[mb-users] extending the tagger for music organization

[Aaron Cooper]

On 14-Jul-08, at 9:40 PM, Adam Golding wrote:

> 2008/7/14 Paul Arthur <flowerysong00 at yahoo.com>:
> On 2008-07-14, Alan <alan at ufies.org> wrote:
>
> >  - overwriting rules would be awesome. Right now the tagger (picard
> >  of course) will append (1), (2), etc if the tracks already exist.
> >  It'd be awesome to specify what you're looking for, ie: select
> >  highest bitrate, select largest size, etc so you don't have to go
> >  back in later and figure out what of the 2 versions of the track is
> >  the "keeper" and delete the other and rename the "main" track (if
> >  needed). Not a big deal for one or two, but more than that, huge
> >  PITA.
>
> This is a huge lack, yes.
>
> >  - "keep up to date" utilities of some sort... the main reason
> >  I'm doing this is that I originally had my filenames set up as
> >  artist/album/track-artist-album.mp3 Crazy huh, but for some reason
> >  it made sense at a time. Now I'm moving to the defaults that picard
> >  tagger has and basically am having to go through each album, drag
> >  it to the tagger, save, repeat. Takes a LONG time :)
>
> You do know that the tagger supports recursively adding directories,
> yes? While it's less than ideal and a better method would be nice,
> you can do your entire collection (if you have sufficient memory) or
> select parts of it.
>
> >  - similar to the above, having a way to update your music
> >  program, iTunes or Banshee or Rhythmbox or whatever would also
> >  be a livesaver. If a track goes from "Foo-bar-baz.mp3" to
> >  Foo-Bar-Baz.mp3" and is re-saved suddenly this is a missing track
> >  for your player and you have to go and locate it or delete and
> >  re-add. I'm doing the latter here because I'm also moving the files
> >  from one fileserver to another, so it's not a big deal now.
>
> This is a lack in your music program, not in the tagger. Any
> decent music management software can rescan your collection for
> modified/moved/added files.
>
>
> For iTunes, there is iTunes folder watch to do this.  HOWEVER:
>
> if a file is renamed for any reason, database specifici info like  
> song ratings, album ratings, and playcounts is lost.
>
> there is, however, another plugin called iRating that lets you  
> 'backup' this info into a field such as the comment field.  But you  
> have to make sure a backup is done before you start renaming your  
> files, and then you must restore the backup.  I think it can run at  
> regular intervals, too.
>
> However, it doesn't support Album rating.
>
> However, the author said it will sometime in the new school year.
>
> One might also try backing it up into the WMP database using  
> musicbridge, but i haven't looked into that.
>
> This is all especially important because using iSproggler with  
> iTunes and iPod is currently the only way I can find to scrobble  
> musicbrainz ids (as opposed to mere tag fields) from a portable  
> device.

In my experience with Max OS X and iTunes, when songs are renamed/ 
moved iTunes knows and you do not lose any track info.  Even after  
deleting files to the Trash can, iTunes still knows where they went.   
Only once I empty the Trash can can iTunes no longer find the tracks.

This is assuming that iTunes is open and running while the changes are  
being made.  I'm not sure how it reacts when iTunes is closed and  
files are moved around.

-Aaron