How to Clean Up a MP3 Mess

I'm still mucking around with my music files from the CD to MP3 project I began on 6-5-2016. It's unreal. I have so many messed up file names. For example,

• 03_Touché [Acoustic]-Acoustic_Godsmack_The Other Side.wma
• 03_Touché [Acoustic]_Godsmack_The Other Side_Stragglers.wma
• 03_Touché_Godsmack_The Other Side_Stragglers.wma

The problem? I want one file named the following: 

• 03_Touche-Acoustic_Godsmack_The Other Side_40000.wma

My issues are as follows:

1. I don't want the é in the file name
2. I don't want the brackets
3. I want to use a dash to separate any information, such as if it's a live version of the tune or, in this case, if it's an acoustic version of the tune.
4. I don't want the word "Acoustic" both in and outside of the brackets
5. I don't want the _Stragglers at the end
6. I use the naming convention: TT_TI_AR_AL_CO 
1. where 
1. TT = Track Number
2. TI = Title
3. AR = Artist
4. AL = Album
5. CO = Composer
1. I actually use the "Composer" property to store the location. Where I want to end up is to have 
1. either 10NN_Spindle, to indicate the numbered spindle the physical CD is located on 
2. or
1.  40000
3. 40000

But I also have junk like this to deal with:

• 23_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone Live_Michael Nichols_Home Alive-The Art of Self Defense Disc 1_1053_Spindle.mp3
• 23_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone [Live]_Michael Nichols_Home Alive The Art of Self Defense Disc 1_1053_Spindle.mp3
• 23_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone [Live]_Michael Nichols_Home Alive- The Art of Self Defense Disc 1_1053_Spindle.mp3
• 23_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone [Live_Michael Nichols_Home Alive-The Art of Self Defense Disc 1_1053_Spindle.mp3
• 22_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone-Live_Michael Nichols_Home Alive-The Art of Self Defense Disc 1_1053_Spindle.mp3
• 23_Sensitive_Guys_Don't_Go_Home_Alone_[Live]_Michael_Nichols_Home_Alive_The_Art_of_Self_Defense_Disc_1_1053_Spindle.mp3

There's spaces, brackets, and underscores. What I really want is the following:

23_Sensitive Guys Don't Go Home Alone-Live_Michael Nichols_Home Alive The Art of Self-Defense-Disc-1_1053_Spindle.mp3

Additionally, there are several files which lack a track number, an artist, the album, and the Composer tag at the end. Many of those files do not include that information within the properties of the file. For example, what artist and album should be in the file name?, such as this: [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher [A Tribute to Jackie Wilson].mp3

All of that leads me back to a macro I have used in the past. The purpose of the macro is to identify the unique strings and provide a count. However, it ignores numbers so I will need to create some sort of masking to replace numbers, underscores, and dashes with a letter in order to use the macro that is described more fully than what I wrote in this post on this page: https://wordribbon.tips.net/T010761_Generating_a_Count_of_Word_Occurrences.html.

Some MP3 Issues

It never fails. I have randomly located files that are corrupt in my "Music-Shell" folder.

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Simply. The. Best.

Even though the CD to MP3 conversion project has been reduced to removing duplicates and other cleanup tasks, when I see an article like this one - The Best External Hard Drives - I still read it with interest. It feels "too early" to speculate about the next conversion project. I had placed my "1000 cassettes to MP3" project next until I talked to Alex on Saturday. I told him I was finally done with my CD conversion. He asked if I was going to scan our photo albums next.

Oh.

Right.

While I know I have 1000 cassettes, I do not know how many pictures exist in our photo albums. I need to evaluate each photo album and determine a total count. There's no pressing need to complete the scanning of our photo albums - no one is asking for it to be done. Of course, the same is true for the cassette to MP3 conversion too.

Hmm. I have to think about it a bit.

Clocking in at 50 Percent When I Came In Today

Going the BlazeBack Route for at Least 15 Days

5.812741 TB of data!

Not a Tagman Kind Of Guy

Tried out a software called "Tagman" as a potential music manager to replace Windows Media Player. I got some files imported into the tool, which allows 500 music files in its 'test' version. I went to the window in the software to set up rename rules and was greeted with a drop-down list of values, as shown below:

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Unfortunately, as I explain in the text on the screenshot, Tagman doesn't allow the files to be named what I want them to be named.

Uninstalling it now.

No Answer = Impossible

I had the same goal as this forum thread - How to add mp3 tags to an explorer's window - from August 2014. See how the Composer column is displayed but is not available in the lower part? I want the "Genre" field to be the same value as the "Composer" field. The "Composer" field is how I store the spindle on which the CD is stored. I can use Windows Media Player to append the "Genre" value to the file name, but not the value in the "Composer" field. By having files named with this naming convention -   01_SongTitle_ArtistName_AlbumName_Genre.mp3 - I would be able to know exactly where the file should be stored. It would be very beneficial as the cleanup of my audio files continues.

Copying Status @ 6 AM

This was the status of my 'copy' from g:\music_shell to b:\music_shell @ 6 AM today:

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It's great to see progression!

He Got Took

Man's Data Recovery Dilemma Costs Hundreds

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I really REALLY need to get signed up for BackBlaze to back up all my external hard drives for $5 a month! Editor's Note: Update to the statement above pertaining to it being necessary to "get signed up for Backblaze to back up all my external hard drives for $5 a month" - I did sign up for BackBlaze and when it came time to renew, I did not do so. There were issues that their tech support could not resolve.
Also, there is a video embedded above this note from NBC News. It is coded differently than when a video is embedded from YouTube.com in that the space is empty when editing and only when "previewing" the post is it viewable.

Synched!

I was relieved to come in to work today and find the following:

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It feels good to know I have a backup of my music!

Maybe it Will Work

I am backing up the g:\music_shell folder to b:\music_shell2 as a means to test whether the b: External Hard Drive (EHD) is dying or not.

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It's over 1/2 way done - 54758 was 1/2 way and the job is 4580 beyond that. Frankly, I have a mess. When I was convinced that the b: EHD was dying, I was desperate to copy files off of it to the g: EHD to the degree that I created duplicates, as illustrated in having the same Wayne Kramer album in the g:\music_shell\03_Spindle folder as well as in the g:\music_shell\music folder, as shown in the following graphic:

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I was going to start deleting files from the g:\music_shell\music folder that had the same value in the Composer column but then thought a backup would be a good idea. Thus, once the backup completes to the b:\music_shell2 folder, I will eliminate the files in the g:\music_shell\music folder that also exist in a NNNN_Spindle folder, where NNNN is the spindle on which the CD is stored.

In the meantime, I have made some progress on Spindle 38, but am unlikely to finish it today, tomorrow, Thursday, or Friday. I am uncertain when it will be finished.

The Windows 10 Beast

Recently, the Windows 10 PC I bought to rip CDs with has been a bust. While I thought I had found a solution - and posted about it within the month - that solution has proven to be a false hope. The problem is that I don't have a valid license key for Windows 10 so if I were to reset it to the factory default, I'd have an issue if I am prompted to enter the Activation key. Trust me, I've searched for the CD to enter it, but no luck. This looks interesting to me:

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So does this article: Selling your Windows 10 PC? Don’t forget to do all of these things by Tristan Greene

As far as whether I should build my own PC to my own specifications, I read this article - https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/the-geek-blog/building-a-new-computer-part-1-choosing-hardware/ - and it may as well be written in Klingon.

Simple Resolution

Over the last few days, when I've been in the den to rip CDs, I haven't been able to rip CDs with the Windows 10 PC. No matter what folder permissions were changed, file permissions were changed, or how many times I rebooted, nothing worked. I was ready to look into tearing apart two PCs that are dormant and residing under the desk and pirating a CD drive from them and hooking it to the Windows 10 PC with a USB to SATA cable to see if I could rip CDs that way when I found this site: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/apps_windows_10-winapps-appscat_music/windows-10-media-player-not-ripping-music-cds-to/950947ad-efc0-41c9-b975-7acf50c39b40

Sure enough, when I looked at the Options, I saw that the Allow audio files to convert in the background check box was cleared. I selected the the Allow audio files to convert in the background check box and inserted a CD into the CD drive.

After days of not being able to convert a CD with the external CD drive hooked to the Toshiba laptop AND also convert a CD with the Windows 10 PC, I now have both CD drives humming away! Of course, it's now 10:32 AM and I've been in the den, ripping CDs to MP3 with only the external CD drive hooked to the Toshiba laptop converting the CDs. I have made a lot of progress today - I'm not disappointed with my accomplishment - but imagining how much further I'd be if I had been able to rip 2 CDs at the same time for the last 3.5 hours makes me wish I had figured this out... 3.5 hours earlier!

Taking Inventory

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the information below about my drives. I feel like I need a plan for how to get all of my files organized. With the purchase of the 4 TB EHD (drive G), I think I now have plenty of total space. I don't think I will need to purchase another EHD until at least May 20, 2018, which is 6 months from today. I also hope that by that date, I have consolidated all of the following drive information into an organized system for backing up my files.

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I would also love to remove drive A - the 3.5" floppy drive - from the Windows 10 tower. It makes a lot of noise when I am doing work unrelated to it. I suppose a case could be made for hoarding when I think about that drive. I went quite a few years without having any computer with a 3.5" floppy drive and, during those years, I purged my collection of 3.5" floppy drives. I didn't see the point in keeping them when I had no way to access the data on them. Now, they are in the landfill or someplace other than the den.

It's Been a LONG Time

I like to look back at the past. I like to look at a post like this one - http://prhmusic.blogspot.com/2008/11/back-in-groove.html - and recapture the frame of mind I was in when I wrote it. I like this specific part of the post in item #3:

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...At work, we order CD-Rs in 100 packs for distribution of our releases to our clients. We use white envelopes - instead of jewel cases - and end up with empty 100 pack spindles. My (cool) manager has said that I could use those spindles if I had a use for them. Right now, there are 4 spindles. I could take 400 CDs from my rack and put them on the spindles. Then I would have more room. The only things to consider are that

• I need someplace to put the cases and inlays for the CDs I put on the spindle
• I need some way to not forget what CD is on what spindle

I can fix issue 2 with an up-to-date CD list. I don't know how I can store the inlays and CD booklets where I can know where they are. In essence, I already have this type of scenario with the existing CD-Rs I already have on spindles. The only difference to overcome is what to do with the booklets, etc. I can find a plastic Rubbermaid to put that stuff in, I guess, and use some sort of filing system to keep things organized.

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I'm here to say that after 3294 days (9 years and 1 week), I don't have this figured out. I have 5000 CDs now - so that's awesome! - on 50 x 100 count spindles, but I still do not have an organization structure for the inlays and CD booklets. I have some sorted into file folders, but I'm not anywhere close to being complete. Maybe by the 10 year anniversary of the post, I will have it figured out. I can say I have completely abandoned Excel as a tool to store my CD information. I use Windows Media Player exclusively.

Coming out of the PIT

Not a mosh pit, a pit of chaos.

We moved into our house in December 2004. We have two storage rooms. The larger of the two has our furnace (and my drums) in it; the smaller of the two has our sump pump (and my journals dating from 1989 - the mid-2000s) in it. Neither storage room has EVER been a model to follow when it comes to 'organization' in my eyes. Sure, there have been times when they looked good but that was usually after a major organization effort due to not being able to find something. Fast-forward to 2017. Even before taking that organization class at Kirkwood, I had the drive to tackle our furnace room in an effort to find a way to make it 'permanently' organized. Knowing that Karen would be on her Women's Weekend Away in Wisconsin this weekend - she left on Friday - I felt it was the right time to do this project. Thus, here is how I worked on it:

• On Friday, when I got home from work, I went to the furnace storage room and started taking our stuff out. I started to figure out how to take down the wood cabinets I had hung in the storage room, but went to bed without getting them down.
• On Saturday, when I got up, a lot happened. 
• I asked Tom, my neighbor, if he could help me with the cabinets. He said "yes" and in the time between asking him to help me and when he actually got over to my house after eating breakfast, I had managed to get the cabinets down. It was almost like asking for someone to help me was a kick in the ass I needed to figure out how to proceed. 
• When Tom came over, we ended up talking in a wide-ranging conversation about life, religion, politics, writing, organizing our stuff, and external hard drive crashes - I have found a kindred spirit in Tom. 
• After Tom left and before the Iowa v. Wisconsin football game at 2:30, I went to Lowe's and purchased 2 x 5 shelf metal shelves. Each shelf set weighed 104 pounds. I assure you I cannot lift 104 pounds for an extended period of time but I managed to get them down the stairs by myself. 
• I also went to Wal-Mart to purchase Speed Stick & a LG Ultra Slim Portable DVD Writer to fulfill the idea I mentioned the other day about ripping CDs to MP3 faster. 
• When I got home from my shopping trip, and with Iowa losing to Wisconsin in the background on TV (they eventually did lose the game, with the defense scoring their only 2 touchdowns!), I began putting the shelves together. I got stuck and sent a picture of what the box said I could do to Matthew, who then offered to come over and help me through my trouble spot, which without Matthew's help, I'd still be staring at the picture on the box so I am indebted to Matthew for his help. Instead of two five shelf structures, he helped me configure the shelves into a 3 shelf and a 2 shelf configuration. 
• I also hooked up the LG Ultra Slim Portable DVD Writer to the Toshiba laptop and set Windows 7 to look at it as the default CD drive. I began ripping CDs with the Toshiba as well as with the Windows 10 tower. 
• I played drums at 5:15 Mass - there were three baptisms!
• After Mass, I went to Falbo's and purchased a double pepperoni / Italian sausage Calzone, which I then ate when I got home.
• After eating, I resumed working on putting our stuff back into the furnace room. As I began putting the stuff back in, it became apparent I needed to have 2 x 5 shelf structures. I had too many existing boxes that putting on a shelf was not the right choice.
• On Sunday, when I got up, I started putting more of our stuff back in the furnace room. 
• Quick update on the CD ripping. I have ripped enough CDs to create 325 files on the Toshiba and enough CDs on the Windows 10 tower to create 170 files. Obviously, the Toshiba & the LG Ultra Slim Portable DVD Writer are kicking ass!
• I took a break to write this post, but I need to get back to it. It's 9:49 AM now and there is still a lot of work to be done prior to Karen returning home later this afternoon.

Out for a Test Drive

I just heard about this software - http://www.zortam.com/index.html - so with a small fraction of my music files, I'm taking it for a test drive. A 'lifetime' license is ~$17. Whether it will replace Windows Media Player is TBD.

A New Toy?

I've been slogging along with the CD to MP3 conversion. I have 3 CDs remaining on Spindle #33. I have a single PC being used for this process. It was deemed too risky (my words) to use Alex's i3 laptop (remember, we purchased an i5 laptop for him shortly before he went to college at UNI because the i3 was "too slow") to do this because whenever I use a computer, I tend to have PC issues. That is true. In fact, the other week at work, my laptop acted like it wasn't charging. I submitted a ticket to the Help Desk and a guy I know came over to assist me. He ran diagnostics on the battery and said it was fine. I hook my laptop to a docking station and it turned out (embarrassed still about this) that I didn't have it plugged in all the way because as soon as I pushed in the thing in the back of the docking station, the laptop started charging.

Shifting gears to my CD to MP3 project, as a refresher, I began this project on 6/5/2016 with 5000 (50 spindles * 100 CDs on each) CDs to convert. Today, I'm on the downhill slide. After I finish Spindle #33 tonight, there will be 1700 (17 spindles * 100 CDs on each) CDs remaining to rip. Simple math tells me that 3300 divided by 5000 (50 spindles * 100 CDs on each) is 66% so I'm getting near the end. Because the Toshiba laptop CD drive ceased working, I'm only using a single CD drive on the Windows 10 PC. Ripping one CD at a time makes it feel like this conversion project is going really slow. I toyed with the idea of buying a cheap second machine and so, to investigate that, I happened to find a local computer company on Facebook. I sent a Facebook message to them, explaining what I was doing with the CDs to MP3 project and inquiring if there were any cheap machines with a CD drive for sale. I explained that I didn't think I would use the machine after the project is done.

The response took me by surprise. Their suggestion was to purchase an external CD drive - such as this one:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABEJ65D8497&cm_re=external_cd_drive-_-27-136-267-_-Product - instead of a second machine. The logic is that instead of using two machines to rip CDs, use a single faster than what I have in the Windows 10 PC to rip each CD faster.

Brilliant! I can then use my work laptop, which doesn't have a CD drive, as a tunnel. At home, on the weekend, I can set up Windows Media Player to rip the CD from the external CD drive to an external hard drive, which I like because then, nothing is stored on my work laptop regarding this CD to MP3 project. I now have to plan this out.

Meet the New Boss - F - Just Like the Old Boss - B

WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD ABOUT THIS?!?!?!?

This is a stream of consciousness post, likely to be updated as I investigate & learn more.

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Found this video:

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Looked at the amazon.com page and read this:

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2Tb model can store 5000 CDs as FLAC - perfect copies of all your CDs forever

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Uh, how many CDs do I own?

5000!

Also, on the Amazon.com page, started skimming the product reviews:

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