iTunes metadata and artwork

William Richards3 wrote:

YOU SAID: If you want to maintain your existing filename pattern then use the script CustomRenamer and specify the pattern as: <Artist>\<Album>\<Artist> - <Name>

ME: So I would do that AFTER I put everything in these folders - meaning, work through upgrading all the audio? Or should I use that script at some point in this process/flow as instructed to this point?

You would use the same process as set out in this post but use CustomRenamer instead of ConsolidateByMoving. For the tracks that you've already moved, but haven't ended up in quite the pattern you want, you can sort on say Date Modified to see the recently updated tracks if they're not still in a playlist, then apply CustomRenamer with your preferred settings.

And could you let me know on this last question posted a short time ago?

Oh, one more question; Now that I have Aerosmith as an Artist using this script (shown in the captures I just sent, now on the E:\MUSIC\Music drive, what happens when Aerosmith (or other artists already in the list) comes up again? Will the script know to just use the one already there and then add songs to any respective albums already there - if you follow? So let's say that "Pump" album has one song from this initial script run test I just did. If the next folder I do this with has two more songs from Pump, will it just add those to the Artist/Album already showing in the list?

Will it ask me if I want to copy and replace or anything like that? If it wouldn't work like my question above poses, I'm not sure what I'd do.

Answered in this post.

And yes, it does sound like it. I'll try your other suggestions for the other scripts. As it stands now, it should be fine.

Oh - did you have a thought on the file type? I know we've exchanged on this before. I'd use the AIFF or ALAC except for file size concerns related to the iPods. I still use a lot. I'm trying to wonder how many songs of these file types I could fit on a 160 or 256. Thanks!!

Mainly answered in this post. Audition the same album in say 256k, 320k, MP3/AAC and ALAC. Find which, if any compression mode you find acceptable, and compare the file sizes. Obviously the larger the files the fewer you can fit on a given device. But do you need to have everything on all your devices at once, or do you need to get your library sorted once and for all so that you can stop having to shuffle things around and convert them in future?

tt2

William Richards3 wrote:

1. YOU SAID: I've sort of assumed (or perhaps we discussed it earlier somewhere) that your library is free of duplicates.

ME: No, there are no duplicates in the library. (If there are, it would be a tiny few). As for naming, no, The Beatles and Beatles (for example) are consistent as "Beatles". (I always use a.g. "Rolling Stones", not "The Rolling Stones." Drives me crazy to have artists A-to-Z but have so many like "The Cars" or "The Who" and have them all start with "The". Not me. It's "Cars, Who, Beatles, Rolling Stones....etc.".

No problem. Although that is what sort fields are for. In my personal library The Beatles get automatically stored in a folder called Beatles, The (and every other folder that would begin with "The " has ", The" at the end instead, but that's a whole other level of OCD we can safely ignore for now.

I think you've explained what my question was, but just to clarify for sure;

1. I ran your script. It created those artist and albums so far. So, for example, Air Supply has four albums that were created. Let's say there are 2 songs in each of the four albums.

2. I then create a new playlist and follow the ConsolidateByMoving instructions a second time. Let's say that the next folder I'm doing that with has the same four albums as already created, but has 2 more songs for each of the albums, thereby making it 4 titles in each one.

Will the script see the Artist and Album that's already there and just add the two new songs for the four albums already there?

Yes.

I think that's what you're saying. It won't make another copy, or ask me if I want to copy/replace or whatever like when you copy files in Windows, right? Again, my naming structure is consistent - that's one good thing. I'm very precise with that (99.9% of the time).

The script works out what folder each file should live in and creates that folder only if it doesn't already exist. As for the filename part if a new track were to have the same details as one that has already been placed in the new structure I think the scripts just link to the file on the path, leaving the old one behind. Again I'd have to check carefully or run some experiments to refresh my memory, but if you don't have any duplicates then it won't be an issue.

One more thing. YOU SAID: You can also edit CustomRenamer so that it knows your default media folder and pattern so that you don't have to edit those each time you use it.

ME: What do you mean here? What don't I have to edit each time I use it? What am I editing with ConsolidateByMoving? Or other thought you mean here? Sorry.

Given you want your files in <Artist> - <Name> form use CustomRenamer instead of ConsolidateByMoving. They are variations of the same script, but have different options for the precise layout of the files. CustomRenamer will support your naming scheme.

In CustomRenamer line 147 reads:

Root="" ' Preset target folder, set here to avoid second dialog

Change this to:

Root="E:\" ' Preset target folder, set here to avoid second dialog

so the script doesn't suggest the wrong media folder path. Likewise line 167 reads:

Pattern="Music\<AlbumArtist>\<Album>\<TrackNumber> <Name>"

Which you can change to:

Pattern="Music\<AlbumArtist>\<Album>\<AlbumArtist> <Name>"

so that you get the filenames the way that you want them.

Hate to ask again, but do you have a thought on file type with size dynamics with iPod and equipment that could be impacted? Like I said, I want to replace my amp and I'm having to pay special attention to things like what the DAC supports. Some don't play AIFF. ALAC might not be listed in another. So I'm trying to balance all this.

I suppose the AAC (MP3 like) files would be sensible. Or maybe I should just go with MP3 at 320? I don't know. This has been a lot of things I've been working through.

Check all of the hardware and software that you want to use. If they all support ALAC go with that. Otherwise ACC supposedly offers slightly better compression than MP3 and I think it does gapless transitions better too, so AAC at 320 might be the way to go if you have to go compressed and all your gear supports it.

tt2

William Richards3 wrote:

If there were a way to run two versions of iTunes on one computer - one with ALAC and one with AIFF - I could just do this exercise twice. Is that doable within one computer? I don't think it is but maybe you have a trick or advice accordingly.

You can have more than one iTunes library. You can press and hold down shift as you launch iTunes to create a new library or switch from one to another. You can potentially clone the existing library as the starting point for one you're going to modify instead of starting from scratch, but with parallel libraries you always have the additional issues of mirroring any changes.

tt2

William Richards3 wrote:

YOU SAID: Can you see if the new EmbediTunesArt script helps at will the multiple Tom Petty covers you illustrated in this post? I'd like to know the effort I put into it has paid off. Failing that there is perhaps a deeper mystery that needs investigating.

ME: The Tom Petty in question do not reside in iTunes. They are in a temporary .mp3 folder right now. That's not to say that there aren't files with incorrect artwork in many folders. When I ran this script, it asked if I wanted to do something on the one song. I canceled it.

If those tracks aren't connected to the iTunes library then don't worry about them for now.

I did notice one thing again that we've discussed in the past. I was in a folder and there was some artwork missing on a couple of Electric Light Orchestra tracks. I went to Get Album Artwork - which it did but it didn't update it in Windows. So I removed them and then dragged and dropped from a browser with the album. I refreshed the windows folder and they showed up. I forget why this happens. (I'm so sorry, we've been working on so many things).

This is where EmbediTunesArt should be the right tool. Given that iTunes will downloaded the artwork, but doesn't embed it in the tag, it is to be expected that the view in Windows Explorer won't change. Removing the track from iTunes also removes the artwork it downloaded so when you add it back you're back at square one. Once you've used the iTunes Get Album Artwork tool you can use the EmbediTunesArt script to embed the download artwork.

So this is an example of a folder with a number of songs with the same artwork:

Since these aren't in iTunes, should I bother with it?

No, if they're not connected to iTunes right now then the EmbediTunesArt script won't have any impact.

I've been looking through many folders and I'm seeing that most of the songs with artwork, are right. I don't know what happened but it seems like it's cleaned up somewhat. I'd have to go over again. Nearly every folder I checked still has those jpg files.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/ad3f22fe-c631-4fa7-966e-bd31111beb8a

As long as you're getting good results in your new artist and album folders you can probably leave housekeeping of these Windows Media Player related files until later, or use CleanDeadArt script, or clean up by hand. Those files should be redundant. At best the dimensions are 200x200 px so even if one of those images is the correct cover for an album that is missing artwork in iTunes you're (a) going to have a hard time picking it out of such a large collection of randomly named images and (b) going to be unimpressed with the quality.

Let me know how I can test that script for you. And I'm sorry if I didn't communicate properly somewhere related to that script. It would be good to test in a folder for all songs but I'd want to make sure based on your reply that I'm doing it right. Thanks!

See if it fixes that ELO track for you.

tt2

Version numbers are at the top of the script when viewed in a test editor, latest version is 1.0.0.21. I made a change a while back so the dialog boxes tell you whether the script is running in Export Mode or Import Mode, but the same string was also being used to build the name of the output file so this changed from ExportImport [<Date>] [<Time>] to ExportImport-ExportMode [<Date>] [<Time>]. I've corrected things so the original pattern is used again. It doesn't alter the way you use the script. It is simply a cosmetic change.

tt2

CustomRenamer moves files and updates the pointers in iTunes. It makes no changes to metadata.

I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer on the lyrics front.

As for artwork I just create a smart playlist with Has Artwork is false and work through it systematically.

tt2

The Has Artwork is false smart playlist allows you to easily identify tracks that iTunes knows it doesn't have artwork for. Assuming it works correctly if you view the list as albums it will display a grid of empty covers. As you add artwork, either manually or using the iTunes right-click > Get Album Artwork tool, tracks should disappear from this list. You can potentially select all items in the list and get artwork, but that might make it harder for you to review whatever the store offers and decide if you want to correct it. Perhaps working with a few albums at a time that you can then easily find again may help. Alternatively you could copy the contents of the smart list to a regular list before looking for art so that the list doesn't get updated before you've have a chance to review the changes.

EmbediTunesArt works the same way that most of my scripts for iTunes do. You select some tracks to process in iTunes first, run the script, and follow its prompts. You typically get a chance to cancel in case you forget to select some tracks first and the script offers to work with the entire library, which you might not want, and there is often an option for track by track confirmation which can be useful for scripts which manipulate tag fields or for something like CustomRenamer to check that the input patterns you've supplied are having the desired effect.

As mentioned previously downloaded iTunes Store art is saved in a private iTunes cache, not in the tag of the track. Art needs to have been downloaded from the iTunes Store for EmbediTunesArt to do any useful work, in which case it will embed the image from the store in the track it is working with. More specifically what it does is one pass through the selection amd if there is store art it is saved at <PathToScript>\Artwork\<Artist> - <Album>.jpg. Then in a second pass through the selection if a track has either downloaded artwork or no artwork and there is an image at <PathToScript>\Artwork\<Artist> - <Album>.jpg tnen the image is embedded. Whenever an image is embedded downloaded store art is removed. So even if you only use Get Album Artwork on a single track the script can still embed the image in all tracks from the album provided they are processed at some point.

As for the other two scripts they're not suitable for you. The reason is that you have tracks from different albums in the same folders, while the logic of those particular scripts demands that a folder only holds one album, and that a file called Folder.jpg (or iTunesArt.jpg) in that folder will be the correct album image for it. The fact that those albums are also scattered across multiple folders doesn't help those scripts do useful work, but it isn't the primary drawback.

You can use EmbediTunesArt now as you gather new images from the store, and you should then find that tracks in Windows Explorer show the correct image. As noted a side effect of ExportImport is that it too will embed iTunes Store downloaded art associated with your low resolution file with the new higher resolution copy when you use the import phase to restore metadata. Because both scripts use the same pattern for the artwork cache they create if you store both scripts in the same folder each can reuse data already gathered by the other.

tt2

William Richards3 wrote:

Yesterday I practiced using the CustomerRenamer (and the EI as part of it). Anyway, I don't want to confuse you but the gist is that I had to move back in the original 160 baud so that I could do this en masse as the new MUSIC drive location hasn't permanently been established.

There is no need to do any work twice. If you've successfully updated a selection of your content simply organize yourself so that you don't try to upgrade those tracks again. A possible way to do this is create a regular playlist of the tracks that you've processed and a smart playlist that shows everything else that you've yet to fix (Music that isn't in that regular list). Alternatively a smart playlist showing only lower resolution files might work for the upgrade project.

I added them back but noticed that iTunes wasn't finding them - even though I definitely added them back. Regardless, I went through the 20 songs and let iTunes find it. Two issues:

1. I had to do song-by-song. iTunes used to ask "do you want to find other missing files" or something to that effect. It isn't doing that now which is creating unnecessary work. I'm on 10.7 so perhaps that's an issue, but I've been on that version now for years and it used to work.

Without knowing the process you used to add them back it hard to be certain, but if you followed through as described iTunes would connected to say ALAC copies in the new Music\Artist\Album locations. Deleting these files and putting back the 160K files in the original locations would leave iTunes confused as expected. It doesn't want you moving files or replacing them with different versions. We're using scripts precisely to avoid the problems that come from manual manipulations. iTunes own ability to find the other missing files is compromised because CustomRenamer is changing both the base location and the file and folder names at the same time.

2. The "description" column is now missing for both the new version I had added yesterday, and the old versions I re-added. I thought I removed the upgraded versions but I probably mixed up the iTunes saving of the XML and ITL files which I do daily (or multiple times a day) when I'm doing work such as this.

Notice how there's no description for the original, or updated version. Given that I'll be doing this for thousands of songs, it's important I think to have this description column.

What am I doing wrong, or do you think is happening (or not happening)?

Way back on page 2 of this thread I described how you can use the script KeywordsToDescription with the keyword <Location> to push the current filepath of each track into the Description field. Make sure this data is filled in before relocating if you want to rely on it later. Once the files have been moved you cannot get this old path again easily. Run another test to ensure that when that data is there at the outset it is preserved after using the export - replace - import process to upgrade them. CustomRenamer shouldn't have any impact on the Description field.

Obviously it you want the MP3's - MasterMP3's - 600s data to remain in the description it is important not to run KeywordsToDescription in the same manner on tracks that have been relocated with CustomRenamer.

tt2

William Richards3 wrote:

The reason I changed these songs out from the new destination drive letter/folder was because I wanted the Artist/Title on the songs and your new instructions/script (?) allowed me to do that.

In general scripts like CustomRenamer can be run multiple times on the same files with different inputs until the files are organized the way that you want them. There was no need to go all the back to square one.

Since I have both the original new upgraded files (number (01) and title) as well as Artist/Title still on this new location (that I had deleted out of i-Tunes), would adding them back in bring back the file location? (Though the file location was lost anyway when I deleted them late this afternoon).

I'm so sorry. It's hard to keep track because I'm doing so many things. I do try to keep notes but that doesn't always work.

No worries, I've been there. The key is to work slowly and stop as soon as anything unexpected happens so you can undo or reverse whatever you just did.

Would you suggest maybe I add these back in (and maybe iTunes will see them again in their new file location?).

Or I could just delete the 160 from the folder and then delete them out of itunes completely. I would write down all the chart information on those 20 songs and then just re-add them and put the metadata back on them? It wouldn't be that hard to do 20 songs. (I will lose playlists they belong in as well as play count or whatever).

Again because I'm not exactly sure what you've done I can't really tell you the best way to walk backwards now. I guess if you have a backup of the .itl file you can restore that.

On the KeywordsToDescription could I highlight the 20 songs as they are now and run the script just on those 20? Would that work?

You can use the script to copy the current filenames into the description fields, but depending on what you've done playlists membership, plays, etc. might have been lost.

YOU SAID: Way back on page 2 of this thread I described how you can use the script KeywordsToDescription with the keyword <Location> to push the current filepath of each track into the Description field. Make sure this data is filled in before relocating if you want to rely on it later. Once the files have been moved you cannot get this old path again easily. Run another test to ensure that when that data is there at the outset it is preserved after using the export - replace - import process to upgrade them.

ME: In re-reading your post on page 2 related to this, it seems like that would/could work? Or do I go through song-by-song of those highlighted, or put the songs in a playlist by themselves and do it that way?

YOU SAID: Obviously it you want the MP3's - MasterMP3's - 600s data to remain in the description it is important not to run KeywordsToDescription in the same manner on tracks that have been relocated with CustomRenamer.

ME: The 600s are just one of the folders. The 20 songs in question are back in the 100s folder on the "I" drive. The upgraded versions are in the E:\MUSIC\ Artist\Album folder. (Those are the first ones I put in which didn't have the title on with the Artist for the song file). Then E:\Music3\Artist\Album is the other folder (which does have Artist - Title on the songs). I'm trying to remember but I don't think those were imported into iTunes. Just the first ones.

Sorry not to have replied sooner. and sorry I'm not quite understanding what you've done with those 20 files, or how to unwind it. I'm sure you'll work it out.

tt2