Ideal file naming scheme?

2005-05-25 04:36:52

Ive got a lot of audio cds that im backing up via flac archiving, and Id like to settle on a good naming convention for them. Heres what I use for my regular albums so far:

Pink Floyd - 1979-11-30 - The Wall (Disc 1) - 02 - The Thin Ice.flac
Pink Floyd - 1979-11-30 - The Wall (Disc 2) - 01 - Hey You.flac

that seems to work fine. Is there a better way to put disc#? Should it look like:

Pink Floyd - 1979-11-30 - The Wall - 02 - 01 - Hey You.flac

... or another varient of?

And of course, theres the various artists thing. I have it named as such:

Track Artist - Year - Comp Name - ## - Song.flac

Variety Lab - 2001 - Hôtel Costes-Quatre - 01 - London In The Rain.flac
The Method - 2001 - Hôtel Costes-Quatre - 02 - I've Got A Cat.flac

Seems to work well for sorting by artist by default... Is there a better way, or is that pretty much the best way of doing it, file name wise?

Thanks in advance for the time. While I'm at it, can anyone point me in the direction for better info on the %album artist% tag? Id like to be thorough with my tagging, once I get around to it. For now, i'll stick to file names.

Ideal file naming scheme?

Reply #1 – 2005-05-25 04:56:57

IMHO these things are a matter of taste, and I think anything that works for you should be fine.

I name my files similarly.

[%artist%-][%album%-][%discnumber%-][$tracknumber()-]%title%[-%version%]

But if an album is by various artists, I put emphasis on the album. I find myself wanting to sort by album rather than artist, because I keep my albums or singles in a directory named after the first name of the artist.

[%album%-][%discnumber%-][$tracknumber()-][%artist%-]%title%[-%version%]

edit: Hm.. That didn't make much sense.

If an album is a compilation of different artists' songs, the songs get named like the above, and get placed in a directory above regular albums or singles.

So sorting by filename usually results in sorting by artist, and in the case of various artists' albums, it results in sorting by album.

Ideal file naming scheme?

Reply #2 – 2005-05-25 06:08:59

Erich w/ an h,
You might want to check out this thread