Virtual CD Management

[Scott]

I want to back up my collection of around 1000 audio CDs to MP3, and have MediaMonkey keep track of both the CDs and the backups.

It seems that Virtual CD is custom made for this operation - it allows me to rip each CD to MP3 and add any information I like (credits, lyrics, etc). A single entry is in the database so I don't have to worry about which one I'm looking at or have to make each change to mulitiple locations.

However, this will result in tens of gigabytes of data sitting on one hard disk. The goal here is to have them backed up and accessible, not all sitting on a single hard drive. Once they're ripped, I want to move all these backup MP3s to data DVDs, and have MM tell me where each one is.

As far as I can tell there's no way to do this - Virtual CD wants to keep all its data in one monolithic directory tree on one hard drive.

The alternative to me appears to be to go ahead and rip the CDs and have them in the library, then copy the tracks to DVD and have the DVDs in the library as well. The downside to that is that each track will show up twice in the library, and any information I add (credits, ratings, lyrics, etc.) will immediately take the duplicates out of synch - and the MM tag synching won't help since one of the duplicates is just a CD audio library entry.

Sorry that's longwinded; I hope it's clear what I'm trying to accomplish and avoid. Any suggestions?

[Scott]

No advice? Is MM just the wrong program for this application?

[jiri]

Sorry, but I don't see any way how to accomplish that - Virtual CD is intended to have tracks accessible for playback when a CD isn't inserted. Maybe you could have another database of mp3 DVDs (e.g. install MM to another folder for this task), this way you wouldn't see any duplicates in your main database.

Jiri

[AlanB]

Want to do something similar myself. I haven't actually tried it yet, but mybe my thoughts will provoke some additional ideas from others.

The thoughts are based on doing it before any database only information is added (rating etc), anything that will be stored in the tags is OK.
1) Start by ripping to virtual CD.
2) Get all the tag information sorted (Album, Album Artist, Artist, Track title & number etc).
3) Now burn it to DVD.
4) remove files from virtual CD
5) if you don't want the orginal CD information, remove that as well
6) load the DVD into MM.

Well, a solution of sorts... I know that what you really want to do is at step 3, update the database to reflect the new location of the tracks, hence eliminating the need for 5 and 6 (which is obviously where the database only information is lost).

Hope this is some help...

Alan

[Peke]

something like that will be great I think it ca be added as a new feature, or not Jiri?