[Old Thread] Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own directory structure?

[Nova5]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Nova5 - just because a column is called Author or Title don't mean it can't be used otherwise. I keep movies and journals in separate physical calibre libraries. For movies I put Director in Author, for journals I put Journal name in Author and Issue #/date in title. I also keep photo-albums in a calibre as CBZ's.

I've thought about using it for music, but for me its not worth the bother.

BR

MediaMonkey is far superior to Calibre for Movies. It has a build in DLNA server that allows me to stream the library to any compatible DLNA device on my network. Music is the same way.

Calibre storing it as Author/BookTitle/Book formats works perfect(thanks to those that mentioned it, haven't had time to look yet). If SQL breaks on my computer the most I lose is the interface to the media. The media itself still safely exists in a logical tree structure on the server. Rebuilding the database is a matter of minutes. All it will need to do is rescan the library and import the tags and store file locations in the database.

I know people who store their music

Album\Artist\track.mp3

This works for multiartist albums.. but when you have "Greatest Hits".. you end up with several albums under that. The sane way (what I use) if you want to play only one artist.. its right there in one spot for all their single artist albums.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by Nova5

I know people who store their music

Album\Artist\track.mp3

This works for multiartist albums.. but when you have "Greatest Hits".. you end up with several albums under that. The sane way (what I use) if you want to play only one artist.. its right there in one spot for all their single artist albums.

But since you use a program with a database it is unimportant in the end. You could put all songs in one dirctory. In Media Monkey it doesn't matter if you used your "sane way" or any other. Same with calibre, as long as you use the program to access the songs/books, it is unimportant which file structure is used.

[cybmole]

mediamonkey sounds good, if it only creates one extra database file.

I tried Plex onetime, & found 250,000 new files in my app data folder, because it make its own metadata folder! for every single media file that it found on the PC.

PS I re-read the posts a couple of times but what is the "sane way" to store greatest hits exactly ?

calibre has the ability to fetch metadata from multiple sources, for books, & does it well. I use MP3tag freeware to do that for music ( because microsoft's media player is so bad at it ! ). can mediamonkey fetch metatdata for human approval before adding it ?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

I tried Plex onetime, & found 250,000 new files in my app data folder, because it make its own metadata folder! for every single media file that it found on the PC.

Well sure, if you let it search your PC for media files instead of just telling it which folders your library is in. It still ceates its own metadata folders , but that's because it downloads scads of stuff from the internet (images, soundtrack snippets, subtitles, etc...) I've got a linux Plex Media Server streaming to 3 Rokus, and various tablets around the house. Couldn't imagine life without it. For almost totally "hands off" media management/streaming, it can't be beat in my opinion (plus it still let's you "fiddle around" if you've a mind to)..

[latepaul]

Plex + Chromecast = v. Happy latepaul!

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Well sure, if you let it search your PC for media files instead of just telling it which folders your library is in. It still creates its own metadata folders , but that's because it downloads scads of stuff from the internet (images, soundtrack snippets, subtitles, etc...)..

i told it where the music & video folders were, AND I told it not to bother with photos, but it still created a new app data folder for every single one of my mp3 music tracks. That accounted for most of the 250,000 additional files.- and an mp3 which is already well tagged ( with a cover thumbnail inside of the tags) does not need "scads of stuff from the internet to go with it" - that is just rubbish design.
It was so bad that windows 7 would just hang & die if I tried to explore the app data entries...

OK, i'ts hidden behaviour , I only noticed because defrag was processing tons of stuff that I'd not created, but it's incredibly wasteful, and If I were using SSD I would really NOT want that going on under the covers.

you shoudl not treat mp3 tracks like you'd treat movies! no one ( I guess ) has 20,0000 movies on one PC but having 20,000 MP3 files is not unreasonable. And 250k metadata records to manage 20k tunes is worse than a 12:1 ratio - madness.

If calibre had a 12:1 ratio of metadata files: books, I reckon it would lose a lot of users

Maybe I'll DL & checkout media monkey

[alanHd]

Originally Posted by cybmole

mediamonkey sounds good, if it only creates one extra database file.

I tried Plex onetime, & found 250,000 new files in my app data folder, because it make its own metadata folder! for every single media file that it found on the PC.

PS I re-read the posts a couple of times but what is the "sane way" to store greatest hits exactly ?

calibre has the ability to fetch metadata from multiple sources, for books, & does it well. I use MP3tag freeware to do that for music ( because microsoft's media player is so bad at it ! ). can mediamonkey fetch metatdata for human approval before adding it ?

Mediamonkey will let you approve which metadata gets updated. I love it for its get lyrics feature.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

It was so bad that windows 7 would just hang & die if I tried to explore the app data entries...

Just like with regard to the original poster ... why would want you do that anyway?

To each their own, though. I admit I don't use the Plex Media Server much for audio files (and I don't use it at all on an OS that I can't tell it where to keep its metadata db).

[Nova5]

Originally Posted by cybmole

mediamonkey sounds good, if it only creates one extra database file.

I tried Plex onetime, & found 250,000 new files in my app data folder, because it make its own metadata folder! for every single media file that it found on the PC.

PS I re-read the posts a couple of times but what is the "sane way" to store greatest hits exactly ?

calibre has the ability to fetch metadata from multiple sources, for books, & does it well. I use MP3tag freeware to do that for music ( because microsoft's media player is so bad at it ! ). can mediamonkey fetch metatdata for human approval before adding it ?

Mm will only fetch metadata under user command normally. There are plug-ins to automate it. However unlike plex (I saw the same horrific crap. Gigs of data lost to it..). Mm will store the metadata in the tags when the file supports it.