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Topics - Phaedrus

Pages: 12
1
I consider anything synced from MusicBee to be disposable. I use USB drives and devices as removable discs to sync music for on-the-go listening. The majority of my use is USB drives for the car and stationary portable listening. I don't update libraries on devices very often but when I do, I attach them as a removable disk to sync files over. The drives are often formatted and usually do not have the same letter, so MusicBee sees them as new. In order to keep things working, I have to make the same tedious setting changes and remember to create the storage folders.

Is there a way to change the default settings for removable media?
Is there a fix for needing to create the storage folder in Windows explorer?

2
Questions / Odd behavior when returning to a tab after switching.
« on: November 19, 2022, 05:19:17 AM »
I'm in my inbox and using the middle button to open a new tab based on Track Title. I'll make some changes to some tracks and then close that tab to return to the inbox. Usually, the track I had selected is still highlighted, but many times, the track highlighted is one I've selected previously. (See the "Too Short: Need Detail.)

Any ideas on what's going on? I'm trying like heck to find any kind of a pattern and haven't been able to identify anything.

TS:ND
I open the inbox, and track "A" is selected. I scroll through the list and middle click on the Title for track "B" to open a tab with all songs in the library with that track name. I make some changes to some files and close the tab to return to the inbox. Often, "Track B" is selected when the inbox opens. Sometimes, "Track A" is selected and I have to scroll to get back to "Track B." (Clear as mud, right?)

3
I've tried a few things, and I'm out of ideas. Looking for some troubleshooting direction

Files are all MP3 320K. When I try to play, I get a very short burst of the first note, then nothing and playback stops. I cannot seek to any portion of the file. The time reported appears to be at least close to accurate.

* These files all play with no issues in a couple of other players
* MP3 Diags 1.02.3 reported problems with a tag stream, stripped out the offending string.
* Audio Tester 1.7 reports all files passed.
* All of my other tools are focused on tags, or FLAC, but they have no issues either
* Converted from MP3 to MP3
* Checked that all files are listed as "Not Hidden" and that everyone has Modify access to the files
* Was able to Volume level entire folder with no errors
* Discovered more, and all appear to be from the same source
* Tried different output devices and settings.
* Files that work, continue to work, Files that don't, continue to don't

Suspect some issue with encoding, but I have run out of tests, or potential solutions.

4
Questions / Question about working with the Album Artwork Manager
« on: August 03, 2019, 02:32:01 AM »
I've finally decided that I've had enough with weirdness in my artwork, so I'm slogging through my library to fix everything. I'm using the Album Artwork Manager to identify albums that don't meet my standard, and things are going mostly OK; I'm about halfway through my 10k+ albums after a couple weeks of off and on work.

My first few batches would have the embedded artwork at the top of my list so that I could easily identify it, and save it as an MBCover.jpg, I think I tweaked a setting or two, and now embedded shows at the bottom of the artwork list. I thought I rearranged my album artwork retrieval filter to have "Embedded" at the bottom, so I moved it to the top, but that wasn't it. Ideas on what I did, or is this a function of something else, and the artwork is ordered based on another criteria, and it just works out this way now?

I notice I can only save the first picture as organized cover art. It would be much easier to fix my cover art if I could set any picture as organized art. As it is, if I don't want the first picture, I have to edit the album, and set the cover art from the artwork tab. I'm curious to know the reasoning behind this interface decision, or ideas on how to fix it if it's a problem on my system. I suspect that understanding of the first question will make this question irrelevant.

For the record, I've decided that I don't want any artwork embedded in my music files, so I'm going through each album, removing the embedded artwork, and saving the largest cover art image as an MBCover.jpg to display in MusicBee. I plan to embed the image when I sync a device, if I need it.

TIA for input on my wall of text.

5
Questions / How to configure "Send To" an external application
« on: February 02, 2018, 04:07:04 PM »
I'm trying to configure "Send To" to send albums to MusicBrainz Picard. I want to be able to send an entire album, or group of albums  to Picard for tagging. Everything I configure sends each file to Picard so that I end up with multiple instances of Picard, with one track listed in each. I'd like all tracks selected to open into a single instance of Picard so I can tag the entire album.

6
Bug Reports / Renaming an album and the column browser does not update.
« on: January 21, 2018, 11:05:16 AM »
I followed these steps, and had the described unexpected results. Signature contains updated information about the installation.

1. Select an Album in the browser.
2. Select all tracks listed.
3. Edit, rename the album, and "Save."

In the Column browser, the next album listed is highlighted, but the tracks shown in the main pane do not update. Clicking on the selected album in the column browser does not update the list. Selecting another album, and then the previously highlighted album is the only way to update the track list. (Clarification; "Next Album" is the one below if Album is sorted ascending, and the one above if sorted descending.)

In the course of testing before posting;
- If I double-click the incorrectly highlighted album, the tracks listed will play, instead of the tracks from the album indicated in the column browser.
- Reduced to only "Album" in column browser, performed the same steps, and it seemed to work as expected. I repeated the test, and found the same issue listed above, several times after.

*Edit to add first line of text missing from paste.

7
Based on a post in Questions, about Advanced Auto Playlist options, I am switching to MusicBrainz Picard for Tagging.
Thought I'd share thoughts as I go. Feel free to chime in with resources, or pointers.

1. If your files are already sorted into directories, don't drag the root folder to MusicBrainz, and let it sort them out. You will be disappointed. Drag the Root of the folders to the left side and then "Cluster." It will be much better.
2. Picard is incredibly powerful, and can be customized with scripts. You can get pretty good information without resorting to them.
3. Work with a copied subset of your library until you are comfortable with the results. (Should be common sense, but I'm not taking anything for granted.)
4. The Album Art is fairly disappointing compared to Discogs.
5. Maybe it's just me, but the documentation is only adequate at best.
6. It is not "Set it and forget it" for updating an existing library. There will be some manual checking. Plan accordingly.
7. Once the IDs are all set from the first cycle, subsequent cycles will be faster.
8. I am not a coder, and trying to create scripts is really driving that point home.

8
Questions / Advanced Auto Playlist assistance
« on: December 16, 2017, 10:43:22 AM »
My specific goal is to create an auto playlist that will show me albums that I have more than one copy of. For example, I buy a CD I forgot I already had, re-rip it, tag it (tags are slightly different because it's a different version) and import it. MusicBee will happily import it, and copy it to the location, but not find that it is a duplicate because the titles are slightly different.

In order to do this, I would like to create an Auto Playlist that contains albums which have two "Disc-Track# 1-01," and I can't figure out how to do this. If it's even possible. I'm approaching this like a SQL query, and that might be my problem. What I really want is to use the "Having" part of a query.

Any thoughts on the matter will only help my auto playlists get better and I really appreciate that.

9
Questions / Created an Auto-Playlist, and don't understand a result
« on: December 14, 2017, 09:30:40 AM »
I'm revisiting an issue I had a while back with files brought over from Media Monkey. The problem was fixed, but it seems I'm still dealing with fallout.

I'm trying to fix some artist tags that have semicolons. I created an auto-playlist that I thought would show the artist field when it contains a semicolon. I have several items that show up where I can't find the semicolon. Here are screenshots of an example track.

Playlist;
Result information
Tag Inspector (ID3v1 and APEv2 tags are both empty, none of the tags further down are related to artist.)

I have used the right-click, send to file rescan, but that did not change the result. Information in the signature is updated.

10
Questions / Help getting rid of multi-value fields
« on: December 13, 2017, 08:03:05 AM »
I'm weeding through my library and I've found some albums which have multiple disc numbers separated with a semicolon. I'm sure these came over from Media Monkey, but now I'm stuck with them here, and I'd like to sort through them individually, because I've also noticed that these tracks / albums have some other weirdness as well. They are also inconsistent in that it is not always the first value which is correct.

I'm trying to come up with an auto-playlist which contains tracks which contain a semicolon. There is no option for "Contains" for Disc# or Track#, which seems reasonable. I tried "Any Field" contains ";" but that shows me any track with a "multi-value" value for a field, including "Genre."

Any ideas on how to create this list? I'm trying to avoid manual playlists because they are inconvenient when sorting through groups of songs to fix tags,

11
I find myself at a crossroads in my Music listening career, and would appreciate your input.

I recently upgraded to MusicBee from Media Monkey. I've spent the last few months getting all my music properly tagged from Discogs using a plugin from Media Monkey. The plugin tags years, ISRC, Involved People, Cover art, and genres. I still get new music regularly, but it has reduced from a roar to a trickle. I'm now sitting at 84,669 tracks, at 1.3 TB.

While tagging with Discogs, I knew that at some point, I would have to fix my genres. I assumed that they would be at least close, and that I would be able to go through the handful of oddball genres and albums, and tweak them to make them fit better in my library. What I've discovered, is that the Discogs Genres are wildly inconsistent. Some albums seem well tagged, especially the "Studio realeases." Many of my albums, especially the compilations are less reasonable, or lacking in detail with only one genre.

So here are my paths as I see them;
1. Bite the bullet and analyze each track individually for proper genre classification. This path is dark, paved with flowing lava, the plants all give off toxic fumes, and the animals will devour me constantly. (1 minute per track, an hour a day will take about 4 years.)
2. Use the Last.FM autotag in MusicBee to autopopulate Genre, Mood, etc.; for each track. Seems promising, I'm afraid of losing the genres on the good ones.
3. Continue on with the original plan, and just go with it? Seems like a fools errand when I'm staring down the barrel of 37K tracks with an Unknown genre category, 6K tracks with no genre at all, and having to rewrite an "advanced search and replace" preset for each genre modification.
4. Hybrid? Auto tag everything except genre for tracks with more than one genre, and everything for the rest? (I'm leaning towards this.)

The problem I see is that until I work with the database when I'm done, I won't really know how well it worked. I like the concept of occasions and Moods from Last.FM, and the settings seem well thought out in MusicBee. It looks like almost all of the problem tags are taken care of.

Thanks in advance!

12
I use the "Involved People" field when I tag my files from Discogs in Media Monkey. (Hate the program, but the Discogs plugin is awesome.) I use a custom tag to show these in MusicBee. Everything is fine in version 3.

I imported some new albums into MusicBee, and now the "Involved People" tag is taking over the Artist field. Suddenly my inbox has things like: <Artist = " Design Concept: Adam Ant"> and <role/ instrument = Art Direction: Adam Ant> (Obviously minus the brackets) I also notice that now I suddenly have a bunch of engineers and photographers listed in my artist field. Many of these are labeled properly; and I really don't want them there, I want them under "Involved People." (or musiciancredits; I want the field searchable, but I don't want to see them as artists.)

Seems like anything tagged with ID3 v2.3 has the issue with weird Artist \ role/ instrument combinations, and somehow I have colons where I should have semi-colons. I did a test, and converted the tags to 2.4 by synchronizing the tags to the database, and now, according to MP3Tag, these are all under "musiciancredits." I'm good with that, but they still show up under artist.

Any ideas on how I fix this? Am I doomed to version 3.0? Open to all suggestions, that don't involve removing tags, or sorting through all 82K files manually. I also want to maintain the tags I've already added by splitting artists manually, so a bulk "Remove anything other than the artist" is out as well.

Thank you, and I look forward to conquering the learning curve.

13
Questions / Getting rid of .cue sheets
« on: February 19, 2017, 09:36:55 PM »
I've run into this before, and I fixed it, but It keeps popping up from time to time, and I'd like to know how to fix it.

I keep the .cue file used to split the original file, in the same directory as the split files. (Mostly because I don't like losing any data. It serves no real purpose.) Everything is fine, unless I have a split file with the same name as the .cue file.

Example;
Enigma - Voyageur.cue
Enigma - Voyageur.flac
The original file was called "Enigma - Voyageur.flac." The artist is Enigma, the album is "Voyageur," and there is a track named "Enigma - Voyageur." My file naming scheme is <Album Artist> - <Track>

I've found that in Music Bee, I have all my tracks doubled, because it is reading the .cue, and splitting the file with the same name. (Obviously the duplicates don't play properly.) When I find this, and try to rename the .Cue file, the file is still split. I've rescanned the folder, and even deleted the .cue file, but the split remains in place.

How do I get rid of these "virtual" files without selecting and deleting them from the database? And If I have to delete them manually, why? (How is Music Bee maintaining this information?)

14
Questions / Artist splitter erasing split artists with Vorbis tag
« on: February 03, 2017, 10:56:24 AM »
I've realized this has happened with other files, and I've probably lost a good bit of information. I assume that this is a limitation of my knowledge and understanding of how MusicBee works.

I use the "Artist splitter" to pull the guest artist out of the artist field. This seems to work, until I save it. Once I save the tags, the Guest artist disappears. I don't find it in the database, or in the file. The little plus does not show up next to artist to indicate there is more than one artist. The artist field is also updated to show that there is only one artist, having removed the separated "Feat." artist. I can see other values entered in MusicBee using TagScanner.

What am I missing?

15
MusicBee Wishlist / Request for some Keyboard Navigation issue fixes
« on: January 09, 2017, 05:18:39 AM »
I'll preface this by saying that I do 508 compliance testing as part of my work as a contractor to an American Federal Agency. 508 compliance is a set of requirements that software must meet as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The part I usually work with is software. Most of the items in the list have to do with alternative use of the software for people with low / impaired vision, or physical access challenges. Part of this is that you have to be able to navigate the software without relying on a single method of input.

I find myself being unable to use a mouse sometimes, and still want to play with my music. I think this is how I got stuck with doing the 508 compliance in the first place.

Anyway, I've noticed these issues with using the keyboard as the only means of interaction. I have very little customization, and am using version 3.0.6190. The first items are individual key navigation items that I can't get to work. The tab order issues can probably be explained. Thanks for your time and attention.

--Can't open the context menu anywhere using the Keyboard's "Menu Key."

--Can't open the main menu using the Alt key.

--Left/Right keyboard navigation does not move the focused tag field in the track view.

--"Ctrl + F4" does not close an unpinned tab.

--In "Artist View," can't tab to the list of artists.

--My obvserved tab order in Music view with colum browser
1. Colum 1
2. Colum 2
3. Colum 3
4. ? I can't change anything on the keyboard, but a few arrow key presses moves the cursor in the Library panel on the left. It then resets the tab order so that the next item is "1."
5. Without pressing arrow keys, Now Playing List
6. Main track list.
7. Back to one.

--My observed tab order In Music Explorer View,
1. Filter Panel. If I "Up Arrow" past the top list
2. Unknown, can't change anything with Arrow keys, enter or Space.
3. Album Thumbnails
4. Top Tracks by Rating panel
5. Unknown, can't change anything with Arrow keys, enter or Space.
6. Playing Tracks
7. Single tab, with Arrow keys, seems to be the same as number 5.
8. Double tab returns to item 1.

Pages: 12