Retagging collection, need some advice.., DISCNUMBER, ALBUMARTIST, etc.. Options

[BelleAndZEK]

So I finally decided to retag my FLAC library because I want to get rid of the mp3 transcodes and only use FLAC instead. Will do with XBMC.
Now before I start, I'd like some advice on a few things..
EVERYTHING is tagged the same way right now:
- ARTIST
- TITLE
- TRACKNUMBER
- ALBUM
- DATE
- ENSEMBLE (for Album Artist, Tag&Rename used that.)

Here's what I'm going to do, what I want to do:
- Remove the ENSEMBLE tag and use ALBUMARTIST instead
- Use TOTALTRACKS
- Use TOTALDISCS
- Use DISCNUMBER

Now I'm wondering what's best.. Should I use a leading 0 for TOTALTRACKS, TOTALDISCS and DISCNUMBER or not?
For albums that have only 1 disc, should I use the TOTALDISCS tag or leave it blank? Same for DISCNUMBER..

For multi-disc albums, TOTALTRACKS is for each disc or the total of all discs? I'm guessing it's per disc...

Also, let say I have an album called 'Hello' and a CD-Single also called 'Hello' by the same artist. What's the best way to get the tracks of both releases not mixed together if I want ALBUM to just be "Hello" and not "Hello (CDS)" for CD-Single for instance? Is there a 'CDS' 'EP' 'Album' tag that most softwares recognize for that?

For albums with a bonus disc, is there a field I should be using for the name of the bonus disc? A field where I can add 'Live in ...' for the bonus disc for instance..

Any other tags I should take in consideration apart from GENRE? That one's too subjective.

I have thousands of albums to do, I just want to make sure I get things right before I start. Thanks!

This post has been edited by BelleAndZEK: Jun 4 2012, 21:15

[Ron Jones]

Any other tags I should take in consideration apart from GENRE? That one's too subjective.

GENRE can be a useful tag assuming you don't obsess over specificity and accuracy. I think I use about eight genres in total: everything I have invariably fits into one or more of those eight genres, so they're quite broad.

You might wish to include the BAND tag as well, which would be a duplicate of ALBUMARTIST. Useful if you ever intend to use an Apple product and end up converting your library to one of its supported formats. You could always do that automatically at the time of transcoding, however.