Thanks, Reacher, but the software isn't the real problem. It's the laziness of the person running the software. :D

Usually, my mode of operation is to have a sudden need to take some photos, discover that my camera is already full, run to plug in my camera to transfer the photos to my Mac, and run outside to take whatever pictures I wanted to take in the first place (assuming the subject hasn't disappeared already). That's how the photos pile up in one folder. Then, finally, I go through the uploaded photos and sort them out. I stopped trying to rename the files a long, long time ago. Instead, I just make sure they are placed in folders with names that describe the subject matter of the photos. That is somewhat hierarchical which allows me to dig down and pinpoint the precise photo(s) I want at any given time regardless of the filename.

It works for me even though it's not at all efficient. :)

GraphicConverter lets you preview an entire folder and rename the image files while you're looking at them. (Or delete them, or reveal them in the Finder to do Finder-level things to them).

Ultimately, the real solution to photos, music, and whatnot lies with the promise of true metadata for each file, a promise inherent in 10.4 but as of yet not implemented yet in a big way.

On the file level (yes :)), each file can have a virtually unlimited number of fields. Actions by system or application can differentiate based on the values of any such fields. The various bits of data that constitute ID3 tags could be among them, as would JPEG comments and file creator-app codes and whether it is part of Project X or Project Y and number of CMYK layers and bitrate and codec version of the video track and so on. And once some useful degree of standardization had been adopted so that different apps and the system and its subsystems all expected to find the same kind of data in the same fieldIDs, you could search and sort on any combination of these.

The only drawback of the finder (and/or the file level) is the sense that not all the data you need is effectively stored there.

(And klunky workarounds like naming your Classical-music .mp3 files with a naming convention that begins with the composer followed by the orchestra, conductor, date of perf, name of overall composition, item number within it, track name, album name, label, album catalogue code, release date, bitrate, and whether or not it came from live-to-digital-file, CD, master analogue tape, vinyl, etc., and encoding software name and version# just doesn't address the problem at all — dumping all that crap in the filename makes for pretty useless searching possibilities)

Metadata fields at the file level, as described in the linked Ars Technica article, would allow for continued elegance and ease-of-use at the file level. (A list view with the ability to do subsorts — e.g., to sort by one category and then sort all items within that category by a second category — would also help immensely. Alt-click on a column title to subsort within the existing sort-order, for instance).

In contrast, if each individual app is reinventing the Finder-wheel, creating a resources-management tool that essentially manages the files used by that app, but which isn't portable to any other app, well, then something's stinky as all getout in Denmark.

It would only be helpful if it could do global file renaming while either still keeping the original filename attached as a prefix or suffix OR performing a smart, logic based renaming. The original filename is a date code that I don't want to lose so I want to keep that as at least a suffix to the final filename.

Ideally, what I would want is a file sorter. And this is going to grate your nerves, but I would like something that uses an interface somewhat like iTunes! (Ducking and running for cover! :D)

I would like to be presented with a mess of my photos on one side of the screen, be able to create nested folders (i.e. "playlists") on the other side, and then drag and drop the photos into the folders. But rather than burying the files under a million folders of its choosing, I'd want to have it physically move the files to the actual folders I set up with folder names that I control.

Sure, I can do this somewhat with the Finder by opening two windows, using the icon preview in one window with the file hierarchy of folders in the other (which is what I usually do, actually), but I run into a problem with my photos being too large for the previews to work in OS X. So I cannot see half of my photos in the previews even when I try. (I haven't checked to see if this is still true with Tiger.)

Once the photos are organized into their own folders, I can then run renaming tools to do mass renaming of the files themselves; although, I have found this to be of little importance to me in the long run so I've stopped messing with this.

Have you tried using the keywords feature of iPhoto?
iTunes is able to do its sorting etc by virtue of the metadata that is associated with each song file (ID3 tags). For photos, there is metadata that comes from the camera (date etc) but obviously this does not include any info about the subject matter. You need to supply the subject matter info manually.
iPhoto allows you to do this and then you can search by keyword etc.
There have been many articles written about this - here's a few from the main macosxhints site:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...40818070433708
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...05041900454453

No, I honestly haven't. I don't want to sit and rename 2,500+ photos, and I think I would have to do that for a keyword feature to work, right? It's faster and easier to select 30 photos and drag them all into a folder which is named with their subject matter than to try to name all 30 photos individually. Even if I tried to use some sort of batch renamer, I would still need to sort out the photos before applying the renamer as I don't always take photos in order (I can go from one subject, to another, back to the 1st, then to a 3rd, then back to the 2nd, etc.). So the subject matter is somewhat random among the pictures themselves.

Or maybe I'm just being stubborn. :D

Well, if you can select them (e.g. to drag them to a folder) then you can apply a keyword via a batch utility like that mentioned in one of the articles I linked to above.

If you really want to drag to a destination, you could create AppleScript droplets (each named according to a subject) that would apply keywords to the files that are dropped on them.

Don't scream at me, but I honestly don't know anything about AppleScripts! I have no idea how to make them or use them! :eek:

But all this talk has reminded me of iView Media Pro. I haven't fired that one up on a long time, but I always liked it when I did use it because of its flexibility and the complete control it gave me. Since I'm really not concerned about renaming the files themselves, I may see about upgrading my current version of iViewMP and seeing if that will help me speed up the sorting of my photos.

As it is... it truly doesn't matter how well organized a filing system might be if you don't use it. Having around 2,300 unsorted photos isn't doing me a bit of good no matter how much I stomp my feet about how I don't like the way iPhoto handles the files.

So I guess I should stop fussing and start sorting! :o

hmm, I also dis like iTunes for many various reasons. One thing that always kind of got me is that its random, is not written very well. I had about 9 gigs or so of music on one of my older work G4s (700Mhz) and it basically just acted as a mp3 player since it was older and no one used it. I would hear the same song 8 or 9 times a day when I played the whole 9 gig library on random, that just shouldn't happen IMHO.

I did a quick versiontracker search linked below, anyone else use any of these?

http://www.versiontracker.com/php/se...macosx&x=0&y=0

The randomness of iTunes' shuffle has been much discussed and even experimentally measured. It is in fact random, but the properties of random sequences do not correspond to what many people expect. (There is a certain probability of repeats in a random sequence and it's higher than what might seem reasonable intuitively.)
That is why Apple introduced some non-randomness via additional preference settings in more recent versions of iTunes.

working with network security I am somewhat familiar with RNG (random number generators), and I am aware that a lot of times devs create pre made random strings and then the RNG picks one of the random preset strings (randomly) to produce random results. They do that for a sense of control, and I can see that, and understand why some developers do such things.

That is just one of my peaves with iTunes...

and I must admit I have not really played around with itunes 6, since I did not like the previous versions. Maybe it has gotten better, but I don't think i will use it simply because of all the bells and whistles. I like media players that take up little to none resources. I have seen itunes hog up some resources.

I do some web developement on the side and some other computer related things on the side with my contracting job and I like to have anything running in the background running at minimal resources. OS X in general, has pretty good memory management from my experience which is why I tend to blame iTunes and not the OS for it sometimes hogging up some system resources.

Reacher, I've heard some good press about that program. Would you tell us more?
tommaso

I am just curious, what is it that bothers you so much about iTunes system of orginization? It seems pretty intuitive to me. I also don't understand what you mean by orginizing music by file name rather than track name. Isnt' the track name the file name? I guess it doesn't have to me, but I don't get why you would name a track "file blah.mp3" when it's "Another one bites the dust" Unless I totally missed the point on orginization by file name. But what is the point of knowing where all your music files are? They play in itunes, and go on your ipod from where they are. If you ever need the track, you can drag and drop it right out of itunes, and if for some reason you need to know where the track is, you can always spotlight it.

I guess I am just curious what kind of work your doing with your music files that you have all these gripes. I have never needed to actually find the location of a music file before. I know they are all nice and tidy in the music folder, and I can play them from itunes. What else could you do with a music file? A few times I wanted to open a file into garage band or audacity to try to play with it, and I just dragged it out of itunes to the desktop, opened it into my app of choice, and tossed it when I was done.

Having just spent some time locating and downloading a few interesting podcasts and viewing movie trailers within iTunes, I wonder what other app offers such a diverse array of options, all seamlessly integrated. Playing a newly purchased song now, iTunes in the background using only around 9% CPU and 30 MB RAM. My music is organized; I know where the actual files reside (not so hard to track down). Hard to find much to complain about.

Some early adopters of the new-fangled horseless carriages complained that they didn't come with whip holders or grain storage bags. :)

Twelve Motion, I've already explained what I dislike about iTunes.

It's not just the file name, it's the entire file path:

a) FileName: "11 Atom Heart Mother". Location in file system: "Primary/MP3-X/Spillover Pink Floyd/Pink Floyd: Total Eclipse 2" Track Name: "Atom Heart Mother"


b) FileName: "05-Atom Heart Mother.mp3". Location in file system: "Primary/MP3-I/P/Pink Floyd Additional/Pink Floyd at the Playhouse Theatre London 16.9.1970" Track Name: "Atom Heart Mother"

c) FileName: "Pink Floyd - AHM1Suite.mp3". Location in file system: "Primary/MP3-I/P/Pink Floyd Std Rels/Atom Heart Mother" Track Name: "Atom Heart Mother"

d) FileName: "01-Atom Heart Mother.mp3" Location in file system: "Primary/MP3-I/P/Pink Floyd Additional/Rarities Off Live Radio" Track Name: "Atom Heart Mother"

To organize my music in the Finder is a simple matter of creating folders and subfolders and giving them names. To organize my music using ID3 tags, which is what iTunes uses for "Track Name", means overwriting the default track names that my MP3 encoder inherits from CDDB.

I can create hierarchies of folders and subfolders as I see fit, and if I change my mind I just move the tracks, I don't have to edit a batch of ID3 tags. Let's say I only have a couple albums of Berlioz but a huge batch of Vaughn-Williams. I might toss the Berlioz album loose in the "B" subfolder of Classical/Romantic, whereas I might put my Vaughn-Williams album folders into separate subfolders divided up by Orchestral versus Choral, with Orchestral subdivided by three conductors I have multiple pieces plus an "Other" folder for all other conductors. Later on, if I continue to get recordings of Vaughn-Williams with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, I might subdivide the Sir Adrian Boult folder up in some manner. Meanwhile, if I acquire a lot more Berlioz, I'm eventually going to want to subdivide the Berlioz folder into major categories of some sort. Wanna try doing that with ID3 tags? Aside from the problem that they don't have enough slots to accomodate Composer, Performer, Orchestra, Label, Soloist, Series, Major Work Title, Individual Piece Title, Album Title, Album Label, Composition Year, Recording Year, and Release Year, they are a pain in the butt to redo. I've had to revamp ID3 tags for my girlfriend's freakin' iPod, and mass-editing even 20 or so tracks is annoyingly slow not to mention cumbersome. And you have to do it for annoying things like "Simon and Garfunkel" versus "Simon & Garfunkel" whereas for music apps that use the Finder's own native file system for organizing, it's just the folder you tossed them in, you don't have to deal with that in order to dump freshly-encoded tracks from "Concert in Central Park" in alongside of "Bookends".

If I want to create a new playlist, I open a "new playlist" window in Audion and I drag actual FILES into the window, after finding them within my hierarchy. Then the playlist is saved and it exists as a file, and I can organize my playlists hierarchically within systems of folders and subfolders.

Having worked with several different media players on both windows and linux platforms I find iTunes a bit sluggish and a bit annoying. It is a personal preference, and I have always found a good third party media player that I like better on other platforms, just not so much with the Apple platform yet.

I actually like to run an old version of winamp on my system that is just a basic music player with a play list. Takes up practically no resources and it plays files as I organize them. I also take the time to Alphabetically organize my music by artist name, then by album. I have been doing that since before iTunes ever existed.

I also don't purchase music online, I do not like how you have to authorize it vis ITMS. I will just download it from the artist themsleves. A lot of times you can just download an .iso file of the artist which means I can rip it to audio cd in no time via nero, and the .iso is already ready to archive for back ups.

Off topic, but word processors really piss me off. I mean, how arrogant those developers are to think that I should use their program to organize the letters on my page.

I like to keep each of my documents in a separate Finder directory. I copy into each directory the individual letters I need to create my masterpiece--in the correct order. To organize my writing in the Finder is a simple matter of creating folders and subfolders and giving them names. I can create hierarchies of folders and subfolders as I see fit, and if I change my mind I just move the letters.

If I want to create a new document, I open a new window in Finder and I drag actual LETTERS into the window, after finding them within my hierarchy. Then the document is saved and it exists as a file, and I can organize my documents hierarchically within systems of folders and subfolders.

It's all very logical.

Ummm, you can do all of that in iTunes without touching a single ID3 tag by using playlists.

Chris

You aren't far off. Yes, I do want my word processors to put the characters on the screen for me (I don't want to drag them out of folders on my hard drive:))...

But I don't want my word processor to change margins for me. To indent for me except as I've specified. To apply some bloody "style" to things I've typed or pasted. Certainly not to override what I'm inputting because it thinks I ought to be using a bulleted list. If I want bullets I'll type option-8 and put a bullet.

So, yeah, Microsoft Word has no space on my hard drive. I do not use it, I do not own it, I will not touch it.

No you can't.

Look, you want to use iTunes, by all means don't let me dissuade you. I made a passing comment in another thread about hating iTunes and was asked to elaborate, hence the existence of this thread. I'm not on a crusade to eliminate iTunes, I just don't like it and don't use it.

Fair enough. I personally think iTunes is great. I think I can do everything you want to do with playlists. Still, that doesn't mean you have to like it. You are free to use whatever method you choose to manage your music. Choice is good.

Chris