Basically, I have a large body of assorted media (text, images, flash files, archives, folders, etc...) and I'm attempting to organize it.

Windows Explorer has a rating column, but there seems to be no way to modify the rating of the files short of opening them in their type-specific software (e.g. Media player, or Photo viewer). However, this does not work when the file is of an unsupported type (.rar, .swf ...), or a directory.

I'd be more than willing to consider a file-manager replacement (I've alreadly looked at quite a few, Directory Opus, Total Commander, etc...), or even a solution that stores the rating metadata in a hidden file in each folder, or a separate database. The one real critical requirement is the ability to sort by rating, and being filetype-agnostic.

Basically, is there any way to categorize a large collection of assorted files by rating that will work with any file type, including directories?

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Ideally, there would be an easy way to add arbitrary columns to windows explorer, and edit them directly. However, there seems to be no way to do this. The rating column is the next best thing.