Zune user switching to MB with questions

[chatham]

Zune user looking for something better and so far I like what I see.  I have been working through MuscBee for a few days and have the following questions even after reviewing the FAQs

Art Work
Sometimes album art wont be added when tagged or the art work is wrong.  How do you add art work or change it?

In my collection I already have most of the album art so I could easily add my own art.  In Zune there is an EDIT command that lets you edit tracks, art, ect.  How can these things be accomplished in MB?

Combining Music
Sometimes I have found a single track or more that show up separate from the album they are a part of.  In Zune you can just highlight drag and drop to add them to the album you want.  How do you handle this in MB?

I prefer to combine double or more CD’s into one.  For example, double album shows up as two and I prefer to just combine them.  Again, in Zune its just highlight drag and drop.  Who to do this in MB?

How to handle duplicates songs, albums

Tagging
What to do when the album is tagged wrong and you know it is not correct?  It seems that MB does a pretty good job of tagging however sometimes it does get it wrong.  This probably ties into the art work above.  I know that my original tagging is correct and want to keep it, but I would like to add the album art.

I have tagged an album closed music bee then when open music bee the album isn’t tagged, lost tagging.  Is this a common problem?

Playlists
Are you able to create playlist by drag and droping?  In Zune I could highlight an artist and by dragging and dropping I could add the entire artist catalog to a playlist.  Is this possible in MB or do I have to add album by album?

do you know how to import play list from Zine?

[frankz]

Art Work
Tagging

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

Playlists

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

How to handle duplicates songs, albums

Tools->Manage Duplicates...

Combining Music
Sometimes I have found a single track or more that show up separate from the album they are a part of.  In Zune you can just highlight drag and drop to add them to the album you want.  How do you handle this in MB?

I prefer to combine double or more CD’s into one.  For example, double album shows up as two and I prefer to just combine them.  Again, in Zune its just highlight drag and drop.  Who to do this in MB?

Make sure everything you want to see as an album is tagged EXACTLY the same in Album and Album Artist (See "Tagging" above).  For multi-disc albums, if you want to denote a disc 1 and disc 2, make sure disc 1 has "1" in the disc number field and disc 2 has a "2" in the disc number field.

[chatham]

I love people who respond with links that do not answer the questions I asked.  perhaps they are lazy or perhaps they don't understand the questions, who knows? 

I'll just hack my way through it.  if I decide to keep MB perhaps ill create a FAQ that actually answers questions instead of providing links that are a general overview at best.

Cheers!

[phred]

I love people who respond with links that do not answer the questions I asked.  perhaps they are lazy or perhaps they don't understand the questions, who knows?  

Common forum etiquette (for just about -any- forum) is to search the forum and other reference material -before- posting questions. Especially those which have been asked many times before and the answers to which are in the Wiki. frankz has been kind enough to provide links to the answers to your questions. And then you chastise him. Not right. Why should he spell out the answers to questions that are already answered if you'd just take the time to follow the links? And -then- if you still have questions, or don't understand something, ask away.

[captain_paranoia]

Why should he spell out the answers to questions that are already answered if you'd just take the time to follow the links?

Or, indeed, take a little time exploring the menu tree for fairly obvious commands, or using the familiar Right-click to bring up context menus, again, with fairly obvious commands.

[chatham]

I know how forums work and forum etiquette quite well.  I have used the search function and read all of the FAQ's and visited the wiki pages.  I could spend hours and hours phrasing and rephrasing my search questions and never find an answer.  my specific questions are not answered there.  if they are I challenge you to show me.  

For example MB has taken a number of albums that it cant tag and broken all the songs out individually.  How do I combine them back into one album if it cant tag it?  if it was in Zune I would just highlight drag and drop into one album and correct the tagging.  not here.


been working at this thing all day and cant figure that one out.  I have a list going of issue that are NOT covered in the documentation.  not trying to be a problem, just trying to solve problems that I have and I suspect others as well.

[phred]

I'm not going to do your homework for you, but since you have thrown down a challenge try this on for size, from the Wiki:

The two basic ways of adding tracks to a playlist are:

    Drag & drop tracks onto a playlist in the Navigator, Playlist Manager, or another tab.
    Use the Add to Playlist context menu.

So once again, I suggest you follow the links frankz posted. And this time try reading -all- the words.

[phred]

You do realize, do you not, that MB is developed by one person, who does this in his spare time and asks for nothing in return? And that the Wiki and forum is maintained by users who have taken the time to learn MB and offer suggestions to new users.

If you feel the documentation could use updating, feel free to add to the Wiki.

[chatham]

I'm not going to do your homework for you, but since you have thrown down a challenge try this on for size, from the Wiki:

The two basic ways of adding tracks to a playlist are:

    Drag & drop tracks onto a playlist in the Navigator, Playlist Manager, or another tab.
    Use the Add to Playlist context menu.

So once again, I suggest you follow the links frankz posted. And this time try reading -all- the words.

nice try but I don't want to create a playlist.  so I supposed what you might be telling me is that you want me to create an album/playlist and add the songs to it.  would that be correct? 

[chatham]

You do realize, do you not, that MB is developed by one person, who does this in his spare time and asks for nothing in return? And that the Wiki and forum is maintained by users who have taken the time to learn MB and offer suggestions to new users.

If you feel the documentation could use updating, feel free to add to the Wiki.

I do and I think it has great potential.  and when I get my head around it I will definitely be adding to it.

perhaps I came on too strong, but you have the wrong attitude about me.  but in my defense, forums are for people to share and just pointing to links and basically saying good luck youre on your own, isn't really helping with very specific questions, now is it?

[phred]

nice try but I don't want to create a playlist.  so I supposed what you might be telling me is that you want me to create an album/playlist and add the songs to it.  would that be correct?

Nice try yourself:

Playlists
Are you able to create playlist by drag and droping?  In Zune I could highlight an artist and by dragging and dropping I could add the entire artist catalog to a playlist.  Is this possible in MB or do I have to add album by album?

Since you don't want to accept any responsibility for your own words, nor do you seem to want to do any research yourself, I'm done with this thread.

[psychoadept]

That escalated quickly.

Look, I agree the documentation is far from perfect. That's why I put as much effort into improving it as I have (and still hope to do more, someday when I'm not snowed under with homework and other concerns). Artwork is one place where it's fairly weak and out of date precisely because there's so much to cover.

At the same time, one of the purposes of the wiki is so that we don't have to write the same explanations over and over again. Frankz and phred are both very active, helpful forum members but we all have limited time. The question about tracks from the same album being separated IS addressed in the FAQ. I know because I wrote it. The same methods should work for combining multi-disc albums that are being separated by disc. If you've tried those things, then come and ask for more help.  The more detail you can give us about what you've already done, the better.

The Playlists page covers creating or adding to playlists by drag & drop. (Although I just discovered that it's even easier with the Playlist Directory than with the left sidebar.)

MusicBee does have a feature that allows you to merge albums by drag & drop, but it has to be enabled in Tags (2). I also can't say for sure if it will have exactly the result you want.

[chatham]

psychoadept, thank you for the thought out response.  I will look into your suggestions and let you know what I find out.

phred seems confused between creating playlists, combining individual tracks back into an album n drag n drop.

it is obviously going to take some time and effort to get my collection, 151,00 tracks, into MB.

my collection is already volume leveled.  I have always done that before adding to my collection using MP3gain which works quite well.  it was nice to see volume leveling in MB.  additionally all of my collection has been tagged using Musicbrainz Picard which works quite well also.

overall MB seems to be handling most of the items quite well, but those that it doesn't it has real trouble with and trying to get those items integrate is taking some effort. 

still having trouble with individual tracks not combining back into an album and staying there.  additionally MB doesn't seem to auto update when a new album is added to the monitored file.  is it that I have to do a rescan every time?

[psychoadept]

I strongly suggest everybody take a deep breath and stop with the ad hominems. It's easy to miscommunicate about this stuff.  If the answer doesn't fit the question, what would help is screenshots of what you're seeing and information about exactly what you've done to try to resolve it.

What are you doing to get the individual tracks back into albums? A screenshot would definitely help here, otherwise we'll just be making wild guesses.

Regarding updating in monitored folders, can you show us your library preferences? I would expect that to be working, so figuring out why it's not could be a process.

[chatham]

over the past week I have been working my way through MB and I am very impressed with it.  it is almost too much...

i am working my through my collection artist by artist making sure that the tagging is correct and the artwork is correct.  what I have found is that sometimes a track, usually form a compilation, is off on its own and not combined in the compilation album.  I also find that this happens mostly with an album that is unusual.  by that I mean it is not easily found through the various tagging software I have.  I buy a lot of international music when I travel.  so I have these individual tracks out there that I need to move/combine into the album that they belong to.

I know for a fact that all of my music is organized and not just an individual track setting out there.  if I go to the edit menu on a track that I want to combine and locate in computer node, it is where it should be.  but MB thinks it is out on its own.  MB seems to be tagging it by artist instead of album.  obviously I can go to the edit menu and type in the correct info but this will take weeks and weeks with my collection.  this is why the drag and drop would make it so easy.

as I have said before, in Zune you can drag and drop which makes it vary easy.  I have tried what you have pointed out and everything I can think of and I cannot figure out how to drag and drop anything. 

inregards to my library, i have all of my music on its own hard drive and its the only thing on that drive.  that is the location that i had MB scan with first installed.  i have noticed that under MB/file/library/open library it is not the location of my music collection or what i told MB to scan at install.  it is pointing to the default location for windows.  however, i know MB is scanning my location at each start up because it is finding the changes/deletions that have been made.

help me figure out how to easily get individual tracks back home and i'm good.  again it is in music explorer where this is really an issue.  this view is where i will probably operate MB from when listening.

thanks