Ubuntu
banshee package

formatting discrepancies on my external hard drives..

Asked by murphy philippi

i have an external terabyte drive that is about a third full of mp3 files.

I began storing them when I was a windows user.

I want to partition the drive to a ubuntu compatible filing system, and move the folders (separated into individual artists, with folders for each album, wherein the individual song files are organized) individually to their new home in ubuntu. and here my problems have begun.

First off, I find it was easier to edit the content of the folders in windows. so my first question is what to do about re installing windows to make the editing go more simply?

can i install windows onto a partition of that external and operate it from there or do i have to have it on the main disc of the computer itself?

next, I have had the strange problem of doing the editing work in the folders as they exist on the hard drive, but when i upload them into the banshee (or other music management programs I have tried in ubuntu) not having them come across the same way.

For example, a mass of individual songs by one artist were all in one big folder.

I separated them into folders by album, and the drive shows them as such.

But moving them into the library in banshee, they displayed in the big mess i had just cleaned up. How come?

I have now got a new clean unused terabyte drive I want to use only for edited music folders.
But I do not want to have the problem of the music coming over in the state it was before I edited the files.

I have had no problem with this using windows.
But I dont want to use windows anymore except to edit, because I find the editing process much simpler in windows.

I would like input as to what file system and how to partition this new drive.for some reason the entire catalog has duplicated on the old drive, and the material there is not completely edited to my specifications.

I would like to edit properly and then move to the new drive. How best to do this?

The current drive has plenty of space, i just need advice on how to slice it to best do what I would like to see done.

Eventually the drive now holding the music will be formatted and made to hold video, but not until I am done with what I am asking,.

Please advise.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Ubuntu banshee Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Installing Windows on the external will need asking in a Windows forum but moving the folders around is no different in Windows as it is in any other OS, you are simply creating folders and cutting and pasting files....

Banshee is probably reading the IDv3 tags which are more than likely blank or a mess and not able to categorise them effectively. You can use easytag to give the files proper IDv3 tags and banshee will build a neater library for you.

The Artist -> Album -> Songs on the album (+ playlist file) storage method is very popular and how I store the few MP3s I have as I use Spotify and musictube to play media. If you intend to use the device in Windows then you will need to keep it formatted as NTFS as Windows (Despite the definitions for Ext4 being completely open) cannot read Ext4 and can only READ Ext2 and Ext3 with 3rd party software.

Revision history for this message
Bob Filipiak (bfilipiak) said : 		#2

If I may humbly suggest, you install a 'tag editor', available from the repositories.

I had a problem with rhythmbox mangling some tags (bug# https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rhythmbox/+bug/1087017). In comment, #3, I outlined how I solved the problem.

Since you want to keep the hard drive Windows compatible, then, whatever you do, DO NOT format it.

'actrionparsnip' is correct, in stating that managing your library amounts to naming files and folders.

Before you begin, you need to determine HOW you want to standardize your "tree structure".

My library consists of both complete albums and individual song files. To manage them I use this convention:

artist-name/album-title/track#-tracktitle

When it comes to multiple individual songs (that may come from more than one album, especially, when I DO NOT known the album title), I just dump them in 'Unknown':

e.g. artist-name/Unknown/tracktitle

Note, no track number, as many of these are not sourced from a CD, like the remainder of my library.

Once you have done arranging them, then you can use a tag editor to ""fix"" any mangled tags. One thing I did was to set "--" as the album title for those song where I do not know what the correct title is. Apparently rhythmbox does not like blank album title fields.

HTH

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask murphy philippi for more information if necessary.

To post a message you must log in.