Naming standards

[oldbrokentapes]

Simple question - is the use of etree naming standards going to be enforced / encouraged here? If not, what swung the decision? This is by no means supposed to sound like a criticism - I appreciate that enforcing naming standards is hassle that to many isn't worth it - it's just the one thing that I was surprised not to see in the FAQ. So I'm curious :)

[RainDawg]

Yeah...I intentionally left it out of the FAQ. There are a LOT of very specific rules here, and we just felt that filenaming was of secondary concern to getting the lineage and quality thing right. We tried to do the mandatory etree naming thing...uhh...on "other sites", and it was a continuous battle. We only put rules we can enforce into the rules.

That being said, we'd prefer to have etree standard for filenaming, whenever possible. I and most of the other staff members here do this auto It's just not in the FAQ because it's not worth beating our heads out over until we're sure that the community can do everything else right.

[oldbrokentapes]

That's cool and makes sense. Might be worth having a little encouragement note and a link to the etree page somewhere (just a quick line in the seeding guidelines maybe?) but obviously the FAQ is pretty busy already so I'm sure leaving it until you figure the community is ready will be fine. Hell, I don't think archive.org even enforce the standards anymore :(

[jcrab66]

nice to see its not one of the rules, just because its the etree standard doesnt make it the best........

[wazoo2u]

This is just a guess, but it looks to me that the "etree standard" was put into place to allow etree admins to better handle their database routines. You must admit that between their SHN's in Circulation and db.etree.org sites, they've done quite an impressive job with the gd especially.

That said, I find that in general terms, the format of "artist-yy-mm-dd[DnTn (or title)] seems to be the logical way to work. Obviously, all this info isn't always available.

If SHN/FLAC portable players were more available to people in these trading circles, it would encourage everyone to work more with ID Tags, which in turn would influence file naming standards. Hasn't happened yet.

[mgleason007]

nice to see its not one of the rules, just because its the etree standard doesnt make it the best........
And what is your file naming suggestion?

This is just a guess, but it looks to me that the "etree standard" was put into place to allow etree admins to better handle their database routines. You must admit that between their SHN's in Circulation and db.etree.org sites, they've done quite an impressive job with the gd especially.

That said, I find that in general terms, the format of "artist-yy-mm-dd[DnTn (or title)] seems to be the logical way to work. Obviously, all this info isn't always available.

If SHN/FLAC portable players were more available to people in these trading circles, it would encourage everyone to work more with ID Tags, which in turn would influence file naming standards. Hasn't happened yet.
It's simply the best way to name files. If you accidentally download two shows to the same folder, or use newsgroups and download all of the files to the same folder, how else are you going to tell which files go to which show?

Along with your last point, I hope to be getting a Rio Karma for Christmas :thumbsup BTW, it's simple to add appropriate ID3 tags to FLAC files (or whatever they're called with FLAC) with foobar. There's a plugin that parses the text file and puts the appropriate info into the correct field for a whole show all at once. Anyone can feel free to PM me for it cuz I don't remember right now what it's called.

[RainDawg]

Along with your last point, I hope to be getting a Rio Karma for Christmas :thumbsup BTW, it's simple to add appropriate ID3 tags to FLAC files (or whatever they're called with FLAC) with foobar. There's a plugin that parses the text file and puts the appropriate info into the correct field for a whole show all at once. Anyone can feel free to PM me for it cuz I don't remember right now what it's called.

My Karma is my best friend....take it to work with me everyday. Name the FLACs with etree and tag them with foobar2000, like you said. The name of the plugin for running custom tagging scripts is masstagger, and there is another one called "traders friend" that can auto-tag the fields with artist, date, and track just based on properly etree named files ;). It can be downloaded here:
http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uzbs/fb2k/html/

Masstagger comes as part of the defualt install package, and I use it for tagging all my files....it does Ape, Vorbis, ID3, and ID3v2, automatically knowing which is the appropriate for each files.

For FLAC, use Vorbis tags (masstagger knows this, but other programs don't) and NOT id3v2, which will work but is a nasty thing to do to your files.

[wazoo2u]

Still watching the Neuros.... I want the 80 gig.

Do I have to buy a Karma, just to stimulate the market for more portable FLAC players ???
:tunes: :confused:

[RainDawg]

Do I have to buy a Karma, just to stimulate the market for more portable FLAC players ???
Might be a good idea.....a awful lot of people are falling for the abomination that is the Apple Lossless Codec, playable only on the iPod. People need to spend their money on devices that say "we will not be a prisoner to your hardware/software just to listen to our tunes". If you're going to buy a player, stand up and support open formats like FLAC!

[bowman]

To back this up, naming will be consistent when people torrent and seed the shows because of the way bittorrent works. The naming is consistent from the time they download the show til the time they drop the seed. This, by all definitions, is *consistent* naming from the origin. If people want to rename the the show to etree standard after downloading the show, they are free to do that... they just need to be sure they change the md5 naming.. and they need to be sure they've shared enough because they cant jump back on the torrent :)

[Rider]

And what is your file naming suggestion?


It's simply the best way to name files. If you accidentally download two shows to the same folder, or use newsgroups and download all of the files to the same folder, how else are you going to tell which files go to which show?

Along with your last point, I hope to be getting a Rio Karma for Christmas :thumbsup BTW, it's simple to add appropriate ID3 tags to FLAC files (or whatever they're called with FLAC) with foobar. There's a plugin that parses the text file and puts the appropriate info into the correct field for a whole show all at once. Anyone can feel free to PM me for it cuz I don't remember right now what it's called.

Etree standards allow abbreviations in band name which is just dumb. Etree was set up for FTP's and was set up with only a small selection of artists in mind, when you look at etree stasndards and think about whatis' like digging through a FTP they make sense. However the world ahs maoved on and I'm sorry but full bands would be required here if we did enforce anything. I also thin adding .SHNF to the end of folder name is kind of pointless.

[wazoo2u]

Just one significant point to add to this discussion, and that is the fact that different OS'es cannot handle long file names in a compatible manner. This creates potential file naming issues in a lot of cases. It may mean nothing in the context of this discussion, but I thought I'd throw it out there..... :)

[RainDawg]

I like the idea of having complete band names for the files, as the abbreviations sometimes are a little obscure. The great points about the etree format is that it contains no spaces (which are STILL tough for some programs to handle) and it contains the band, date, and track all in one short, easy to read package. You're right though, some accepted prefix with a full band would be required.

[Rider]

I like the idea of having complete band names for the files, as the abbreviations sometimes are a little obscure. The great points about the etree format is that it contains no spaces (which are STILL tough for some programs to handle) and it contains the band, date, and track all in one short, easy to read package. You're right though, some accepted prefix with a full band would be required.

Yep ((% of the etree standard is perfect and can never be imporved upon, there is however that 1% tha'ts outdated. Iknow I got sick of trying to figure out things on DC hubs, it took me for ever to remeber who FZ was, and for some reason LZ always threw me. And then it took a long time to figure out that Moe was actually the bands name.

[oldbrokentapes]

Fine point on abbreviations actually - the etree method does give too much potential for conflict. I seeded a Hundred Reasons show a while back and abbreviated to hr (which is common amongst their fanbase anyway) but later found out that Henry Rollins is already assigned to the hr abbreviation, even though under the etree rules, he should probably be hrollins. Ah well :rolleyes:

[RainDawg]

Moving this thread to the Technobabble Archive. It contains some interesting discussion that I think may be useful to future readers.