Renaming and reordering various artists on compilation albums in B2

[James]

Hi there,

This may already have been addressed elsewhere, so apologies in advance if the answer is on here and I've not seen it.

I've uploaded a couple of hundred albums to my B2 already, including several compilation albums with different artists for each track, but realised it's not straightforward to rename the default 'various artists' into individual artists to match with their respective tracks.

As I've already ripped and compressed these albums onto my B2, I'm reluctant to delete them and rip them again on my PC using third-party software and add them again via USB, as I've seen suggested on here.

I've accessed the NAS via my PC, can I simply just create new artist folders and drag and drop their songs into these folders, if so will they still be associated with the original compilation album?

Hope this makes sense, happy to explain further and thanks in advance.

James

[Daniel Taylor]

You can do what you suggest via NAS - and that may be the best way.  But when you're done, you MUST run the Scan Disk command for the B2 to see the changes.  Make sure you have a reasonably strong WiFi signal (WiFi Strength command in Maintenance menu) closer to zero than -50 (-40 and better is usually fine), OR an ethernet connection (must have WiFi dongle removed). 

[JFBUK]

Hi James,

Take a look at this thread. 

It is not quite specific to what you may need to do with Picard but I will be able to tweak it tomorrow when I have more time

https://groups.google.com/g/brennanb2/c/FYgnASNjBhM/m/fEAv0o5qCQAJ

John

[Ray Dion]

Part of your question is "Will they still be associated with the original compilation?"

If you place them in a new directory on the B2, the B2 will not relate them to original locations. The B2 does not use tags. The only way files are tracked by the B2 is by the folders they are in. The folder containing the music file (flac, mp3...) will be the 'album' name and the folder containing the 'album' will be the artist. 

While writing this I thought of a solution. You can repeat the compilation (album) name under each artist and those 'albums' would contain a song or two. That would keep track of the compilation but hard to find all the folder names in question. So a compilation Z that has say three artists A, B, and C would have the compilation name Z under each artist and their songs from that compilation in that folder. I don't want to think of duets! 

You can use tags if you wish to keep the information. It will only be read by external programs like an mp3 player. Conversion programs like Picard, dBpoweramp or mp3tag could also read them. If you just want to know what album they came from, then tag them first and move them as you see fit. I see that JFBUK has provided a link with more tag information. I have done what he suggests for about 20 compilations, it takes time and attention to detail.

You could create a play list for each compilation you want to keep track of. Perhaps you could even automate it if you can do sufficient scripting. You would need to tag the files first or the job will be a great deal more difficult.

[Ray Dion]

John,

I followed most of that thread recently in trying to label all of the wife's mp3s. One trick I learned is that if Picard comes back with multiple albums and only a song or two per album it can get confusing. I use the album list as an inventory so even if the cut is identical to some other CD, I want them all on one CD. If you enter the name of the CD in the search (and it exists) it will be added to the list. I click on lookup and it drops them right into the album with high scores. I try the lookup button first and only use scan after.

My goal in doing the work is inventory. If I have a second printing or rerelease CD, I don't get into that kind of detail. I do try to get the right cover art to a point I take a picture after searching the web. I leave file names alone.

[PMB]

Hi James,

You could add the Artist name to the Track names - a little tedious but will display the Artist for each Track as it is played.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[JFBUK]

Hi,

yes I take your point about the multiple albums when you scan ripped tracks.

My ripped compilations had incomplete track tags as they have never been uploaded to the Musicbrainz database so

I ripped them on my PC with just tags for  album name, album artist, track number, genre and year.

I bought the CDs as part of a subscription service to a website.

This is why I used Scan to identify the tracks and populate other tags like Artist and Title

I used the 'Preserve Tag' options

This will keep the current tag values for 'Album' and 'Track Number' and not overwrite them with values it finds on the albums 

returned as part of the scan

John

[JFBUK]

I have put together the following help guide for using Picard to update tags and filenames of compilation CDs ripped directly on a B2.

Feedback on clarity and typos welcomed from those interested.

Its swings and roundabouts as to whether using this process is quicker than re-ripping on a computer using software that can be configured to

create file names using tag values (e.g. dBpoweramp), and then uploading to a B2.

Just another way to skin this particular cat :)

John

[James]

Belated thanks everyone for this advice, which I've followed as best I can.

The WiFi strength hovers between -47 and -51, so not ideal but still seems to implement any changes made on the NAS.

JFBUK thanks for your comprehensive guide. I've downloaded Picard and followed the steps, the only issue I'm having is with the scripting.

Under 'File Naming' and 'Edit script...', do I then need to create 'add a new script' then copy-and-paste your suggested script values, or add in other values, to make it work?

Sorry if this seems obvious and I've missed it, but this is where the gaps in my knowledge show.

Otherwise, I can follow the rest of the steps and load up compilation albums from the NAS etc, I just need to be able to identify and pick out the metadata tags I want to keep.

Any help you can give you to help clarify this would be much appreciated.

Thanks again in advance

[JFBUK]

Hi James.

'do I then need to create 'add a new script' then copy-and-paste your suggested script values, or add in other values, to make it work?'

The answer to this is yes

I just grabbed that list from a post on the Musicbrainz/Picard community support forum and tweaked it a bit.

You don't have to run this script. Its just a way of tidying up & removing tags you are not interested in

https://community.metabrainz.org/t/after-audio-tagging-save-only-certain-fields/466462

My documentation uses 'Add Folder' to load all tracks on an album into Picard but you may want to try just a single track first to get the feel of things by using 'Add File'

The rest of the steps are essentially the same.

John

[PMB]

Hi James,

Your WiFi signal looks OK although signal strength isn't the be all, signal quality i.e. the number of errors introduced, needs to be considered too. So signal strength is just an indicator.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Mark Pittman]

Yes, that's the only way i have found, but can there be an update that does it like in Windows Media Player?

On Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 11:07:23 AM UTC PMB wrote:

[JFBUK]

Hi Mark,

That needs the Brennan software to offer more comprehensive tagging options and functionality which I believe are already on the wish list.

John