[ale] CD ripping and maintaining album and track number

[JD]

I've used directory structures to maintain an extensive CD to MP3 
collection. Never used FLAC, so YMMV.

{Genre}/{Artist}/{Album}/
01-title_with_underscores.{format}
02-title.{format}
...
99-title.{format}

Many tagging tools can work to convert this structure into tags and a 
few can take the tags and make this structure. Using a dash (-) instead 
of an underscore helps with regex matching, but since it is always the 
3rd character in, that isn't a big deal.

Artists that fit into multiple genres are maddening.  Pop/Rock?  
Funk/Soul?  Ah, the choices.  I guess softlinks would work, but probably 
not get translated properly to any portables. I hate duplication.

On 03/01/2011 08:34 AM, James Sumners wrote:
> If you're not adding ID3 tags[1] to the files then players like iTunes
> are going to screw up. FLAC has some sort of tag support, but I've
> never seen a player actually recognize them. So, you'll need to store
> the data in a format that you can read later and add to the MP3s.
> Failing that, you might try this format:
>
> 01_Artist_-_Album_-_Song_Title
>
> iTunes might be able to pick that up a little better than just trying
> to match the song title. You might also do a search for "scene mp3
> rules" for some other naming... suggestions. Player authors may not
> admit it, but I bet they keep up.
>
> [1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Jeff Hubbs<jhubbslist at att.net>  wrote:
>> I use Grip on Gentoo to go from CD to FLAC and I have my own Python
>> script that uses sox and lame to make MP3s.  So I have a pair of similar
>> directory trees, one with FLACs and MP3s (the latter when that's the
>> format of my original) and one with MP3s made from the FLACs and copies
>> of the original FLACs.  Something I'm not doing right and need to fix
>> (because my daughter gripes at me) is that I'm not handling track order
>> properly somewhere along the line...When a directory of songs
>> (representing an album) gets pulled into an iTunes library, I want to
>> have it where the songs will get grouped by album and the songs on each
>> album will play in the original order.  I've been doing it by starting
>> song names with track numbers (e.g., "01_tom_sawyer.mp3) but that screws
>> up browsing for songs by name on the iPhone and other devices.  Is there
>> a way I can I maintain track number info from CD to FLAC to MP3 or do I
>> need to have a more elaborate Grip configuration that makes FLACs and
>> MP3s at the same time?