This may take time I'm afraid. 81,000 files take a while to read...
I would have loaded just the 5 folders ...
You can load these with drag&drop from the Windows Explorer.
If you use the library function, then repeated loading of already scanned and unaltered files will go much quicker.
OK sorry and thanks, I'm not familiar with this program yet...
Did what you asked, Alt-T and there's no metadata for any of the 5 files.
That's too bad.
So now it would be best to import data from the filenames and foldernames. Otherwise, your project will come to a grinding standstill.
So, what does a real, complete path and filename look like for the 5 files?
It would also be nice if you could still post screenshots - sometimes a screenshot shows more than the description reveals.
All tracks are from the same album but they've ended up as single files in their own folder. iTunes somehow manages to place them all in 1 album.
Try Convert>Filename-Tag
Format string: %artist%\%album%\%title%
The preview in the converter should show which part of the available data ends up in which field, ideally, all fieldnames appear in bold type.
After the conversion, you would have set a common ALBUMARTIST manually, e.g. "Various Artists" or "Maurice Ravel" in the corresponding field in the tag panel and save that modification.
Converters and changes in the tag panel (and actions) apply always to all the selected files. So you can treat several files in 1 go.
Itunes has its own database. If you can get itunes to write this information to the tags, that would help a lot.
In the old days this could be achieved with a function that transformed one tag version (e.g. ID3V1) to another (e.g. ID3V2.3). THe trick would have been to convert ID3V2.3 to ID3V2.3 which would have forced iTunes to write the database contents to the tags.
I don't know if this function is still available.
Ok ohrenkino. Again, thanks for your help (and others too). Maybe best to close the thread.
To close a thread, tick the solution button under the respective post.
This detailed iTunes information is cached in the local library since prior to when you deleted the tags externally. Any change you try make now from within iTunes will cause the program to reach back into the actual file and update these to be empty.
I caution you to only try whatever solution attempt you come up with on a single track or album you easily recognize and can repair should things go wrong. Once you have a working solution you can apply it to the rest of the library.
MotleyG - thank you. I'm not entirely sure how I'll proceed because at the end of the day iTunes seems to be able to compile an album (including correct track listing) from single tracks in individual folders. It's this I'm tying to eradicate because sometimes I simply copy and paste albums onto an SD card to play in the car. Obviously there's no issue using an iPod, but it's capacity is low. Perhaps my mistake was to use iTunes in the first place.
I will have a think but will close this thread. Thank you, everyone, for your help and advice.
A decent player never relies on the folder structure but always uses the metadata to group files together.
Apparently, you stopped half way and never transferred the existing data (back) into the tags - as suggested.
The next step, that we never reached, would have been to use the tag data to rename folders which would have led to all files from an album being in 1 folder.
But for this stop you need structured data in tag fields as otherwise you only have a long string of characters but no indication where and what "an album" could be.
I can assure you iTunes is not using any witchcraft to handle your music files.
Prior to deleting all of the metadata information, there was sufficient data there. When you first added those files to your iTunes library this data would have let the program define the Artist and Album details. The iTunes library data is then kept separately in a single file that helps to optimize how quickly it can display and search.
The data for each song file is not updated on the fly, but rather only as any track is accessed to play or edit the data. So again I caution you to either restore these songs with the data from a backup if you have one, or seek some support from Apple to somehow use the current library to write it back. At some point, if you continue to use iTunes to play these files that have been stripped of the tags, then iTunes will start to update it's library and eventually will also lose the album structure you prefer.
Please tell me you have at least one complete backup from before these recent changes. Anything you may have had, even if not all 100% accurate, had to be better than nothing. Never make a change to any size library without a recovery option.
I have a complete back-up. I did this before using MP3tag.
When MP3tag reads the directory of the music folder I'm messing with it presents a list of all the MP3s in the right hand pane. Can they be copied somewhere else? If so, could MP3tag sort this collection into album and artist only? The information each MP3 has after I stripped off the tags is track title, album and group (artist).
Yes.
If the artist is not the same, then each file with a a varying artist will get its own folder.
Again: the best way would be:
Get data into the tag field while you can get it from the path.
This will be much harder if you move the files around.
Once you have filled the tag fields, you can use an action of the type "Format value" or the function Convert>Tag-Tag for _DIRECTORY
Format string: D:\mp3\%album%
The example you gave with files from Ravel have varying artists so you would have to find out how you want to treat such compilations. A good way would be to use a dummy album artist name like "Various Artists".
The suggested function would move all files with the same data in ALBUM to a single folder.
Ok thank you. I've abandoned this idea, and will let iTunes manage things despite the peculiarity of 1 album with all tracks (appearing on iTunes), but 1 track and 1 folder if there is any difference in the artist list, on the hard drive.
There are many different standard tag fields available.
These help define and sort your files into a manageable collection. Different apps have varying levels of tag support. But using just these three fields for a large library really limits your options for sorting in virtually any of them.
If your previous data has any tags, I highly recommend you restore the current list first. Then work backwards from there to correct them. mp3tag can help take care of this in short order. But guessing from filenames is not the best first step.
For anybody reading this unfortunate experience, and want to organise a bunch of files.
This is how I would do it, it's neither wrong nor right, just the way I would do it.
First thing to do is NOTHING but think how you want to have the files organised. Give this a seriously good lot of thinking, it will save some heartache later. Whilst doing this, load the files into MP3Tag and look at what you have. Then when you have given this a long hard look at and a great deal of thinking, then you can move on.
How you proceed now depends on what you have come up with, with all that thinking, but if you have the space to back the files up, then do this first.
This is a very simple way, it works for my 750,000 tracks, 7TB's. But I would do this first if you are wanting to do something more elaborate, later on. It's easy to understand.
I don't use "The" in the artists name. So "The Tornadoes" are under "T" and David Bowie is under "D" and the Strauss's would be "Strauss, Richard" and "Strauss, Johann" etc.
The way I have my stuff organised is....
Root Folder%artist%\first letter of artists name%year% - %album%%track% - %artist% - %track%
Root Folder\VA Artists%album%%track% - %artist% - %track%
Root Folder\Classical\ Composer's family name, first name%album%%track% - %artist% - %track%
So using the information you have. I would try sorting into the above, after you have verified the tag info. For those files without any tag info, then if you can grab this from what ever you have ie folder names, your own knowledge etc. and set those tags and then sort.
As for this OP as said before, don't try iTunes until you can be sure that there is a way to use it's stored database. If iTunes had placed them into one album folder that would solve a lot of you problems, but it hasn't, it just showing you what it thinks is an album from where ever it found the files. It hasn't really organised anything like us organising our own physical LP's & CD's. IF you are sure your backup is intact, then I would, delete what you have done and copy the backup to a new directory and start again. When you get stuck come back here with pretty pictures and clear word on what you have and want to have and I'm sure this can be done without to much fuss.
I done this on a bunch of files, field recording done over 50 years or more. with very little organising but the files had loads of info in the tags, to much info and with the help from here, I got it done, in a few weeks after battling on and off for 8 months on my own. The guy that recorded all this changed his methods every few years so it was a real nightmare to do.
There are a few other bits of FREE software I use on a daily basis. I'll not blow their trumpets here, so go take a look at what they can do. I will say the guy at voidtools is just as helpful as this forum is.