Multimedia Managing With Pandora

[CronoTriggerfan]

I'm not going to lie, I've always been a bit of a mainstreamer/simpleton when it comes to media management on any of my devices. When I had my Zen, GP2x, PSP, etc., I simply used Windows Explorer and dragged and dropped all of my files manually. After getting my iPod Touch, though, I've become spoiled. The syncing is extremely easy, and I've become somewhat of a podcast addict.

My point is, after using iTunes, I don't think I could ever go back to my old ways in media management. Seeing as the Touch will most likely be sold to fund a Pandora purchase, I've been looking for a good way to manage music, movies, and podcasts once it gets here. So far, I really like MediaMonkey, as it's very full-featured and has autosync capabilities with USB mass storage devices which will work nicely with a big SDHC card. What software will you all use to manage multimedia on your Pandora when it gets here?

 

[gruso]

My portable listening is mostly DJ sets, which tend to be a single file 1 to 2 hours long. So drag and drop is the best way to manage them. I don't really like the synching thing, although I can see the value in it when you want a large portable collection.

 

[Insanemal]

Big sdhc card.

robocopy /mir

lol

 

[JakeK]

I am a very organised person so everything can be found easily when it comes to many files.

 

[Prophet]

What is this "organize" you people speak of?

Seriously, I'll be honest, my files are a mess - all over my various drives. I know where most of them are, but not all.

 

[TheGrandPubaa]

Been following Pandora for quite a while so I thought i'd chime in here with a thought/suggestion. What are the odds of having a port of Rhythmbox on the unit? Works like iTunes from what i've used of it, and it even supports reading music from an iPod(not sure about writing, though). Something like this would be a great addition to the software library, I think. It's for GNOME, though, so i'm not sure if that would present a major problem or not...

 

[TaG]

I hate manufacturer lock-ins so I always use a gui file manager with top folder determining type (audio, video, photo etc), then on audio for example next folder for artist, then album with the track and title as the filename.

I try and avoid anything that imposes unnecessary control or having to use specific software, that way I can keep everything compatible between work pc (windows), home pcs (linux), media players, phones, pda. Even on PSP I automatically whip out the card and transfer manually. I hated an old Sony player that forced me to use its software and their sync which allowed up to three copies, which meant if you lost or wiped a minidisc for example you were down to two copies. Keep it simple, use a file manager and understand your data and you also save the need for a special app to sync each type of media. Devices / OSs may not always be compatible but the cards are.

 

[Null]

I'll use the same method that I currently use with my GP2X, which is create a few top level folders with names like music and games and copy and paste stuff into them. That's as close as I get to media management and organisation. :lol:

 

[PoisonedV]

My music is extremely organized- 8 days of music, 18 gigabytes, ID3 tags all managed by artist, or, if they are mashups, etc under 'Mashup' or whatever. I would have to get a 32 gig SD card to be able to sync to, because I don't think it would let you split it half and half.

 

[jhoff80]

I know that this will be heresy on an open source forum, but Windows Media Player does a pretty good job of syncing multimedia to anything. Not only will it sync but it can also reencode on the fly during sync in order to put smaller versions of files on portable players, which is perfect if you store music on the PC in lossless format.

iTunes' interface works better for syncing, but I haven't found another program that does this.

 

[PoisonedV]

I use Winamp for syncing.

 

[emil10001]

While on the desktop, I prefer Amarok; my mobile music/media manager of choice would be canola2 (maemo platform). I'd use it a lot more often if it had a2dp support. But I think that it does a really good job of media management, with a really slick interface. I believe that you can give it different locations for all of your media, and it will scan those locations whenever you open canola (it sounds like that'd take a bit for several gigs of music, but it's surprisingly fast).

http://openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/

 

[javaJake]

I use MediaMaster to store my collections online. They released an API to developers, so I created a li'l script that downloads either all or new songs in my collection to my hard-drive. Then I hacked up a private version that lets me download songs in a playlist, appending "T###_" to each song file so that mplayer would read them in order.

What I've got is a playlist that has all the songs I like. I just loop through that when I want to listen to my music. I'll use the above script to download that playlist to my Pandora.

The result is a synchronized music collection on my Pandora and online if I feel like listening there instead. Maybe one of these days I'll write up a MediaMaster player so the Pandora can play straight from MediaMaster.

What are the odds of having a port of Rhythmbox on the unit?



Amarok stands 5 feet higher than Rhythmbox in terms of features and looks. You might as well port Amarok instead.

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

Amarok is such a great program, but it's too bad I'm a Windows guy *ducks for cover*. :lol: I really like Winamp too, especially with all the skinning features and the ease of podcatching. Can it autosync with USB mass storage devices?

 

[sindbad]

Amarok is such a great program, but it's too bad I'm a Windows guy *ducks for cover*. :lol:
Amarok2 works on windows, but it isn't released yet. Wait for the release

 

[PoisonedV]

Amarok is such a great program, but it's too bad I'm a Windows guy *ducks for cover*. :lol: I really like Winamp too, especially with all the skinning features and the ease of podcatching. Can it autosync with USB mass storage devices?

Yes it does!
Also, I am excited for amarok2 as well

 

[cools]

Same as I do on my NAS server. Type>classification:

audio
>book
>music
>>library
>>portable
>sample
graphics
>font
>>a
>>b... etc
>photo
>>2008
>>>05
>>>>29 ..etc
software
>arcade
>computer
>console
>handheld
text
>fiction
>>novel ...etc
>non-fiction
>>reference ..etc
video
>clip
>movie
>music
>recorded
>tv
>>The Simpsons ..etc
>stand-up
work

The stuff under music library is all tagged MP3/FLAC and sorted:
genre>album
I don't go deeper than that.
Albums are named Album_Title-Artist_Name unless they are various artist or dance label releases in which case they are done as Album_Title only.
Tracks are named Track_Number-Artist-Title

I run MP3togo on the music library folder to transcode portable versions as a batch job. The portable folder is flat, with files named Artist-Album-Track. When updating my phones memory stick I just randomcopy from there.

Movies are all named with IMDb name + year, and TV shows are named so that XBMC can scrape info from thetvdb. I did previously have a script that batch transcoded all the movie/tv files into portable MP4 versions, similar to the way my audio is handled, but as it turns out I hardly ever watch video away from home so it was ultimately pointless