TIP: quick way of importing a boat load of Mp3s

[dutchtrance]

i do not know if this is of any use to any one but....

when i re install vista/xp i have my mp3 collection which i re import to sonicstage. normally its a ball ache as i have a lot of mix albums which have different artist for the tracks but belong to one album or compilation. sonic stage imports these as individual tracks with different artists but the same album. its a pain to have to re edit every single one of my 3000+ tracks.

usually i would have to go through each ttrack, tick the `compilation album` tick box to group the album tracks together, then imput the correct album artist ( mixed by marcel woods for example) for each album. i found this way of doing it which is a bit quicker.

firstly, make sure all the mp3 files from the same album are tagged with the same album.

for example, all `high contrast presents marcel woods (disc1)` album tracks have the same album name assigned to them and vice versa with `high contrast presents marcel woods (disc2)`

i just import my libary at this point via folder import.

open sonic stage and switch to `view all tracks` on the left hand side.

click the top most track once, hold down the shift key and scroll to the bottom most track. whilst still holding shift, click the last track once.

all the tracks should now be highlighted.

right click one of the highlighted tracks and sellect properties and tick the `compilation album` tick box.

once sonicstage has done its business (which takes a while on my 3000+ tracks) switch back to `view by album` and then `view by artist`.

all the albums should then be listed as `no album artist` and in the artist initial `other`.

sellect the first of a group of albums and right click and go to properties.

for example, i have all the gatecrasher albums, which i all want to have the album artist of `gatecrasher`. all the tracks belonging to each album/disc have the same album title, and are now grouped together in an album with no album artist. I click the first album of the gatecrasher collection i have which is `black (disc1)`

in properties type in the album artist for the album for example `Gatecrasher` and once done, highlight the name and press Ctrl+C to copy. DO NOT SET THE ARTIST INITIAL just yet.

dont change any thing else and leave the cursor blinking in the `album artist` box, click next at the top of the scren to go to the next disc, in my case Black (disc2)`.

If you left the cursor in the album artist box after sonicstage loaded the next album it will still be in the album artist box, just press CTRL+P to paste in the same album artist.

repeat the above steps for al the albums, if your album titles are prefixed by the album artist, such as `Gatecrasher - Black (disc1)` this is even easier as all your albums will be grouped together.

Finally, on the last album that uses that album artist, then sellect the album artist initial. this is as SOnicstage only seems to ``remember` the last artist initial set so it was a waste of time if you did it for each album your edited.

sorry for the long reaad, but i know as a novice in other areas i hate being told to `use XX in the YY` menu which soes not really help a novice.

hopefully this is of help and better than setting each individual track!