ID tags for double discs

I'm just curious, how do you folks go about tagging 2 disc sets? Is there a good way of indicating in the tag/filename which disc it is? Thanks.

I just put the cd number in the album title. eg Cream Live CD1

for me i do a lil diffeent process for example ill use the new aphex twin cd i have the mmain folder

Aphex_Twin-DrukQs_(Full_Retail)-2CD-2001-zrO_INT

then in that i have 2 other folders

CD1
CD2

then all the songs listed in cd1 that are on cd 1, and all the songs on cd2 in the cd2 folder.. looks cleanre than having 2 folders in the main album selector.

I have (e.g.):

Artists\Faithless\Reverence - Disc 1\Reverence - Disc 1 - 03 - Faithless - Salva Mea.mp3

Occasionally, I'd have:

Artists\Faithless\Reverence\Disc 1\Reverence - Disc 1 - 03 - Faithless - Salva Mea.mp3

The album tag contains "Reverence - Disc 1".

I painstakingly renumber the second disk and rename the album field so that both discs appear to be one long CD. In both the tags as well as the file names.

For instance, my "Delicate Sound of Thunder" looks like this:

Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 01 - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 02 - Learning To Fly (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 03 - Yet Another Movie (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 04 - Round And Around (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 05 - Sorrow (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 06 - The Dogs Of War (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 07 - On The Turning Away (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 08 - One Of These Days (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 09 - Time (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 10 - Wish You Were Here (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 11 - Us And Them (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 12 - Money (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 13 - Another Brick In The Wall, Part II (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 14 - Comfortably Numb (Live).mp3
Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - 15 - Run Like Hell (Live).mp3

Hmm, just noticed that I need to fix capitalization on these. Maybe the problem is just in the file names...

> I painstakingly renumber the second disk and rename the
> album field so that both discs appear to be one long CD. In
> both the tags as well as the file names.

I do this as well. For example, NIN's The Fragile is identified as discs Left and Right but for me I've numbered the tracks contiguously.

I look at the identification of the track and with regards to its location/order within a 'work' and not the partitioning imposed by a particular medium.

I look at the identification of the track and with regards to its location/order within a 'work' and not the partitioning imposed by a particular medium.

Yeah, I do this too. So I've got the Orb Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, tracks 1-10, or the Pet Shop Boys Alternative, tracks 1-30.

Peter

I've considered doing this, but I found it tricky when amalgamating 18 disc sets. It's hard to map the new track numbers back to the original disc, should you find a ripping error in the MP3.

It's not that hard. Maybe I'm just not enough of a purist.

I've racked my brains to no avail - what comes as an 18 disc set?

I've racked my brains to no avail - what comes as an 18 disc set?

An Orb single?

Peter

"An Orb Single?"

lol

While I like Peter's answer, the correct answer is "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

It's not that hard:

tagmp3 "%T" *

for i in *; do id3 -T `expr $i + $offset` $i; done

#more id3 tagging, if necessary

tagmp3 "%T - %t.mp3" *

for each directory.

(from memory, but looks roughly right.

I think it's better to have a high level playlist and child playlist for each CD. That way you maintain the original format of the music. If you want to play the music in a continuous format, just play the higher level playlist.

Calvin

that's nothing. i divide all of my older CD's into playlists for "side a" and "side b", to reflect how they were originally released on LP.

just kidding. actually, i do exactly what tony does, despite the time it takes.

--dan.

Yeah i treat them as one big album too, but it doesn't take any time, i just leave the 'add track number' option and the 'automatic increment' option enabled in my id3 tagger "tagtool"

I'm actually going to have to disagree with this one...

For large compilations, I don't see the harm in joining them into one big list (altough I still prefer to preserve the original "seperate" playlists structure like the CD's). But for double length CD's like NIN's the fragile, thoses songs were specifically selected to be on two seperate discs. I would even argue that Pink Floyd albums were meant to consist of two parts. Two acts in a play if you will. (too bad DVD authors didn't take this care in selecting layer switches! )

Trent Reznor hired a long time Pink Floyd producer (the name escapes me) to select the track order (and what should remain a b-side to singles). The discs are intentionally seperate with a beginning, middle and end to each disc. I imagine, the same care went into the Dark Side of the Moon.

my copy of "dark side of the moon" is only a single disc.

for something like "the wall", that was originally on four sides of vinyl, you could argue that it was four acts, not two. in any case, as long as i've preserved the track ordering, i can always play "side b" of DSOTM by skipping the tracks in my playlist that made up "side a". likewise for multi-disc albums.

--dan.

I was refering to the Dark Side LP that I grew up with And yes, you could look at the Wall as 4 acts...

I do like one person's suggestion to have the album be one playlist with "childs" being the seperate discs.... That way, you can select DSOTM and play the whole thing, or select DSOTM and then "side b" to play only side b.

That's exactly how I have all my multi-disc releases set up. I used to merge some of them into one list, such as NIN's The Fragile, Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie, etc. I had these named to be able to sort properly in windows as well (not applicable to the empeg - they came up properly when imported and stayed that way). But then I thought about wanting to play a specific disc (like the second disc of New Order's Substance...) So I changed everything to a single master list and then "disc1 and "disc2" inside it (I actually used whatever convention was used on the original release: so for NIN's it was "left" and "right") Works well this way. I can play the entire master in one shot, one individual "disc" and they all come up when random shuffling the entire player.

Bruno

But then I thought about wanting to play a specific disc (like the second disc of New Order's Substance...)

Ah, yes, Substance is a tricky call, as they (mostly) arranged the A-sides onto disc 1 and the B-sides onto disc 2. I think this could well come under the umbrella of "two works in the same box" rather than "one work that happens to be more than eighty minutes long".

OT: Why O why O why don't New Order bring out a CD set of (a) all the stuff that's on the cassettes of Substance but not the CD (both tapes are 90 minutes), and (b) the brilliant twelve-inches from 1987-1990? They could call it Unsubstantiated...

Peter

I was refering to the Dark Side LP that I grew up with And yes, you could look at the Wall as 4 acts...

These are good points. Some artists actually did write "for" the LP format and did clearly think in terms of "side one" and "side two" (or three and four in the case of The Wall).

But here's something interesting:

When Ian Anderson (along with the band Jethro Tull) wrote the masterpiece "Thick as a Brick", it was conceived as one long piece. This was in the days before CDs, so even though they knew full well that it was going to have to be split into two parts, they still thought of it as one long piece. They literally had to "create" a side1->side2 transition moment in the album. If they had done Thick as a Brick today, they might have coded it as one long CD track.

I think that would fall into the same mess of questions that "Why did they end up taking so many bloody years to release a new album?" fits into. (an album I quite like btw.)

I just figured that redoing the lists was going to give me the most options when playing back. And apart from the little while it took to fix things in the database, usage on the player is pretty transparent.

Bruno

[OT] BTW, I also agree with you about the harder to find material. We'll probably see some type of collected works (beyond a greatest hits) someday. It saddens me that we're stuck with shite like Britney, all the useless boy bands, crap like everclear, crap like Limp bizkit and meanwhile we're missing stuff from bands that just fell apart or gave up or suffered a devastating loss (Inxs, Blind Melon, Nirvana...) - there are far too many to name of the previous two categories. [/OT]

Honestly, after that last album (Republic), I don't think anyone was clamoring to get a new one. I'm very happy that the new one has exceeded everyones expectations by a long shot.