MusicBrainz Picard q & a thread

[hiccup]

No problem. Even with a fresh mind this can be a confusing matter.
(it is to me at least)

Having 'display artist' populated by the script is just fine and is how I also like it.

The matter of 'preserving' is another one, but I thought it best to leave that alone for now, because:
1.  As we know it is currently kind of broken at the Picard side.
2.  It is mentioned on the settings page it is case-sensitive, so the current vorbis capital/lower-case letter issue that Picard seems to have with vorbis would also make it difficult and very time-consuming to nail-down.

After/if the casing and preserving is fixed and working reliable, I am wondering if I should even use 'preserve' for 'display artist'.
Probably not, because that would prevent it getting updated when it's content in the MusicBrainz database is edited or updated.
So it's probably better to make sure that the script does update it every time.
(but that it doesn't just add artists to it every time you run it ;-)


So you yourself don't use flac at all?
Is there a reason for the script using capital letters?

[psychoadept]

I wouldn't hold your breath on the casing conflicts between Picard and MusicBee, that's been an ongoing issue.  You should be able to use a script in Picard to convert to whatever case MusicBee wants, though.

The reason for the all caps is the same. It might have changed since then, but whenever I wrote the script MusicBee would convert the TXXX tags to ALL CAPS anyway, so I wrote the script that way.  So just change it to what works for your situation and you shouldn't need the "preserve tags" for that anyway. The only catch might be working with different formats. Maybe you could just copy the script and activate/deactivate as needed: "Multiple Artists for MP3" vs "Multiple Artists for FLAC".

On a side note, though, do you know you can add preserve tags by right clicking on them in the main window, now? That will guarantee that capitalization, etc, is correct for Picard.

I gave up on FLAC a while ago. Even with headphones I can't tell much difference above about 256K, so I just rip everything at 320 and call it good.

[hiccup]

I wouldn't hold your breath on the casing conflicts between Picard and MusicBee, that's been an ongoing issue.

I am hoping we can use the momentum of having the attention of the samj dude.
Having him on our side would be nice.

Thanks for all the other good suggestions. Some of them I was aware of, but it's good to be refreshed.

I gave up on FLAC a while ago. Even with headphones I can't tell much difference above about 256K, so I just rip everything at 320 and call it good.

Haha, maybe I should consider that too.
It would make my audio life a lot easier and I could give the audiophile perfectionist part of my brain a single train ticket to Novosibirsk.

[hiccup]

In case others are reading this thread, have some interest in it, but don't have it clear what's it all about (I know how that feels):
Using this script from psychoadept makes it possible to i.a. make good use of the 'Artists: Artist' field.

For example if you have an album (or a track) where "Rufus and Chaka Khan" is the artist on the cover (the release artist), this plugin makes it possible to have Picard splitting the separate artists, and adding them to the 'Artists: artist' tag frame.

In for example MusicBee's column browser it would look like this:



So now you can not only filter and search for 'Rufus and Chaka Khan', but also for the separate artists.

This is especially useful for releases from artist participations that have the 'album artist' credited differently on different albums.
Such as: 'Rufus & Chaka', 'Rufus with Chaka Khan', 'Rufus featuring Chaka Khan', 'Chaka Khan with Rufus', etc.

update:
I've changed my ways, and am now doing this:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29851.0

[hiccup]

@psychoadept,
Picard currently is case-sensitive in relation to the 'preserve tags' option.
I fail to see the advantage of that, and consider raising it there that it might be better to make it case-agnostic.
Before I do that, would you agree, or might that interfere with your setup?

[frankz]

In case others are reading this thread, have some interest in it, but don't have it clear what's it all about (I know how that feels):
Using this script from psychoadept makes it possible to i.a. make good use of the 'Artists: Artist' field.

For example if you have an album (or a track) where "Rufus and Chaka Khan" is the artist on the cover (the release artist), this plugin makes it possible to have Picard splitting the separate artists, and adding them to the 'Artists: artist' tag frame.

In for example MusicBee's column browser it would look like this:



So now you can not only filter and search for Rufus and Chaka Khan, but also for the separate artists.

This is especially useful for releases from artist participations that have the 'album artist' credited differently on different albums.
Such as: 'Rufus & Chaka', 'Rufus with Chaka Khan', 'Rufus featuring Chaka Khan', 'Chaka Khan with Rufus', etc.

That's very useful. I currently do this manually, and it's a real pain in the neck.

[psychoadept]

@psychoadept,
Picard currently is case-sensitive in relation to the 'preserve tags' option.
I fail to see the advantage of that, and consider raising it there that it might be better to make it case-agnostic.
Before I do that, would you agree, or might that interfere with your setup?

No, I'm totally with you on that. Honestly, anybody trying to keep different tags with the same name except for capitalization is rolling some big dice

(I thought I was hitting quote but I guess I hit modify when I tried to reply to this earlier...)

[hiccup]

No, I'm totally with you on that. Honestly, anybody trying to keep different tags with the same name except for capitalization is rolling some big dice

Great, I'll wait until there is some pulse on the patient again and some running issues have been addressed (I wouldn't want to flood the dude), and will then try to make a case for it. (phun intended)

[hiccup]

I am trying to get 'involved people' displayed in a MusicBee.
That's not very difficult for mp3 files, but I have a hard time achieving it for flac files.

After running a release through Picard, for mp3 these roles are nicely gathered under a TIPL tag.
E.g.:
TIPL:arranger
TIPL:engineer
TIPL:DJ-mix
TIPL:mix
TIPL:producer

MusicBee will display those just fine when using 'involved people'.
So you can get something like this:



But for flac files MusicBee will display nothing at all under 'involved people'.
That's probably because for flac these roles all get separate tags such as:
ARRANGER
ENGINEER
PRODUCER
MIXER
etc.

Is anybody aware if there might be some Picard script to solve this?

I do have an itch that I am missing an obvious and simple solution, but the coin hasn't dropped yet.
It might be accomplished from within MusicBee by means of e.g. a virtual tag, but that would require creating quite a few custom tags for all these roles, and most of us using MB at this level have probably already run out of those. (I have)

Any ideas or suggestions?

[psychoadept]

I think your best bet would be writing some scripts for Picard to the effect of

$if($eq(_extension,flac),
$copymerge([musicbee tag],role: [Picard tag for that role])
$unset([tag that Picard provides])
)

That's off the top of my head, so might take some fiddling. You'd have to do an additional copymerge and unset for each tag, and you'd have to keep an eye out for others that crop up.  But the result should be something like this in the MusicBee tag:

arranger: Artist 1
engineer: Artist 2
producer: Artist 3
etc

[hiccup]

$if($eq(_extension,flac),
$copymerge([musicbee tag],role: [Picard tag for that role])
$unset([tag that Picard provides])
)

That's off the top of my head, so might take some fiddling. You'd have to do an additional copymerge and unset for each tag, and you'd have to keep an eye out for others that crop up.

Thanks.
I think I will sacrifice one custom tag for this purpose.
That will make the script a bit more straightforward, and it won't risk messing up existing and valid tags.

But it's a bit of a struggle to learn the correct syntax for such a script.
Something basic like $if(%producer%,$set(INVO,producer: %producer%),) will work.
(using $copymerge instead of $set doesn't seem to work here)

But now I'll have to find a way to also make it work for engineer, arranger, mixer etc.
That will probably need some more advanced nesting with the use of $copymerge or perhaps $setmulti, but at the moment I can't come up with 'one ring that rules them all'.
Don't feel obligated to jump in and put more time into this. (unless it's fun for you...)
I'll give it some more effort, and I can also turn to the other forum for some extra help.

[hiccup]

I have a question about the 'Display Artist and Guest Artist' script on the wiki.

Especially about the 'feat.' part.
I could be wrong, but I am under the impression that 'featuring' is not an allowed or acknowledged concept on MusicBrainz?
If so, am I correct to understand that that part of the script will in fact only affect (look at) tags that are already present in your files?
Or does MusicBrainz sometimes supply tags containing 'featuring'?


edit:
I now see it will query 'something' from MusicBrainz.
And it looks like in it's current state the script is not covering all 'featurings'.

Using the strict 'feat.' in the script, for the below example Syd becomes a guest, but Bridget doesn't:

[psychoadept]

"Featuring" Is definitely a thing in Musicbrainz!  Maybe you're thinking of the fact that musicbrainz has long since done away with putting featured artists in titles? That's half the reason they invented artist credits, so that things like A feat. B would be credited to both A and B.

For a long time the guideline was to standardize all such credits to "feat.", but that's been changed to "whatever's on the release". However, there's a plugin  that will still standardize it to feat.

I should probably review that part of the instructions to make sure it's still effective.

[hiccup]

Thnx. Note that I modified my previous post at the same time of you posting.

[psychoadept]

Gotcha. Unless you really care about the exact credit, the easiest solution is probably using the feat. plugin.