Is there anyway to interface with VGMDB?
532 views
Skip to first unread message
Tanner Wigington
Jul 29, 2016, 4:44:27 PM7/29/16
to beets
I have a large collection of anime and video game music that I would like to be able to add to my beets library. However, a lot of albums are not on Musicbrainz or Discogs, but they are on VGMDB. As far as I can tell, beets doesn't have any option or plugin to connect to VGMDB. I was able to find that VGMDB does have a freedb emulation provided: http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2618. I don't know how I would connect this to beets though, and my results using other tagging software were worse than Musicbrainz or Discogs even for things I know are on VGMDB.
Adrian Sampson
Jul 29, 2016, 9:32:47 PM7/29/16
to beets...@googlegroups.com
We don't currently use it (or Freedb). But beets does support plugins for metadata sources. We have plugins for Discogs and Beatport, so if you're interested, I'd suggest starting with those as a template for a new plugin.
I have a large collection of anime and video game music that I would like to be able to add to my beets library. However, a lot of albums are not on Musicbrainz or Discogs, but they are on VGMDB. As far as I can tell, beets doesn't have any option or plugin to connect to VGMDB. I was able to find that VGMDB does have a freedb emulation provided: http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2618. I don't know how I would connect this to beets though, and my results using other tagging software were worse than Musicbrainz or Discogs even for things I know are on VGMDB.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "beets" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beets-users...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
François-Xavier Thomas
Aug 5, 2016, 3:25:42 PM8/5/16
to beets
There's an issue on musicbrainz-userscripts (https://github.com/murdos/musicbrainz-userscripts/issues/81) where they mention vgmdb.info. It apparently exposes VGMDB info as a consumable API. Someone still has to write a plugin for it, but it's there!
(That being said, I use both MB and VGMDB on a regular basis and vastly prefer MB because a) almost all albums I can find on VGMDB are also on MB, b) I try to add those that aren't, and c) I usually find Musicbrainz entries to be of a much greater quality : VGMDB stores per-track information (aside from the title, track number and time) in the "notes" section, which makes it far less useable as a data source for compilation albums.)
(That being said, I use both MB and VGMDB on a regular basis and vastly prefer MB because a) almost all albums I can find on VGMDB are also on MB, b) I try to add those that aren't, and c) I usually find Musicbrainz entries to be of a much greater quality : VGMDB stores per-track information (aside from the title, track number and time) in the "notes" section, which makes it far less useable as a data source for compilation albums.)
Tanner Wigington
Aug 7, 2016, 11:33:45 AM8/7/16
to beets
Thanks, vgmdb.info looks useful. I don't know when I'll get around to writing a plugin, but it should be quite helpful.
I agree that the way MB does most of the metadata is better, but there is a significant problem. A lot of the things I want to tag are anime soundtracks and many are on MB, but VGMDB gives me more options for the track titles and artist names. After importing a good bit of my library with beets, MB only ever gives me one choice between Kanji, Romaji, and English as far as I can tell. Fairly often it's Kanji. VGMDB generally has at least Kanji and Romaji if not all three. I don't understand Japanese as Kanji or Romaji, but I can at least recognize song titles and artists more readily in Romaji.
I've also discovered that when beets creates the file and folder names from the Kanji (because I am using asciify_paths I presume) it interprets it as Mandarin and uses the Pinyin representation. Katakana and such get treated as Japanese though leading to some names being a bizarre mishmash of Pinyin and Romaji.
I agree that the way MB does most of the metadata is better, but there is a significant problem. A lot of the things I want to tag are anime soundtracks and many are on MB, but VGMDB gives me more options for the track titles and artist names. After importing a good bit of my library with beets, MB only ever gives me one choice between Kanji, Romaji, and English as far as I can tell. Fairly often it's Kanji. VGMDB generally has at least Kanji and Romaji if not all three. I don't understand Japanese as Kanji or Romaji, but I can at least recognize song titles and artists more readily in Romaji.
I've also discovered that when beets creates the file and folder names from the Kanji (because I am using asciify_paths I presume) it interprets it as Mandarin and uses the Pinyin representation. Katakana and such get treated as Japanese though leading to some names being a bizarre mishmash of Pinyin and Romaji.
François-Xavier Thomas
Aug 7, 2016, 5:23:36 PM8/7/16
to beets...@googlegroups.com
Ah, I understand now! MB has the concept of "pseudo-releases" for
transliterations (in fact, Beets picks up those more often than not if
they are available, in my experience), but they don't appear often.
Also, transliteration is hard, so I'm not surprised asciify_path
dosn't handle that job well.
VGMDB often has multiple artists listed (performers, lyricists,
composers for multiple tracks) in the "album artist" field, even when
an album has a clearly identified[0] album artist. How do you usually
handle those?
[0] As in "written on the cover", e.g. for soundtrack albums that are
identified by the composer. So not a "various artists" release.
transliterations (in fact, Beets picks up those more often than not if
they are available, in my experience), but they don't appear often.
Also, transliteration is hard, so I'm not surprised asciify_path
dosn't handle that job well.
VGMDB often has multiple artists listed (performers, lyricists,
composers for multiple tracks) in the "album artist" field, even when
an album has a clearly identified[0] album artist. How do you usually
handle those?
[0] As in "written on the cover", e.g. for soundtrack albums that are
identified by the composer. So not a "various artists" release.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages