How do you manage your mp3 libraries, tagging, organisation

[Don Seer]

(topics merged.. but poll remains!)


Late last year i got a laptop to stem my transient lifestyle.. (i spend at least half the week outta town at my girls these days) and since forever i've had a big mess of mp3s... a stash at work.. a stash on home pc etc etc. now with the laptop i've got a stable constant thing with me wherever i am.

plus i have a car head unit that pulls songs from a memory stick.. so i needed to be able to just copy albums i've sorted onto that. 

since then i've been taking my collection of CDs and importing them into Windows Media Centre on my laptop and thats what i use to catalog everything... works best as i get to organise them on the harddisk as I want, but they're presented the same in windows media centre.. and i know that the mp3s arent "tied" into some kind of system where i dont have access to them.. it has the album art, the track names/numbers are all sorted... pretty fly really... love it..  i still have a long way to go.. but its great just being able to tap "ice" into the windows media centre front-end and see all the ice cube album covers then pick what i want. plus the laptop has a remote which can be handy as well...

and i also know that if i build another HTPC with a media remote everyhing will be available there

so how are you lot managing your stuff?





heres an example of how my shit looks right now in windows media centre..  window borders arent normally there but ALT+print-screen doesnt work when its full screen




and with a visualisation running..  (its just starting to play that song, its not there all the time..)

[Al Bundy]

http://www.dubcnn.com/connect/index.php?topic=172770.0

[Don Seer]

crazy! i looked to see if i'd made this topic before haha!


merged and keep the poll in the main section

[Al Bundy]

windows media center extender is about the only wmc thing i'd fuck with. There are so many better alternatives to that shit program.

[Don Seer]

yeah windows media player itself is pretty wack.. but its actually not bad at setting up the media for the media center extender.. the extender presents it fairly well.... the extender plays movies n shit too (some settings needed for some codecs though) so i can use the remote.. like i might get given a movie at work on a usb stick or something... then i go to my girls... i plug into the hdmi on my girls tv... and boom.. movie mode... the laptop has a remote tucked away... so fly... been wanting shit like this for years

the most important things to know about media centre are..

1) the "album artist" tags are needed for everything to be organised right
2) the "apply media information" thing that you should do after editting tags

[Rud]

sounds awesome. what notebook you got seer?

[Don Seer]

HP dv2535ea.. core2duo, 2 gig of mem, 160 gig hdd... 14inch screen (15s are cheaper but needed portability.. this is in my rucksack from home/work/girlies)

got firewire too.. i have nice sony camcorder i got for recording skate stuff about a month later (sony hc96)

its vga, svideo and hdmi out..
never really considered the hdmi but now i wouldnt be without it..

and lots of newer lcd tv's

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pavilion-Processor-Widescreen-Bluetooth-networking/dp/B000TNWDVC

[Rud]

Nice spec! i need to get a new notebook, cant decide what yet though!

yea hdmi is a must now!

[topshotta]

Mediamonkey is a great program!

Try it:

http://www.zshare.net/download/87797801a81441/
MediaMonkey Gold 3 with keymaker

[Jome]

Yeah, I recommend MediaMonkey as well, just take a look at this thread:

http://www.dubcnn.com/connect/index.php?topic=163330.0

There's no need for tagging, you can just organize the albums/singles in folders, and choose to view the folders in tree-view.

[1234]

I have it all on Windows Media Player. Its easier than those other media players. I gotta huge collection of albums and mixtapes.

[Shango]

the new winamp is the shit

[Don Seer]

I have it all on Windows Media Player. Its easier than those other media players. I gotta huge collection of albums and mixtapes.

it'll migrate to windows media centre nicely if you get a windows xp media pc, or a vista home premium one too.. digital convergence is coming..

in fact anything that does album art + stuffs the album artist tag in should work out great



the dope visualisations pack i got came from  http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070831/psychedelia-wmp-visualization/

pretty sure they'll work in windows media player too

[Ozir]

I use iTunes and Front Row on a Mac ...

[WICK1D]

Which program is best for an apple lap top