Topics

1

Questions / Changing how 'artist' is displayed on album cover view?

« on: August 30, 2021, 09:41:38 PM »

Albums with featured artists used in the <artist> tag display the full string, any way to detect the matching artist bit and only display the difference?



Don't want to alter the actual text of the <artist> tag, just the display, is this doable with virtual tags or something, even just being able to remove the square brackets "[ ]" surrounding it would be nice since I like to use them for [ft: artists]. ^^

2

Questions / Sort *specific* Artist by Album Name>Year in main album view?

« on: August 28, 2021, 10:29:59 PM »

So my regular Album Cover's view is sorted by Album Artist > Year > Album, which is great BUT for any soundtrack stuff.
I separate any OST things since I rename their album artist to "Soundtrack" so they all live together.
Now this probably isn't possible but I'd like to 'conditionally sort' or something akin, so for any album artist which matches "Soundtrack" it would sort by Album Artist > Album > Year without disturbing everything else. Would be helpful for anything under the umbrella of 'Various' too. Am I just crazy or is this achievable?

3

MusicBee Wishlist / Add "Volume Leveling" to the list of auto-playlist rules / filters.

« on: December 14, 2019, 12:40:20 PM »

Hey, the rule list for the auto-playlist is fantastic and very extensive, but i can't seem to find a way to filter the volume levelled tracks with it. Just a small request hopefully to add it or track gain etc to the list.

In the meantime I can just make a full playlist and add the "track gain" column and sort by that i guess, as i intend to remove most cases of of the levelling. Thanks for the consideration and for this amazing program!

4

Questions / MusicBeeLibrary.mbl Stores Some Song Ratings

« on: August 05, 2018, 12:30:07 AM »

Hi, just wondering if this is an intended feature or not?

So finally got around to taking note of my settings and doing a clean install of MusicBee,
since fresh install of windows (new SSD) and misuse of "settings snapshot" left MB no permissions without elevation,
adjusted everything to my liking. All good could use MB as normal... when I noticed hundreds of my ratings had been wiped.

Not all of them, curiously mostly older ones before i changed rating system to include half stars i would guess.
Anyway this left my slightly aghast and puzzled, ratings should be saved in the ID3 Tags?
And they were there since my new SSD install, so i threw in my old MusicBee settings and the ratings were back,
(and also the MB permission problem) so I reverted to the fresh MB settings and the same missing ratings went again.

In trying to isolate the file I copied my old "MusicBeeLibrary.mbl" over to the fresh profile and found my ratings,
so for some reason "MusicBeeLibrary.mbl" contains a bunch of rating info...

I've made playlists of all tracks per rating so i can quickly restore without fear, just thought I would ask.
Sorry to be a bother, thanks for your time.

Update: I am fairly certain that all the ratings effected were imported ratings from iTunes when i migrated.
So iTunes doesn't apply the tag to the songs correctly and when imported MB doesn't actually effect the files I'd wager.
Not sure if that's an interaction that merits change, would possibly be intensive on first load for large libraries?

5

Questions / "Organise Library" Adds <disc-track#> multiple times.

« on: August 04, 2018, 10:58:04 PM »

So on latest release of MusicBee, fresh install as well now. MB>Edit>Preferences>Library>Organisation
I notice an issue on some (not all) albums where MusicBee wants to duplicate the <disc-track#> value...

template: <Album Artist>\<Year (yyyy)> - <Album>\<Disc-Track#> <Title>
good example: Billie Holiday\1957 - Body and Soul\1-05 Comes Love.mp3
bad example: Billie Holiday\1957 - Body and Soul\1-05 1-05 Comes Love.mp3

https://imgur.com/np19wCS Shows "naming template" and exception example.
https://imgur.com/GBBr4yO Shows regular case naming template file with same problem.

The reason i have two sets for moving and naming templates is for convenience,
MusicBee will perform the same operations to a file from Drive D:\ or E:\ when adding.

As shown in images above MusicBee has already done this and wants to repeat the mistake again.
Any suggestions or things you need to know? Thanks for your time.

6

Questions / File Permission

« on: July 20, 2018, 04:00:08 PM »

First off, my fault using a feature not as intended.
MusicBee doesn't have clearance to change files [rate/rename/move] or add to library etc...

So I upgraded [replaced] my C:// SSD, fresh windows install, with user files relatively unaffected on other drives.
Installed MusicBee again, imported my panel layout [edit>import/export] then unsatisfied, foolishly went ahead and...
loaded my "saved settings" [edit>saved settings>load snapshot]... instantly all music and settings flashed into existence.

Delighted, I carried on my merry way setting up windows. So later on I try adding an album to MusicBee and get this error:

MusicBee v3.2.6760.38310 (Win10.0), 20 Jul 2018 15:23:

System.Exception: You do not have access permission to the source or target folder, or another process has a file locked

https://ibb.co/mKjhzJ

And when trying to Rate or change ID3 Tags MusicBee can't access it.

https://ibb.co/fzco6y

So rather than admit my problem I went and told MusicBee to launch as admin and that worked, mostly... except...
When MusicBee is elevated like that windows doesn't like Drag&Drop with it, so can't just drop an album into the library.

So I should just reinstall MusicBee and go through the settings manually right?
Or is there a simple line in some .ini where i have my old C:/ path clashing with the fresh install or something?

Thanks for reading, this is my fault, sorry for inconvenience.

7

Questions / Filename Char Mapping "." without effecting file extension?

« on: March 28, 2017, 04:55:37 PM »

Hi, I'm curious if it's possible with the library organisation settings to have "."'s be swapped out to something else in the file explorer without effecting the file extension.

For example "mr. writer.mp3" > "mr_ writer.mp3".

Currently using the "Filename Char Mapping" swapping the "." for an "_" results in "mr_ writer_mp3". Which is clearly disastrous ^^

I'm not a fan of "." being used in filenames unless it's an filename extension, it's a minor nitpick but one I will manually change a song's title for. I was pleased to see the option of Char Mapping but disappointed when it affected the extension. Is their anyway to only effect the title of the song [in explorer]?

Thanks for your time.

8

Tips and Tricks / Solution to MB applying iTunes "Auto Album Rating" to Unrated Tracks

« on: March 28, 2017, 04:07:31 PM »

So I imported my iTunes music library to MusicBee. I have many albums which I've not finished applying track ratings for and I noticed in MusicBee all the unrated songs had also been given a star rating if any track on the album had any star value. This was based on the auto album star rating that iTunes makes, even if not applied.

It is an inconvenience but sounds like an issue with iTunes applying a hidden rating.

For others migrating and having this problem you can:

1- Create a "new smart playlist" on iTunes with the settings below.
"[X] Match |Music|" > "|Rating|is|0/5 stars" > "[ ] limit to"

2- Name & select this playlist before exporting.
"File > Library > Export Playlist..." save dialogue, just change format to .m3u [eg: D:\Music\fix.m3u]

3- Open MB then go to menu "MusicBee > File > Playlists > Import Playlists" open [eg: D:\Music\fix.m3u]
Now go to PLAYLISTS tab [if already open alternate between tabs to refresh] and select your imported playlist [eg: fix]

4- Lclick on any single song in the correct playlist > "ctrl + a" to select all songs > Rclick > Rating > 0 - Not Rated.
Now patience if you have a large amount of songs to "correct", this will also be affecting songs with no rating.

After issuing the command to unrank all songs in the playlist my MusicBee froze for a few minutes before reacting like normal, where it gained a progress bar [in win 10] and showed it's progression in the bottom status bar. This was with over 7.5k songs being adjusted and took about 15 mins to finish. Your results may vary, but this is probably the most automated a solution available.

Hope this helps others running into this problem, cheers.