Q: How do I understand what are the dimensions of the picture file for the album artwork for each file in my library?
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Mar 10, 2013 9:00 AMby thecucuzza,So, your script works perfectly now.
I did notice another thing, however. I'm only mentioning it as a suggestion of improvement. I started noticing that the number of rows in my output did not equal to the amount of songs that were in my library. I noticed what was the issue. The songs that were "missing" from my output, where in characters in other alphabets, These song titles contained Cyrillic and Japanese characters. I'm guessing the script doesn't support these types of characters? Is there any way to update the script to accept these types of characters and thus process the same way for these songs as it does for all the others?
I have another question... is there a way to update this script to capture all the other tag information that iTunes has to offer? For example, all the tags that are on the Info tab, Sorting tab, and Options tab in the window that appears when you right click on a song and select "Get Info". That would make this script even more amazing than it already is. For example, I have some SmartPlaylist built on the fact that the "Part of a Compilation" checkbox field is selected and I would like to see which ones have that field. Thank you for all the work you've done already! This is an awesome tool!
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Mar 10, 2013 11:36 AMby turingtest2,Not sure why it is skipping over tracks with Cyrillic or Japanese. Certainly nothing I've done intentionally.
I wonder if they make it to the CSV file but then get skipped by Excel's import routine. Perhaps I need to wrap the text in quote marks. Did that already.
Adding more fields to the output is easy enough. Adding everything is probably overkill, but it depends a bit on what you want to do with the data once you've got it.
tt2.
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Mar 10, 2013 4:55 PMby turingtest2,I think the light has dawned. My original script created an Ascii output file. I've played around with it to make it generate Unicode, however Excel then didn't want to automatically parse the input into coulmns. I swapped to using tabs as the field delimiter which seems to work better. I've added Compilation and separated out Artist and AlbumArtist so you can see when these differ. I've reduced the number of places that need to be updated to add in extra fields but it still takes work so the fewer the better. Try downloading a fresh copy of ExportCSV and see how you get on.
What specific fields would be useful? (Please don't say "everything" )
tt2
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Mar 16, 2013 7:41 AMby thecucuzza,Here is what I would extremely helpful:
Fields on the INFO tab:
- Name
- Artist
- Album Artist
- Album
- Grouping
- Composer
- Comments
- Genre
- Part of a Compilation
- Year
- Track Number (first number and OF number)
- Disc number (first number and OF number)
- BPM
Fields on the SORTING tab:
- Sort Artist
- Sort Album Artist
- Sort Album
- Sort Composer
- Sort Show
Fields on OPTIONS tab:
- Volume Adjustment (if possible, not necessary)
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Mar 16, 2013 9:45 AMby turingtest2,I've uploaded a new version of ExportCSV that should have all you want.
I've included PersistentID as the first column which might be useful if/when I get around to writing a script that can reimport data that has been modified externally. Otherwise the order is as given with the exception of VolumeAdjustment which I've placed after BPM, and the artwork details come last.
I've added a simple option to exclude all the artwork details which may not be useful for other people and hopefully made it even easier for others to make sense of the script if they want to modify the details that are exported.
tt2
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May 12, 2013 10:37 AMby kingsriver64,Hi, I just downloaded the ExportCSV script yesterday and it looks like it has solved something I've been wasting time on for the last few weeks.
I want to create a printed catalogue of my album collection, which is mainly in iTunes. I've been finding it quite difficult to accurately get all necessary info, including "Sort Album Artist" field into Excel. But your script seems to have done it.
Two comments:
I am getting a blank row between each line of data in the txt file when I import it to OpenOffice spreadsheet (haven't tried it with Excel yet). The last few fields (Sort Album onward) are bringng in data from different songs.
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May 12, 2013 11:49 AMby turingtest2,The blank lines thing is probably related to the fact that Windows usually provides both a carriage return and a line feed for new lines but other software can use one, the other of even both.
Not sure what might be going on with the second issue. Is there any noticeable pattern?
tt2
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May 13, 2013 1:13 PMby kingsriver64,Neither of the two funnies happened when I opened the file from Excel, only with OpenOffice spreadsheet. I will try to find a pattern for the second issue in OpenOffice.
I have about 50,000 songs in the lbrary, so I'll need to spend some time checking the Excel file. One thng I've noticed is that if a song has two items of artwork, then it appears twice in the CSV file. Is this intentional?
For my purposes, I can probably fairly easily within Excel delete the items where the artwork number is 2 or higher.
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May 13, 2013 4:35 PMby turingtest2,kingsriver64 wrote:
Neither of the two funnies happened when I opened the file from Excel, only with OpenOffice spreadsheet. I will try to find a pattern for the second issue in OpenOffice.
I have about 50,000 songs in the lbrary, so I'll need to spend some time checking the Excel file. One thng I've noticed is that if a song has two items of artwork, then it appears twice in the CSV file. Is this intentional?
Yes, it was part of the original request for the script to get the dimensions of each piece of embedded art. If you don't need the artwork details you can omit them from the output, or tweak it so that only the first piece is detailed.
tt2
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May 16, 2013 12:33 PMby kingsriver64,I am starting to feel like my project to make a definitive printed catalogue of my music could go on for the rest of my life. Your script has does a really nice job of getting my iTunes library metadata into a file I can open from Excel so that I can filter it, pivot it, sort it etc.
But what scares me is that the metadata seems to have a life of it's own. Some metadata that I know I have corrected has reverted to its uncorrected version. In some other cases, the metadata corrects itself on the screen while I am watching it - for example if one track from a 20 track album doesn't have a Sort Album Artist, sometimes if I select all 20 tracks, the one track will correct itself and add the Sort Album Artist. Alternatively, if for example track 2 is the one which is missing the Sort Album Artist, I select the Get Info option for track 1, and then I click Next to move to track 2, it automatically corrects the info for track 2.
What is going on here? Does iTunes have some live correcting feature that I don't know about? I have unchecked the Preferences - Advanced option to "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organised". Is the fact that I have a large library relevant?
Maybe I should start a separate thread about this - apologies if I have gone offside here.
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May 16, 2013 12:52 PMby turingtest2,There is possibly some weird stuff in iTunes with regard to iTunes purchases if you make your own manual changes so that your local metadata doesn't agree with iTunes cloud version of the same. However, unlike Windows Media Player, I'm not aware that even the latest version of iTunes actively tries to update metadata. It will however sometimes update itself to display information that has been adjusted externally.
Keep organized... controls whether or not iTunes attempts to rearrange the file & folder names following a tag change.
tt2
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Apr 6, 2015 8:54 AMby thecucuzza,This script you have created has helped me time and time again. Thank you so much for it! I do have another request. Is it possible to include the file path of each individual track in the Excel output (just like how it exports all the other data attributes)? Is there any instructions on how to update this script so that I can add anything additional if I wanted to (so I don't have to keep bothering you) ?
Thanks!
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Apr 6, 2015 10:04 AMby turingtest2,The current version on my site should include the Location property for each track. Well it does now! I had forgotten to post it after updating a few days ago.
If you want to adjust the output you need to modify both the Action and OpenFile subroutines. The former exports the data for each track and the first sets up the file and the column headings which need to match and be in the same order. Commenting out any existing property you want to exclude should be easy enough. For additional fields you add suitable instructions following the structure of what is already there, but to do that you will probably need to grab the iTunes COM SDK so you can find the correct property names for the various fields.
tt2
