Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

[haggis999]

I am now on day 2 of my trial of the Professional version. So far, I am impressed with what this program can do but I have a couple of questions.

When ripping a 2-CD album containing one of Janacek's operas, the metadata I was offered all related to a 9-CD boxed set of of three of his operas. Most of the data was still relevant but I still had to make several manual alterations. Is there any way to get dBpoweramp's CD Ripper to find alternative metadata, or does the lack of a visible choice mean that none of the databases contained any such alternative in this case?

While messing around with the metadata, I noticed that the cover art options were not always the same for this recording. Is this likely to be because I had edited the album title?

David

[Spoon]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

On the Review Metadata page is all the data we have access to (from 4 databases)

[garym]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

I am now on day 2 of my trial of the Professional version. So far, I am impressed with what this program can do but I have a couple of questions.

When ripping a 2-CD album containing one of Janacek's operas, the metadata I was offered all related to a 9-CD boxed set of of three of his operas. Most of the data was still relevant but I still had to make several manual alterations. Is there any way to get dBpoweramp's CD Ripper to find alternative metadata, or does the lack of a visible choice mean that none of the databases contained any such alternative in this case?

While messing around with the metadata, I noticed that the cover art options were not always the same for this recording. Is this likely to be because I had edited the album title?

David

I'd say that 98% of the time the multiple sources of metadata automatically provided in dbpa are correct and I don't have to make any changes (other than perhaps Genre, which is a more personal choice for me). I tend to click the "find art" option before ripping and can often select a higher quality artwork. The 2% of the time I have problems, I have to make edits/changes/enter data before ripping. And I'd say that multidisk CD sets are more likely to fall within that 2% problem group than my single CDs, but this is just based on what I've noticed over the years.

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

On the Review Metadata page is all the data we have access to (from 4 databases)

I'm not sure you understood my question, or perhaps I didn't explain it properly. The fact that the Review Metadata page shows info from only 4 databases is not the issue. The problem is the matching with a compilation album containing 3 operas when I am really looking for the album dedicated to just one of them. This results in misleading dates and the wrong cover art (though both issues can be fixed with some manual effort). Is there no way to force the databases to offer other matches or does it always default to the first match?

David

[Spoon]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Databases only hold one item, because they can only be identified by CD TOC, so if you have an album which appears on its own, then is later disc 3 out of 4 of a set (with different art) the only way is manual correcting.

[garym]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Databases only hold one item, because they can only be identified by CD TOC, so if you have an album which appears on its own, then is later disc 3 out of 4 of a set (with different art) the only way is manual correcting.

And as I pointed out earlier, metadata sources are never 100% correct for all disks. Record companies have not fully embraced the concept of providing correct metadata. Most of the metadata floating around is "crowd sourced", which fortunately is correct most of the time.

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Databases only hold one item, because they can only be identified by CD TOC, so if you have an album which appears on its own, then is later disc 3 out of 4 of a set (with different art) the only way is manual correcting.

I understand your point, though one could argue that the database companies are simply taking the easy option of overwriting any previous record for a given CD TOC rather than storing multiple versions.

So far, I've only ripped ten CDs, all of them classical, but rather than the 2% that Garym has found to require a manual edit of the metadata, my experience (albeit with a small sample) has been that 100% needed tweaking or a change of the default metadata selection. The last CD was a recital of Chopin piano music played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Three out of the four databases told me that Chopin was the artist as well as the composer, despite him having died in 1849!

Classical metadata is inherently more complex than for most other types of music so I am resigned to my ripping project taking quite some time.

David

[garym]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

I understand your point, though one could argue that the database companies are simply taking the easy option of overwriting any previous record for a given CD TOC rather than storing multiple versions.

So far, I've only ripped ten CDs, all of them classical, but rather than the 2% that Garym has found to require a manual edit of the metadata, my experience (albeit with a small sample) has been that 100% needed tweaking or a change of the default metadata selection. The last CD was a recital of Chopin piano music played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Three out of the four databases told me that Chopin was the artist as well as the composer, despite him having died in 1849!

Classical metadata is inherently more complex than for most other types of music so I am resigned to my ripping project taking quite some time.

David

My 2% is based on non-classical music. For my small classical music collection, I'd say the need for manual intervention is more like 98%. Metadata for classical music is a mess in general and everyone I know that rips classical music has to spend a lot of time with the tagging and planning for who they will use various tags (performer, composer, artist, album artist). See, for example, (and google "tagging classical music" for a lot more info.

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Beginners_Guide_To_Classical

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Hi Gary,
Thanks for that useful link. I'm planning to spend a little time seeking out such guidance and coming up with a tagging strategy before I proceed too far with my ripping activity.

Is there any way to edit the metadata after scanning the CD in the CD Ripper software but without reinserting the CD?

David

[garym]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Hi Gary,
Thanks for that useful link. I'm planning to spend a little time seeking out such guidance and coming up with a tagging strategy before I proceed too far with my ripping activity.

Is there any way to edit the metadata after scanning the CD in the CD Ripper software but without reinserting the CD?

David

Yes. For an album by album (non batch) manual edit of tags, just navigate to the album subdirectory, open, select all track files, right click, and select "Edit ID TAG" from the context menu. Then you should see a popup menu that allows you to edit (or add) fields that relate to all tracks in the CD. Click on the "edit single" at the bottom of the tag list and this will then convert the view to track-by-track. You can then edit/add/delete things for that track, click the right arrow next to edit single and move to the next track, etc.

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

I just tried that and got the message 'Power Pack required for ID-Tag Editing'. What does that mean?

[garym]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

Do you have the dbpa "reference" edition (paid edition). Or are you using the trial/free version?

EDIT: I see you are on trial. I thought it was full featured, but don't really know. I think you do have to install the trial "as an administrator" to access all the features. Not sure about the ID TAG EDIT feature in this regard.

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

After reading your post I remembered that I was trying to do this editing on my main PC, which only has an expired version of the trial software I briefly used a long time ago before I was seriously looking for a CD ripper. The working trial code is on my laptop, where the tag editing works fine. However, it seems a bit odd to be running an editor via right mouse clicks on Windows Explorer. Is it possible to invoke this editor via the Start menu in a conventional manner?

[Spoon]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

It is not possible by start menu.

[haggis999]

Re: Is there a way to look for alternative metadata?

I guess tag editing is not the primary purpose of a CD ripper. However, a Google search for 'CD Tag Editor' tells me that there are several other programs that focus on this task, though it is not yet obvious how many of them do a decent job for classical metadata.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_editor