Another dynamic (?) naming problem

[Jon Sterling]

Two part problem: I had part 1 figured out but in the course of trying to solve part 2 I lost my solution. I seem to mrecall it involved doing settings in 3 different places (that is, the shotgun approach). I wiwh to supress a leading "the" at the root folder. So "the rolling stones" would render as simply "rolling stones". Moving the "the" to the end will, at this point, create duplicate foloders.

The newer problem (two) is I need to number the tracks as 01 artist album song for each track no matter where the tracks are on the disk. So if I rip the first, third and fifth track the numbers would be 01, 03 and 05. But I'm no code warrior and the instructions on the dynamic renaming are greek to me. My experiments (as instructed) have made some large messes. A list of the commands and what they mean and do would be helpful but is not to be found.

Third problem needs its' own thread but for the moment can anyone help me on these two?

Thanks!

jon

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

help on naming commands:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/help/dmc/Naming.htm

not sure on first issue. But second issue should simply work with no special settings. If you rip tracks from a CD properly, they already have the metadata field for track number included (and title, album name, etc.). So in dynamic naming, using [track] should write that correct track number as part of your file name.

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

regarding issue *1, you'll need to make sure you add albumartistsort tag when ripping, then use this in the naming process. See post 9 at this thread and his linked post.

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?48628-Beginner-question-on-dynamic-naming&p=211616&viewfull=1*post211616

[Jon Sterling]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

Cannot get rid of the leading The like it used to work (and I never touched the naming). I get endless bizzare results: "the' removed from the track name, tht string "the" removed from the middle of words. Code printing out instead of tracknames. And on and on. Read the documentation page again on dynamic naming and it was just as useless as the other times I have read it. I can't count the symbols, words and syntax that go unexplained and are far more obscure to a non-programmer than a programmr might imagine. . And that line about running experiments reveals someone doesn't know the math of permutations and combinations.

I really appreciate the help but no one, it seems, can just give me the code string that does it. So rather than beating my head against a wall and bugging y'all I'll get on with the work. I can do it faster manually than messing with this. Yes I am more than a little annoyed. I didn't have to buy this thing. I could have used it forever for free...and now I am regretting my decision. Today alone I have burned more time trying to get it working than getting many, many days of work done....doing it manually.


Reading through the forum, and I have a fair amount, I see other people coming to high degrees of frustration too.

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

Most people that use this program use it trouble free (I know lots of them as I recommend this to others). Obviously, support forums mostly contain questions and problems. This is not a social forum where we just hang out and chat about music. In the past, me and others (and we are all just users like you that like to help) have spent lots of time helping new users figure out ripping, tagging, naming conventions, etc. And in virtually all cases after some help and feedback, these new users had everything set to their liking. And that's the key, once the ripping/tagging/naming settings are setup to suit one's preferences, one doesn't have to think about those things again. I was a new user once, and there was a learning curve. But once I got everything squared away, I could simply rip away without touching a single setting. I've ripped over 5,000 CDs since then with no issues or questions.

Remind us exactly how you'd like your folders/subfolders and file names to be created and I'll take a stab at creating a dynamic naming string. Address how you want compilations (various artists), multidisk sets, etc. treated as well, as this matters too. And are you on Windows or Mac?

[Jon Sterling]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

Most people that use this program use it trouble free (I know lots of them as I recommend this to others). Obviously, support forums mostly contain questions and problems. This is not a social forum where we just hang out and chat about music. In the past, me and others (and we are all just users like you that like to help) have spent lots of time helping new users figure out ripping, tagging, naming conventions, etc. And in virtually all cases after some help and feedback, these new users had everything set to their liking. And that's the key, once the ripping/tagging/naming settings are setup to suit one's preferences, one doesn't have to think about those things again. I was a new user once, and there was a learning curve. But once I got everything squared away, I could simply rip away without touching a single setting. I've ripped over 5,000 CDs since then with no issues or questions.

Remind us exactly how you'd like your folders/subfolders and file names to be created and I'll take a stab at creating a dynamic naming string. Address how you want compilations (various artists), multidisk sets, etc. treated as well, as this matters too. And are you on Windows or Mac?

I looked deeper into matters. My attempts to search the forum have been fruitless. A large part of my frustration is that the thing was working just fine except for the numbers and then whatever I had done (and not with naming) to supress leading "the"s stopped working. Took a few disks to discover this and then I had to do a bunch of cleanup. I thought I did something with the settings to supress prohimited characters. But I can't reproduce whatever I did. I also have a vauge memory of some instruction in the documentation on how to do exactly this with some setting. Can't find it again.

I have found many of your posts through the years and they are helpful;. I saved two posts from others that give some more guidance. (hint people: use Google). This is what I have saved (edited for brevity):

"... 02-11-2007, 08:52 AM*9
EliC
dBpoweramp Guru

Join Date
May 2004
Postsf
1,176
Re: Help with understanding File Naming
[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]\[track] [title][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[artist]\ [album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][] [track] [title][]


Im no programer, but the naming scheme is really not the easiest thing to get when you first look at it. Its easier when you realize that its nested arguments (correct term?)

So the first part:

[IFCOMP] or [IFMULTI] or whatever, opens a command that is not closed until there is a []

Sothis:
[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]\[track] [title][]

Actually has 3 nested commands

[IFCOMP]....[]

and inside that is:

[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]

and:

[IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]



[IFCOMP]....[]
Means that if the disc is a compilation use this part

Then it moves to the next nexted command inside the [IFCOMP]....[]:
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]

The [IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]
will add the following text (if its a multi disc set):
Disc **

If you change the "Disc" text to anything it will simply be displayed as whatever text you change it to."

"schmidj
dBpoweramp Guru

Join Date
Nov 2013
Location
New York
Posts
450
<snip>


Basically the [] serves as what we call a delimiter. It appears following commands in the string editor which require one or more expressions as input (following the command) to tell the parser (the part of the string editor which separates the commands) when the input for that command has ended. Since one can nest commands (as is done in your naming string}, if there is a [] after the first command before the second one, they are not nested but run consecutively in forming the string. If there is no [] before the second command the commands are nested and the second command executes as controlled by the first command. Then there might well be a [][] after the input for the second command to tell the parser that both commands have ended.

In the specific question you have asked from your string, [disc][]. will put a period (.) at that point (before the track number) whether or not you have a multi disc album (which you probably don't want) but [disc].[]will only put the period there after the disc number before the track number if it is a multi-disc album, so you will get [disc].[track] (such as 2.03 for disc 2 track 3) but only if it is a multi-disc album, which I assume is what you want.

This string editor is quite powerful, as you can see."

So far so good. But then how to tell what is a command, what is an argument and what is a variable and then what is with the commas?

So in the default:

[MAXLENGTH]80,[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][][]\[MAXLENGTH]80,[album][]\[MAXLENGTH]80,[track] [artist] - [title][]

[MAXLENGTH] Opens with the MAXLENGTH comand followed by the variable 80. So it is testing the string length up front. Dunno what the comma does.

This is followed by the command [IFVALUE]album artist where the command IFVALUE takes the argument album artist drawn from a tag. Another mysterious comma and then [album artist] Which I gather is a variable again drawn from a tag but the [ and ] symbols mean print the tag value to the output name?

Then another comma and the command [IFCOMP] which is the command to test for a tag declaring a compilation and if found doing "various artists"? so is that various artists a command, argument or variable? Next a [] delimiter closes the command.

Next the command [IF!COMP] tests for not a compilation [artist] bit which I am guessing prints the value of the artist tag. Then three delimiters closing the whole mess. (things look different in notepad when you work the code vertically using tabs to show the nesting)

a slash makes the next folder down, the size test again then the album name and a delimiter.

a slash to nest another folder, size test then print track, artist, a dash to make it pretty and title last followed by a delimiter for that stretch.


turning this: [MAXLENGTH]80,[track] [artist] - [title][] into this [MAXLENGTH]80,[artist] [track] - [title][] should number the tracks. Windows does not order tracks by the tag values but by the leading number or letter of a filename.


There is a setting in the menus to move the leading "the" to the end. Didn't have to do it before and I will be adding more discs of bands already in the library so if the root folder has a different name I get duplicate folders. I just want it to work like it did before.

Working with compilations is fine using the default naming. I often touch up the various values in the ripper before ripping. I seldom want more than a few tracks. I only have a few multi disk sets and where I am picking out tracks I just let the ripper assign the disk number and dump them all in a folder the manually assemble the tracks in one sub-folder and ditch the empties. Where I do rip full disks of a multi disc set the data bases again do the disk numbers and it's all tidy. This was the big attraction for me of Db, assembling and naming the folders in the libraries. The Accurip is a minor annoyance because it won't let the tray open if there is an error I don't care about and do know about. So open the freakin' tray so I can check the disk!

Most of the library is organized alpha but some is by producer and artist (Jan Garbarek and Manfred Eicher stand out). Not available in the tags. My player only reads album and track name and the way I actually use it all the tag get erased

I couldn't get the replace command to work to remove a leading "the". . Syntax doesn't make sense. Something is missing and I suspect it is a different font to lend clarity.

I work in a modified Win10 on the ripping machine and Ubuntu on the web wandering laptop. I have minor ability with the command line on either but I know you can't just go throwing commas around without knowing what they do and linux is funny about capital letters.

Again I appreciate your efforts and thanks for putting up with me.

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

There is a setting in the menus to move the leading "the" to the end. Didn't have to do it before and I will be adding more discs of bands already in the library so if the root folder has a different name I get duplicate folders. I just want it to work like it did before.

Working with compilations is fine using the default naming. I often touch up the various values in the ripper before ripping. I seldom want more than a few tracks. I only have a few multi disk sets and where I am picking out tracks I just let the ripper assign the disk number and dump them all in a folder the manually assemble the tracks in one sub-folder and ditch the empties. Where I do rip full disks of a multi disc set the data bases again do the disk numbers and it's all tidy. This was the big attraction for me of Db, assembling and naming the folders in the libraries. The Accurip is a minor annoyance because it won't let the tray open if there is an error I don't care about and do know about. So open the freakin' tray so I can check the disk!

Most of the library is organized alpha but some is by producer and artist (Jan Garbarek and Manfred Eicher stand out). Not available in the tags. My player only reads album and track name and the way I actually use it all the tag get erased

I couldn't get the replace command to work to remove a leading "the". . Syntax doesn't make sense. Something is missing and I suspect it is a different font to lend clarity.

I work in a modified Win10 on the ripping machine and Ubuntu on the web wandering laptop. I have minor ability with the command line on either but I know you can't just go throwing commas around without knowing what they do and linux is funny about capital letters.

Again I appreciate your efforts and thanks for putting up with me.

I'm thinking the quote above is your new response and the earlier part is just copying the two earlier replies you had received. Correct. These are both great posts and explain the dynaminc naming and nesting of commands quite well. A couple of your other things:

1. moving leading "the" to the end, is just affecting the metadata tag field, not the file name itself. File name can be based on tag fields, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

2. AccurateRip and tray opening. That must be something in your drive, as I've never seen that across using 5 or 6 different optical drives.

3.
a. Back to naming, it is still not clear to me what exactly you want the naming structure to look like. For example, for a single artist, single disk album, I'd use the following:
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album]\[track] - [title]
this would give me a subfolder for the artist (but it would use album artist instead, if that exists), then it would give me a subfolder under that for the album name, then under the album subfolder it would name all the tracks you have included in the rip, starting with track number followed by a dash then song title. e.g., The Beatles\Abbey Road\01 - Come Together.flac.
note: by having the track number, you avoid the problem with multiple songs having identical names. By using the track number in the name, these identical songs have unique names.
note: I use the album artist option, as I don't use album artist generally. But I do in cases such as, Miles Davis. I might want the ARTIST tag to be "Miles Davis Quintet", but I put the ALBUM ARTIST as "Miles Davis" so that all my Miles Davis related albums are under a single artist folder called "Miles Davis".

b. The above is the most simple naming string. What if you want it to put all the disks of a multidisk set in a single album folder, but with the track numbers also containing the disk number (so you don't have any duplicates). Here I would add this:
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI]\[disc][].[track] - [title]
This does everything the naming string in "a" does but also automatically handles the track names to include disk number (e.g., 1.01 - song name.flac). Of course for this to work, you need to enter the disk number in metadata when ripping (or ensure it was automatically entered). When ripping, if this is a 3 disk set, you would enter 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 in the disk number field at the top of the ripper page.

Because I don't ever try to move the "The" etc. from front of artist name, I can't help with that, although some of the other posts I suggested have instructions on using the ARTISTSORT tag field to make that happen (for example, ARTIST =The Beatles, but ARTISTSORT you enter as "Beatles, The". In the ripper settings you'd want to tick that you want to include the ARTISTSORT tag info, so that you can fill this in when ripping (if it doesn't get filled in automatically).

[Jon Sterling]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

Yes I was quoting two posts I dug up with Google.. I left the posters names in and the dates for credit where it is due.

Guess I'll break out some scotch, spin up some Dylan and hammer on it some more. Or something like that. Still don't know what the commas do. I need to turn the string "the" into a null string.

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

not sure what you mean about commas. there are no commas in the naming strings I recommended. Do you mean how a comma is handled if you have a folder in windows, named, "Beatles, The" I just tested, and can have such a folder in my windows10 machine with no issues. Maybe you were asking about linux. That's above my pay grade.

[Jon Sterling]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

[TRIM][REPLACE]The,,[album artist][][]\[MAXLENGTH]80,[album][]\[MAXLENGTH]80,[track] [artist] - [title][]



Kept the name length testing/fixing, ditched the compilation stuff 'cause I'm a simple bear and don't have many of them. I can use the default for those odd ones and just touch up the album artist string in the ripper. Be nice to put time or size in there but I don't know the commands.(oops, do now, time anyway but format unspecified.) Was getting a space in front of the root folder names that Windows wouldn't let me delete so slapped a trim on the nose.

Works on disks with or without a leading "The".

Some hints for the other noobs like me: These things: [ and ], if they enclose something in upper case its a command and needs to be closed eventually with a delimiter such as []. If they enclose something lower case its a variable and has to pull it's data from somewhere. Look to the various fields the ripper fills out from the online data bases.

When entering your latest prize command string in the "dBpoweramp: CD Ripper Naming" window Keep an eye on the "example" area at the bottom. As long as you have a disk loaded and metadata showing in the main ripper window the results of you commands will show up live....but ya gotta tick one or more of the little boxes. Try "current disk metadata"

Construct and edit you command string in a plain text editor, notepad on windows or gedit in linux. The latter is more powerfull without mucking things up. Then copy and past to the window in dB. More room to work and easier to see. If the window does not display some output to your code string or shows some thing really weird close and reopen it. Save your little text file, you may want a number of command strings for different jobs.

While you are in that ripper naming window clear the box where you paste code. Then hit the "programmable actions" button and select "equals test". Code will appear in the window. You get:

[IFEQUALS]tag,equals,string[]
1 2 3 4 5

1 is the command
2 is a variable and you have to figure out what tag you want to pull data from
3 is an argument to the command. Here it argues the command is about equality of the things on either side of it.
4 4 is another variable of the type "string" which means some string of letters. You pick 'em. Dunno if a string variable can include numbers.
5 is the delimiter closing the command.

the "programmable actions" button is your list of commands.

Clear the box and go to the "add properties" button. Try throwing some variables out there. Ditto the "add tag" button.

Slashes (/ or \ ) in your command jump you down a folder. Which one you use depends on if you have a good operating system or a Mac. (leetle joke there)

I still don't have the first clue what the commas do.


Under green menu icon>CD Ripper options>Tags and file names>Meta Tag and ID tag>options there is an unchecked box that you can tic to put the leading "the" of the root folder the end of the folder name. beware. Once you use it on a disk it sticks like that no matter if you change the setting.


Good luck Mr. Phelps.

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

It looks like you are climbing the learning curve well at this point and are on your way to finalizing a ripping/naming process that works for you.

[Jon Sterling]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

In your [IFEQUALS] example above, without commas used to separate the arguments how would dBpoweramp know which inputs were 2, 3 and 4? Remember, those arguments can contain spaces e.g.

[IF!EQUALS]album artist,Various Artists,[GRAB]1,4,[year][] - []

If it's not a compilation I name the folder [YEAR] - [ALBUM], otherwise I name it just [ALBUM].

It would have made it clearer for closing braces to follow the html standard e.g. [IFEQUALS]tag,equals,string[/IFEQUALS], but it's more typing I guess.

@simbum

I was trying to just make an example and the forum software hosed it. Was supposed to look like:

[IFEQUALS]tag,equals,string[]
----1------2----3------4----5

1 is the command
2 is a variable and you have to figure out what tag you want to pull data from
3 is an argument to the command. Here it argues the command is about equality of the things on either side of it.
4 4 is another variable of the type "string" which means some string of letters. You pick 'em. Dunno if a string variable can include numbers.
5 is the delimiter closing the command.


The numbers refer to the text and symbols above them.

Yup, my command string will wipe an occurrence of "the" in the middle of the artist name. I played with it a bit then just filed a bug report. Guess I'll just keep an eye open for now. I can isolate the "The" and I can double it to get TheThe but sooner or later I have to insert Album Artist and it is back.



-------------------

As an aside, after many attempts the history in the naming window will fill up with junk. This is stored in the registry. GoTo

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Illustrate\dbpoweramp\C DRipper\Profiles\(default)]

Backup the key then open it and scroll down to

"FileNaming"="

and clean house.







@garym

Linux is not above your pay grade. Much simpler than you would think. If your machine will boot from a USB stick you can load some flavor of linux live on the stick, boot into it and play around. The command line is used more and some software is command line only but the documentation is so good it's a snap. I would avoid the garage band versions like Mint and Bodhi. They are skin jobs with much bloat. I have found playing with the big boys works better thus my use of Ubuntu. Software is a little thin but you can run a lot of windows stuff if you want. (runs under emulation).

[garym]

Re: Another dynamic (?) naming problem

@garym

Linux is not above your pay grade. Much simpler than you would think. If your machine will boot from a USB stick you can load some flavor of linux live on the stick, boot into it and play around. The command line is used more and some software is command line only but the documentation is so good it's a snap. I would avoid the garage band versions like Mint and Bodhi. They are skin jobs with much bloat. I have found playing with the big boys works better thus my use of Ubuntu. Software is a little thin but you can run a lot of windows stuff if you want. (runs under emulation).

Yep, I used to run a Fedora Linux based server at home for my music collection to feed various endpoints around the house (since replaced with an rPi4B with attached USB drive running piCorePlayer as the OS (which I think is linux based in some way). And I used a lot of command line stuff for that. But in all these cases I'm really good at following instructions, but not so good at figuring out what the instructions should be (really learning linux). But yes, with enough attention I'm sure I could do any of this, as I've spent >35 years line-by-line coding SAS (statistical analysis systems) or SPSS programs to perform statistical analyses. Well to be fair, maybe only 25 years, as the last 10 at least I just tell really smart people what I want them to do in this regard and only help with review and problem solving. The advantage of being old.