I have just installed an internal 320gb hard drive & transferred my entire mp3 collection over from PC......this equates to over 500 albums!
Now due the to the useless way the PS3 sorts files, trying to arrange my albums is next to hopeless:(. As i have so many albums, if I arrange in album order, I need to be able to remember who has recored each album as the PS3 can not tell me - this is impossible. If i arrange in artist order, the PS3 dumps every track by that artist in just one folder:eek:. So in my case over 500 Depeche Mode tracks (not sorted in album order...aaaaahhhhhhhhh !!!)
The only way I can think of sorting into some sort of order is to rename every album but prefix the album title with the artist's name (ie for Black Celebration, I rename album as Depeche Mode - Black Celebration)
I have got tag&rename but can not see how to just rename album.
Anyone advise on how to rename album OR a better way of trying to find an album & play it on my PS3 ? (and yes I have thought of just selling my HD & buying some home plugs to stream from PC;))
I just did this very same thing and had the exact same problem. The PS3 is retarded this way. I ended up tagging all of my music with that program that you mentioned. It's an excellent program. Didn't have to do anything more than download the info from Amazon.com (there is an option in the Tools menu). Some of my music was mis-named in the first place, so in those cases, I had to tweak certain songs to match up with the Amazon info. Also, remember that no matter what you physically rename your song to in Windows (it could be 01-theshiz@by@rapperdude@$#feat.@gangsta@#$#.mp3) the PS3 will display only what is in the tag. So once you tag it with Amazon info, there is no need to manually rename each file unless you really want to.
Once tagged and renamed, I used my old PS3 40GB HDD that I stuck in an enclosure to do all the transfers from my PC to my PS3. In the "MUSIC" folder on the 40GB drive, I created a separate folder for each artist (ie. an "Aerosmith" folder, a "White Stripes" folder...etc.) I don't know if that's absolutely necessary, but it helped me to keep everything organized. Next, I copied all songs from a specific artist into their folder. I did not create sub-folders for albums. So if I had 10 albums from Aerosmith, I copied over just the 100+ mp3 files to the single Aerosmith folder. I'm sure you are aware of this, but once the mp3 is tagged, there is no need to copy over any of the image files to the PS3. Just the mp3's will suffice. They retain the art.
When I plugged in the 40GB external USB drive into the PS3, I sorted by artist. All of the folders for each artist appeared. I hit the triangle button and selected "multiple copy" and that was it. Everything copied over.
Now when browsing on my PS3, I sort by artist. All of the songs in each artists folder are automatically sorted by album and track #. And since they are all tagged, the icon for each album shows up next to each song, so it's easy to scroll through all of the albums of a specific artist without having to think about it or read any of the text.
Not sure if that specifically answered your question, but it was the best alternative I was able to figure out given the PS3's limitations with regards to sorting music.
You could stream using TVersity, which would mean leaving your PC on for your MP3's to play. But I have to say that the convenience of having my entire music collection on my PS3 HDD is not something I would want to give up. I love it. Makes choosing custom in-game music extremely convenient, and I use that feature all the time. Plus I feel secure that all of my music is in more than one location.
Originally posted by aqol45: Cheers buddy...will give that a go
Hope it works out. One more thing about tagging with info from Amazon. As you know, a lot of older music is available remastered. So when you grab the info from Amazon, the original release date does not show up. It really annoyed me, as Aerosmith's 3rd album was not released in 2006. So in a lot of cases, another tweak I needed to do was change the year in the tag to the original release date. I don't care when it was remastered....I personally want the original release date to show up.
Once you have imported your albums to the PS3, scroll to the music icon and press Square, until you find the right layout, it may or may not work.
I stream my music, so i dont use it.
