Using EAC and Lame I have created a MP3 library of my CDs.

On my harddisk (windows PC) the library is organised as follows:

Artist - Album Name - Song Name.mp3

in the case of a few CDs havig compilations from various artists such as soundtracks and remixes

the library is stored as follows

Album Name - Song Name.mp3

Now I want to copy this whole folder structure to my Ipod so I cna search Songs on my Ipod the same way as I do on my PC using Explorer (windows).

FYI the Ipod is a 60GB Photo if this helps.

What does that mean? I am confused? Did I ask a silly question? I triedto search this forum before posting but did not find a suitable answer.

lol... I think he mean that you are trying to fit and square block into a circle hole

Did you tag your musics well?

Since I don't have an Ipod I don't know if it could keep the same directory structure, but if you tag you musics well, why don't you just use iTunes to transfer your musics? It make organizing your musics simplier...

What is a tag? How does one tag one's Mp3s?

I am quite old. Not very PC or MP3 literate and only got into this so far thanks to my nephew (who gifted me all the hardware) and Synthetic Soul who guided me into converting my CDs into Mp3.

The Mp3 were made using something called EAC and LAME; Synthetic Soul set it for best audio quality with a compression ration of about 5:1.

and example of my music is stored as follows:
D:\MP3\Prokofiev, Serge - Andre Previn\Symphony No. 6 - "Scythian" Suite\Sym. No. 6: Allegro Moderato

I mostly listen to entire CDs except sometimes when I am listening to Etudes and Nocturnes or when there is more than one Symphony or Sonata on one CD.

I have not yet installed the ipods (I got 2 one small one called a "1GB Shuffle" and one big one called a "60GB PC+Mac") yet. Afraid I will do something horribly wrong. So I want to get as much information on this before I damage the ipods or my PC in the process.

The manuals that come with these machines dont explain anything.

navin,

You won't be able to keep your preferred directory structure on the iPod. The ipod has its own way of organizing music files on the hard disk. Merely copying your mp3s to the \music folder on your ipod will not work.

As FrzzMan said, probably the easiest and most convenient way to transfer your music to the ipod is to install iTunes on your pc. Your iPod probably came with an installation disk for itunes. iTunes will organize your music on your ipod automatically.

There's a catch, however. Your music must be properly tagged. Tags are simply information about an individual song (title, tracknumber, album, year, genre etc) stored inside the mp3 file itself. [See short introduction here. There are lost of free programs that allow you to conveniently enter tags into your mp3 files en masse without resorting to typing them in individually (which can be difficult with 9600 songs). Examples are foobar2000, mp3tag and the godfather. Foobar in particular lets you create/enter tags based on the filename of the mp3, so that your files labeled

Artist - Album Name - Song Name.mp3

will automatically have ARTIST, ALBUM, and TITLE tags. You can add other information (year, genre etc.) in batches afterwards.

You probably know this already, but you can also enter tag information before you rip in EAC so that your encoded mp3 will already have proper tags. Enter the artist name, album title, track titles etc in the EAC main window and make your commandline something like this (depending on your encoding preferences ):


regards,
kindofblue

Wow you guys are smart. You know a lot of what i got before i even told you.

I got a CD with the ipod (each ipod came with it's own CD). The CD even says "Install Softwre before connecting ipod". I hope it wont damage my PC.

Synthetic Soul and/or Ponchorage wrote this for me...

[MP3-ID3]
EXEPATH=D:\lame-3.96.1\lame.exe
ARGUMENTS=--preset extreme --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --scale %x --ta "%a" --tl "%g" --tn "%n" --tt "%t" --ty "%y" --tg "%m" %s %d
FILEPATH=D:\MP3\%a\%g\%n - %t
EXTENSION=.mp3
FILETYPE=1
APPLYREPLAYGAIN=false ;;;;;;;;;; mp3gain stores it's information in APEv2 tags.
REPLAYGAINEXEPATH= ;;;;;;;;;; Using mp3gain with ID3 tags will cause the tags
REPLAYGAINARGUMENTS= ;;;;;;;;;; to disappear on some players (ie, Foobar).

I assume it will make tags. But they are in a different order than what you wrote. Will what I got work with my ipod?

How will the ipod organise the songs. Will I have to register each folder and subfolder seperately.

I got so many folders (about 150) and each folder may have 1 or more subfolder or may have mp3's. How will ipod know where to find all these Mp3s. for example

I can have...
C:\MP3\Beethoven, Ludwig Van\Sonatas and Overtures\Grave - Allegro di molto.mp3
or

C:\MP3\Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus\Symphonies\Symphony 5\Andante.mp3

so sometimes the MP3 is 2 levels down, sometimes 3 and a few times only 1 level down in the directory tree.

navin-

You can use the foo_pod plugin with foobar2000 to do what you need. Although I'm pretty sure your filenames will be truncated to whatever the limit of the iPod is, but the directory structure should be maintained.

I would be much obliged if there was a link to the foo pod plug in as i got foorbar already.

navin,

iTunes will not harm your PC. Just follow the installation instructions.

If your music files are all stored in one main folder like c:\My Music, you can simply drag and drop that folder into the iPod icon in iTunes and it will copy the mp3s to the iPod.

The iPod organizes your music files according to Artist, Album, Genre and in playlists that you can create yourself. The catch, as I've said, is that your mp3s need to have Artist, Album, and Genre tags at least. More info about tags click here.

The stuff that Synthetic Soul and Ponchorage wrote for you is for tagging the mp3s that you are GOING TO ENCODE in EAC. This presupposes that you enter CD information (artist, title, year etc) in EAC each time you encode a new CD. This is a good idea for all your ripping/encoding activities with EAC.

For the mp3s that you've ALREADY encoded and are ALREADY in your hard disk (I assume they still don't have tags), you'll need to use the tagging software I mentioned in my earlier post (foobar2000, mp3tag etc). Use google to find them.

Thanks. I have all my MP3s is a folder called C:\MP3\..... so that is great.

I have copied all my MP3s using EAC and those special lines that Synthetic Soul and Ponchorage (he created a program called WACK) wrote for me. Each CD had the following fields filled in EAC before I encoded the CD: CD Title, CD Artist, Year, Genre & freedb. I hope this ensures that I dont have to tag my songs again. I am really not very comfortable with a PC.

If that is the case, then your files are probably tagged. You can check by loading them up in foobar, choose any file, right-mouse click and choose "Show File Info" from the menu. You should see the tag information in the file. In which case, you can go ahead and transfer your music.

You can choose between foo_pod and iTunes. Personally, I prefer iTunes for transferring to my 20GB iPod. It's a little more convenient to use, especially for novice users..

The iPod lets you organise tracks by CD title, artist, track name and genre. The folders are not used at all.

Note that iTunes has an option buried in the preferences to "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" (Advanced). It is enabled by default. What this will do is to copy all the files you add into iTunes to iTunes own folder organisation.

If you have enough space on your drive, that is not a bad thing. If drive space is limited you may want to disable this so that files exist only at one location. Just remember not to delete files from your existing music collection so that iTunes can still find them.