recently ive started using the johnny decimal system which has helped with the chaos of my folders/files, and for me it has actually worked, everything is sorted in a very organized and meaningful way according to my own subjectivity. except for media. i tried using calibre for books, picard for music, i dont know what i could use for films/tv shows, but everything requires a lot of manual work, i have to verify the metadata is correct, or in some cases that the release is the correct one, sometimes the author isn’t properly rendered, etc. is there a way to automate this? i know using something like radarr helps when you’re downloading but what i am supposed to do with the files i already have?
You must log in or register to comment.
I don’t bother with Calibre or anything similar; I simply use the directory structure. Easier to show it with examples than explaining it.
Full path description /storage/reading/language/David Marcus - A Manual of Akkadian.pdf language book /storage/reading/light novels/The Faraway Paladin/04.epub light novel /storage/music/Die Ärzte/2003 - Geräusch/05 - Dinge Von Denen.mp3 music track /storage/tarballs/ROMs/snes/Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy’s Kong Quest.smc SNES game /storage/tarballs/Utils/Android/F-Droid.apk installation file for F-Droid, Android system /storage/videos/movies/The Lord of the Rings/2002 - The Two Towers.mkv live-action movie /storage/videos/animes/Kimetsu no Yaiba/Season 3 - Entertainment District/01 - Sound Hashira Tengen Uzui.mkv anime episode You get the idea, right? No additional software needed, any automation tool to move/rename files can be used to help you out, and since metadata isn’t used for the organisation you can take your sweet time checking and fixing it. And sharing it across my network means simply sharing a directory with everything in it.
Key points to use this approach effectively:
- Keep it simple. If you need to think on where an item should go, you’re probably over-engineering your sorting.
- Keep it objective. For example, genre is usually a bad sorting criterion, as the same piece of media can belong to 2+ genres. Author, franchise, set (season, album, etc.) are typically better.
- Keep it flexible. It’s fine and good if each subdivision has its own sorting criteria. Just be consistent with it.
- Keep it accurate. Names are part of the sorting structure, and should be descriptive.
- Keep it clean. Don’t add unorganised items to the file structure; if you must, keep a separated “to sort” directory elsewhere.
- Keep it broad. You’re probably already used to this due to the Johnny decimal system, but broader categories are usually better. Just don’t create artificial divisions to arbitrarily nest divisions, though; remember #2.
- Keep changing it. Ultimately the goal of a sorting system is to find your stuff; it is neither to be a control freak, nor to follow the advice of some random internet person like me. So if something is not working well for you, change it.
Ah, on automation:
- GPRename and Bulky are useful to… well, bulk rename files.
- EasyTag can do it for audio files, based on the metadata and/or info retrieved from the internet.
- Wikipedia “
$series_namelist of episodes” for descriptive names for anime or live action seasons. Often you can copypaste the whole text bloc into a text editor, and use some find-and-replace to get rid of everything except episode number + episode name. - Calc (yup, the spreadsheet program!) is a godsend. Specially with the above, plus a terminal; it means you can create on the spot a bunch of commands like
mv 01.mkv "01 - The Sphere.mkv" mv 02.mkv "02 - The Inhabited.mkv" [...]you can use those arr apps to groom existing media also
Oh oh, I have had this problem and I have favorites!
So for music, MusicBee, it has a great tagging system and music organization for free. I just run it in the same library and have a folder for unorganized files I add new stuff to.
For movies and TV shows, I know there is free options but I hate them. I dont know, I am a dumb dumb I guess but I can’t get most to work for me. Filebot, so good, I will parade for filebot it is so good. I know it is paid but I paid for it twice. It can even keep the file linked so you can keep a torrent running and will do so much so simply. It kind of works for music but not really but movies and TV its like a wizard.
Books… I do them by hand. Man thats still a thorn but its clean.
So for music, MusicBee
FYI for anyone on Linux, Strawberry music player is IMO closest to Musicbee.
i just assumed it was obvious i was on linux, so thank you for that lol
Tiny media manager for tv and movies
I’ve recently been playing with claude code via the terminal and it’s literally saving me 100’s of hours organizing all my ttrpg pdf’s and other media. I’d suggest trying that with the johnny decimal system, that sounds like a great way to organize things with claude code (claude code requires a min $20/mo sub, but it’s worth it IMO).
i used it to help me create my jd system, but that directory level where my media lives is item so there’s not really a way to do another jd just for that. i think the best way is to use tags for media. how did it help you to organize your files at that level? i am totally poor, no way i can pay for claude
well, just to be clear, im not shilling for antrhopic here, most AI companies are evil little shits ruining the planet, but I have to admit it has its use cases that are legitimate, and coding is definitely one of them.
that said, once i have it installed in the terminal i just point it at the folder i want to organize, and tell it in layman’s terms what i want it to do, like, “Organize the files and folders into a system that is human-readable and generally makes sense” or I’ll tell it to organize into a specific folder structure, and it will scan all the file and folder names and write scripts (and execute them) to re-arrange them as needed.
it’s accuracy is shockingly high, but it does miss some things, so always double check it’s work.
if there’s any doubt, i tell it to put duplicates and other things to get rid of in a “_trash” folder for me to look through before i commit to deleting them.
