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Bish · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:41 am Post subject: Music Library - Mac

I have amassed a significant quantity of music & effects that I use in production. The problem is that (to me) the music loop, music bed and effects management system in my main software (Soundtrack Pro) is woefully inadequate and it can take me ages to find anything. I've tried the Apple Loops utility, but it doesn't deal with all formats and doesn't really suit my needs as a content management system. Part of the problem is the sheer volume of material I've collected... I could have a major culling and tagging session, but the though of doing that is daunting.

iTunes would work well, but I don't want to bog it down with all the production stuff. Managing multiple libraries in iTunes would work, but it's a bit of a kludge to make it do it (it would be so much easier if iTunes allowed multiple music libraries). I need it to handle wav, aiff and mp3 (I can work-around/convert the .caf files)

So, is there a decent Mac program out there that I can use to manage my ever-growing music and effects library? ... or does anyone have a good trick for creating another library in iTunes that doesn't involve a restart and a keyboard dance, or better still, a way to run a second iteration of iTunes without messing with the first...

Cheers
Peter
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bobsouer · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 9:14 am Post subject:

Peter,

Normally in your situation I would recommend Media Monkey, but alas it runs only under Windows.
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RD Levine · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 9:48 am Post subject:

I think if you open a new account you can just use it to just run your itunes and audio software you could then just switch back and forth between accounts to do other things. I did just try this and was able to set up itunes with out any of old library. You will just have to re-rip you cd's and then I would remove them from your old library so you don't have dupes on your hard drive taking up space. Just one idea I bet there are better ones
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Deirdre · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 9:57 am Post subject:

Can you make the playlist setup work for you in iTunes?
I've got my stuff sorted with a million playlists.
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Bish · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 10:08 am Post subject:

I'm playing with the alternate library at the moment... it's not ideal, but I guess if I'm in "production" mode, I don't really need my regular library open (although I do tend to multitask listening to podcasts or audiobooks all the time). As far as playlists are concerned... I tend not to use them a great deal... they may work, but my main library would be jammed up with all the effects and stuff. I tend to share my main library with a couple of Apple TVs around the house as well as a couple of other computers... I would not make myself popular if the main library was jam-packed with royalty free clips and effects... not to mention that my general iTunes library has already filled a 750Gb drive!
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

Bruce · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 3:38 pm Post subject:

iTunes has an internal method of splitting things up into separate libraries but when I tried it I found it cumbersome and hard to switch back and forth.

HOWEVER, I did find a great solution: a little program called Libra.

http://www.sillybit.com/libra/

The author is asking $10 and I sent him $20 and would have sent more if he'd asked. Basically it sets up as many individual iTunes Libraries as you want. Open up the program, click on the library you want and in a couple of seconds you can scan just the tunes you want. I have libraries for Work (all my incoming and outgoing production and voice tracks), Production Music & SFX, all of my Demos and the saved items I might put in them, and my Personal Music. Most of my items are on one drive but there's no reason you couldn't pull stuff in from a dozen sources. Of course the iTunes search feature is great for finding just the cuts you want. I've been adding descriptions in the comments section of certain tunes when I think it'll be helpful. And as you've noted it handles all major formats. It even converts SD2 files from my audio editor to MP3 nicely.

When you're done you click on the library you want to go to next and if iTunes is open it closes the first and then opens the next one in just a few seconds. Slick as can be. Works with Mac and Windows.

B
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whalewtchr · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 6:46 am Post subject:

Thanks Bruce...an excellent piece of software!
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Bish · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 7:01 am Post subject:

Thanks for the advice everyone. I decided that the first thing to do was cull out a lot of the cruft that had accumulated. I was trying to index all of my loops, effects and beds and it was becoming a nightmare (even my Garageband Jampacks... duh!). So, I'm going to build and alternative iTunes library that contains only the survivors of the cull. Anything that doesn't make the cut gets archived. I fell victim to google searches that found me boatloads of royalty free music and SFX... and, of course, I grabbed everything and bogged myself down with gigabytes of crapola. Lesson learned.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.