Messages

1

Beyond MusicBee / wondering about redwing

« on: Today at 04:17:04 PM »

Reading back some old posts, redwing has been one of the valuable old-school forum members that has done a lot of good regarding improving MusicBee and helping other users.
It came to an abrupt end with him leaving the forum for reasons I still don't fully understand.
(to be clear and honest: I myself had some issues and confrontations with him regarding how he voiced his opinions sometimes)

But I'm still curious if he has indeed abandoned MusicBee completely.
Hard to imagine considering the shared appreciation of MusicBee, seeing no valid alternative anywhere on the horizon.

2

Tips and Tricks / Re: Make Album highlighting act on any track in album instead of only the first one.

« on: Today at 02:42:41 PM »

Request to mod/admin: please delete this whole topic.

It was rendered obsolete in 13 hours, 39 minutes, and 51 seconds thanks to a very fast patch update that solved the underlying issue.

Note that the information it contains won't be lost, since I have used and modified it to create a new and improved Tip&Trick that makes the principles work for playlists and library filters. (which is probably even more useful than using it for album highlighting)
See here.

3

Tips and Tricks / Have playlists and library filters return whole albums instead of tracks only.

« on: Today at 02:24:33 PM »

This Tip & Trick makes it possible to set a filter for a playlist or a library filter that will return the whole album if even only one track matches the filter rule.
 
This can be useful if you e.g. want to filter:

     - albums that have one or more tracks that don't have a track gain value 
     - albums that have one or more tracks encoded in a low quality 
     - albums that have one or more tracks missing 
       etc. 

This needs two virtual tags.
The first one is to define what tag is to be used as criterion for the filter, the second one will be used in the filter/playlist rule.

          virtual tag 1 will be something like this:
          $IsNull(<original tag>,,1)

          virtual tag 2 will be something like this:
          $If($Sum(<virtual tag 1>,<Album>)>0,yes,no)


Examples for the three above mentioned cases:


          1.  Does an album contain a track that has no ReplayGain value?

          virtual tag 1:

          - label:
            trackgainmissing
          - formula:
            $IsNull(<Track Gain>,1,)


          virtual tag 2:

          - label:
            albumtrackgainmissing
          - formula:
            $If($Sum(<trackgainmissing>,<Album>)>0,"RG missing",)


          filtering/playlist rule:
            albumtrackgainmissing has a value


          2.  Does an album contain a track that was encoded in a lower quality lossy format?
             (in this example below 160Kbps)

          virtual tag 1:

          - label:
            bitratelow
          - formula:
            $If($Split(<Bitrate>,k,1)<160,1,)


          virtual tag 2:

          - label:
            bitratealbumlow
          - formula:
            $If($Sum(<bitratelow>,<Album>)>0,bitratealbumlow,)


          filtering/playlist rule:
            bitratealbumlow has a value


          3. Filter incomplete albums ⁽¹⁾

          This one needs only one virtual tag:

          - label:
            albumincomplete
          - formula:
            $If($Sub($Sum(<Tr.#>,<Album>),$Div($Mul(<Album Track Count>,$Add(<Album Track Count>,1)),2))=0,,mismatch) ⁽²⁾

          filtering/playlist rule:
            albumincomplete has a value
 
 
              ⁽¹⁾ you could also use MusicBee's <Album Complete?> tag for filtering, but that one will only work if all your tracks have their tracknumbers written as 'track/total tracks"
              ⁽²⁾ shout-out to Carl Friedrich Gauss for helping me with this
 

4

Beyond MusicBee / Re: MusicBrainz Picard q & a thread

« on: Today at 06:25:39 AM »

I am wanting to start using the grouping tag for a few of the albums I’ve got ie box set, Remastered etc.

I'm pretty sure both are currently not possible to retrieve.

Box set is a problem, because the boys and girls at MusicBrainz haven't come to an agreement if boxset is a valid release attribute, since some believe 'compilation' already covers those, and 'box set' is a difficult to define concept.
(I agree with making boxset an official release type b.t.w.)

Here is the (ongoing) discussion on the matter. You could contribute to it to help convince them.
(or to this one ;-)


Attributes such as 'remaster' are not regular and retrievable tags at MusicBrainz.
They are in a so called 'disambiguation' field.



You could post a request at MusicBrainz Picard board for making it possible for Picard to retrieve them.
(I myself am not aware of a plugin that can do this)

b.t.w.
You could easily add tags such as 'boxset' and 'remaster' to a release yourself as 'other tags'.
Then they can be retrieved by Picard by allowing it to retrieve 'folksonomy' tags.


 

5

Questions / Re: How to retain "Date Added" when importing iTunes library?

« on: Today at 05:51:05 AM »

I think it should work on files already loaded in your library…

Out of curiosity:
Since these dates are not metadata tags (I think?), are they written in the file headers? Or maybe as some Windows time attribute?

6

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: We want more! ;-)

« on: September 23, 2023, 01:43:00 PM »

While you wait...

Nice. It looks like most of the bee's skeleton was already in place at the first attempt.

7

Questions / Re: Is there a trick to override the "No Artwork" thumbail of an XMLC skin ?

« on: September 23, 2023, 01:36:48 PM »

You can achieve this by creating a piggy-back skin.
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29815.0
Doing some forum searches on 'base64' should explain how to add images to such an xml.

8

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: We want more! ;-) (custom tags)

« on: September 23, 2023, 01:05:12 PM »

+2

Also the Musicbrainz identifiers would be a good addition to have for free without the need for custum/virtual tags

Indeed. But in my case that would only free up a single custom tag, since I am using this system for storing MusicBrainz IDs.

B.t.w. I added a table for your wish in this wishlist topic that may be helpful in case Steven would be willing to do this.

9

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Picard MusicBrainz standard tags

« on: September 23, 2023, 01:01:39 PM »

+1

In case Steven is open to doing this, here is a table that should make it easier:

Internal Name	ID3v2	Vorbis	APEv2	iTunes MP4	ASF/Windows Media
musicbrainz_artistid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Artist Id	MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID	MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Artist Id	MusicBrainz/Artist Id
musicbrainz_discid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Disc Id	MUSICBRAINZ_DISCID	MUSICBRAINZ_DISCID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Disc Id	MusicBrainz/Disc Id
musicbrainz_originalartistid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Original Artist Id	MUSICBRAINZ_ORIGINALARTISTID	n/a	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Original Artist Id	MusicBrainz/Original Artist Id
musicbrainz_originalalbumid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Original Album Id	MUSICBRAINZ_ORIGINALALBUMID	n/a	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Original Album Id	MusicBrainz/Original Album Id
musicbrainz_recordingid	UFID:http://musicbrainz.org	MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID	MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Track Id	MusicBrainz/Track Id
musicbrainz_albumartistid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Artist Id	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Artist Id	MusicBrainz/Album Artist Id
musicbrainz_releasegroupid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Release Group Id	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Release Group Id	MusicBrainz/Release Group Id
musicbrainz_albumid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Id	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Id	MusicBrainz/Album Id
musicbrainz_trackid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Release Track Id	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASETRACKID	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASETRACKID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Release Track Id	MusicBrainz/Release Track Id
musicbrainz_workid	TXXX:MusicBrainz Work Id	MUSICBRAINZ_WORKID	MUSICBRAINZ_WORKID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Work Id	MusicBrainz/Work Id

10

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: We want more! ;-)

« on: September 23, 2023, 07:36:31 AM »

Remember - I started with v0.3 but I'm fairly certain there were no custom tags at that time. I sure don't know when they were introduced. And I'm not going to start installing portables to find out.

Could you pm me a d/l link to 0.3 portable?
I'm very curious about its first look and functionality.

edit
doesn't have to be portable (I think those came much later), I can run an installer version on a testing system

11

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: We want more! ;-)

« on: September 22, 2023, 10:52:37 PM »

Oh, how I remember back in the day when Steven increased them from eight to sixteen. It's never enough.  

You have a good memory!
The oldest version I have available is 2.3 from some 10 years ago, and that one also already had 16 of them.
This hasn't really followed Moore's law ;-)

12

Questions / Re: How to retain "Date Added" when importing iTunes library?

« on: September 22, 2023, 10:26:16 PM »

'date added to itunes'

if this is equivalent to Oh yeah I bought the Velvet Underground an Nico in 1968 and Five bridges by the Nice in 1973, do you understand?

That is an answer to my assumption to the 'emotional' part of such a date.
For me, this would mean I should be able to recall when I heard a song for the very first time and it made me 'stop'.
Which exact dates and times are lost like tears in rain. As they should be ;-)

13

MusicBee Wishlist / We want more! ;-) (custom tags)

« on: September 22, 2023, 10:15:58 PM »

While having 16 custom tags available is something I believe no other music manager than MusicBee has, it still has been a restrictive limit for me for quite a long time.
One of the solutions I resorted to is having two different MusicBee (portable) installs for my classical music and my non-classical music.
I just couldn't get optimal results for both using a single MusicBee install. The most important reason being the limitation of custom and virtual tags.

But, the limitation of virtual tags will soon be completely solved, since 3.6 will have 50 of them available, which is fantastic.
But the remaining limitation of having (needing) 16 custom tags is still a problem for me.

So my request would be to increase the amount of custom tags to e.g. 20, or 24.
Which would completely solve my problems regarding this.

And/Or:

There are a couple of tags that I believe have proven their worth over time to be available by default, and shouldn't require to be made available only when linking them to a custom tag.

Tags such as:

Subtitle
Set subtitle
Involved people list
Location
Media type
Initial key

in my opinion should be available by default without the need to set up (and sacrificing) a custom tag.

Personally, if only one of the two above suggestions gets rewarded, my 'problems' are resolved completely and I will be grateful.
But for the greater good, maybe both can be adapted/implemented?

14

Questions / Re: How to retain "Date Added" when importing iTunes library?

« on: September 22, 2023, 10:12:26 PM »

Yea I guess it doesn't really matter "why" as long as it is important to someone.
if somehow all my Ratings disappeared I would just about lose my mind, thats how important they are because so much time was invested and having to do it all over again would be devastating.

Ratings I understand.
'date added to itunes' I still don't.

15

Questions / Re: Album view sorted by type (LP, EP, Live, etc.)

« on: September 22, 2023, 08:13:45 PM »

Is there something I don't understand  ?

Any chance of you revealing what the exclamation icon said?