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I know there are many posts asking about music setups, but I just wanted some clarity. I'm sure setting up of my Music library will go smoothly seeing as I'm starting from scratch.

So, I understand the ID3 tags are important to have, so XBMC will be able to scrape the covers etc properly.

1) Are the following apps good to use in sorting my tags out if needed?? Picard.... Mediamonkey....

2) What are the naming conventions and folder structure used by XBMC for music? & What is the best in your opinion?

So I have all my tags sorted and music folder ready,

3) What scrappers should I be configuring bearing in mind that I'm using Aeon MQ4 which I believe uses CD art?

Basically I'm wanting to know which scrappers to set for my music library for all relevent metadata and artwork.

Do I need to set these up in the general settings and skin setting?

I'm asking the above question because my first try didn't seem to work.

My first album was set out as follows

C: Music/Artist/Album/ filename.ext

When I added the content it seemed to get the CD cover but no info on the artist or album and the Artist folder was blank. Looking at the album tracks no info. I'm pretty sure all the tags were ok.

What's your verdict? Incompetent perhaps Big Grin


XBMC 12.2
Windows 7 Home Premium
Aeon MQ 4
Seems like you have a handle on things.

1) The tagging tools you mention seem to be popular, along with MP3Tag.

2) The Artist/Album folder structure is the best for XBMC and other media software as well. Filename really doesn't matter, but I prefer "track# - title.ext" That way the songs list in the proper order in folder views.

3) The default scrapers should do just fine. If they are not providing the desire results, try some of the others available via addon. My experience is that scrapers only find a small percentage of album info if you have anything but the most popular artists.

Tag hint: Always populate both the ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST fields on each song. Use Album Artist = Various Artists for compilations.

Suggestion: I always try to include a 'folder.jpg' for each album cover in each album folder. If your tagging tools support that, go ahead and do it while you are working through your library. That will ensure you at least have an album cover for each album, regardless of whether is scrapes or not.


Have fun.
First of all (stating the obvious) make a copy of your files before any changes that way you can always restore if you mess up.

If you use mp3tag and add all your mp3s into it you will likely notice there is a variety of tag versions being used, ID3v1, ID3v2 (both 2.3 and 2.4) and APE, first thing I recommend using mp3tag to save them all into the same tag format of which I recommend ID3v2.3 UTF-16 which is what I use, and then remove all other types, so the files just contain the ID3v2.3 tag (ID3v2.3 is the best to use as it has support for fields greater than ~60 characters but a warning some very old car stereos may not be able to read anything other than a ID3v1 tag)

Likewise I suggest an ARTIST/ALBUM file structure, and then name your individual music files as DISK#-TRACK# TITLE (e.g. 1-01 Song Title) but you can split up your library if you like eg I have a folder called MP3 then inside that I have CD Albums and CD Compilations then inside that I have the Artist/Album structure from there.

Personal preference but I hate having a folder.jpg amongst my music, this is only needed for really old programs and players that cannot read album art metadata, so if you are going to take the time to add album art to the folder I wouldn't and just add it direct to the ID3v2.3 tag, mp3tag will automatically add it as the Front Cover and you can change any music that has album art not set as Front Cover to Front Cover with mp3tag.
Thank you for the info it was very helpful....I'm curious that when you add a source for music once you add a folder that is it, however when you add TV and Movie sources after the folder is selected it asks you to specify what content is in the folder and what scrappers you want to use. I gather you need to go into settings to select what scrappers to use?

I'm using the universal Artist and Album Scrappers and It seems to have done a great job with the first album I've added. I wondered three things however.

1) Where is all the metadata and artwork stored for my music?

I use MCM to get my movie and tv info and it's all within the repective folders.

With extra artwork there is a option to show this and a selection to specify a path within the Aeon MQ4 skin. I've selected within one of the scrappers I mention to get extra info. "sorry I forget the exact wording of the option"

2) Does XBMC display the extra artwork etc by default or do I have to specify the folder, Oh and again where is it Smile

Lastly

For what ever reason certain info is missing, is there any way to manually edit the music data within the gui rather than editing the physical file (If I can ever find them) Smile


**** THANKS "pulsewave" Another bit of useful info ****

I'll give Mp3tag a go later
If the metadata inside the music files is correct then everything should fall into place, xbmc will then pull in the fanart (the artist pictures) to display, these will be stored in your xbmc library file wherever your OS of choice stores it.
I don't use other xbmc skins so can't help with that.
pulsewave you suggested ID3v2.3 UTF-16 as the preferred tag for XBMC. I have some mp3's with this tag but with the following as well

ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 Lyrics3v2 ID3v2.3)

Can these be left as they are?

Again, thanks for the help!
I won't cause any harm to leave them nor will it do any harm to remove the ID3v1 Lyrics3v2 tags, my personal preference is to only have the ID3v2.3 tag and remove all others.

The only possible problem is if they contain different information from each other and something uses say the ID3v1 tag instead of the ID3v2.3 tag, but applications (ie xbmc) will prefer the ID3v2.3 tag if present.

If you have mp3tag set like this in Options > Tags>mpeg set it to read ID3v1 and ID3v2, write ID3v2.3 UTF-16 only and remove ID3v1 and APE only, if you click 'Save' and then 'Remove' that will save all information to ID3v2.3 and then remove all other tags.