Computer geeks, help please!

[michaelhigh]

I have folders on my hard drive that sit within a folder (download a CD, there's an outer folder with the band name, and an inner folder with the album title).

How do I configure the folder so I can click on it once and get the song contents, without having to click once to get into the band name folder, then click again to get into the album name folder (ie to condense them)?

Every Google search yields the same result... "compress" instead of condense. I DON'T want to compress, defeats the purpose of high def in the first place.

Help please! Anxiously awaiting! :thmbsp:

 

[Beatnik]

You mean only have a music folder and then songs ? Rename your files one by one like this maybe ????

band-album title-track 1-song
band-album title-track 2-song

 

[robgmn]

Select all the files (CTRL-A), then cut them (CTRL-X), back out to the main folder and paste them (CTRL-V).

Always think of what you would have to do if you were using actual manilla folders instead of the directory structure on your hard drive.
If you had a document in an envelope, in a bigger envelope, in a folder, in a hanging file in a file cabinet, you'd be dealing with the same situation you have now.

 

[ra7c7er]

You can manually move the songs from the sub-folder (album folder) to the main folder (artist folder) then delete the album folder. That's what I do. You can change the file path if you want to to make everything download into just one folder but it's not something you can set to happen every time you have to change it each time.

Just tell it to rip into whatever folder you want it to and it should just put the songs their instead of doing what is preset. Some burning programs will allow you to change the preset file paths though.

 

[smccrary]

What Robgmn said. Move them into the artist folder by cutting and pasting. Then you will have the songs in the artist name folder along with an empty folder with the name of the album.

 

[shelly_d]

Typically, you have a start folder that you are in. Could be My Music, My Documents, something like that. For each of the folders create a shortcut whose name tells you enough about the contents so that you know whats in it. Something like True Blue - Modonna or the like. Then move ALL the shortcuts to one place. That way when you start, you are 1 double click away from any folder with music.

How to create a shortcut:

In your windows explorer, find the icon on the menu bar that is labeled folders and click on it. That will split the view into two sides, on the left is the directory tree and the right the contents of the directory currently chosen.

Navigate to the folder above the one you want. In the example above, the path would be My Documents - My Music - Modonna - True Blue. So navigate to the folder Modonna. Select the Folder True Blue by single clicking on it. Now Right Click on it and select Create Shortcut. A new folder icon appears with the name Shortcut to True Blue.

Select that item and press F2 to rename it. Give it the name you want to use.

Now pres control X to cut the shortcut from where it is and navigate to the starting point you want. Press Control V to paste the shortcut in its new location.

You can now double click the shortcut and be taken to that directory with just the one double click.

Hope this helps.

Shelly_D

 

[OldSch00l]

You aren't entirely clear on whether you want to keep the files in their current structure or not? As others have suggested if you aren't dearly attached to them being sorted that way you can just move them all up one directory in the hierarchy so that when you enter the "band name" directory the files are right there. However, this could be very messy if you have files from several different albums by the same band all in one "band name" directory. If this is what you want to accomplish, this can be done automatically using a batch file in windows.

Lets say for example you have:

/My Music/Band Name/Album Names/

Create a simple text file inside of /My Music/ (right click -> New -> Text Document) and name it something like "condense.bat". You will be changing the file extension from .txt to .bat and Windows will ask if you are sure (assuming you don't have file extensions hidden? I always have hide file extensions turned off so I don't even know how Windows deals with this if they are hidden...).

Next, you right click on the empty .bat file you have created and click "Edit" which will open it in notepad. Paste the following inside:

for /f "delims==" %%i in ('dir /a:d /b') do for /f "delims==" %%f in ('dir %%i /a:d /b') do (move "%%i\%%f\*" "%%i"&&rd "%%i\%%f" /s /q)

Then save the file, and double click it to execute it. It will move all files from within their "Album Name" directories up one directory into their respective "Band Name" directory and delete the empty "Album Name" directory. If you have a huge collection you will be running this on I would try it with a small test sample first, although I have tested it and it seems to work fine...


All of that being said, it seems to me as though you need to take better advantage of the meta tags (ID3) present in the files and use some sort of GUI software to sort your collection. Whether this is just for playback or actually sorting them within the directory structure there are hundreds of little apps that are made specifically for such a purpose. For example I use Foobar and it scrapes my entire library and presents it in a logical fashion, I don't even look at directory structures...

 

[michaelhigh]

Select all the files (CTRL-A), then cut them (CTRL-X), back out to the main folder and paste them (CTRL-V).

Always think of what you would have to do if you were using actual manilla folders instead of the directory structure on your hard drive.
If you had a document in an envelope, in a bigger envelope, in a folder, in a hanging file in a file cabinet, you'd be dealing with the same situation you have now.

It was just a matter of remembering what I did in the past! Rob nailed it.

Thanks, all. :thmbsp: