Rush Live Concerts
The majority of these shows are from the original Rush hard drive that was shared out years ago. Some dates have been also added since it was copied. But as time as progressed, so has the technology and many of the files sets were just plain old and in serious need of updating. It originally became a project of mine for many reasons. One was personal and the other was how I access this with my tablet or any other media devices from my share drive.
The main updates involved converting all SHN files to FLAC and tagging them as needed. There were plenty of other files not needed which included old mht files, pdf’s or other junk files that were deleted.
Furthermore, all music files were then moved into their root folder. Originally many were placed into sub folders primarily for CDs which are now becoming less of a need and can still be sorted with the proper naming of files. I no longer preferred this and felt it was personally better to have it all in one place. Besides, who wants to listen to all of these shows split on CDs anymore? Well maybe a few but in reality most of these shows were just one continuous set, not broken into discs with fades. Minor exceptions were given when folders contained large numbers of files like pictures or artwork.
Another issue that drove me nuts was the common renaming of original info files to “Extra” while new ones were replaced with another info file that just linked the old and now defunct DRE website. The constant renaming of the original files also caused many original MD5’s to fail.
This was done on nearly most of the folders from the 2000’s and back, which is now been fully ellimated and no longer present. Thank goodness!
These days the need for “titles” is just not as important as the actual source info and it can get very confusing. Many dates are duplicated by various titles and sources. Some better than others but none were removed and are left to one’s discretion to either keep or remove a date/title themselves. It would be nice to see all shows sorted and cataloged by best source/recorder but that’s another task in itself. So all folders were renamed with location prefixed to all titles and in some cases sources were included.
All MD5s should now pass and originals placed back in their proper place or updated to reflect all files. Any missing audio and/or video files, and there were some found, have been replaced or found so no file sets should be incomplete.
With all that being said, this has been the general process and guidelines for all folders based on my preferences.
AUDIO FILES:
1) If needed, rename folder to date(yyyy-mm-dd) – city, state, and venue – title and/or source. This may not be the preferred way by some folks but I am sure someone can write a script to rearrange it to your preferences or look into a program called Bulk Rename Utility that may help.
2) Check all existing MD5’s for errors and correct as needed. See #5
3) Check all music files for SBE’s and repair if needed via TLH. Several were found and fixed which will have a file name appended with “fixed” at the end.
4) Move all music files to primary folder, if needed and convert SHN files to FLAC via TLH
a) If needed, rename files/add disc number in order to sort properly in one folder
5) Rename proper/original “Extra” info text file back to rush-date(yyyy-mm-dd)-abbreviated title-info including cover art files or anything else needed to match and remove/delete generic info file with DRE link.
a) If no text info file was present, create one with proper file name where applicable.
b) If original info file name was renamed or updated then the FILE UPDATE text (see below) was then added to the file
c) If the “Info” file had relevant info that original “Extra” did not or vise versa, then the information was combined.
d) If the only info file was one created with the DRE link then it was kept but renamed to match proper naming above and the FILE UPDATE info (see below) was added to the info file.
6) Delete unnecessary files (i.e. old folders, cue files, mht/web files that serve no purpose, old MD5s if needed, PDFs, ._ hidden files!, etc)
a) If a PDF contains important info or higher res artwork or larger size than what was already there then the PDF was kept but still renamed to match the info file name format.
b) On rare occasions, duplicate shows were found and deleted. If FLAC was one of them or one set looked better then it was kept and the other removed.
c) I found tons of hidden thumbs.db, ._ and DB_store meta files on this drive, aka “turds” left primarily by Mac OS systems and some PCs prior to me so they were all deleted. If you use a Mac user then be aware of this. For PCs, you can turn this option off in folder properties.
d) Delete duplicated folders/shows. In some rare cases there were some duplicated shows or incompleted copy attempts of a duplicated folder that were removed.
7) Add tagging to all FLAC files from info file. Tagging will generally only include Artist, Track Titles and folder name as the Album.
a) If the original file names had the title in them (i.e. 01-Intro, 02-Dreamline) or tags were already present, it was generally left alone and not updated to help preserve the original MD5.
b) With so much tagging added, there is a slight chance of tagging being off here and there but should be 99% correct based on the info file.
8) Add new MD5 for entire folder and contents to include all files. Primarily try to keep one MD5 for all files.
a) If no MD5 file was found in the root folder, and there were some, then a new one was created to cover all files.
b) If original MD5 was kept but did not cover other files in the folder, another MD5 was either created or additional checksums were added to the original MD5. This generally was not the case unless tagging was already present since it will change the file signature.
Audio Completed Notes:
-Since most of everything from the 2000’s and back were renamed and/or screwed with, 99% of the file sets were corrected and tagged. For the file sets in the 2010’s, I tried to leave as much of it “as is” especially if the file names had the song title, then tagging was not applied.
-ALL MD5s should now pass! Many did not due to missing files or being moved to a different directory. This has all been fixed by finding missing files or correcting locations.
-99% or all folders should have one MD5 and one text info file.
-99% of all tagging and SBE errors should be correct. I’m not perfect so there is some room for error on this.
-About 5 or so duplicate shows were found and deleted, they just had different folder names.
VIDEO FILES: NOW COMPLETED!
1) If needed, rename folder to date(yyyy-mm-dd) – city, state, and venue – title and/or source.
a) Seperated combined dates into their own folder. In some rare cases, titles with multiple dates were put in their own properly dated folder.
2) Check all existing MD5’s for errors and correct as needed. See #5
3) Rename proper/original “Extra” info text file back to rush-date(yyyy-mm-dd)-abbreviated title-info including cover art files or anything else needed to match and remove/delete generic info file with DRE link.
a) If no info/text file was provided, then in some cases it is added and others it is not since many are either single video files with unknown sources or the video lineage is just unknown.
b) If the “Info” file had relevant info that original “Extra” did not or vise versa, then the information was combined.
c) If the only info file was one created with the DRE link then it was kept but renamed to match proper naming above.
4) Delete unnecessary files/folders (i.e. old folders, mht/web files that serve no purpose, old MD5s if needed, PDFs, ._ hidden files!, etc)
a) If a PDF contains important info or higher res artwork or larger size than what was already there then the PDF was kept but still renamed to match the info file name format.
b) I found tons of hidden thumbs.db, ._ and DB_store meta files on this drive, aka “turds” left primarily by Mac OS systems and some PCs prior to me so they were all deleted. If you use a Mac user then be aware of this. For PCs, you can turn this option off in folder properties.
c) Delete duplicated folders/shows. In some rare cases there were some duplicated shows or incompleted copy attempts of a duplicated folder that were removed.
5) Add new MD5 for entire folder and contents to include all files. Primarily try to keep one MD5 for all files.
a) If no MD5 file was found in the root folder, and there were some, then a new one was created to cover all files.
b) If original MD5 was kept but did not cover other files in the folder, another MD5 was either created or additional checksums were added to the original MD5. This generally was not the case since new MD5s will carry the same signature as the original files did unless the original file has changed in some way.
Video Completed Notes.
-ALL MD5s should now pass! Many did not due to missing files or being moved to a different directory. This has all been fixed by finding missing files or correcting locations.
-99% or all folders should have one MD5 and one text info file.
-About 5 or 6 shows were missing VOB files and would not play correctly which is now fixed.
-About 5 or so duplicate shows were found and deleted. There were a few that were kept due to small variants or sources (i.e. Updated menu or other related differences)
Text added to audio info files:
FILE UPDATE:
As part of an effort to update many of these Rush shows from shn to FLAC, a lot of these original files were corrupted by certain users in the past when they were redistributed. Therefore any file not needed was removed or combined and proper MD5s were created to include all existing files.
All original MD5 files were checked for verification. All files were then checked for SBE’s and marked fixed, if needed via TLH. Any existing SHN files were also converted to FLAC (level 8).
All FLAC files were then tagged as needed and then consolidated to one folder. In some rare cases, files were renamed in order to be in one folder.
Since tagging will cause original MD5s to fail, a new MD5 was then created to include all files and/or combined with original MD5 checksums (if tagging was already present) in order to still match original files.
Generally info files were renamed and/or combined so only one exist per folder. This was done to help avoid confusion since many originals were renamed so this was corrected in order to help preserve orginal author notes. Please see the file update text on the main folders of the Rush hard drive for a full list of details to these updates.
PLEASE DO ENCODE TO MP3 FORMAT UNLESS IT IS FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL USE. KEEP THESE FILES THE WAY THEY ARE AND FEEL FREE TO SHARE THEM ONLY, PLEASE DO NOT SELL THIS. THANKS!!!