Hi All,

Was wondering if there is any way that y'all can think of to do the following:

Let's say that you have an album on your empeg that you want to populate with the correct track numbers (for each file). It's easy to put in a common track number, but that won't help.

The reason for this request is two fold...

1) My playlist got hosed, and now a lot of my albums have the songs in the wrong order. Since I don't have all of the track numbers populated, it's going to be a big job to try and re-order all of them.

2) I hope that the emplode download mp3 feature will eventually allow us to name the files in this format:

artist - album - track# - trackname.mp3

If so, I'd like that track number to be accurate.

- Jon

Ditto. I would like this as well. When I suggested this, I was pooh poohed. It would be nice if the file name is numbered (01, 02, 03..) it would translate that directly to the track number field, at minimum.

Calvin

I don't know whether they re-use FIDs (Roger?). If they don't, and if FIDs got allocated in the order you copied them, it would be fairly easy to write a script that would populate a particular album's track numbers based on FID order.

Update: took a look at my player. It seems that FIDs are in correct order, even where there seems to have been some reusing.

Ouch. Who pooh poohed you? Did it hurt?

- Jon

We do re-use FIDs.

artist - album - track# - trackname.mp3

No, no, no, no, no !

You can't put the artist first. What happens if you have a compilation with multiple artists on it?

Yes, that's right, your album is no longer grouped correctly if you sort the files alphabetically.

This is precisely why the format currently used by the download feature is correct.

So, I'm not going to give people the freedom to change the output naming format until I have a signed affidavit from each and every one of you acknowledging that I'm correct, and that you'll never do something this stupid .

That's not what Jon's asking for -- his tracks are already on his empeg. What you want is the attached piece of Python script.

Oy, Roger. PUB!

Hugo

Right. Five minutes.

You can't put the artist first. What happens if you have a compilation with multiple artists on it?

Now hang on.

What if I like to re-tag so that the proper original album is reflected in the tag? For instance, what if I ripped the Sopranos Soundtrack CD, then went into Emplode and filled in all the correct albums? For instance, on my system, the Van Morrison song has had its album field re-tagged as "Here Comes The Night" instead of "Sopranos Soundtrack".

In my case, an albumname-first save would also result in an incorrect alphanumeric ordering. In fact, in that case, anything other than a tracknumber-first save would be wrong.

I mean, I see your point about putting the album first. I understand it. My goal was to point out a common situation where it didn't apply.

IMHO, the only 100-percent solution is to allow the user to fully configure the file names, specifying any fields they like in any order. And perhaps with the ability to create folders where they like (for instance if you wanted to create artist/album folders).

Another option would be to say "screw the file names" and simply make sure to write correct ID3v1 and ID3V2 tags at save-time and tell the user to go get Tag Studio to rewrite the file names and folders based on the tags.

Have fun at the pub, don't keep Hugo waiting.

Here's how I'd picture it working:

In emplode, you highlight a list of songs, open properties, enter the track number for the first track (usually 1) and click the (proposed) checkbox for "Autonumber" and all of the highlighted songs are autonumbered based on their current sort order in emplode.

Here's how I organize my file. Anyone else do it this way?

I have a folder for each artist that I have 5 or more songs for.
All tracks are named: "Artist - Title.mp3"
None of them have ID3 v1 or v2 tags.[1]
I have a playlist for each album.

I have plenty of perl scripts for auto-fixing playlists and managing files (easy to create new playlists by grepping a checklist for something like a movie name). Without track numbers stored anywhere, they can be implicity found by counting (non-comment) lines in the playlist for that album.

I think it'd be nice if when importing a song, if there is no ID3 tag, search for " - " (space dash space) and use what's before that as the artist and what's after it as the title. I know some people do it differently, so maybe a config option to specify how your files are named.

Comments?

After 2.0-final is released, I plan to add scripting to emplode. You can do your own filename to tag conversion once I've done it. OK?

If you hold down Alt+3, it'll do sequential editing of the selection, which is a step closer to what you want. It _ought_ to leave the same field highlighted in each instance, but probably doesn't -- I can't remember whether I implemented it or not.

That's what FOLDERS are used for Roger.

Bruno

How does the Alt-3 key sequence work? I've tried it in a bunch of places and don't get how to use it...

- Thanx
- Jon

Select a bunch of files in the RHS. Press Alt+3. The normal properties dialog will appear, except that when you press Enter, it cycles through the selection, rather than applying your changes to the whole selection.

Early on, I gave up trying to get emptool/emplode to do this correctly, and I wrote my linux "empsync" script to force track numbers and other useful things.. like overriding the truncated ID2 tags (artist, title) with names extracted from the filename instead.

But I haven't done much with it lately..

Roger,

What if I were to generate my own MP3 and "tag" files, picking unique hex numbers for "fids", along with my own playlist files. If I then instruct the player to "rebuild databases", will it be happy, and will it find my new tunes and playlists?

Assuming of course, that the file formats are correct.

Thanks

Yep.

;-)

Calvin