Tutorial on strings?

[negcreep80]

I've been searching for hours and figure I'm better off just asking upfront and hope someone can assist...

First off, is there a tutorial on strings, creating them and how they relate to dynamic filenaming? I usually feel pretty confident when it comes to those things, but I can't seem to make anything work right in dBPoweramp. I've found plenty of threads where people discuss specific strings, but nothing that matches my situation and I can't figure out how to adapt those strings to work for me.

Here's my particular dilemna...I am trying to rip Wingspan, which is a 2 disc greatest hits collection for Paul McCartney, Wings, etc. I want to have the Album Artist as "Paul McCartney" since he is the common denominator on all the tracks. However, I want the Artist on the individual tracks to be the name of the group when the track was recorded, i.e. tracks that were recorded under the name "Paul McCartney & Wings" or tracks that were recorded under just "Wings". Unfortunately, I don't know enough about strings because I'm still having problems with compilations where each artist gets saved into its own folder with just 1 track in it, and then I have to go and manually move the tracks into a folder under the title of the album.

So for the structure, what I would ideally like is to have albumartist\albumtitle\disc *\track number - artist - track name ...any thoughts on what string would work to make that happen? Just to add one more wrinkle, I do like using the multi encoder to simultaneously do mp3 and flac, so would the string be the same for each encoder?

Appreciate any and all input as this seems like a very smart community...let me know if you require more info...Cheers!

[Spoon]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

[album artist]

and

[artist]

are the two naming strings you need

[negcreep80]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

[album artist]

and

[artist]

are the two naming strings you need

Thanks for the prompt response...but I'll have to plead further ignorance. I understand building basic strings for the file and folder structure using [album artist] and [artist]...perhaps my issue is with trying to build the "if" statements. I don't understand when to put the [] or when to put [][], and how to build an [if] string for the two separate elements, whether something is a compilation or not, and whether it is a multi disc or not, and how the cd ripper builds the folder structure. Am I making it harder than it needs to be?

Anyway, thanks again...I know you're busy on here and appreciate the assistance. Cheers.

[Spoon]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

Here is the default string:

[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

which is:

[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],
[IFCOMP]Various Artists[]
[IF!COMP][artist][]
[]
\[album]\
[track] [artist] - [title]

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

So for the structure, what I would ideally like is to have albumartist\albumtitle\disc *\track number - artist - track name ...any thoughts on what string would work to make that happen?

[albumartist]\[album]\[discnumber]\[track] - [artist] - [title]

[negcreep80]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

First off, thanks for the help...so I finally had time to play around with this a little more, with mixed results. So here's what I have in the Multi-Encoder settings for the mp3, in the Dynamic box:

[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist]\[album]\Disc [disc]\[track] - [artist] - [title],Various Artists[]\[album]\[track] [artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album]\Disc [disc]\[track][] - [title]

So when Compilation is not checked, it seemed to do what I wanted...created a file structure so that album artist\album\disc number\track number - title. Unfortunately, when Compilation is checked, it did not work as I'd hoped. Essentially it created more layers of folders.

The album I tried was Iggy Pop's greatest hits 2cd set, A Million in Prizes. I wanted the Album Artist to be Iggy Pop (since he's the common denominator), but the album is essentially a compilation of the various artist incarnations in his career (The Stooges, Iggy Pop, etc.) So with that string I listed, what I ended up with was:

Iggy Pop/
A Million in Prizes/
Disc 1/
01 - The Stooges - 1969/
A Million in Prizes/
The actual mp3 file

So, from what I can tell, it basically added the part of the string after "Various Artists"...not sure how to separate that out. I still want the option to have the Album Artist as "Various Artists" in case I rip true compilation albums, so how can I tweak the string to make this all work. Thanks to Spoon and BrodyBoy for your help so far.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Tutorial on strings?

The problem with all the folder layers is the location of the bracket pair that closes the [IFVALUE] function. Just use the [IFVALUE] to set the top folder name, i.e., either the [album artist] or "Various Artists." All the rest of your compilations naming scheme after that should be the same, right? So put all that after the [IFVALUE] function is closed by its bracket pair, like you did in your [IF!COMP] function.


So, if you change it to:

[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album]\Disc [disc]\[track] - [artist] - [title][]

Then you should get, with your example:

Iggy Pop\A Million in Prizes\Disc 1\01 - The Stooges - 1969 ...When "Iggy Pop" is in the [album artist] tag.

Various Artists\A Million in Prizes\Disc 1\01 - The Stooges - 1969 ...When there's no [album artist] tag.