How do you organize your audio-video collection on PC?

[theredcommando]

So we have tons of audio and video content in different format. Now the next big question is how do you keep count and manage them?

Tagging is one way to identify the content quickly. But how do you access the content instantaneously? Like for example I want all songs by RD Burman in my collection. Are there any tools that you use? Does any tool support offline access(means I connect external drive and my library maintains reference etc)
Music library is one helpful tool to organize them. Whats your favorite? Winamp for example has pretty good library and you can use jump to search for any song and it gives result by filename, artist etc.

Any hands on experiences and strategies? Please share it here folks!

 

[aashish351]

I use Mediamonkey and I think it is one of the best out there.

 

[Shivam]

I like foobar.

 

[musicbee]

MusicBee is the best for organizing, tagging, managing. Foobar is good too but not the Swiss army knife MusicBee is.

I used MediaMonkey previously but of late I found it not recognizing a few of the albums i.e. not adding them to the library so I've stopped using it.

I also use XMPlay a fair bit especially when I'm working as its light weight and runs in the background. It also does not require installation so I have it installed in my DropBox folder and that way I can use on any device even when I'm traveling.

Also, check out Jaangle... its fun. Lyrics, artist bio, pics, etc. on the fly when the music is playing.

MusicBee has a very active forum and the creator visits/posts on the forum often and is also open to suggestions.

Of note, most of have DSPs that color the sound. I find Foobar and XMPlay to be most accurate in terms of SQ and also the best when using the right DSPs.

 

[technobhatt]

Just read this one as well

Best Free Music Player and Organizer

 

[Ashutosh78]

I use the Itunes good to tag and add art work I can also add lyrics on the music files. I think after going through above post will try out these options.

 

[sbg]

Any questions?
Ask my folders!

 

[goyal.sanchit]

For maintaining and organising the list of movies I have on external hard drive I use EMDB (Eric movie database). Its a wonderful software which does the work and doesnt take too much space.

 

[musicbee]

For maintaining and organising the list of movies I have on external hard drive I use EMDB (Eric movie database). Its a wonderful software which does the work and doesnt take too much space.

I've used it previously and the feature allowing HTML export to a website is great. Lets you share your movie collection online.

Unfortunately, have not found anything that does the same for a music collection though.

 

[goyal.sanchit]

I've used it previously and the feature allowing HTML export to a website is great. Lets you share your movie collection online.

Unfortunately, have not found anything that does the same for a music collection though.

I do not know about that feature! Maybe would try it someday.

 

[musicbee]

I do not know about that feature! Maybe would try it someday.

Yup. It has a HTML export option. Export to a local folder and then upload to your website host via FTP. It pulls data from IMDB so you can have your own movie collection on your website looking just like IMDB.

 

[ukjeyaraj]

I used media monkey and find it very very comfortable

 

[kingajit]

Bros,

I am eagerly looking forward to some good recommendations for organising Indian music. I have embarked upon a project to transfer all my collection to HDD and keep it it on a server. The english music is a breeze to organise and is almost automatic but the desi albums are giving a real headache and taking a lot of time! I have each album in FLAC, WAV, ALAC and MP3 format and this means I have to make the individual album entries manually for the desi stuff 4 times!

Hope some can suggest a software which has a good database for desi music..cheers

 

[baijuxavior]

I'm using MediaMonkey to manage my music collection and XBMC for Video collection. MediaMonkey is a great tool. If you have properly tagged the music files, then it is a breeze to find any song which you want. For example you can right click a song and select the option 'Find more from same artist' or composer to get all the songs by that particular artist/composer. It also supports multiple artists, if a song has two artists A and B, then it will list that song for both Artist A and Artist B. You can also install minilyrics plugin and embedder to view synchronized lyrics. A snapshot of my mediamonkey in action is posted below.

 

[theredcommando]

Thanks a lot guys.

@kingajit
Mass tagging-renaming tools should help you in such cases. Some tools allow to generate tag info from file-parent directory name etc.

Media monkey and Music bee seems to be the preferred choices here.
One function that I liked from Music bee was, right click -> search -> system node. This would list all the files in that folder. You can afterwards tag, add to playlist etc.

This is especially important in cases where files are not tagged and file structure is the only reliable way to deduce song information.

 

[kingajit]

Dear Baijuxaviour & Theredcommando, many thanks for your prompt responses. I have purchased mediamonkey and tried using it for tagging desi abums. It is not efficient when it comes to desi albums but works accurately for english albums. The data base which it uses for desi albums have very few unless you guys are using some specific database to fetch the data from. At times I have wondered if there was any way mediamonkey could fetch the data from Rhythm house or flipkart site!
I have not tried Music Bee and I dont mind buying it if it has a decent database for indian albums.

 

[baijuxavior]

As far as I know there is no other way but to manually tag your 'desi' collection. I have manually edited all my music collection and mediamonkey has a nice tag editor. Another tool I use is mp3tag.

One function that I liked from Music bee was, right click -> search -> system node

That function is available in mediamonkey. See the menu in the pic I posted above.

 

[kingajit]

dear Baijuxaviour ...thanks for your comments

 

[musicbee]

MusicBrainz - The Open Music Encyclopedia

http://www.discogs.com/

freedb.org > Home

All 3 are user powered and should have quite a few albums listed. I've tagged Hindi albums (A. R. Rahman) using them. You can tag with MusicBee or alternatively try Tag&Rename (paid but 30 day trial).

If not available with those databases then you need to tag/sort manually.

Bros,

I am eagerly looking forward to some good recommendations for organising Indian music. I have embarked upon a project to transfer all my collection to HDD and keep it it on a server. The english music is a breeze to organise and is almost automatic but the desi albums are giving a real headache and taking a lot of time! I have each album in FLAC, WAV, ALAC and MP3 format and this means I have to make the individual album entries manually for the desi stuff 4 times!

Hope some can suggest a software which has a good database for desi music..cheers

 

[musicbee]

You can tag/edit individual files and entire albums from there. Just select "Edit" (Shift + Enter) option. This feature of MusicBee has helped me tag albums and entire folders/directories with ease.

Thanks a lot guys.

@kingajit
Mass tagging-renaming tools should help you in such cases. Some tools allow to generate tag info from file-parent directory name etc.

Media monkey and Music bee seems to be the preferred choices here.
One function that I liked from Music bee was, right click -> search -> system node. This would list all the files in that folder. You can afterwards tag, add to playlist etc.

This is especially important in cases where files are not tagged and file structure is the only reliable way to deduce song information.