Rick : While the propensity to belittle some techniques others have found useful is not uncommon, please remember not all users of computers have the knowledge and skill sets others may possess like the ease of falling out of bed in a matter of daily routine, especially me.
Perhaps you might wish to post an expanded dissertation of what you do, how you make it work, and why?
Feeling the need to somewhat defend this ufnp concept, it was developed when Windows introduced long file name (longer than eight characters) potential, when a 47gb external SCSI hard drive cost a grand, and there weren't any "tags" or CDDB.
It is also well documented the indexing features of any Windows system will cause a marked decrease in explorer and system response performance which laptop video playback can ill afford.
This ufnp has survived Win 95, Win 98, Win 2000, Win ME, Win XP (Home & Pro), Win Amp 1 and up, BPM Studio 1.1 and up, Virtual DJ 3 and up therefor it is time tested. I am currently using archaic Win XP-Pro SP2 and have zero desire to downgrade to Vista.
Not belittling at all Cap -- I find it interesting, albeit somewhat "over the top"
Granted, it may have served well in the past, and may still serve well. Just seems like an awful lot of work, given the technology available today (and in the last 7-8 years).
What I do, is simply tag everything correctly -- I couldn't care less if the filename was Track1.mp3, as I almost never search for filenames. Most of mine, are just Title - Artist.mp3, which is the way I have my ripper setup to name them. Things I get off Amazon, are whatever the filename they gave them -- I've found their tags to almost always be correct, with the possible exception of genre.
Everything gets album cover art added (Amazon tracks already come with that), and most get lyrics embedded as well into the tags. There is a standard tag field, for almost anything imaginable, and all DJ software I know, reads them.
As far as some of the interesting things you put in, I can only say that I've never in all my years in this business, had someone come up and request I play the #4 charted song in 1983 -- they generally ask by name or artist.
BPM is automatically figured out by almost any DJ software -- no need for that.
Bitrate -- don't care -- wouldn't put it in my library, unless I was willing to play it.
So, if all this info is already in the tags -- which everyone reads -- why duplicate it in the filename? As you mentioned, many years ago, that was needed -- but it is no longer. It also poses some problems...
Most software allocates buffers to hold path and filename data. The usual thing to do, is use the MAX_PATH that Windows defines, which is usually 255 characters. So, if the entire path plus filename exceeds that, you start running into problems.
Also, when searching, whether Windows or a DJ program, things are searched left to right (mostly). The longer the data, the longer the search and the sorts take. So, it also becomes a performance issue.
BTW, as to Vista, it simply blows XP off the track -- no comparison in my eyes, although I use hardware capable of using it to the max. The search indexing is totally different than previous versions of Windows, and works in idle time. I've never seen any performance degradation, and I have 5 drives indexed, and they also constantly defrag in idle time. Simple AMD 64 X2 6000 processor -- nothing fancy that's doing all this work.
For example, as I'm typing this, I pop over to Explorer on my other monitor, highlight my music drive with 40 some thousand songs on it, type in beatles, and every beatles song instantly pops up, by the time I finish typing it. Doesn't matter if it's The Beatles, Beatles, The, or even if beatles isn't in the filename, yet is in a tag field.
Modern technology -- if we never embraced it, we'd still be plowing fields with an ox...
As an added aside, I spend lots of time with my music like you. I put the proper stuff in the tags, I listen to every song in the library in their entirety many times over, thinking of cue points, etc. So I agree, it does help one to know their library very well. We just do it in two different ways, and yes, I am a geek, and know how Windows works, so that gives me a bit of a different take on how I do things...
