Musings on Meta
Ever since I acquired my iPod Shuffle, I have been on the quest to get my music collection under control. Now that I have installed Tiger and am finding Spotlight to be much more useful than I had previously anticipated, I am trying to get my photos keyworded. Both of these projects have been going on for a long time actually. I have always intended to add these elements to my collections, but as they continue to grow and GROW (over 6,500 songs and about 2,000 photos) the ability to search intelligently for these files is becomes more useful. To that end I thought I might share my strategies for applying said meta data, and some of my wishes now that I am getting into the process.
iTunes
ID3 Tags
The first line of defense in organizing your iTunes library is the ID3 tag. I have always been a little obsessive about my ID3 tags, but that doesn’t mean that all of mine are done. Not even close. I have been downloading a lot of new MP3s (legally, before you get any ideas) and about 2/3 of them don’t have the ID3 tags filled out. Why can’t that just be an understood, “if you put out an MP3, fill out the tags.” So I use Smart Playlists to help me stay on top of this stuff. Being able to keep track of which songs are lacking what info is priceless. Now when I get a free moment (which is not often enough) I can start correcting some of these issues. Too bad that all the tools that are supposed to automate this for you don’t work very well.
Ratings
My Shuffle has really been the impetus that got me wanting to start getting my stuff rated. The problem is that I didn’t have a good way of doing it before. Well, based on some advice I received I decided that I would use my Shuffle as the tool to help me get this done. I set up a Smart Playlist that contains unrated songs with a playcount less than three (because you should listen to a song at least three times before you decide if you like it) and fill my iPod Shuffle randomly from this list. Then I set up a Smart Playlist of songs that have been heard three or more times but have no rating. Once again, when I get some free time I go through and rate them. My goal is to have about 80% of them rated by the end of the summer.
In case anyone cares, my rating system is set up as follows:
- 1 - Horrible: I would delete it and maybe one day I will, but not until I need more space or something.
- 2 - Bad: Not worthy of being trashed, I could see how someone might like it, but rather not here it in regular rotation.
- 3 - Okay: Don’t mind hearing these on a regular basis, but nothing too special (most songs are here).
- 4 - Good: I like these songs and want to hear them more frequently.
- 5 - Great: These are the songs that make me say, “Oh my gosh I LOVE this song. Turn it up!”
Album Art
While this doesn’t help one iota with organization I happen to love this feature and so I decided to include it. I try to always find proper artwork for my songs but this is often rather time consuming. I have tried a couple of different “automated” programs and have had less than stellar results. Consequently, my album art is far behind. I think that the only decent solution I have found is a program called Clutter. It runs outside of iTunes, which I dislike, but it looks up the artwork of the currently playing song and then allows you to copy it over. The advantage is that you can preview the artwork before deciding to add it.
Gripes and Wishes
My major complaints with iTunes revolve around library management. Not managing the library, but managing libraries. I for two things basically; the ability to have multiple libraries and the ability for different users to have their own library, but share the same files.
First I want to have different libraries for different types of music. Don’t get confused here, I am not talking about different genres of music. I am talking about music for different purposes. For example, I have a collection of royalty free music and such that I use for my video projects and DVDs. I keep them in iTunes because I like to be able to see them from iMovie and iDVD, but I have to keep them unchecked to keep them out of the playlists. Why can’t I just have a seperate library for these, and another for Audio Books, and so on? I know that there are programs that offer this functionality, but I think that it needs to be added as a standard feature.
iPhoto
Keywords
Like ratings in iTunes, this is a feature that I have wanted to add for a long time. When they introduced Smart Albums and Ratings to iPhoto, I thought, “Hey, great I better get cracking on getting those Keywords in.” Now I have installed Tiger and am finding Spotlight to very useful and like the idea of being able to find my photos. So what took me so long to get going on this? The problem was that iPhoto’s method for adding Keywords was pathetic. It was such a pain to create and then find the keywords and select them. I guess if you were only going to have a keyword or two per photo, then it might be okay. That is not how I do keywords though.
![]( <a href="http://digitalsandbox.us/wp-content/keywordsample.jpg">http://digitalsandbox.us/wp-content/keywordsample.jpg’</a> alt=‘Keyword Samples’ />Let me show you a typical set of keywords for a photo. When I apply keywords to a photo, I want to set everything I can think of to help me find that photo again. I typically use the following pattern: 1) list everybody who is in the photo; 2) list where the photo was taken; 3) does it relate to some event (birthday, holiday, first steps, etc.); 4) anything else about the photo that was not covered (maybe there is an animal in the shot—list it, etc.). For example, here is the list of keyword for the photo at the right: Thing 1, Grandma, Danny, Erin, Zoo, Salt lake City, Summer.</p>
<p>You can see that my list of keywords would get abnormally long with just listing who was in the shot. Enter <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/kenferry/software.html">Keyword Assistant</a>. This is a phenomonal program, that makes adding large number of keywords almost trivial. First of all, it is a plugin for iPhoto so it ties right in and feels very seemless. It provides a textbox in a floating window that you start typing in your keyword. When it finds a match in the list, it fills in the rest. It also ties into the Address Book Application, which means it will look up those names for you as well automatically making them keywords. And then to take a step further it remembers what was the last keyword used if multiple matches are found and offers them first since you might have several shots of the same subject. For example, you have the keywords aardvark and Aaron. Aardvark would clearly be first alphabetically, but if you used Aaron last a single push of the ‘A’ key will bring up Aaron instead of Aadrvark. This program is a must have for everyone.</p>
<h4>Gripes and Wishes</h4>
<p>My wishes for iPhoto are also tied to the libraries. At least with iPhoto you can hold down Option when you launch it to create new libraries and switch between them. I would like to see some sort of easier method though. I have a library for my photos (mostly family stuff) and another to organize random pics I download off the Internet for desktops or other projects. I think it would be great if there was like a tabbed interface to switch between libraries on the fly instead of quitting and relaunching. Also, I plan to go back and scan in all of my old photos, it would be so awesome to be able to fake a date taken and so forth. Right now I don’t see that option in iPhoto. Please correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<h3>The Future of File Systems</h3>
<p>For a long time now there have been rumblings about a push to database driven filesystems. While I didn’t fully comprehend the need at first, I am now beginning to see the usefulness of such a beast. iTunes and iPhoto have shown me that organizing my files in a database can be a much better method of handling my data. I can’t remember the last time that I looked in my iTunes folder to find a song. If I need a song I launch iTunes find it. If I need to copy is somewhere it is a simple drag and drop. If I need a photo, I launch iPhoto and repeat the process. now with Spotlight I am finding this paradigm useful for every type of file. Just the other day I needed an email that I had filed away who knows how long ago. Spotlight found it in less than 10 seconds.</p>
<p>Personally, I say bring on the database drive filesystem. I couldn’t care less if I never have to see another folder again. This method is so much easier when I am dealing with huge amounts of data like we all have now. Time to get cracking on adding that meta data to my other files.
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<h3>Post<span class="normal">Info</span></h3>
<ul>
<li>Posted: May 17, 2005</li>
<li>Category: Tech</li>
<li>Tags: <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/apple">apple</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/iphoto">iphoto</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/itunes">itunes</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/keyword">keyword</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/metadata">metadata</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/organize">organize</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/spotlight">spotlight</a>, <a rel="tag" href="http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/blog/tag/wishes">wishes</a></li>
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<h3>Related<span class="normal">Content</span></h3>
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