can use as a temporary "quarantine" location for your media until you can run the tagging app on it and get it perfect, and THEN stick it in your library. It makes things about a billion times simpler in the long run. On the other side of that coin, never have your media player pointed at the folder you use as the default download folder of your torrents/downloads to monitor and auto-add to your player library. Lastly, embed your album art in your tags. It makes it so much simpler in the long run when you know that if something comes up and you're just grabbing a random song here and a random song there to put on a portable device instead of whole albums, you'll still have everything looking perfect and functioning. Oh, I guess that wasn't last. This is. Do yourself a favor and don't mix file types. If you have a collection, odds are you already know what sound quality you want. If you have a portable device, you already know what files types are and aren't supported by it. Pick a file type and stick with it. Take the time to convert if you have to. If you're a FLAC guy/gal, then make everything FLAC. If you rock out with APEs or OGGs, then stick to that. If you're a standard MP3 type, then rock it like you own it. The reason being is that every player and every tagging app will do / won't do certain things with certain file types. Avoid the hassle and the heartache. Happy tagging, happy listening. Front-load your work and make the investment. I believe I spent a day or two getting everything in place when I first seriously started my collection. Over the past few years, that day or two has easily saved me cumulative time that can be measured in weeks, most likely. |
| Rosalee Mcclease 08.07.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
It's also Tools > Advanced Tag Management > Synchronize Tags. This will write the tag info directly in to the ID3 tags so the info shows up in other programs. Until you do this its sitting in Media Monkey Library database. Also I would check out MusicBrainz Picard @ http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard/ This program can find out what your unknown files are by doing a audio finger print analysis. If the music is popular you have a good chance for a match, less if it's some obscure band. It has a bit of a learning curve for it, it's worth it IMHO. Also check out http://trixmoto.net/mm/index.php for some good Media Monkey Scripts. Look at this page for Advanced Tagging Scripts http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/inde...Masks_Examples Modify them to suit your needs. I'm working on my library, it's taking a long time, almost there. Its 20,000+ tracks est. 150 GB So the 3 I'm using most are MediaMonkey, MP3 Tag, and MusicBrainz Picard You can also try Jaikoz @ http://www.jbelieve.com/jaikoz/ Note: The trial works on up to 20 tracks in one session. So it's like an album or 2 at a time. Then close it and reopen it again. MP3 tag I love because it show you a before and after, and you can move tracks up and down in the list. This is handy if a song has a wrong track #. You can then match the song correctly. If the length is available in the album your matching you can even match up that way. Using MP3 Tag with the Tag Sources from Discogs saved me while handling a large collection of music from Ultimix. Discogs has almost all of them. Most other sources have very few of them, if any at all. Well I hope this helps you. I know its been a few months, but I just came across your post and thought I would help you and others who see this. Best of luck, 2Many |
| Maryellen Cancelli 18.04.2012 |
Originally Posted by soundinmotiondj
another tip I tried I used file location to order all music. that way I could go by file and batch a file at a time. So all my playlist are in a folder. so I could rename all the songs in that folder with the album name as my playlist. As well as I have a lot of file already in folders by artist, how ever they are not tagged witht the artist name so they come up unknown. I can go to that group by file and retag them with the right artist name all at once. Depending on how you file your music this could speed things up for you. It helped me as I have 750gb of music that is filed correctly how ever not tagged. |
| Layne Koop 17.04.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
Back to tricks and tips: I use the add on Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix downloaded from the community . This is Vastly Superior(tm) to the built in version with MediaMonkey. http://www.mediamonkey.com/community /viewtopic.php?t=13000 Most of the other add-ons I used in v3 are shipped with v4. |
| Maryellen Cancelli 14.04.2012 | So Im gonna sit down and go through my files. I have way to many. Im gonna use Media Monkey as I have already started a few transfers with it testing out what I want. Still not there and looking for more info. Found a lot of advise to use it on searches, but no real tips on what people have done with it, so I thought this would be a good thread. My issues so far is a lot of "unknown" track names, artist or titles. So any way I do it I still end up with a large file of Unknown. Was going to do it with genre/artist/track but found so many B/S genre or wrong genre that its going to still not complete my main task. So I believe im gonna skip genre all together so that all tracks will go under artist and group all my doubles together. This way I can pick and choose witch doubles to delete. That is my main thing I want to do. So any suggestions would be welcomed and add any tips and hopefully we can get some good stuff to help us all out. |
| Brunilda Kora 12.12.2012 | Great post, SodPen.
NEVER EVER EVER (infinity evers on this one) download new media and just toss it directly into your default media library. Always have a second folder set up elsewhere that you can use as a temporary "quarantine" location for your media until you can run the tagging app on it and get it perfect, and THEN stick it in your library.
Only files in the "Done" folder make it onto the external drive.
I believe I spent a day or two getting everything in place when I first seriously started my collection. Over the past few years, that day or two has easily saved me cumulative time that can be measured in weeks, most likely.
|
| Russ Gorry 11.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
I'm a musician, and as such, I have a rather extensive digital media collection (measured in hundreds of Gigs of data). Over the years, I have tried/used just about every tagging app and media player you can believe of on either Windows or Linux platform. For me, MediaMonkey has always been the clear front-runner as far as a tagging app that balances power and intuitive design of the GUI. However, every person is going to have a different level of comfort and a different level of need and expectation of what they want out of their tagging app and media player. To anyone reading this, I cannot stress this one point strongly enough. No matter what tagging app you go with, and no matter what media player you go with, one core principle will save you time and time again across the board. Organize. Have a plan, have a system, and never deviate from it. When it comes to the embedded metadata in audio tags, every media player is, in some way, going to use them differently than other players. That's a fact. Some players will list your audio by the "Artist" field. Others may ignore that field and use "Album artist" field instead. Some players will, by default, group albums under the various artist heading based on a "compilation" value in a field, while others may use "various" as the flag it's looking for. Some media players (specific attn to iTunes here) use a lot of wonky proprietary types of metadata structures because they felt some obligation to reinvent the wheel. It all comes down to knowing the minute details of what you're using, how it's structured, and what its specific capabilities are. The same way that different media players handle metadata differently, so too do the actual tagging apps. The surest way to get your collection out-of-whack is to keep jumping back and forth between tagging apps. All it takes is having one app that auto-saves tags without a confirmation prompt, on you're well on your way to word salad for tags. Also of note is that some players don't actually change tags at all when you edit information from within the player instead of using an outside tagging app. Many players have their own internal databases, and won't change the actual tags, but instead, just put the info in the internal database and form a symbolic link to it. There's nothing more frustrating that believeing your collection is perfectly handled and arranged, then syncing to a device that, upon attempting to read the track tags, returns half your stuff with no cover art, missing track numbers, jacked up album names, and a billion other things you thought you corrected months ago. Well, you did... it just didn't save to the tags, just the player's internal database. And that does you exactly no good once you're in a situation where you share media between computers and/or devices. My nickel's worth of free advice is this. Set aside a few hours and download every player and tagging app that you see mentioned frequently. Play with each one for about 15-30 minutes each. Figure out which ones feel comfortable and seem to meet your individual needs and expectations. Then go all-in and delete everything except the ONE player you like most, and the ONE tagging app you like most. No fuss, no muss, done. Use them and get your current library in order. If you're using a player or tagging app that offers the ability to auto-arrange your actual library files and file names, take advantage of it. There's nothing but benefit to be had by having your actual library and your virtual tag library BOTH ship-shape and sorted. And have a pre-sort / pre-edit system in place. NEVER EVER EVER (infinity evers on this one) download new media and just toss it directly into your default media library. Always have a second folder set up elsewhere that you can use as a temporary "quarantine" location for your media until you can run the tagging app on it and get it perfect, and THEN stick it in your library. It makes things about a billion times simpler in the long run. On the other side of that coin, never have your media player pointed at the folder you use as the default download folder of your torrents/downloads to monitor and auto-add to your player library. Lastly, embed your album art in your tags. It makes it so much simpler in the long run when you know that if something comes up and you're just grabbing a random song here and a random song there to put on a portable device instead of whole albums, you'll still have everything looking perfect and functioning. Oh, I guess that wasn't last. This is. Do yourself a favor and don't mix file types. If you have a collection, odds are you already know what sound quality you want. If you have a portable device, you already know what files types are and aren't supported by it. Pick a file type and stick with it. Take the time to convert if you have to. If you're a FLAC guy/gal, then make everything FLAC. If you rock out with APEs or OGGs, then stick to that. If you're a standard MP3 type, then rock it like you own it. The reason being is that every player and every tagging app will do / won't do certain things with certain file types. Avoid the hassle and the heartache. Happy tagging, happy listening. Front-load your work and make the investment. I believe I spent a day or two getting everything in place when I first seriously started my collection. Over the past few years, that day or two has easily saved me cumulative time that can be measured in weeks, most likely. |
| Rosalee Mcclease 08.07.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
It's also Tools > Advanced Tag Management > Synchronize Tags. This will write the tag info directly in to the ID3 tags so the info shows up in other programs. Until you do this its sitting in Media Monkey Library database. Also I would check out MusicBrainz Picard @ http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard/ This program can find out what your unknown files are by doing a audio finger print analysis. If the music is popular you have a good chance for a match, less if it's some obscure band. It has a bit of a learning curve for it, it's worth it IMHO. Also check out http://trixmoto.net/mm/index.php for some good Media Monkey Scripts. Look at this page for Advanced Tagging Scripts http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/inde...Masks_Examples Modify them to suit your needs. I'm working on my library, it's taking a long time, almost there. Its 20,000+ tracks est. 150 GB So the 3 I'm using most are MediaMonkey, MP3 Tag, and MusicBrainz Picard You can also try Jaikoz @ http://www.jbelieve.com/jaikoz/ Note: The trial works on up to 20 tracks in one session. So it's like an album or 2 at a time. Then close it and reopen it again. MP3 tag I love because it show you a before and after, and you can move tracks up and down in the list. This is handy if a song has a wrong track #. You can then match the song correctly. If the length is available in the album your matching you can even match up that way. Using MP3 Tag with the Tag Sources from Discogs saved me while handling a large collection of music from Ultimix. Discogs has almost all of them. Most other sources have very few of them, if any at all. Well I hope this helps you. I know its been a few months, but I just came across your post and thought I would help you and others who see this. Best of luck, 2Many |
| Maryellen Cancelli 18.04.2012 |
Originally Posted by soundinmotiondj
another tip I tried I used file location to order all music. that way I could go by file and batch a file at a time. So all my playlist are in a folder. so I could rename all the songs in that folder with the album name as my playlist. As well as I have a lot of file already in folders by artist, how ever they are not tagged witht the artist name so they come up unknown. I can go to that group by file and retag them with the right artist name all at once. Depending on how you file your music this could speed things up for you. It helped me as I have 750gb of music that is filed correctly how ever not tagged. |
| Layne Koop 17.04.2012 |
Originally Posted by onebuckwild
Back to tricks and tips: I use the add on Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix downloaded from the community . This is Vastly Superior(tm) to the built in version with MediaMonkey. http://www.mediamonkey.com/community /viewtopic.php?t=13000 Most of the other add-ons I used in v3 are shipped with v4. |
| Maryellen Cancelli 17.04.2012 | So I came up with a plan, Changed all the genre to what they should be, Then used album to identify my play list. So all songs in a play list now have the same album name to match the playlist folder I had them. 93GB I worked on for 6hrs. got it all nice and clean in Media monkey. then did an auto orginize by Artist/track name. That ran over evening . wake up and go look at the main music folder. I see NO CHANGES. I open VDJ and no changes, I open tracktor no changes. All the genre and changes I made show no were except when Im in Media Monkey. So hope I missed something or Im kinda believeing what was the point. then add into this that I am at work open a bounch of tracks in windows 7 in a regular window. selected to add album as one of the headers. all songs from differnt. I selected all, hit properties. changed them all to one album and applied it to all of them. Pretty much same thing I did in media monkey, but it happen faster and it shows in the actual folder. So seam to work better. So what am I missing? |
| Earlean Mundstock 13.04.2012 | I have the same problem, but most of my music is running through a hard drive and not itunes. + like you i do have a lot of problems like most of the things are wrong. |
| Georgianna Eurick 13.04.2012 | You may wanna check this software. http://www.rinsemymusic.com/ Never used it so can't give you any feedback sorry |
| Maryellen Cancelli 13.04.2012 | That is my main concern at this point. I really want it all orginized better but with out sitting down and manually editing each track to get all tags right I dont see it happening. So now its just a matter of getting all the doubles out. For example the song that is in Promo only EEF file, Promo only rock and in the promo only mainstream file. All the same song. My main problem is that I found some tracks I have like 10 coppies. I figure thats a lot of wasted space when Im pushing 1tb of music and adding weekly with my promo only subscription. But the over all reason for this post is not just to find my answer, but what others have done and found best for them. You know the "oh I used media monkey for this and it was great because...." |
| Georgina Schatzman 13.04.2012 | After reading that I'm still not sure what you wanna do. Are you just looking to get rid of your duplicates? |
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