.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful input, folks! I got a number of chuckles and a few nice laughs out of it. One reason I decided to hang my hat around these parts for a bit (apart from some amazing music) is the nice off-kilter sense of humor I picked up on.
[ No. I will not >here< inflict upon you a smiley of a kilt-less Scottsman. Tempting, though ... ]
From some number of years back I used to (somewhat casually) collect lots of Grateful Dead tapes, along with such misc. Tull, Yes, Crimson, ELP, Zep, BÖC, Zappa, Floyd and some more etc. as fell across my ears. Alas, that collection is long since dissipated. Many of the best tapes were played to death, and various other laws of attrition & entropy claimed the vast percentage.
Today I still have a couple dozen cassettes tucked away (somewhere), but no decent equipment to try & capture from them.
Any-a-way ... the point being, I feel I can best contribute to the Q'tinuum by seeding out for all those unfortunate enough not to have surplus bandwidth, such as some I have to spare about half most any given week.
In return .. yes indeed I will greedily suck down all that I can manage. Been wandering in an audio desert for the past five years & the
addiction desire is upon me some kinda fiercely ...
This is my initial step into lossless collection and archiving. As an experienced IT person, I have quite some experience with organizing data properly for later reference & retrieval.
And, thus this humble thread.
I got it that there is no "official" convention .. as was always the case forever. Just each person doing the best they can for the love of the hobby.
So, without guilt, I will heedlessly re-name & re-organize per my personal tastes. Part of my question was directed at saving myself time from uploading and re-re-naming to re-seed oldish torrents. But, I see no way to be true to the original torrent AND also Do It My Way.
Maybe, in the end, it's something for the best & a way I can contribute back. Should I have to create new torrents to honor reseed requests, tags and filenames and directory structures plus additional data may well be one of my value-added services.
I pretty much archive at the raw data level for playback on computators & relateds ... very rarely do I burn CD's or DVD's for playback, and then it's nearly always as a gift rather than personal use. To me, full and accurate tagging is essential, an integral part of the collections as much as liner notes and artwork.
I promise to preserve the lineage of all that I gather, but it seems I will add my own layer on top when it comes my turn to upload new torrents based upon my sources.
For me, it starts with a directory by artist, within which are directories for specific 'works' (CD's, shows, etc.). Artwork and info directories catch all non-media files and are placed in appropriate specific directories.
I understand the need for a main torrent directory to be very uniquely named, but it will always be intended to have its contents placed into an artists directory.
Example:
suzanne Vega - 2007-10-28.torrent - [original torrent name, root directory]
\Suzanne_Vega\ - [root artist folder]
-> \artwork\ - [sub-folder of general Susan Vega art, photo's, etc.; media-ish]
-> \info\ - [sub-folder of general Susan Vega info, text-ish]
-> \Norway_FM(2007-10-28)\ - [sub-folder of one "work" or "project"]
-> -> \artwork\ - [sub-folder of project-specific art, photo's, etc.; media-ish]
-> -> \info\ - [sub-folder of project-specific info, text-ish]
-> -> \CD1\ - [as needed, individual files sorted by disc]
-> -> \CD2\
-> -> \Suzanne Vega - 03 - Marlene on the Wall (2007-10-28).flac
the last being a typical filename.
So, other quickie examples from the past week:
\Beth_Orton\Whine_Over_Newtown\CD2\Beth Orton - d2t22 - She Cries your Name (2006-04-20).flac
shows the exact location of track 22 from the second CD of this particular project.
These were nice, neat examples .. others get more messy with long medley's or numerous artists:
\Solomon_Burke\Montreux_Jazz_FM(2005-07-04)\Solomon Burke - 14 - Sittin' at the dock of the bay-fafafafafa-Stand by me-Spanish harlem (2005-07-04).flac
and
\Pink_Floyd\Interstellar_Zappadrive\CD1\Pink Floyd - d1t05 - Interstellar Zappadrive (1969-10-25).flac
and
\Pink_Floyd\What_Syd_Wants\CD2\The Pink Floyd - d2t10 - Vegetable Man 67 (mix with ASoS).flac
\Pink_Floyd\What_Syd_Wants\CD2\The Pink Floyd - HRV CDR032 - What Syd Wants CD2.md5
and
\music\Bob_Marley\Rainbow_Theatre_London(1977-06-04)\Bob Marley & The Wailers - 06 - Crazy Baldhead-Runnin Away (1977-06-04).flac
\music\Bob_Marley\Rainbow_Theatre_London(1977-06-04)\Bob Marley & The Wailers - Rainbow Theatre London (1977-06-04).txt
and
\music\Les_Catacombes(1969)\Corea, McLaughlin, Holland & DeJohnette - 02 - Les Catacombes (take 2).flac
\music\Les_Catacombes(1969)\Corea, McLaughlin, Holland And DeJohnette - Les Catacombes (1969).md5
wellllll ... I've rather clearly over-stated the idea.
A bit of work, but pays for itself when searching a hard drive (or dozen) for something. Also, this very importantly avoids the tragedy of accidentally over-writing existing files; this naming convention gives each song a unique filename.
Been doing it this way for about about ten years with *.mp3's, and am now stepping to the next generation as I replace all the critical *.mp3's with lossless.
dboot looks like it'll be quite possibly interesting ... but I think I'll still be following the directory & filename conventions. Been learning a bit about complex and large databases these past couple of years & I see myself applying that knowledge to the hundreds of thousands of documents & files across three terabytes of drives that represent my
matrix, uhr, life.
Thanks for all the feedback! Feel free to argue/advise as much as you wish. I'm still searching for a more perfect solution.
-- teh 3Xp4t
