Etree.org / Archive.org Part 3 (Importing)
Part 1 (Introduction) | Part 2 (Conversion) | Part 3 (Importing) | Part 4 (Final Conversion)
This is part three in a little series of writeups about etree.org and Archive.org. In the first part of the series we introduced the websites themselves and discussed their mission. In the second part we downloaded some FLAC files of a Soulhat live concert and converted them to WAV files. It's now time to import them into iTunes.
Import Into iTunes
Open your Soulhat folder in the Finder and select all the files. You can use command-A to select all, choose Select All from the Edit menu, click the top one then hold the shift key and click the bottom one or hold the apple key as you click each one. What fun, options galore!
Now drag the selection into iTunes and drop it on the "Library" folder. Your cursor will grow a green blob with a "+" symbol in the middle meaning that the dragged items will be copied into the Library folder. iTunes will take a few moments to import and copy the files.
Smart Playlists
It's possible that the songs have now gone missing - lost in a sea of music files already listed in your iTunes library. What I do in order to easily locate new songs is create a smart playlist. To create a smart playlist you can hold the option key when adding a playlist - the plus sign in the lower left hand corner of the window changes to a gear symbol when the option key is held down. Alternately you could choose New Smart Playlist... from the File menu.
Here are two different smart playlist settings that work for me and might help you:
- Recently Played
- Match the following rule:
- Date added - is in the last - 2 weeks
- Live Updating (checked)
- Never Played
- Match the following rule:
- Play Count - is - 0
- Live Updating (checked)
Either of these will give you a playlist containing the songs that were just added into iTunes! Woot!
One website I love is SmartPlaylists.com - you can go there to find lots of great ideas on using smart playlists to enhance your music listening habits.
Metadata
Once you find the songs in your iTunes library you're likely to experience a bit of a sinking feeling. The song names are the same as the filename and they're metadata free. There is no artist listed, no album, nothing other than a rather useless song name. The FLAC files do not contain the metadata that you are used to finding in your MP3 file downloads. You'll to need to rebuild that information from the Archive.org listing.
If you revisit the Archive.org page - Soulhat Live at Liberty Lunch on 1992-07-21 (July 21, 1992) - you will find all the information needed. Optionally you could download the text file with show details along with the FLAC files - in this case the file is soulhat1992-07-21.txt.
Update Metadata
Now that you are armed with the metadata for the show you'll want to update the WAV files. Select them all and choose Get Info from the File menu (or click command-I). You'll be presented with an editor window allowing you to batch edit various information for the songs selected.
Enter the artist information and the year of the concert. For the album I usually prepend it with "[Live]" which allows me some flexibility with smart playlists, then I follow it up with the date in standard US format, a semicolon, the venue of the concert, another semicolon followed by the city and state of the concert. I also add a grouping of "[legal download]" again giving me more flexibility with smart playlists - I do this same grouping for MP3 files I download from MySpace and other artist endorsed freebie websites. Finally I add the Archive.org URL to this exact concert in the comments section. Now I can use a smart playlist that includes any items with a comment containing "http://www.archive.org" to get all 2,768 songs in one location.
Save those changes and let's go back to each individual song file to edit the song names. Click the top song and get info on it. Make your edits and then press the Next button to move down the setlist.
There are a few conventions used by the etree.org/Archive.org postings that I dislike and "fix" after importing into iTunes. Songs that were played live uninterrupted, back to back, might have a ">" in the song title. An example would be "Holy Cow>Built It Up Tear It Down" meaning that this one track has the song Holy Cow and the song Build It Up Tear It Down played together in succession. Another would be "Shady>" followed by "Warsong > Wicked City > Small > Warsong" which implies that the song Shady was played directly into the Warsong medley. One might also note the spacing is different in the two song titles I referenced.
Where the songs should not be separated, such as the medley "Warsong > Wicked City > Small > Warsong", I just change the ">" character to a "/" character and ensure that there is spacing before and after. In cases where the song is alone and the mark indicates it had been played directly into the song after it, but that it was separated such as "Shady>", I just remove the character. For instances where the song is just too long or I hear an obvious place where it might be split I'll use iTunes to separate it out into two separate songs and remove the marks.
The next entry in this series will go over some optional steps one might take.
Part 1 (Introduction) | Part 2 (Conversion) | Part 3 (Importing) | Part 4 (Final Conversion)