Music collection organisation for dummies

[Renoman]

Have read all i could find on here that made any sense, but I am still unsure on how to approach this....

I have a massively huge mess of music and videos that is on an external HD that has been amassed by playing swaps with friends - and its a mess. Its about 200G, with god knows how many duplicates and folder within folder within folder, with a few itunes Libaries thrown in just to confuse things...

There is plenty of good stuff in there, and my iTunes Libary is sitting on around 30G just from exploring, but it needs to be sorted properly.

How.....? Without spending 3 years going through it!! Is fixtunes the go? Is anything of a freeware type any good?

[Renoman]

Was is really that silly a question...? Think I might have to borrow an old PC and use Media Monkey to sort it all out on the external HD, and then re-import back into iTunes.

PC beig used to get around a Mac. Dammit.... wot an 'orrible concept...

[TommyMac]

make a new library, import the files, do the "duplicate files" list in itunes, and sort from there.


200gig, sounds fun

[Renoman]

Originally Posted by TommyMac

make a new library, import the files, do the "duplicate files" list in itunes, and sort from there.


200gig, sounds fun

Kinda exactly what i am desperately trying to avoid... will take ages and it wont tell me which is the best (highest bitrate) version to keep anyway.

Anyone here forked out for Fixtunes? ie - is it any good? Apparently they are developing a Mac version of Media Monkey, but not for a while.

[TommyMac]

how is the library looking now, just by folders of album, or did you sort it manually via artist then album?

if its just a big massive mess, i wouldnt bother, just start from scratch.

what do the filenames look like, make any sense or just random?

[bljpoad]

Just how much of a mess are we talking here?
- Berwyck

EDIT: ^ Yeah what he said ^

[Renoman]

Originally Posted by bljpoad

Just how much of a mess are we talking here?
- Berwyck

EDIT: ^ Yeah what he said ^

enough.... was created by playing swaps with a whole bunch of friends at work. We brought in our portable HDs, and copied each other entire collections.

Many many many many (many) folders, with what lots of repeats. Lots of folders full of singles, albums, itunes playlists etc etc etc. Every music format known to man.... (and lots of shit music i know i will delete. I discovered something called kanye west in this collection. nasty...)

I am not doing it manually....

(edit - i want your job!)

a bit of an idea of the mess....

http://i363.photobucket.com/albums/o...d/Picture1.png

[bljpoad]

gah! That does sound and look a bit messy. Unfortunately if I was in your position I would probably resort to doing it manually. You could possibly have a go at making an automator work-flow to sort through it all....

I just had a look at Fixtunes and it didn't really work too well for me (I have about 30 unsorted songs in my iTunes library). It got them right about half of the time, so you probably would want to keep an eye on it and do it song by song (which would be crud for 20GB). It did fare ok with the songs that were say "Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning" sort of thing, is that how the majority of the files are?
- Berwyck