I have a large music collection. I have hi-res cover-art for almost all albums. I store the cover-art as folder.jpg, artwork.jpg, albumname.jpg and I embedd artwork.jpg as 'Front Cover' to each mp3 file using actions in mp3tag.

In VMC I had to add music from a read only share to prevent WMP11 in reducing folder.jpg to 200x200px. I had to use a small utility to update the cache to read the artwork.jpg files.

With 7MC the music gathering seemed much, much faster. I did let 7MC gain normal read/write access to my music directory and choose not to let media center to download information from the internet. 7MC is reading the artwork from the embedded artwork in the mp3 files. Looking in windows explorer I can now see that all my folder.jpgs are now hidden and suddenly 200x200px. So Windows or WMP12 is still working hard to mess up folder.jpg.

From a 7MC point of view I think the important thing is to name covers as artwork.jpg to have a backup and embed the artwork to each mp3 file.

As others have noted I too see that the music wall only display "random" artwork from artist named A-F. I guess this depends on the size of your music collection.

Is there a guide regarding how to organise/setup music?

My questions/issues:

1) How to organise multi-CDs?  Is it best to keep each CD as a separate folders - with suffix "(Disc 1)" etc    If so what about metadata - the tag 'album' should this include the suffix, e.g. should tag 'album' always exactly match the actual folder name?  WMP has previously destroyed my music folder - I ended up with new folders and pseudo tracks - specifically I had folders 'Best of abc' and also 'Best of abc (Disc 1)', and 'Best of abc (Disc 2)'.  So effectively I had duplicates.

2) What artwork is required for MCE (Windows 7 and/or Vista)?  People mention folder.jpg and artwork.jpg and cover.jpg and albumname.jpg and track tag 'FrontCover'.  What is required and where is it used?

3) I have hidden files in my music folders. Click properties it says I have 12 files but I can only see 10 tracks?  What is going on?  Interestingly when I try and add folder.jpg to the directory it tells me one already exists - but I cannot see it? Which program puts a hidden file there and why can I not see it?

4) What tags does WMP and MCE require?  There is a tag 'artist album' is this used by MCE or does it just use tags 'Artist' and 'Album'??

 Sorry to jump on this thread but I'm hoping you folks may have some of the answers

tgbsam

Is there a guide regarding how to organise/setup music?

My questions/issues:

1) How to organise multi-CDs?  Is it best to keep each CD as a separate folders - with suffix "(Disc 1)" etc    If so what about metadata - the tag 'album' should this include the suffix, e.g. should tag 'album' always exactly match the actual folder name?  WMP has previously destroyed my music folder - I ended up with new folders and pseudo tracks - specifically I had folders 'Best of abc' and also 'Best of abc (Disc 1)', and 'Best of abc (Disc 2)'.  So effectively I had duplicates.

For compilation albums I do the following:

Music\Rock\Best Rock Album In The World Ever

\CD1

\CD2

For the music files in the CD1 folder I would name the album in the metadata tags "Best Rock Album In The World Ever - CD1"

and the files in the CD2 folder would have an album name of "Best Rock Album In The World Ever - CD2"

If I called them both just the Best Rock Album In The World Ever it would show as one album in Media Center rather than two CD's.

tgbsam

2) What artwork is required for MCE (Windows 7 and/or Vista)?  People mention folder.jpg and artwork.jpg and cover.jpg and albumname.jpg and track tag 'FrontCover'.  What is required and where is it used?

Not an easy question to answer in a few words. Folder.jpg is the main image that gets used. Artwork.jpg and Cover.jpg are not system files. If your like me you would have a Folder.jpg present in each albums folder but I then also have a copy of that same image called Front.jpg as a backup. So if WMP overwrites my folder.jpg's I know I have a backup with the Front.jpg's

tgbsam

3) I have hidden files in my music folders. Click properties it says I have 12 files but I can only see 10 tracks?  What is going on?  Interestingly when I try and add folder.jpg to the directory it tells me one already exists - but I cannot see it? Which program puts a hidden file there and why can I not see it?

Folder.jpg is a system file which is hidden, go in to Folder Options in Explorer and un-check hide protected operating system files and they will then be visible in your albums folders.

tgbsam

 

4) What tags does WMP and MCE require?  There is a tag 'artist album' is this used by MCE or does it just use tags 'Artist' and 'Album'??

The fields are actually as follows: (7MC - I think Contributing Artists was called just Artists in VMC?)

Contributing Artists:

Album:

Album Artist:

For most all albums I set the Contributing Artists and the Album Artist to be the same, i.e the Albums is by Bob Marley so I put Bob Marley in to both fields. 

However if the album is a compilation album, if I am being lazy I would just put "Various Artists" in to both the Contributing Artists and the Album Artist fields.

However to do it properly you would put the track artists in to the Contributing Artists fields and "Various Artists" in to the Album Artists field, this way the album is still grouped together in Media Center as one album but each track shows the artist of that particular track. 

I think I've got all this the right way round!  Hope this helps. Have a search on the forums there are loads of threads discussing this kind of thing.

Thanks for swift reply.  Its great I am now sorting out my music (movies already well organised).  I have a few more questions if someone could help:

(1) Folder 'Album' i want to get this really organised - then I will use mp3tag to setup metadata tag 'album' automatically as an action

Folder name ideas (a) avoid excessive capitalisation, (b) use a suffix "(xxxx)" for release year - could mp3tag action auto extract the 'xxxx' and insert as music tags for release year? (c) use "{}" to denote special info, e.g. "{single}" or "{EP}", (d) any album 'Best of' I will include the artist name, i.e. I want all albums to be unique (no duplicate 'Best of', or 'Greatest'), (d) Not sure how to folder name 'compilation' albums?

 (2) Track filename also needs to be organised - then I will use mp3tag action to replicate as tag 'track'.

Track name ideas: (a) Should the track filename include a suffic for the track number? Also for multiple CDs should the track filename have suffix for example "2-04".  (b) Is there a mechanism in mp3tag to extract the suffix and setup the metadata tag 'track' automatically? 

(3) Artwork. Every 'Album' folder will have a file 'Folder.jpg' and I also make a copy called 'Folder backup nnn-mmm' where nnn and mmm are the pixel size, e.g. 300-300 or 445-445 etc.  This will (a) protect my artwork from being trashed by WMP and (b) give me a quick way to auto search and find better artwork.

Any way in mp3tag to use the 'Folder.jpg' and insert inside the track metadata?

(4) Metadata: 3 key fields.  'Contributing Artist' = artist for the track (differs if a compilation album); ''Album' = folder album; 'Album Artist' = artist (must be the same for all tracks on an album, so for compliations setup as "various artists").

Think the key is not to mess with metadata setup until all folders and filenames are correct.

tgbsam

Thanks for swift reply.  Its great I am now sorting out my music (movies already well organised).  I have a few more questions if someone could help:

(1) Folder 'Album' i want to get this really organised - then I will use mp3tag to setup metadata tag 'album' automatically as an action

Folder name ideas (a) avoid excessive capitalisation, (b) use a suffix "(xxxx)" for release year - could mp3tag action auto extract the 'xxxx' and insert as music tags for release year? (c) use "{}" to denote special info, e.g. "{single}" or "{EP}", (d) any album 'Best of' I will include the artist name, i.e. I want all albums to be unique (no duplicate 'Best of', or 'Greatest'), (d) Not sure how to folder name 'compilation' albums?

I do my folders like this:

 D:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album

For albums just named "The Best Of" for example I ensure I add the Artist name in as well so I don't have loads of albums that are just called "The Best Of" In the metadata I'd call it something like "The Best Of - The Police" or "The Best Of - The Kinks" or whatever.

tgbsam

(2) Track filename also needs to be organised - then I will use mp3tag action to replicate as tag 'track'.

 The actual filename of the MP3 file is not as important as you don't see that in WMP/WMC

tgbsam

Track name ideas: (a) Should the track filename include a suffic for the track number?

The file name of the tracks yes I would recommend you call them:

01 - Name of first track.mp3

02 - Name of second track.mp3

As it makes viewing the files in Explorer and MP3TAG easier in number order.  

But the name of the tracks in the metadata tags does not need number suffix, just call the tracks in the metadata tags what they are e.g.

Name of first track

Name of second track

tgbsam

Also for multiple CDs should the track filename have suffix for example "2-04". 

I would only do that if all the tracks off a multiple CD compilation album where all in the same folder. But if you put them in seperate sub CD1 and CD2 folders you wouldn't need to do that.

tgbsam

(b) Is there a mechanism in mp3tag to extract the suffix and setup the metadata tag 'track' automatically? 

I'm not sure. But you can auto number the tracks # tag 1,2,3,4,5 or 01,02,03,04,05 etc in MP3TAG. Just sort the files in the MP3TAG view by track number order using the number suffies you have in the files names and hit the auto number button.

[quote user="tgbsam"]

(3) Artwork. Every 'Album' folder will have a file 'Folder.jpg' and I also make a copy called 'Folder backup nnn-mmm' where nnn and mmm are the pixel size, e.g. 300-300 or 445-445 etc.  This will (a) protect my artwork from being trashed by WMP and (b) give me a quick way to auto search and find better artwork.[/quote\

Yes highly recommended

tgbsam

Any way in mp3tag to use the 'Folder.jpg' and insert inside the track metadata?

I never insert cover images in to the MP3 files. However Yes you can do this in MP3TAG.

tgbsam

(4) Metadata: 3 key fields.  'Contributing Artist' = artist for the track (differs if a compilation album); ''Album' = folder album; 'Album Artist' = artist (must be the same for all tracks on an album, so for compliations setup as "various artists").

Album = The name of the album, rest of the above is correct.

christian_s

I have a large music collection. I have hi-res cover-art for almost all albums. I store the cover-art as folder.jpg, artwork.jpg, albumname.jpg and I embedd artwork.jpg as 'Front Cover' to each mp3 file using actions in mp3tag.

In VMC I had to add music from a read only share to prevent WMP11 in reducing folder.jpg to 200x200px. I had to use a small utility to update the cache to read the artwork.jpg files.

With 7MC the music gathering seemed much, much faster. I did let 7MC gain normal read/write access to my music directory and choose not to let media center to download information from the internet. 7MC is reading the artwork from the embedded artwork in the mp3 files. Looking in windows explorer I can now see that all my folder.jpgs are now hidden and suddenly 200x200px. So Windows or WMP12 is still working hard to mess up folder.jpg.

From a 7MC point of view I think the important thing is to name covers as artwork.jpg to have a backup and embed the artwork to each mp3 file.

Your observations are correct here. However I wouldn't embed the covers in the MP3 files but that's just my choice. See options 2 & 4 on this thread for an explanation as to why.

Does anybody know the largest size music artwork that W7 MCE will accept?  E.g. if i have a Folder.jpg size 1000x1000 pixels will this be loaded into the MCE cache without compression?

People have mentioned using 500x500 hi res music artwork.  Is this size simply because thats what Amazon and other sites can offer? Or is there some technical limitation.

If a jpg was 20,000x20,000 then would this be loaded into the cache or would it be compressed and/or ignored?

It's a gig exercise to get hi res artwork so we need to make sure we only have to do it once and use the max / best possible size.

Dont know if there is a limitation, I just chose 600x600 for all of my covers. Looks right on large HDTV's and even our massive cinema screen..

I seem to remember 406x406 being touted as the resolution displayed within Windows 7 MCE.

dunno I just guested at a resolution to use, there was nothing at the time that said one way or the other.

Thanks for your help - I have been updating my music folder.jpg using paradise covers site.

I have just come across this thread http://www.simplify-i-t.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=85 which talks about loading png graphics as artwork tags.  Has anybody tried .png instead of jpg artwork?  Any thoughts feedback would be appreciated

Another question if i may

Does anybody know how to automate the process of scanning a music folder (and all sub folders) to find all files folder.jpg and to copy and rename to (say) folder_backup.jpg? (just to stop iTunes or WMP ever wrecking my hard work).

I am also thinking about trying MediaBrowser for accessing my music and this may require/allow different artwork (with maybe different quality) and again a quick automatic way to re-name files across lots of folders would be fantastic.

 @tgbsam.

I searched google and found this thread: http://www.den4b.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=641 .

You mention iTunes. If you have all your music in itunes as well then you can use iTSfv to check albums and export artwork to folder.jpg. artwork.jpg and a few other naming schemes.

- Chr