Organize your songs
This help page will give you only an overview of the concept of organizing your album collection, to see the full process in action we recommend you view the appropriate "How To Organize your albums" section.
The concept
With only a couple of clicks Soundbase allows you to move your songs into an organized folder structure. But to do so, you will need to understand a little bit of how Soundbase achieves this. You will need to understand the basics of a "base path", templates, and how Soundbase uses these values.
The base path is like a root directory, the lowest level of your folder structure that you use to store your music. For those of you who have additional discs this could be a folder called d:\archive.music\, or any folder name you like. And all your music is stored inside this folder structure.
The template translates certain TAG values to filename values. You can change the template for organize in options => template tab (*note: the location of these templates might be transferred to the organize screen). The template is nothing more then a replacement string. In other words, a template of "TRACK - TITLE" would translate a file with a value of "1" for track, and "yankee on my shoulder" for title to "01 - yankee on my shoulder.mp3" by replacing the TRACK in the string with the value "1" and the TITLE in the string with a value "yankee on my shoulder".
Soundbase takes the template for organize one level further, it allows also for folder structures. The default template that soundbase uses is "a\artist\album\disctrack - title". Where the "a\" (only to be used at the beginning) stands for the first letter of the next folder structure. "artist\" stands for a folder name as the artist TAG, and "album\" stands for a folder name as the album TAG. The final result of organizing would then be "Base path+Translate(Template)". In the example showing, this would be "l:\archive.music\pop\t\the moaners\blackwing yalobusha\01 - yankee on my shoulders.mp3". If I press the organize selected songs button, all songs will move to this location. And all songs will have the same folder/filename structure. Isn't that great!?
Knowing how the template works, it is eminent that the organize function can only work correctly if you nurse your TAGs correctly, and if you choose and stick to your template. So have a good think about your template (we believe the given template is the best). And if the values in your TAG are not correct, the organized song filenames will also be wrong!
If the album already exists soundbase will give you a double screen, the same as above, but with two lists. One with the new songs, one with the already existing songs, and you can select, which of the songs you like to keep. So no more double albums, or accidentally overwriting songs.
For more info, and examples it is best to have a look at some examples in the "how to's" help section.
Other setting you need to know
Under the dropdown on the "settings" button you can set 4 settings, 2 are on what to do in the destination folder, two are on what to do with the original files. You have the option to auto create a playlist.m3u and a folder.jpg in the destination folder, and you can delete the songs from the database (not from disc!) and remove empty folders.