New quicker simpler bulk tag editing UI / window

[whismerhill]

Hi,
so I saw this done in other software, I thought it was a good idea and to be honest I believe MusicBee has all the functionality to do this almost already implemented with the genre browser, from where I stand  it seems like mostly UI stuff.

To explain myself better I'll start with a picture :

So the goal is to make batch edits to your tags/genres or whatever globally:
-this would be a new tagging tool/window
-I took "Genres" as an example and also because it's the most fitting of all tags for this
-the column "Genre Old" starts blank
-the user can not access the columns "count" & "Genre Old"
-the user can rename any of the tags in the "Genre" column
-upon renaming one of the tags the original tag name is put in "Genre Old"
-further renaming of the same tag does not change "Genre Old" (only the original Genre is held there)
-when the user click save : Any non-empty Genre Old is renamed into the corresponding "Genre"

-the user can additionally Delete (which strikes through the corresponding row) or Undelete (if striked through already)
-no changes to the actual database are ever made before the user clicks save or cancel.

-optional special case: if a tag  ("electronica") is renamed to the name of another tag ("electronic") then all tracks who already have the "electronic" tag get "electronica" deleted, and all tracks who do not have "electronic" get "electronica" renamed to "electronic"

I hope this is clear enough ?


the user can already do this but with a lot more manipulations :
-first the user chooses a genre in the genre browser.
-then select all tracks & edit
-then select the genre field
-then go through the possible numerous tags in this field searching for the corresponding tag he wants to alter
-then text select & rename or delete according to his wants.
-then click save
-done

the new UI would do this in 3 steps :
-invoke tool window
-rename
-save

the new UI could additionally batch edit multiple tags at once which is impossible with the current UI. (unless all the tracks have identical tags)


So, in the end
I would like to know if I wet your appetite ? if you think it's a good idea, if you think you're gonna implement it in MusicBee ?
reason I'm asking is, I'm a little programmer myself, I made some mods for the game "don't starve" & other stuff, I may be getting way over my head but I was actually considering trying to learn the API & make a plugin for this IF you're not interested in implementing it yourself. Because if it takes you 4 hours, it'll probably take me one or two month to learn :p (I said 4 hours because I dared believe pretty much everything already exist in the form of the existing musicbee genre browser but feel free to contradict me)

Thanks for reading, any replies welcome.
Whis.

[psychoadept]

I didn't follow all the details, but +1 to the principle of improving bulk tag editing for multi-value tags.

[hiccup]

I also support the thought behind what you would like to accomplish here.

Either by a solution in the line of what you present here, or perhaps it would be possible to accomplish this by just making some changes in the current functionality of Tag Inspector and Tag Editor.
Two reasons why it's not ideal or even possible to achieve this currently with those is:

1. When you have selected several tracks that contain different tags for e.g. genre, in Tag Editor that field will display completely empty.
That could be considered misleading, and give the impression that those tracks have no tag for that field at all. Then it would be very easy to overwrite tags that actually are present but that you are not aware of.
It would probably be better to have the '+' sign showing in such cases, so you are aware the tag fields are actually not empty.

2. As a second step you could then use Tag Inspector to correct e.g. a genre name to make them uniform. But the wish the OP has, is that only the files that have that genre present in their tags will get that edited genre name. But when you edit such a genre tag through Tag Inspector, not only will it change the genre name for only the tracks that contain that genre, but it will also be added to all other selected tracks.

[psychoadept]

1. Seems like an easy fix.

2. The challenge will be finding a way to differentiate whether you want to add the tag to all tracks or not (such as in Tag Inspector).  Might be as simple as another check box, or maybe a query when you go to save the changes.  Or maybe a way to do it from, say, the thumbnail browser, where you could select a particular genre/artist/etc and click an icon or use a context menu to rename that specific tag on all included tracks. (With filters and playlists, this would allow for easily doing it on specific subsets.)