Metadata settings

[Schnitger]

Can anyone help with metadata settings? I find this part of the process bewildering and don't understand the 'Naming' process. What does "[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist]," etc mean and how can it be changed?

I want to rip primarily classical CDs and would like to catalogue them as genre and then composer, though I want to avoid tracks from a compilation CD consisting of several different composers' music being put into different composer folders. I'd also like other headings, eg, genre as jazz, composer, artists etc.

Can anyone help with this?

Many thanks.

[mville]

Re: Metadata settings

Can anyone help with metadata settings? I find this part of the process bewildering and don't understand the 'Naming' process. What does "[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist]," etc mean and how can it be changed?

To get you started, locate %ProgramFiles%\dBpoweramp\Help\dMC\Naming.htm on your PC and open it in your web browser.

Once you understand the Naming scheme you can edit the default to reflect your own requirements.

Also, search the forum. There are many examples of customised Naming schemes.

[garym]

Re: Metadata settings

For example, I use this (in ripper program, lower left, click on set in the naming item, then paste this into the naming string:

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

This will generally create

x:\music\AlbumArtist (or artist)\Album\track No - Title

for compilations it will create:

x:\music\Compilations\album\track no - title - track artist

if there are multi disk CDs, they will appear as:

\album\disk 1\track no - title
..........\disk 2\track no - title

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Metadata settings

Can anyone help with metadata settings? I find this part of the process bewildering and don't understand the 'Naming' process. What does "[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist]," etc mean and how can it be changed?

I want to rip primarily classical CDs and would like to catalogue them as genre and then composer, though I want to avoid tracks from a compilation CD consisting of several different composers' music being put into different composer folders. I'd also like other headings, eg, genre as jazz, composer, artists etc.

Can anyone help with this?

Many thanks.

Don't be discouraged, but classical music is a bit more of a challenge when it comes to tagging. I think there are a couple reasons for this: (1) The online databases are much less consistent with classical than they are with popular music, therefore necessitating more user intervention to maintain a consistent tagging system. (2) The relatively narrow sub-set of tags used by playback devices (for navigation and display of your music library) aren't well-suited to classical music, forcing you to make some less-than-ideal compromises with your tagging scheme.

As mville suggested, your first step is going to the help section to read up on how tags work and how dBp uses tag variables to create naming strings for the files you rip. Then rip some CDs and experiment with the program....you can't ruin anything and you'll learn a lot faster through hands-on experience. Be sure to play your "practice files" back on your own playback devices, so you understand how different tagging options impact navigation and organization. Important point: How your files are named and organized on the hard drive (i.e., the file system) has no bearing at all on how your playback devices see and use those files. Playback devices use the tags embedded within the files, not the file structure, so you'll need to know how to manipulate those to get your players to behave as desired.

While garym's example works very well for most popular music, it won't organize your classical library as desired. Once you get how the naming strings work and how they allow dBp to organize your files, you'll be able to construct strings that organize by genre and composer, or any other way you want.

[garym]

Re: Metadata settings

You might find this useful:

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