Hi,
Could anyone tell me if there is a way to change files in a music folder from being A-Z by artist to being A-Z title of song, or is it a case of re-typing them all individually. I have looked at the menus, but can't see any option for this. I'm putting a folder of music onto a dvd to play in my dvd player and would like to have the songs by title and a random of artists rather than the same artists 6/7 times before moving onto the next artist. Maybe I'm asking the impossible?!
Hope I have explained this okay. Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered.
How are you viewing these artist folders? If through Windows Explorer, then you are looking at the actual folders, subfolders and files used by the disk file system and you would have to move each song to one big folder.
But there are several media players that allow you to create libraries categorized any way you want, then you can copy your library to optical. Many are free - including Windows Media Player. And you don't have to mess with renaming any files. If you delete a library, the files remain because the library is just a group of shortcuts - so they take up little disk space.
Hi, thanks for the responses. Digerati, I have wmp 11 which I hadn't explored before, but unless I'm missing something (wouldn't surprise me!), I would still have all the same artist together in alphabetical order with their respective songs following one another. What I am looking for is: song, artist, then any other relevant information, album, duration etc so that I have a 'mixture' of artists following one another instead of 1 artist with about possibly a dozen of their songs following each other.
Looks like it might be your former suggestion of doing it manually?
Eric, doing as you suggest only reverses the artists Z-A which still gives all the songs by the same artists following each other.
Thanks again for the help. Much appreciated, as always.
hedley
What I am looking for is: song, artist, then any other relevant information, album, duration etc so that I have a 'mixture' of artists following one another instead of 1 artist with about possibly a dozen of their songs following each other.
Looks like it might be your former suggestion of doing it manually?
I think there is a lot of confusion here. What you want to do is easy. But you should leave the folders and filenames alone!!!!! Stay out of Windows Explorer for this. Use Windows Media Player to create Playlists - as many as you want, containing as many or as few songs as you want, sorted any way you want.
Even if you add all songs alphabettically in WMP. You can
still make it play the songs randomly. Thus avoiding to hear the
same artist or song two times in a row. Depending on how many songs
or artists you add of course.
Abydos
Hi, Digerati, I have looked at wmp again and see what you mean, but these are dvd's I want to make of individual folders of my music. At the minute I have 14 folders of songs, each ranging from 4gb to 11gb. Obviously I will have to move songs to new folders. I want to put them onto dvd to save them in case I lose them off the computer as I built up the collection over a long period of time (in some cases, years) and some of the music would be impossible to replace. It seems that it would take a very long time to make out a list in wmp to do this and how would I know when to stop adding songs. These songs were not 'ripped' to my computer off cd's, they were put on from cassettes and are .wav files.
You said not to touch the folders in windows explorer. What about copying the folders to another location on the computer, renaming them (just a matter of cut & paste to change the artist and song around) and then I can put that on dvd and then delete the folder, leaving my original folders intact. I have plenty of space to do this as I have 6 drives in all. What do you think?
Abydos, I want to play these on a stand alone dvd player, hence the want, rather than need, to change them round as, unfortunately, there is no shuffle key on the dvd player handset. That would have made it a doddle.
Hope this wasn't too long winded. Thanks for the help. Always appreciated.
hedley
Obviously I will have to move songs to new folders.
Dude! You are not hearing! You do NOT touch folders or files!
Hi, Digerati, I have looked at wmp again and see what you mean,
No, I don't think so, otherwise you would not be stuck on folders. The media player you use does not matter. I use WMP but there are other players that will use your playlists to create CDs or DVDs, or copy to a portable player (MP3, Zune, etc).
I have 600+ CDs I am going through, copying only what I consider 4 or 5 star songs. I currently have 172 folders (same as artist name) with over 1000 songs. I created 4 playlists: Christmas, Christmas Auto, My Music, and My Music Auto. The My Music Auto and Christmas Auto playlists are 5-Star songs only and are used to create CDs for the car. I don't have a DVD player in the car. If you have a DVD reader/writer, you can write to DVD too.
but these are dvd's I want to make of individual folders of my music.
Umm Okay.
Maybe I am not following.
What do you want to do with these DVDs when done? Archive the files? If so, Make a new folder and copy and paste the songs you want in that folder, then drag copy the new folder to DVD as you normally would. If you are wanting to create DVDs of your favorite music to play on a compatible player, use media player software.
Hi, Digerati, Sorry, I seem to have confused the issue. When I said I would have to 'move' files to new folders I meant 'copy & paste'.
Archiving is exactly what I want to do, for safekeeping.
Help very much appreciated and sorry again for any confusion.
hedley
Okay, that makes a BIG difference! Thanks for clearing that up.
If all your tunes are .wma files, for example, you could enter:
*.wma
into your Search box and have it find all your .wma files, then select all the seach findings and copy and past into a single folder - it will take some time though, Windows never has done that well.
