Topics

1

Questions / Tricky regex expression...?

« on: July 02, 2023, 01:52:58 PM »

Hoping someone can help with this.
I have a custom field in MusicBee where I enter multiple values separated by a semi-colon.
e.g. FGH; JKL; ABC

I have an expression that I use in a Virtual Tag to determine whether any values in the Custom Field have been duplicated.

$IsMatch(<MyCustomField>,"(?<=(\b\w+\b).*)\1")

The problem which I've just realised is that this expression only works for the first value, i.e it picks up
ABC; FGH; JKL; ABC

but not
ABC; FGH; JKL; JKL

Would anyone be able to help me correct this expression?

2

Questions / Determine if track has cover image embedded

« on: June 16, 2023, 12:33:37 PM »

Is it possible to determine programatically which tracks are missing cover images?
NB I embed all my images.

In mp3tag I can bring up a coversize field which shows me the dimensions of the embedded image. It would be useful to be able to do something similar in musicbee so that I can create an automatic playlist listing all the tracks I need to go find cover images for.

3

Bug Reports / Merging playlists doesn't handle dupes in list being copied from

« on: June 15, 2023, 01:42:50 PM »

Probably a fringe case.

If you have a playlist A and you want to append playlist B to the end of it, if playlist B contains duplicate entries, only one of the entries is added.

Easy to reproduce - create two playlists A and B. Add one file to B twice. Then select both entries in list B and drag to A. No dialog about duplicates, and only one entry is added to A.

4

MusicBee Wishlist / Implement warning message box when copying files.

« on: May 25, 2023, 05:35:46 PM »

Currently when you MOVE files, you get a warning prompt, but if you COPY them, you don't.

5

Questions / Copy vs Move behaviour

« on: May 25, 2023, 09:30:21 AM »

If I drag files between folders on the same drive, the default action is Move and I get a prompt. If I drag files and ANY of the files is being dragged to a different drive, MB initiates a COPY without prompting.

Is there a setting for any of this, ideally I'd like to disable COPY completely.

If not possible, did I disable the COPY message popup at some point by clicking "Don't show again", or was there never one there? If disabled, can it be restored?

6

Questions / MusicBee integration with iTunes

« on: May 13, 2023, 10:22:14 PM »

I've read a few other threads on this, but none are quite my use case and some are quite old so things may have changed?

I use Traktor for DJing, but all of my music is currently managed by MusicBee. I'd like to be able to create and manage playlists in MusicBee and simply use them in Traktor, but the only way it appears I can do that (other than quite expensive 3rd party software), is via iTunes, which I haven't used in decades so I'm unfamiliar with that bit too!

I've a number of questions before I set about potentially messing up my library - I hope someone has some experience and can answer.

1) The starting point is to export the library from MusicBee and then presumably import the xml file into iTunes right? Can I do this without an Apple account?

2) Once in iTunes, I believe the integration with Traktor is seamless - all the playlists should show up right?

3) Presumably I still only have a single copy of the files on my computer?

4) So far I've been using a duplicate set of files for tracks imported into Traktor, but Traktor doesn't seem to be messing up the metadata so I think I'm safe to use the same files for all three?

5) The big question - how do I maintain it all? If I move things around in MusicBee, I guess I have to re-export into iTunes right? Is it a case of blitzing the existing library there and starting again or does it pick up changes?

7

Questions / Strange error with Paths

« on: September 21, 2021, 01:45:12 PM »

I use MusicBeePortable on both my desktop and my laptop. When I travel, I sync the library on a portable drive from my desktop - work with it while I'm away and then sync it back to my desktop on return.

The complete paths for the music files are the same no matter which machine I use. The only difference between the two, now corrected is the musicbee application is stored in a slightly different path along with the library files and playlists.

Recently, I've noticed that the paths to the music files are sometimes altered when I update from one to the other and I have to use the "Relink music file paths" function to correct them. The pattern is that if say my music files are located on E:\MyMusic and on my desktop my library is located in E:\Apps\DJ Music and on the laptop drive in E:\DJ Music, then when I sync the files back from my laptop drive to my desktop, the music files are all listed as in E:\Apps\MyMusic which doesn't exist. I fix this with the Relink function as mentioned above, but here's the strange bit: I have playlists in folders - if I select a playlist that I created on the laptop then despite using relink paths, all the tracks in the playlist are listed on the wrong path and are unplayable, but if I instead select the folder containing the faulty playlist, all the music files within are now in the correct place and are playable!

Edit - to correct a playlist - e.g. one not in a folder, or in a folder with lots of others,  I've found I can create a new empty folder X and move the faulty playlist inside. Then I create a new playlist and drag the contents of the folder X into the newly created playlist. So presumably MusicBee doesn't store absolute paths within a playlist, but uses a relative path and calculates the absolute path differently depending on whether you're viewing the playlist itself, or a folder.

8

Bug Reports / Moving files in a playlist with duplicates deletes the file without warning.

« on: September 03, 2020, 09:26:13 PM »

If you have a playlist that contains duplicate entries, and you select all the tracks in the playlist and MOVE them to a new folder, the files are simply deleted. However, the playlist continues to reference them in the moved-to location.

I only noticed when I went to play one of these files and musicbee told me it couldn't find it, so I looked in the recycle bin and there it was!

Music Bee ver 3.4.7499

9

Questions / Player access to tempo controls

« on: July 26, 2020, 09:27:13 PM »

At the moment if I want to mess around with the tempo of a track, I have to click on the equalizer to bring up the DSP Settings screen, from here I can tick Tempo Control which brings up a window on top of the DSP settings screen.

I know there's a very crude control if I right click on the player, that allows tempo altering in increments of 50%, but that's useless to me.

Is there any way, via kb shortcuts or otherwise to manage tempo changes more easily?

10

Questions / Override display names for Tags

« on: February 27, 2020, 04:43:26 PM »

I use Traktor for DJing, but MusicBee for managing my music.

The problem is there are only effectively 3 fields for storing custom info that both MusicBee and Traktor can read.

These are Comment, MixArtist and Publisher.

All the other fields in Traktor are either occupied by important stuff - e.g.. Artist, Title or are Traktor ONLY fields, e.g. "Comment2"



MixArtist is not configured in MusicBee so I've configured a UserField (which I can call whatever I want) to write to this tag and I'm happy with this. Comment can stay as it is. What I'd like to do is rename the Publisher field in the GUI so that for example, if I wanted to put KeyText in this field, I could call it KeyText in the GUI in MusicBee although it would continue to be stored in the File under the Publisher Tag.

Is there a way of doing this?

11

Bug Reports / Search box text selection issue

« on: January 30, 2020, 09:25:01 AM »

This probably isn't going to be a biggy for most people, but it's quite annoying for me as I often perform over a hundred searches at a time.

It concerns partial selections of the text in the search box - e.g. using the mouse to highlight one word in the box and then overtype it
e.g. You may have searched for "Charlie Puth" and you want to highlight the word "Puth" and type "Wilson" so that you search for "Charlie Wilson" without needing to type "Charlie" again.


First of all this works perfectly if you DON'T change focus away from the search box.

But, if you type the first term "Charlie Puth" and then switch focus to the results - i.e. DO something to one of the tracks in the result list, and then try to modify the search text using the mouse, the instant you release the left mouse button (after selection), the whole box is highlighted.

You can work around this by first selecting the box (i.e click on it) which highlights the text, and THEN manually select only the text you want changing.

I suspect it's the Mouse-Up event that's firing, and selecting all text - be great if you could add a check in there that if the SelectedText property is already populated, that it isn't modified.

12

Questions / $Len issues

« on: December 23, 2019, 01:37:28 PM »

I use MusicBee Portable edition as I like to maintain my collection on multiple computers.


I created some Virtual Fields which worked fine on two of my computers, both running Win 7 x64 Pro, but I'm looking at my collection on a laptop running Win7 x64 Home Basic and the fields are all blank!

I've played around a bit with the Virtual fields and narrowed the issue down to the $Len function, which was never listed in the function selector in the template editor, but nevertheless works on my other 2 machines.

The windows version could be a red herring - the Home Basic laptop is also a new build.


Anyone any idea why $len isn't working?

13

Questions / Column display frustrations

« on: October 28, 2019, 01:37:25 AM »

OK- so I understand about playlist views - that you can configure a profile for them.

But in addition to playlists you have Search results and folder views - these don't appear to use profiles - or do they?
I feel like I'm forever editing the list of columns in one place, only to have to do it a number of other times.

How can I manage things so that everything uses the Default profile - i.e. the same list of columns in the same order, unless it's a playlist that I've set to use an alternate profile?

14

Questions / CustomTag Info

« on: October 25, 2019, 07:55:26 PM »

I'm struggling to squeeze all info into the 16 custom tags.
Trying to figure out if I can use the Virtual tags instead.

Lets say that I have a number of refs against a track that I store in a single custom tag, so say for a given song, there are 4 refs: "ABC17; ABC18; ABC19; XYZ19"

If I want a count of how many refs a track has, that's easy - a virtual field that counts how many semi-colons there are in the custom-tag - the formula for this was perfected with help from here in another question.

But let's say that I only want the count to include CERTAIN refs.

I can create another virtual tag that ONLY contains certain refs in it and then use the same count formula against this field.

But how to transform a Custom_Tag: "ABC17; ABC18; ABC19; XYZ19"
to a Virtual_TAG "ABC19; XYZ19"?

15

Questions / How to remove spaces from Virtual Tag

« on: October 25, 2019, 07:07:56 AM »

For sorting purposes, I have defined a virtual field (FirstArtist) that I create via a transform from the SortArtist.
I'd like to remove any spaces in this field though and the following expression:

$Replace(<SortArtist>, " ", "") doesn't do anything.


Trim obviously only removes the end spaces.

I'd like an Artist such as "Jo Bloggs" to be shown as "JoBloggs" in this field. How can I achieve this?