Sort on Load option

[iota]

What is the possibility of adding a drop-down or radio-button selector for choosing how to sort the files on load, if the sort files on load option is checked? For example, I'd like to have all my files sorted by filename, instead of path and filename (which is what sort files on load seems to do). Is there any way to do this, or do I just have to get in the habit of sorting them myself after winamp pre-sorts them the wrong way? http://forums.winamp.com/ubb/smile.gif

thanks!
jason

[Kaboon]

He seems to have a good point here. I never thought of it to use a option like that. But he's right. Or is it possible with a command line option. Don't know them (shame on me) because I never use those either.

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-Kaboon
http://come.to/kaboon/

[Kezman]

if i'm right (probably not) you can change it in the preference menu...go to preferences, input and nullsoft mpeg audio decoder blabla...hit configure and title..there you can chance how you're files are sorted (on load or not on load, that's the question)...

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Dommelsch makes me puke...:D

[iota]

I checked that... it appears that the title tab only lets you configure how the titles of the files are presented, not how they are sorted....

Just a note, I don't use ID3 tags at all (I remove them off all my files), so that might be why they aren't sorting properly. The way I organize my files in the directory tree is GENRE\Artist\Artist - Song.mp3

I want the files to list in alphabetical order by Artist (ie, sort by filename, from the misc menu in the playlist), not by path (if they are sorted by path, then CHRISTMAS genre music comes before ELECTRONICA genre music, even though the artist names could be 'Mannheim Steamroller' (from CHRISTMAS) and 'Astral Projection' (from ELECTRONICA)).

Does that make any sense? http://forums.winamp.com/ubb/smile.gif I know that this is a 'personal' feature request, because I don't know that anyone else really needs it, but it would be helpful for configurability's sake, at least.

jason

[bjay125]

You may want to redo your tags. I use 2 progs at the moment to do my tags - MP3 Tag Studio for ID3v1 and MPTagger for v2. Soon MP3TS will have v2 implementation. I know your reasons for not using tags - depending on the source of the mp3, the tag info can be anywhere from perfect to non-existent. These programs allow you to set the id3 tags based on filename - even in your case where your tag info would be defined as "genre\artist\artist - title" you can set MP3ts to read your directory structure and fill in the tags accordingly. Thus, as long as your directory names and filenames are correct, you will get perfect tags. You could also wait a very short time for Winamp 3 - it's supposed to have a really good playlist with all sorts of features, and it wouldn't suprise me to find out that it can do what you described.

[iota]

Thanks for the idea, but I'd rather not use tags at all...

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

I'd rather not use tags at all...

I know what you mean..... I decided to stick with the tags cuz I had so many to begin with that it wasn't worth getting rid of them. Now I have hundreds of id3v1 tags that I need to convert to version 2... Ugh.

[iota]

Sarge, that sucks :) Good luck...

I can see how tags can be VERY helpful to many people... but I am very anal about my file organization structure, thus negating the use of tags for me. I'd rather have all my MP3's tucked away in their own little places, and use the directory structure to organize files, than to have to manage a few 1000 tags. I just delete the tag when I get the MP3, rename it the way I like it, and put it in it's place. That way, I can, at a glance, keep track of all my MP3's. And tag features like comment, year, album, etc don't matter to me at all -- but I can see how useful they are to people who choose to organzie their MP3's in another way. Therefore, I have respect for ID3 tags, but I just don't have any use for them, and would like to be able to sort my MP3's the way I want them to be sorted :)

Getting back to the main point, what are the chances of a sorting option being added? justin (or any other nullsoft guy) care to comment?

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Have you tried the sort option at the bottom of the playlist editor? It gives you the option to sort by filename as well as by title or path & filename... I believe this is what you were originally asking for.

Anyway, I too organize my mp3s like you do (well, similar to it). I name all my files the same as the song name and I put them in folders named after the artists. But I still use the tags...

[iota]

Yes, I use the sort option in the playlist *after* the list is loaded because the sort on load option sorts by path and filename, not just filename. If the sort on load option sorted by just filename, I would be a happy camper and would go to sleep :)

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Oh... I got'cha. :) That makes sense now...

[iota]

At least it makes sense to someone :) I tried to explain this to someone else but I guess that I can't articulate very well... they didn't understand.

Oh well :)

jason

[JackW]

It seems to me that probably the best solution would be to make Sort On Load and the standard sort operate in exactly the same way, so that it is no longer necessary to load a folder and then use the playlists' Sort buttons in order to play an album...

Jack.

[penguin22]

Actually, this has been asked for before. It would be nice to be able to check the "sort on load" and then have a dropdown box next to it asking how you would like to sort. This way, after you check the box you could select to sort by path & filename, path, filename, ID3v1 tag, ID3v2 tag, etc.

This is close to, but not exactly like the problem that if you select a whole bunch of mp3's from explorer, right click and select "play in winamp," they sort out of order. This happens even if they are all tagged and they are all named right. So they always go out of order no matter what.

One other thing. I do like the idea of how you sort your music, but what about when you download one song from a band and only have that one song, does it go in its own folder too? And what if you have an 80's band doing a techno remix, etc., etc.? What genre to you put them in? Sorry to ask so much, but this is why I don't use the same sorting method... That and I can never place the music in the right genre anyway.

[iota]

I have a 'OTHER' genre for music that doesn't get sorted into one of my other genres (ELECTRONICA, ROCK, RAP, CHRISTMAS, etc). OTHER includes stuff like a 'Humor' folder, a 'Theme Songs' folder, etc. Each genre also includes a 'Misc.' folder (like 'Misc. Rock', 'Misc. Electronica', etc) for single songs. I normally create a new directory for an artist if I have 3 or 4 songs by that artist in the Misc folder. There is also an Unsorted genre of music that I just downloaded, where i can listen to it, de-tag it, re-name it, and sort it into the right genre.

Hope that helps!

jason

[penguin22]

how many mp3's do you have?

[iota]

I personally have around 300 MP3's. However, the SMB server that I run for my dorm at OSU uses the same scheme for organizing MP3's, and everyone sorts them out that way, has about 20gb worth.

It seems to work well as long as you have set rules in place, ie, if an artist has 4 or more songs, create a new directory for the artist, or if the artist counts for more than one genre, place the artist in the genre where you would be most likely to look for the music. Other 'rules' include if the song is a remix, denote it with parenthesis after the song name, in the form Artist - Song (artist, remix name).mp3 and put the file in the origional artist's folder, unless the remix differs enough from the origional that it should be sorted differently (for example, the William Orbit remix of Barber's Adagio for Strings would be sorted into the ELECTRONICA / William Orbit folder, instead of the CLASSICAL / Misc. Classical folder because of the major differences).

The reason we sort the files like this is so that if you want to listen to a variety of rock music, you can just Add->Add Directory and add the ROCK genre. But if you want to listen to just Orbital, you can open the ELECTRONICA genre and add just the Orbital directory. Or, if you want to only listen to Strokin' by Clarence Carter, you can go to the OTHER directory, and add the file from Misc. Other.

Everyone who uses the SMB server uses this MP3 naming system (about 50 people) because we all use the same MP3 library, so it makes everything much easier, just as long as people take the time to name and sort everything the way it should be (which they do). A cron job removes the tags from the sorted music just to make sure there are no discrepencys.

jason

[penguin22]

Umph, I like this method, I have 13.9GB of mp3's on my comp as of now, but I am thinking of organizing them better. I use nothing but ID3v2 tags for the long name support. This is only because I sometimes like to know where I can find the song... i.e. what album. As of now I have a main folder with every mp3 that isn't a full CD, a comedy, or theme. This works well with a few exceptions.

First, what do I do with bands that have "The" in front. Some, like The Cure are obvious, you would look for The Cure so it stays, but what about The Sheila Divine?... I would look for Sheila Divine. I hate the Cure, The idea too.
Second, what about a song by Wierd Al or Adam Sandler, they are funny, but not always comedy. Plus, I have many many many genre's of songs on my comp... And a lot of them fit into multi classes; such as, Techno/Goth, Goth/Industrial, Metal, Industrial Metal, 80's, 80's/Goth, etc., etc., etc.
Third, doesn't it make searching for a single song a lot harder when you have to search through directory after directory?... I mean, it is easy to just hit "o + r" to go directly to Orb.

Sorry to bother you with this so much, but a big resorting of my mp3's will take me a long time, and I want to see if, from your experiences with your method, it's worth it. TIA

[iota]

I would say, for all of these cases, do what you feel is the most conveniant for you... thats what it's all about, whats conveniant for you, the user. If the scheme you have now works well for you, then keep it :) If not, then set up some conventions and use those.

First, what do I do with bands that have "The" in front. Some, like The Cure are obvious, you would look for The Cure so it stays, but what about The Sheila Divine?... I would look for Sheila Divine. I hate the Cure, The idea too.

Under our scheme, bands with a 'The' prefix drop it for the directory name, and keep it for the song name (ROCK/Cure/The Cure - Song.mp3 for example), so that if you load the 'ROCK' genre the files sort nicely. Thats how we normally load songs: by genre. I load up the ELECTRONICA genre and shuffle away, but others load the ROCK or RAP genres. If I want to listen to a specific group, I'll just directory-load their folder.

Second, what about a song by Wierd Al or Adam Sandler, they are funny, but not always comedy. Plus, I have many many many genre's of songs on my comp... And a lot of them fit into multi classes; such as, Techno/Goth, Goth/Industrial, Metal, Industrial Metal, 80's, 80's/Goth, etc., etc., etc.

As far as Weird Al and Adam Sandler go, you could just create a genre of 'OTHER' or 'FUNNY STUFF' or 'HUMOR' or something to that effect and put them in their own subdirectorys of that genre. That way, when you load up the 'ROCK' genre, you don't get Weird Al song's thrown in. This used to be a problem for us, as someone was sorting Chris Rock under RAP, and whenever RAP was loaded, you had to flip through the hour-long chris rock skits. For the 'mixed genre' music, just make up a new genre or category that could hold a few bands, and put them in it. For example, if you have 6 bands, each with 4+ mp3's, that you would consider to be techno/goth, then you could create a new genre of 'TECHNO-GOTH' and add the bands under that. Bands that just don't sort nicely could be put into an 'OTHER' genre. In some cases, we've used symbolic links (the SMB server is an OpenBSD machine, so symlinks are usable) in the filesystem to put a band in two genre's without having two copys of files. I know a couple of people who made a genre for themselves, (ie, JACOB or ADAM), and then symlinked their favorite bands from the other genres into theirs. That way, they can just load up the JACOB folder and have their favorite bands loaded. As far as I know symlinks aren't possible on Windows, but thats a different hurdle...

Third, doesn't it make searching for a single song a lot harder when you have to search through directory after directory?... I mean, it is easy to just hit "o + r" to go directly to Orb.

I can see how it would in some cases, but thats entirely up to you. We normally try to keep no more than 2 levels of directorys (GENRE/Artist) so you dont have to go far to get to a specific song. Most people just load an entire directory (or multiple ones), either a genre or an artist, and then just let it play randomly. If you wanted to load a single song, you would only have to enter the genre, then the artist. I know that with Win2kPro you can just enter the first letter or two of the directory for completion and then choose from the drop-down. Using Winamp alongside explorer could also be a solution...


Obviously, this naming scheme isn't for everyone, and it doesn't work perfectly in all cases, but it works well enough, and we all know the basic scheme, so it comes out OK. If you download only 'popular' music that is easily sorted into ALTERNATIVE, ROCK, RAP, etc then it works great, it's only when you start bringing in cross-genre'ed music that things get hairy (I record rare trance tracks off of vinyl, and many times these don't exactly fit anywhere... I created a 'VINYL' genre, and put them into there, for example). As long as you organize the files in a way you like, you shouldn't have any problems.
From what you described, perhaps you should try making a top-level folder for the artist, then naming the mp3 after the name of the song, and setting the ID3 tag to have artist - song, so that you can open the artist folder, choose the song, and see it in the playlist as artist - song. Example: AC-DC/Big Balls.mp3 loads as 'AC-DC - Big Balls'. I don't know how far off that is from what you have going now, but it might be better than no organization at all.

I hope all this helps, and good luck!

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Whew..... that's a lot of reading.

I've got an idea: How's about you guys check out FindIt 2.0 (http://www.winamp.com/customize/detail.jhtml?componentId=527)? It works like a champ! :D

[iota]

Hehe, i didn't realize how much i typed. Damn.

I tried FindIt a few days ago... very nice, but it only searches through the current playlist (like hitting J does).

Sarge, I like the new sig!

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Thanks. :)

Yeah, FindIt only searches the current playlist, soooooo how about adding all the mp3s to it? Oh wait, that's 20gigs worth..... isn't it? Nevermind then. :( Well, your organization methods sound pretty damn good. :D

[penguin22]

Ok, I am doing a partial sort type thingy. I will now sort by Genre and also have a Remix/Cover folder. I am going to put all of the songs in their respective folders and not break them down any further... as in creating a folder per band. If you want to hear all of The Cure, you can just select them all from windows explorer and select "Play in Winamp." Now only if they automatically sorted :p... hehe, back to the original topic. I think that this method will work best for me. Also, as for renaming the mp3's by just the song name... ouch... not for me, plus it makes them harder to get off of napster. You download six like this then have to use CD-Now to figure out who plays what :) Thanks for all the ideas, and I agree Sarge, nice sig... Hmm, first SLK, now Sarge...Woohoo! I must be soon!

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Originally posted by penguin22
Thanks for all the ideas, and I agree Sarge, nice sig... Hmm, first SLK, now Sarge...Woohoo! I must be soon!

Actually..... I made the images for SLK's sig. Then I made one for my own... Chev and John made some for their own sigs, too. I think a couple other people have self-made images in their sigs, also... but I can't really remember. If you want, I can make an image for yours... :)

[penguin22]

Hey that would be awesome of ya Sarge! I'd really appreciate it if ya made me sig images! Woohoo!

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Give me 'til tomorrow, k? :)

[penguin22]

No prob Sarge. That's quicker than I thought... I guess my name could help ya with ideas :rolleyes:

Thanks again!

[iota]

I'm glad you found a naming scheme that works for you -- and I'm glad that you also noticed the same problem with Winamp that I did :)

Hopefully someone with a kind heart at nullsoft (hee hee.) will add this feature for us.....

jason

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

After a while, I'm probably gonna have to get a new naming system for all my muzak... I've got almost 500 mp3s so far, and that's increasing every day. I've got lots of folders with sibdirectories in them to hold all of those songs... This seems to work fine, but I'm not sure how long that's gonna last. Oh well, I'll think of something...

Dave-
For the sake of a small file size, I made your image kinda simple. I just hope that you like it... :)

http://darthsdomain.homestead.com/files/Penguin22_anim.gif

[penguin22]

Thanks Sarge! Now I'm gonna try and find a face... bigger than the ones in the Smilies. Know anywhere that I can get one? Wait I have it, nm... Gonna try a neato trick.

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

You're welcome. :) Glad you like it.