MMFrLife wrote:What exactly are you doing?
You have a directory that you are moving individual tracks, from many different source folders, to a single directory?
Auto-Organize?
Well, ok, since you did ask!
I started with about 300,000 songs that were either ripped from physical CD's (I used to have thousands) or downloaded (from Amazon, iTunes, Bandcamp, the creators themselves or online websites like Ektoplazm). Needless to say, they were in all sorts of different formats, spelling, grammar, etc. and I'm a very organized guy (yeah, anal rententive is probably a fit label
).
As both a music lover and a musician, I'm very into music and want to be able to find things easily as well as create playlists however I want (I've got many ways to hear the tracks including four iPOD's). So I started to combine things with iTunes but somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 songs it became unusable and my search for a better media organizer started. It ended, obviously, with MediaMonkey.
Outside of your basic import & play approach, I've chosen to use some of the default fields differently and map all the custom fields for my own use. I also have done a LOT of studying and gathering of information so I can capture the primary genres (as I use them) for every artist along with all sub-genres, country, related artists, etc. I also keep track of both release dates and original dates, information about the album (compilation, reissue, remaster, soundtrack, bootleg, live, etc.).
Add all of that together along with all the scripts I run to make everything look consistent, the converting to use the same type and resolution, and the actual importing itself and it takes about eight hours per 1,000 tracks. Almost half of that time IS the importing process so I try to get everything setup then start an import and go to bed (or work, or dinner, etc.).
Here's how I import: I prepare about 1,000 tracks in a directory specifically used only for importing to MM (preparing consists of converting formats, removing images and other files I don't use - I only have a cover image that I rename as "folder.jpg" so each album should only have a cover image and the song tracks). Then, from inside MM, I hit the <INS> key and <OK> with my import directory checked. I should note that I always use a copy of each album since I AM using Auto-Organize and it can sometimes do some weird things with the files.
There you have it! Probably TMI and worthy of a tl;dr, but it is what it is. Needless to say, with the import process taking between three to four hours each time, when it stops early in an import, a lot of time gets wasted. I actually have started checking it in the middle of the night to see if the message is there so I can click the "No to all" button and go back to sleep.
Craig B. (a.k.a., NW Dreamer - Gold user)
