Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

[Redd]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Later still (too late for an edit?):
Not so good. The car wants to see "01" "02" etc for the tracks. When there is no leading zero, it "alphabetizes" the DOS 1.0 way, that is 1, 10, 11, 12, 13....2, 20, 21, 22...so anything with more than 9 tracks will have a glitch.

And, much worse still, I think the extensive memory use in the computer somehow trashed the file structure on the D: drive. I was only working on the USB on E:, but the computer was running bog slow, and even with waiting for prolonged shutdown and restart times, the physical D: drive hasn't come back. Nor has the drive activity light stopped.

Something in Win7 has been really insulted by the large metatag operation!

[garym]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Later still (too late for an edit?):
Not so good. The car wants to see "01" "02" etc for the tracks. When there is no leading zero, it "alphabetizes" the DOS 1.0 way, that is 1, 10, 11, 12, 13....2, 20, 21, 22...so anything with more than 9 tracks will have a glitch.

And, much worse still, I think the extensive memory use in the computer somehow trashed the file structure on the D: drive. I was only working on the USB on E:, but the computer was running bog slow, and even with waiting for prolonged shutdown and restart times, the physical D: drive hasn't come back. Nor has the drive activity light stopped.

Something in Win7 has been really insulted by the large metatag operation!

simple to do leading zero:

use "$num(%track%,2)" rather than "%track%", as in example below:

$num(%track%,2) - %title% - %artist%

If extensive memory use trashed your file structure you've got way bigger problems than renaming files. That shouldn't happen unless something is really wrong with your computer.

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

You can't just say "stay here and overwrite" you define how "here" will be imagined. So if "here" was a folder named for the artist, but the songs in a soundtrack album were each by a different artist, the one album now splits into a dozen separate new folders.

Yes you can. For future reference, in dBpoweramp you can use [origpath] and [origfilename].

[Redd]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

I can't say anything actually "crashed" the computer, Windows and the primary drive are just fine. The physical D: drive, which is a data drive that co-incidentally carries the original music files, is what seems to have gone walkabout.

The system kept working--but bog slow. So I tried a shutdown (took forever) and a restart (also took forever). I happen to know from recently having run a chkdsk on the drives that there was no corruption in the system. No malware either, I do regular multiple scans and have fairly high security settings.

What I do know, is that when a process doesn't close properly, or doesn't release memory properly, or does other things with huge numbers of files (like opening and closing 14000 files on the USB stick to rename them) that typically can affect the paging files, the temp files, and a number of system parameters. Adobe is infamous for that, among other companies. It has been known to leave files locked (no edit, no delete) until they're reset by other means.

What exactly happened...I don't know. I'll let the disk activity eventually time out, even if it runs all night, and see if the D: drive comes back. If not, there's a recent backup. But the only "actors" that would have trashed the drive, would be Windows itself (never been a bug there(G), dbpa, and mp3tag. Mp3tag being the one that was actively "doing" things, so the one I have to suspect most.

I'll hold off on the leading zero patch until I've got the system recovered, either way.

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

The fact that the system was running slow (probably windows trying to access the failing drive) suggests a hardware problem, rather than a software issue.

[garym]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

I can't recall the exact details, but a number of years ago (10?) on an old laptop (not dual core even), I tried to run something in mp3tag that was converting ReplayGain tag info to itunes soundcheck values. I did this in bulk and it would cause things to eventually fail because of some memory issue. I was running this on about 100,000 mp3 music tracks. I ran it instead on batches of about 25,000 and it worked fine. But none of this is likely your issue.

[garym]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

The fact that the system was running slow (probably windows trying to access the failing drive) suggests a hardware problem, rather than a software issue.

Isn't it 3:30am where you are?

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

I can't recall the exact details, but a number of years ago (10?) on an old laptop (not dual core even), I tried to run something in mp3tag that was converting ReplayGain tag info to itunes soundcheck values. I did this in bulk and it would cause things to eventually fail because of some memory issue. I was running this on about 100,000 mp3 music tracks. I ran it instead on batches of about 25,000 and it worked fine. But none of this is likely your issue.

Agreed. I have run into memory issues with MP3Tag, which generated errors on a couple of occasions. I submitted the Mp3tagError.log to MP3Tag support as requested. In my experience, what is being described here suggests a different problem altogether.

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Isn't it 3:30am where you are?

Yes, sadly I am working on another completely unrelated IT software development project which requires my attention all the time. Actually, 3.30am is about the time my concentration nose dives and I have to call it a day.

[garym]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Yes, sadly I am working on another completely unrelated IT software development project which requires my attention all the time. Actually, 3.30am is about the time my concentration nose dives and I have to call it a day.

I understand!

[Redd]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Yes, it could all be coincidental mechanical failure. The drive is a WD Black Label (good drives) that has never hiccupped. The drive monitoring systems have thrown no error codes--ever. As long as a failing drive will spin, they usually would give warning.
However. Disk Mangler [sic] finally admitted the drive exists, and claimed it was a HEALTHY, RAW drive. That's somewhat impossible, RAW means the entire NTFS partition and MBR was wiped out and the drive reverted to "raw", a most curious state of affairs that can't happen by accidental keystrokes. Even a power failure or physical disconnect can't "re-raw" the drive.
So...I'll play stump the stars with WD and MS support on that, but also try a total reformat and then thorough diagnostics, if I can get it to reformat.
I might mention, I'm an ex-sysadmin and long time NT consultant, not as familiar with the internals of the newest systems, but way more familiar than most.
If I hadn't gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the system clean, and this had been the primary drive (rather than the on-line archive drive) I'd suspect malware. But I have no reason to suspect that. More likely, something was accessing the MBR or other low-level data and that something wiped it out in a glitch.
Long ago, maybe 2000(?) MS eventually conceded there was a glitch in their OSes, where if you have two "Active, Primary" drives in the same system, the OS could wipe them both out. The only solution they ever had was to never, never, do that, but to have only one active primary--and everything else strictly logical and extended partitions.
That wasn't very well publicized outside of the internal tech support channels, either.

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Very odd indeed. I'd check the event viewer for any clues as to what may have occurred.

I guess you have run a full virus scan on your system?

[Redd]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

As I said, multiple scans. Multiple tools. And all interactive technologies, including Flash, are normally (almost always in fact) disabled among the bowser's security settings. The likelihood of malware getting in is damn low. It is also pretty much unheard-of for malware to attack a data archive, and ignore the primary/system drive, where it can do more damage.

Although, I suppose the Chinese Army may have been targeting me for my blatant remarks about China's cultural disregard for quality control in the Lower Kingdom.(VBG)

Disk Mangler [sic] refused to do a Quick Format (I'm not sure it can do one on a RAW disk anyway) but it is slowly rumbling along doing a full new one on the drive. I make sure to do a full format, even on a brand new drive, to ensure there's been no shipping damage. An old habit from when a 10MB drive could be $2500, on sale.

I'm fairly certain *something* burped, and nulled out the lowest level information on the drive. I'm waiting to see that it does in fact take a new format, before I call WD and MS and some old colleagues to see if they've ever heard of this. NTFS even keeps a backup copy of the MBR, which it supposedly can read to restore the original in case of damage of attack. And there's nothing you can do by hitting "the wrong key" at the user level, that will re-RAW a drive that way.

Most unusual.

[Redd]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Gary-
Coming back to the original problem I was trying to fix, you gave a lead zero solution above. But if I want to make Real Damn Sure I'm not missing any steps, the whole process would be, using the already tagged files (that just don't have lead zeros):

1. Load up all files in mp3tag. Select all.
2. from menu select CONVERT, then TAG to Filename
3. and then enter the parameters:
$num(%track%,2) - %title% - %artist%

Which will add a lead zero just to all the single-digit-lead track names, yes?

Thanks again.

[mville]

Re: Can I batch-rename every song to begin with its track number?

Before you start put this in filter (with all files in MP3Tag):
%track% MISSING

This will display all files where the track tag does not exist, so you can fix these.

Next put this in filter:
"$len(%track%)" GREATER 2

which will display any track anomalies (like 2/11 described earlier), so you can fix also.

... there's also this feature, MP3Tag >> Tools >> Auto-numbering wizard