Author Topic: MusicBrainz Picard q & a thread  (Read 89833 times)

hiccup

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The real issue still stands, I can't get the "thumbnail browser" or the "left main panel" thing to sort my music by works unless they are m4a files as shown in the last image I posted. Or maybe I can but I have to use virtual tags? Maybe I can combine the two work tags to one virtual tag?

I don't use m4a files myself, but doing a quick test, I think Picard writes @wrk for work, and MusicBee recognizes that just fine for me.
If Picard doesn't write @wrk for you, that's probably something to investigate.
(e.g. maybe 'Use release relationships' and 'Use track relationships' are not checked?)

In MusicBee, indeed Work doesn't seem available by default for the thumbnail browser.
So you could either make a wish for that, or as you suggested yourself, create a virtual tag for it.
This should work:
Label it something else than "Work", e.g. something like "Work (v)", and use this as formula: $IsNull(<Work>,,<Work>)

sadsack5000

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The reason it doesn't show up as Artists in MusicBee is because that's simply a list of everything in TPE1. You'd have to configure Musicbrainz TXXX/Artists as a custom tag.

Is this still the case with MusicBee? My mp3s are pristinely tagged from Picard with the artists tag fully populated with featured artists. I was hoping MB would natively support this tag by now and dont really want to go back and change my tagging regime

psychoadept

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Yes, it's a non-standard tag. I suppose you could make a wish list request for some kind of support, but you can still just configure it yourself.

You might be interested in the scripts I've written to import guest artists and display artists for MusicBee with Picard.
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sadsack5000

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Im trying to minimise or better still prevent tagging any new fields save from what Picard writes for me.
FYI im scripted up to the max in Picard so my mp3s are pristine to my own internal (psychopathic) standard
I basically just want to see ARTISTS in the left hand navigator list of musicbee

Ok so i guess a custom tag is my best bet. I tried to map TXXX/ARTISTS and it proved difficult. I cant seem to get it to work
What have you got in "New Custom Tag Definition" for TXXX/ARTISTS?

Thx

psychoadept

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Ok so i guess a custom tag is my best bet. I tried to map TXXX/ARTISTS and it proved difficult. I cant seem to get it to work
What have you got in "New Custom Tag Definition" for TXXX/ARTISTS?

I don't use Artists because my script writes to the built-in Guest Artist tag instead. But according to this page it should just be "Artists" in all the columns. Then you'll have to link it to a custom tag in Tags (1), and then it will have to take time to scan everything.

Another option you could consider would be using the Additional Tagging and Reporting Tools plugin to move tags from Artists to Guest Artists. That could at least do it in one go for you (with appropriate testing first). You'll still need the Artists tag set up first.
Last Edit: October 06, 2019, 03:07:53 PM by psychoadept
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sadsack5000

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Ok so leaving the ArtistS tag aside...

What is the benefit in using Guest Artist over tagging Artist with multiple values?

I just ran your script on a test album in picard and sure enough it works to give a single Artist and a list of contributors in Guest Artist

But i cant actually see what Guest Artist is used for in Musicbee over a list just in Artist


I guess i was hoping if i switched the thumbnail viewer to Artist: Guest that clicking on any contributing artist would load their details in Artist Biography/Artist Pictures but it doesnt. Just loads the album artists biography etc.

Hope that all made sense...

psychoadept

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Well, the guest artist tag by itself doesn't do anything. But there are official Id3 tags for Artist and Remixer and Performer, so if you wanted to keep guest artists from cluttering up those tags it will do that. Or if you want to search for cases where someone is a guest artist instead of primary artist, it lets you do that. You could just put them all in artist, of course. If you're syncing to a phone or something, that could have undesirable results
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sadsack5000

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Ok i understand now thanks. I'm trying to find a happy medium for my mp3's that are played on different devices/software. For example i use Asset UPNP or Minimserver as my DLNA music server on my NAS. Asset doesnt recognise ArtistS so you have to put all featured artists as a multi-value list in Artist. Conversely, MusicBee which i use on my laptop can deal with a single entry in Artist and featured artists in for example Guest Artist. I dont want to be running with two libraries tagged differently for different devices so trying to find a happy medium.

sadsack5000

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Ok after a little experimentation i believe i've found the sweet spot but i have a problem.

I'm using MusicBrainz to copy ArtistS to Artist. For tracks with featured artists this will appear in Artist as a typical multi-value list artist1; artist2 etc
The album artist is typically identical to artist1
Since i want the "main artist" aka artist1 to appear in MusicBee's "Aritst" column/thumbnail browser rather than a comma delimited list i have used the script $set(Display Artist,$rreplace(%artist%,; .*,)) to take the first artist from Artist

Take this example from Catatonia's Greatest Hits album:
Every track has "Catatonia" as the Album Artist
23 of the 25 tracks are purely Catatonia, no featured artists
2 tracks are credited to other artists as the main artist and Cerys/Catatonia are the Featured artist (why not throw these onto a greatest hits album?)
E.g.

Title: The Ballad of Tom Jones (Featuring Cerys Matthews)
Artist: Space; Cerys Matthews
Album Artist: Catatonia
Display Artist: Space


In Musicbee it doesnt like this. In the main column browser Space is displayed correctly as the Artist however in the thumbnail browser it appears as "Space; Cerys Matthews"

Looking into the file tag splitter "Space" is indeed the Display artist but Musicbee has not split out "Space; Cerys Matthews" as two artist rows - they both appear on the same row and only a manual alteration can fix it

As far as i can tell this is a bug

Any chance you could try the same on a test mp3 to confirm please?

EDIT forgot to mention when i click on the entry "Space; Cerys Matthews" in the thumbnail browser no tracks are listed at all
Last Edit: October 08, 2019, 08:31:44 PM by sadsack5000

psychoadept

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I think the problem you mention at the end has been corrected in the latest patch (see my sig).

But the main thing that's going on is that the $set script in Picard writes a single string rather than a multi value tag. You need to use $setmulti to write to the Artist tag in Picard. Then MusicBee should handle it fine. If that still doesn't do the trick, I'll take a look at one of the files and see what I can do.
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sadsack5000

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I'll look into that patch for sure.

Yes im aware of $setmulti i use that in other scripts. Since i only want Display Artist to be one value i use just $set

psychoadept

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Yeah, but how are you moving Artists to Artist?
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psychoadept

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Hmm. Seems like that should work. What happens if you use $copy(artist, artists)?
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sadsack5000

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thats ok i upgraded both MusicBee and Picard to latest versions and the problem has cleared up. Weird mind

Thanks for your help again