Compilation discs > iTunes > iPod

likeisaid wrote:
Naturally the track names and artists don't come in on the import.

Why? Are these discs your own compilations that you've burned, or are they commercially available compilation CDs?

Phil

Hi,

I've recently been working on a script to fill blank tags from the filename & path data. This could be easily adapted to read in a table of strings and apply these to a set of selected tracks in iTunes. When working with the path it extracts data from the string in the format:

<Parent Path>\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<## Name\[ - <Artist>\].<ext>

If you can use Excel to create a series of strings such as:

Table(1)="Grass\XTC"
Table(2)="Calling All Stations\Genesis"
etc.
Table(X)="<Name>\<Artist>"

Then I could adapt the script to read the table and write the values into the tracks in turn. If your database has other fields that you'd like to include then it should be easy to add those in.

I'm about to go out but I'll try to upload the script later on today/tonight. You'll still have to cut & paste some chunks of data around but it should be possible to save you quite a bit of finger work.

tt2

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but wouldn't it make more sense to import the tracks from the original albums, (so that track names are added by Gracenote) and then (within iTunes) add those tracks to a playlist which you then Sync to the iPod?

So if you only want one or two tracks from a particular CD, then simply import only those tracks, which would then be listed with track name, artist and album it came from. Once you have all the tracks from all the albums, create playlists with the names you want and drag tracks into the appropriate playlist. Sync the whole lot to your iPod and you then have the playlists you want and the original albums (with all or only some tracks). The "original albums" is only a label, if you don't want to search by albums, you don't have to.

Phil

Hi,

Download TagFromTable. I'm assuming you know enough about Excel to create a new column that creates the text you'll need to paste from the preceding cell data. The version as posted expects to get something like this:

Table(0)="Album Name"
Table(1)="Name 1\Artist 1"
Table(2)="Name 2\Artist 2"
Table(3)="Name 3\Artist 3"
Table(4)="Name 4\Artist 4"
Table(5)="Name 5\Artist 5"
'Etc.

Take the data for one of the albums you've already imported into iTunes but not yet filled in the track data for (or just import a new album). Create the relevant text in Excel and paste it over the sample data in the script, then save. Select the tracks of the coresponding album in iTunes, then run the script. It should issue a message box showing each change that it would make. If you're happy it's going to do what you want change the line that reads Demo=True into Demo=False and run it again. Paste in a new set of track names & artists, save the script, select the relevant tracks and run it again. Repeat until all your imports are named. If you need help tweaking the script just ask...

tt2

The track times will be what the track time is. You can't import that value.

Agreed. If there is other useful data in the spreadsheet then that could be included, but track times will be derived from the imported media.

tt2

Of course the alternative approach is to use
MusicBrainz Picard to try to identify the original meta-data for each track but that would break apart the compilation structure you currently have.

tt2

You can set the array Dim size as large as you need it. The loop bounds are determined by the track selection in iTunes. Select 5 tracks and 5 will be processed. I've not put in much in the way of error checking so if you select more tracks than you have provided data for then it will probably produce garbage.

As writtten it assumes you're going to process one album at a time but I suppose it would be possible to modify it for multiple albums. As you've noticed VBScript is just a BASIC variant with access to objects so it's quite easy to knock something up in Notepad and, provided you don't do anything too destructive, test & tweak until it does what you want. There are lots of online references for VBScript and you can track down the iTunes SDK to see what bits you can manipulate via script.

tt2