Messages

1

TheaterMode / Re: Modify .xml file - how to see changes in TM

« on: September 28, 2018, 08:52:45 PM »

OK - sack the programmer.

I run MB from one place while having the source tree backed up elsewhere. Only a slight difference in path names. Honest.

When you edit the .xml in the correct ....\MusicBee\Plugins\TheaterMode.List folder - guess what - it works fine.

I thought it was strange what I was having to do (add it manually) - but because I could see all the other previous .xml files it didn't trigger (until now) that I was actually in the incorrect folder to be read automatically.

Schoolboy error. Sorry for the time waste. Not just of mine...

2

TheaterMode / Re: Modify .xml file - how to see changes in TM

« on: September 28, 2018, 06:24:16 PM »

What is the best way to see this change reflected when viewing it in TM?

For messing with TM files, find one that works and make a copy!
Edit the copy to try out any changes. Ensure copy is in the folder with other TM files.
Use MB view Theatre Mode [name of your TM file here].xml option to see changes.

That works fine the first time you do it. ie make a default2.xml file and use it in TM (I have to add it first via [View / Theater Mode / Add Skin] for it to show in the list - is there a way for it to automatically show up after it's been added to the same folder as all the other ones?)

Anyway - you look at it and think 'grrrgh - need to increase that x value' so you modify the default2.xml source file.

Close TM down. Open it again with the same file and the change is not reflected.

How do you do a 'refresh' here? It's like it caches it in someway - it doesn't re-read the file.

3

TheaterMode / Modify .xml file - how to see changes in TM

« on: September 28, 2018, 04:27:40 PM »

You are modifying a TM .xml page. You make a change & save the file. You definitely DO save it!

What is the best way to see this change reflected when viewing it in TM?

I can't work out an easy way to see the change. Just closing TM down and opening it again doesn't work. The old version of the file is still displayed.

I've set F9 to Start Theater Mode. ESC (by default) closes it. This is quick and easy. But I don't see my modifications this way....

Any tips/tricks/settings out there to aid this? Thanks.

4

Questions / Re: Numbering tracks

« on: January 07, 2016, 02:17:45 PM »

Select the tracks you want to renumber and then go to:

Tools / Tagging Tools / Renumber Tracks

That should do the trick.

5

Questions / Re: Seperating multiple versions of same album (MP3, M4A, FLAC)

« on: November 13, 2015, 03:37:51 PM »

I've accomplished similar to this by doing the following:

Preferences / Tags (1) / Define New Tags /

Label = YearLPKind
Formula = <Year> - <Album> $If(<Kind>="MPEG audio file",,"- "$Left(<Kind>,4))

After saving this <right click> your library's displayed columns and choose 'Set Displayed Columns'.

I choose:
Genre
Artist
YearLPKind (the virtual tag you've just defined).

You will now see all the albums listed for a selected artist in year order and with 'flac', 'ape' etc appended to any album that isn't MP3 (mpeg).

If you have an album in both flac and mp3 you will see them listed separately - even if they have the same album name.

I'm sure it must be possible to get the 'specify how files are grouped to an album' setting to do this but I wasn't able to get it to work - so ended up doing the above....

6

Questions / Re: Tag separation of FLAC and MP3?

« on: November 09, 2015, 09:19:59 PM »

The [kind] tag holds values like
MPEG audio file
FLAC audio file
WAV audio file
etc

When re-organizing folders you can do something like:
$If(<Kind>="MPEG audio file",,\Flac)\<Genre>\$Sort(<Artist>)\<Year> _ <Album>$If(<Kind>="MPEG audio file",," ("$Left(<Kind>,4)")")\<Track#> - <Artist> - <Title>

So here you'd get anything that isn't mp3 going into a separate folder called 'Flac' and the first 4 chars (ie 'Flac') of a non-MP3 file getting appended to the name of the folder the album is in.

You can use the [kind] tags in filters to easily just play all your Flac files. Not sure if this is what you mean by 'tag separation' but it may help put you on the path to what you are looking for...

7

Questions / Re: 2 different date tags? 1 for song 1st release & 1 for compilation realease

« on: November 06, 2015, 03:49:35 PM »

There is a pre-defined custom tag "Original Year" available in the custom selections.
Maybe 'Year' for the compilation release and 'Original Year' for first release would work.

It certainly would and makes more sense than using [year(yyyy)].

The main reason I want to do this is because I rename folders as [year] _ [album] and - because it picks up the year from the track - this means I end up getting multiple folders of the same album if I do automated folder renaming with musicBee (sure I can hardcode the album year into the path but would be nice not have to have to think about that in the future...)

I'm still learning what musicBee can do and this has led me onto discovering the excellent Tools/Tagging Tags/Library Report.
With a bit of playing around you can create a spreadsheet that you can filter to only show albums that include songs with different years. Very useful.

I swear if I look hard enough I'll find a 'free beer for life' button in MusicBee somewhere - and it would actually work...

8

Questions / Re: 2 different date tags? 1 for song 1st release & 1 for compilation realease

« on: November 05, 2015, 09:31:21 PM »

Yeah a 'song year' and 'album year' tag would be handy.

Same sort of thing as 'artist' and 'album artist'.

Is the best way round it to use [year] and [year (yyyy)] (as a custom tag)?

Have [year] as the album year. To start with copy all of the values in this over to [year(yyyy)] so you don't lose what you've already tagged. Then for albums with different year songs set the [year] to be the album year.

This would work - any better ways/ideas out there?

9

Questions / Re: Location of bands - what do people do?

« on: October 30, 2015, 07:51:11 PM »

Okay, the first thing you probably need to do is go to the "Advanced Search and Replace" tool in the plugin (it will show up in the Tools menu), and click on "Import All".  That will import all the preset commands.

Then find the preset for "Move everything after <Custom text 1> from <Tag 1> to <Tag 2>".  DON'T tick the box next to it.  Set Tag 1, Tag 2, and Custom text 1 in the settings (in your case: Artist, Location, and open parentheses), then click Preview.  If you're happy with the changes, you can click Apply. (But test on a small batch before doing the whole collection!)

Once you've got the info moved in the Location tag, you can do a simple search and replace (also in the Tools menu) to get rid of the close parentheses and change the commas to semicolons.

Thanks Psycho. This has put me on the right track - I can't blindly use an open bracket as sometimes they may be included for other info but the "click on "Import All" " part has opened up a lot of options. Again like I said - I'm new to MB so am still finding out about things like this. Some great options in there.

I'll probably extract everything after the first bracket to a custom tempTag. This can then be the new 'artist'. I can then sort by this tag to see what city/country combos I have. Will create 4 new custom tags (suburb, city, state, country) and multi tag each unique combo by hand (won't be that much work really and only have to do it once) Can then use some of the concatenate functions available to write all these to the Location tag.

Nice once done. Today I want to hear USA Punk that was released in the 70's. Simple.

Now of course that opens up the 'what year do you put a song that was released in 1979 but appears on a 2006 compilation' question...

As for where the location of artist is? I don't sweat it too much. I just go by birthplace - or from where it says a band is from on Wiki or Discogs etc. Like genre - it's not an exact science...

10

Questions / Re: Location of bands - what do people do?

« on: October 29, 2015, 07:33:25 PM »

Just gotta work out the best way to populate the tag now!

Since you have a lot of the information in your tags already, you can probably use the Additional tagging & reporting tools plugin to quickly transfer it to the custom tag.  Just be sure to test, test, test on a few files until you're sure that it's working as desired.

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Additional_Tagging_and_Reporting_Tools

I've been looking at that but can't work out a way to do it. I currently have the location as part of the band name and I can't see any (obvious) way to parse the tag and extract parts of it.

Anyone know if you can sort by the end of a column value? I don't mean Z-A instead of A-Z. I mean the column is actually sorted by the last chars of the string. That way you would get all xxx (London, England) and yyy (Chicago, IL) tagged bands next to each other. Even sorting by say the last 10 chars would probably work. I can then multi-select and tag manually (better than nothing). I can't see anything in the custom sort options to allow this. Can't believe it isn't possible though!

BTW this whole 'location thing' can get pretty complicated. There's quite a few scenarios when you start thinking about it. Mainly with big cities and the UK. The UK is England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland. Within those countries you have counties (ie Hampshire, Dorset, Cornwall etc).

ie
The Ramones (Queens, New York, NY, USA)
The Business (Lewisham, London, England, UK)
Strate Jacket (Shirley, Southampton, Hampshire, England, UK)

Probably easier just to ditch the UK all together. Stick with the countries within it. So go with
<suburb><city><state/county><country><continent>
(may as well add continent in there - today I want to easily hear all my music by bands based in South America...)

Also I'm edging towards multiple custom fields. Will make it easier in the long run I think. Plus not sure you can do $First(<customtag>) in Theater Mode so if you display location it doesn't look that good with all the semi colons in there.

Anyway - thanks for the pointers. I'm getting there...

11

Questions / Re: Location of bands - what do people do?

« on: October 29, 2015, 05:00:55 PM »

I use the Location custom tag for this.  All tags are entered as (for example) Chicago; Illinois; USA.  That way, in the column browser or library explorer I can easily select City, State, or Country separately.

Just did a quick test of that and that is exactly the sort of idea I was looking for. Thanks.

I renamed custom3 tag to 'Location' and set it to use the Location tag.
Then added ie New York; NY; USA as a value to this and yep - all 3 values show as separate entities if you use the Location column. Plus you can set a filter on any of the 3 values. Perfect.

I didn't know the semi colon worked so well when doing this sort of thing. Like I said - I'm still very new to MB. Learning a lot though.

Just gotta work out the best way to populate the tag now!

12

Questions / Location of bands - what do people do?

« on: October 29, 2015, 04:13:27 PM »

Hi - I'm new to MusicBee and love it so far. Very powerful with tons of useful features. Scarily good.

Anyway - when I tag stuff up I often include the location of the band/artist in their name:

ie
The Damned (London, England)
Dead Kennedys (San Francisco, CA)
Anti-Nowhere League (Tunbridge Wells, England)
The Exploited (Edinburgh, Scotland)
etc

Now it's easy to to keep the artist names consistent by just selecting 'Damned', 'The Damned', 'Damned, The' and changing them all to 'The Damned (London, England)' Then to hear every artist from London you can do a filter of 'all artists that include (London' but I'm wondering if there is a there is any recommendation on how to include the location info in a separate tag(s)? Town / State / Country.

Is it just the case of using Custom tags? I see one of the 'save to music file as tag' values is actually 'Location'. So if I did 3 custom tags for town/state/country then I could concatenate these 3 into Location to save it with the file... It would be a bit manual but doable.

Just thinking out aloud really. Does anyone else actually do this? (include location info for the artist). Now you've read this you know you want to...

13

Questions / Re: Best way to organize 65K plus of files.

« on: October 29, 2015, 03:26:57 PM »

You can start with this guide:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=10980.0

In the end, anyone can write more complicated rules than that. It's just about how to customize it to your tagging scheme.

Redwing - thanks a lot for that link - and for the guide you wrote there.

I'm new to MusicBee and find out more great stuff I can do with it by the day. Being able to rename folders with $Sort(<Artist>). Simple - but very handy!