Re: Digital House Cleaning

Really, its kind of Part 2 of my last post which discussed the new Microsoft applications that I've learned to really like a lot. However something that even us diehard gearheads have to admit; none of the cool shiny gear does anything without the software end of it. Part 1 was really about the applications themselves, this part I'll delves into the bane of our (at the very least, "my") existence......media files.

Like most people, particularly those close to my age, we've spent the better part of several decades accumulating media. Of course, some of it is in the form of obsolete medium such as vinyl records (or even shellac), cassette tapes and even 8-Tracks. In this post, I don't intend on discussing digitizing/archiving that media, but the other stuff that's been accumulating in our computers the last decade or more. We all have videos, mp3s, and photographs in digital files scattered all over one or more of our computers. I know this, because every time, I work on somebody's computer and have to move their hard drives, I come across files scattered all over the place. Quite often, the owners are even surprised by what I've found and put back in place for them. Furthermore, even if they're all in "My Documents", and in the "My Music"/"My Pictures" subfolders, they are generally just kind of thrown in there; much like our closets. What makes it more complex, is that over time, files of all different types have been thrown in there all together.

All good example are music files. In most cases, people will have some WAV files which are essentially the complete equivalent of what's on a CD, then there are MP3s of varying sizes dependent on the bitrate at which they were ripped (or downloaded), which is often dictated by the device on which they are intended to play. You add to that, the various other issues, like AAC for iTune/iPod users, WMA for Windows device users, OGG for those cool Linux guys or just people who want to be different, you can easily have chaos.

What, I decided to do was to consolidate and combine first, then secondly, move everything to the server. My thought process was as follows:

• I really want everything as universally readable as possible.
• I want as much in as high quality of format as possible.
• Everything as organized as possible.

That's a tall order, so, how do I accomplish all this:

• Obviously, I want as much as possible in a "lossless" format as I can. That means, whenever I rip a CD, I want to set the application to save that way. Although, this uses quite a bit more space, than even 256bit, it give me essentially a perfect copy of everything. I plan on eventually ripping (actually reripping) my library that I haven't already done....which is most of it! On the server, I actually have a lossless folder, a standard bit-rate (128 or better), and a low bit-rate folder (for stuff that is horrible, but I don't have another copy of at the moment).
  
• I use Microsoft's included WMP to do this which gives me WMA files. Why that, says the Mac maven?!? It's the most universal. Pretty much anything can play and/or convert WMA, but the converse is not true of AAC.
  
• Organization is pretty standard; mean putting music in the WHS Music share, Photos in the WHS Photo share, etc. with a twist. That means that I use subfolders to help organized each of these categories. Although, Windows Media Center doesn't really care and just pulls everything in, as individual users, we need to find individual files for things like FaceBook, or my long neglected, high school and college favorites CDs project.

As far as a files system is concerned, the music side is pretty easy since I use the default, Artist, Album standard that most software is set up for. The only difference is that I separate the files in terms of resolution (lossless, standard bit, low bit). Its the photographs that are the headache.

What I've developed over time is a system of topic, sub-topic (as far down as is necessary), then date preceeding the lowest level of sub-topic which hold the individual files. These dates are created by last two digits of the year, so they'll stay in Chronological (and not numeric) order, the two digits for the month followed by underscore and the topic (most of which are recurring). The only picture files in the Photo share are the family ones since they're the only ones that need to be generally access by everyone as well as displayed through Windows Media Center for guests. Of course, 95% (or more) of our pictures files are of this one group, so this takes care of the bulk of files. Obviously, nobody else is interested in or needs to have access to the photos I use for items I'm selling or ones that I'm adding to my blogs so they go in my personal server folder. That way, I can grab them regardless of which machine I happen to be on at the time. This will become our standard, whenever my wife starts using the server for storage on a regular basis and the kids grow into that need in the future.

So basically; other than what I use on a "live" project, most of what I do resides on the server in a "replicated" folder (you can never be too safe). Its the same model that most corporations use because its convenient and safe.

Let me just say that it's been hard work....very hard work! I've spent the better part of the last week, where I'd estimate that I put in on average 3+ hours on file organization most days. So many files got moved and deleted that my main workstation running Windows 7, on 4Gb of RAM took 3 hours to completely defrag the 1Tb storage drive! Digital or not; "house cleaning" is no fun, but it needs to be done.