Library File Management

[Codebunnie]

I have a really convoluted music collection.

I did a search of my hard drive and I have a whopping 60 gigs of music. I see that MM has quite a few features but I am having trouble trying to figure out which steps/features I should use, and in what order, to accomplish my task.

Here are my problems:

1) Alot of the files are named improperly. They have all kinds of naming conventions like random characters, some are named just by song title, some by artist/title, etc etc, I want to rename all of my files by Artist - Track title.

2) I have a lot of duplicate files that have all kinds of file names.

3) Alot of the tracks are missing tags, and alot of them that do have tags, have the wrong info in them.

Basically what I am looking to do is to get rid of all the duplicates, get the right tags for the songs that are left, and then rename all the files in Bulk based on the tag content, with the naming convention of Artist - Song title.

How do I go about doing this? Are there bulk features for these options? I am going through 60 gigs or music here!

At the moment, the system is scanning for duplicates based on content.

Any help is appreciated.

[Squargle]

Here's some information which may be of some use on all three issues. There may also be some quite useful scripts you could use useful for you too.

1) Files are named improperly.
You could use the tag information to correct the file names by going to "Tools > Auto Organize Files..." (Alternatively press Ctrl+R with the relevant files highlighted).

To do this en masse you could use an "Auto-Organize" rule, which will use the tag information in all your files to sort your music library into a coherent order and naming system. This option can be found in"Tools > Options > Library (tree node) > Auto-Organize (tree node)"

You'd need to create a rule similar to the one below:
...\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> - <Artist> - <Title>

This would ensure your music is sorted by Artist and then Album, with individual tracks tagged by order number and song title.


2)Duplicate files.

Here's some content from MediaMonkey help on this subject:

Deleting Duplicates
MediaMonkey offers 2 ways of getting rid of duplicate tracks: by finding duplicate titles, or by finding tracks with identical audio signatures. Both methods require that you choose which track to delete since automatic deletion could result in the 'wrong' track being deleted.

Duplicate Titles
In the Tree, go to the Library > Files to Edit > Duplicate Titles node. The tracklist will fill with tracks that have identical titles. Manually delete the tracks you no longer require.

Duplicate Content
In the Tree, go to the Library > Files to Edit > Duplicate Content node. You'll be prompted to analyze your library for duplicates. Once analysis is complete, click the '+' to show which tracks have duplicates. Manually delete the tracks you no longer require.

Note: You can have tracks analyzed for duplicate content when they are added to the Library. To do so, enable this option in Tools > Options > Library.

3) Tracks have missing tags.

In this instance you can highlight the tracks with missing tag information and then go to: "Tools > Auto-tag from Web..." (Alternatively press Ctrl+L)

Add/update the tag information as necessary.