Auto-Tagger

[VX]

Note the Genre differs in the last example. Foobar retrieves "Oldies" for the file, whereas Album Auto-Tagger names the Genre "Engelbert", which is meaningless and useless as a Genre. I could provide more examples for that inconsistent behaviour of Auto-Tagger when it comes to Genre retrieval if you like.

FreeDB is IMHO more reliable source for Genres than the one currently used with Auto-Tagger.

[Steven]

i havent implemented genre from freedb yet.

for the cd artwork, everything is fine for me. It looks like the pictures are completely unrelated in your case. I can only give you a debug version if you are willing to try that

edit:
i think i know what the problem might be. Could you try opening the CD in the CD Ripper screen (no need to do the rip) and see whether the artwork is correct

[VX]

I can only give you a debug version if you are willing to try that

I can try it if that help to fix the bug.

Could you try opening the CD in the CD Ripper screen (no need to do the rip) and see whether the artwork is correct

For the first CD (Myslovitz) the artwork shown in CD-Ripper is incorrect (exactly the same one from LastFM as shown at the above picture). Moreover, the tags retrieved for the album with CD-Ripper have NO diacritic marks!

For the second album CD Ripper shows exactly the same cover as... Album Auto-Tagger (see the picture above).

[VX]

I did some tests with the tracks that MusicBee fails to retrieve an artwork for and found much easier way to improve the current solution.
It seems that after addition of FreeDB service, the Discogs support is not needed anymore. 

 I was able to find all the missing covers on Amazon

I'll write more later.

[VX]

Just trying version 088. It looks that some tabs disappear randomly (the Editor is docked to Main Panel):

[Steven]

when multiple files are selected or a virtual file from a single album file with an embeded cuesheet is selected, a number of the tabs which are not applicable are not displayed. Its been this way since the start of MB

[VX]

when multiple files are selected or a virtual file from a single album file with an embeded cuesheet is selected, a number of the tabs which are not applicable are not displayed. Its been this way since the start of MB

Thanks for the explanation. It's quite logical IMHO. MB is even better than I'm aware of 

What about the above Artwork issue Do you need any help with that 

[Steven]

i thought you found the problem above and you were going to write about it.
Can you send me your settings file (help/support/view settings). I will PM my email

[VX]

PM sent.
As far as Auto-Tagger improvements, what I really miss is:

1. support for Genre from FreeDB (to avoid updating genres with Artist names, which is quite common in current solution) - thankfully You are going to add this;

2. option to take into account track title in search criteria.
That option would narrow search results significantly when used with Album Auto-Tagger. If the Album Artist is taken into account (assuming that Album title is unknown), user have to browse through more than 20 albums of the Artist sometimes to find the one that contains the searched track. That is very time consuming activity and the feature could be automated by creating extra track title field in the search criteria. I'm sure it would work faster than current solution;

3. Better Artwork preview options for Auto-Tag by Track similar to TagScanner:




4. Optional improvements for Searching for Artwork:
- Auto-Tag by Track - search for Artwork of a single song by default (if not found - search for the Artwork of the Album or compilation)
- Auto-Tag by Album - search for Artwork of Album by default.

5. Auto-Tagg: Update Missing Pictures window adjustable to the content - it's impossible to adjust width of columns 'Name' and 'Status' and the text in the last column is often partially invisible ('Artist or album nam...' - you must hover over to see it)

I'm going to write more about no. 3 i 4., but I need more time to test and rethink the problem. Helpfully implementing this would solve another Auto-Tagger issue.

[Steven]

using your settings file i get the same incorrect artwork for Engelbert/Golden Stars - but its amazon.com thats returning the incorrect picture.
for the album-autotagger, if the file already has artwork associated (embeded, linked picture etc) it wont try and re-fetch the picture from the web, but you can force it to by clicking the artwork link under the picture. I expect you will see the same incorrect result

[Steven]

i have made the following changes:
- autotag settings in the preferences now allow you to give preference to freedb or musicbrainz for tags
- autotag by album now gets genre from the metadata provider, so if the release you select from the album-autotagger dialog was retrieved from freedb you will get the freedb genre (musicbrainz tags/genres also look pretty good to me)
- only if the selected release has no genre from the provider, then MB will use the additional genre providers (last.fm/discogs) to get a genre
- as before autotag by track only uses musicbrainz as the freedb web-query is not well suited for this
- autotag by track now gets genre from musicbrainz and if no match, then last.fm/discogs as configured
- as a result autotag by track should be faster in most cases

this still needs more testing (so keep a copy of your current .exe) but should be ok as i have done basic testing

http://www.mediafire.com/?t64rf9t91it5ync

[VX]

I did some tests with the latest build: it seems stable and significantly faster in searching for tags in general than the previous one 
Thank you very much for the implemented changes and enhancements 

For tested set of tracks I couldn't get Artist Name instead of Genre, which is good and worth to mention compared to former results.

As far Auto-Tagger improvements listed above I'd change no. 3 with:

add an option to exclude tracks without Artwork from the search results
if Artwork Preview for a single track (similar to this existing in Album Auto-Tagger - much better than in TagScanner BTW) is harder to implement.

Auto-Tag by Track should work faster with this option enabled I believe, but what's more important - it won't update tracks with tag values that could result in Auto update missing Artwork failure in future attempts.

[antiPOP]

Thanks Steven for the further improvements. This is exactly what I wanted to see. Great Job!

Edit: I did some test too, and still there is one thing to do, I think. Would be much better if for FreeDB MB could use DiscID because it will save some time. I've tried to find tags for one album, and MB didn't find correct ones, but foobar2000 does. I can give you an example if you need it.

[VX]

Auto-Tagger is getting better and better with every new release. More and more requested features have already been implemented or improved recently. Thank you very much


To sum up the above suggested improvements list and update it a bit:
1. - IMPLEMENTED;
2. -reconsider please;
3. -

add an option to exclude tracks without Artwork from the search results
if Artwork Preview for a single track similar to this existing in Album Auto-Tagger is harder to implement. Auto-Tag by Track should work faster with this option enabled I believe, but what's more important - it won't update tracks with tag values that could result in Auto update missing Artwork failure in future attempts.

- minimum image size filter added instead 
4. - to consider;
5. - I'd really love to see it. Auto-Tagger window should be auto-adjustable, because in order to read the whole message in the Status field log I have to hover the mouse indicator over it and there is enough free space in neighbouring "Name" field that is wasted.

6. (New one) Add Retry button for files that failed to auto-update and returned the error:  'Web-service failed with error: Protocol error - please try again'. Similar option could be applied to files that returned "Failed: Unable to match the name of the track" as well. An example usage

[Nixander]

2. option to take into account track title in search criteria.
That option would narrow search results significantly when used with Album Auto-Tagger. If the Album Artist is taken into account (assuming that Album title is unknown), user have to browse through more than 20 albums of the Artist sometimes to find the one that contains the searched track. That is very time consuming activity and the feature could be automated by creating extra track title field in the search criteria. I'm sure it would work faster than current solution;

++1 This is exactly what i thought yesterday...