Question about the (automatic) file naming options.

So under 'Examples' there's an option 'Create Folder with First Character from Artist' which results in this 'string of code' (or whatever you call it):
[GRAB]1,1,[artist][]\[artist]\[album]\[origfilename]

I was very surprised and pleased with the result, for a mobile device this is simply excellent. But I also want to use the file naming option to organize my current music folder on my PC. And what this does, is also break up albums and releases. So if an artist has a track/song appearing on a compilation for instance it will appear in the folder of that artist. But for this 'local' file naming I don't want it to break up an album or release. So for a compilation with various artists I want this result: Various Artists - Title Of Compilation. Or as you will, the 'Album Artist' instead of the 'Artist' followed by the name of the album/compilation.

So I replaced 'artist' in:
[GRAB]1,1,[artist][]\[artist]\[album]\[origfilename]
with 'album artist' like so:
[GRAB]1,1,[artist][]\[album artist]\[album]\[origfilename]

but that resulted in this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2481[/ATTACH]

So not quite what you would want/expect.

With the file naming as: '[artist]\[album]' there IS a folder created named 'Various Artists', but it doesn't contain all my compilations. Moreover, it hardly contains anything.

For instance for the Sound Track of Kill Bill 1 this was the result:
E:\_Music (A-Z) first try\*\(\(sound effect)\Kill Bill (Soundtrack) (Vol.1)

So the artist is '(' followed by a folder named '(sound effect)' and it contains just two tracks of the release. So I don't quite get what's going wrong here.

So to sum it up, How do I maintain a 'Various Artists' compilation in 1 folder.

Thanks in advance :)

If I have understood correctly, you need to test on a Various Artist/Compilation AND not a Various Artist/Compilation.

Example:
[IFCOMP]V\Various Artist[][IF!COMP][GRAB]1,1,[artist][][artist]\[]\[album]\[origfilename]

I was indeed already in the process of putting all my Various Artists releases in a separate folder so that I can process them separately. I will try out your file naming format! Thanks! :)

btw: could you explain to me what the effect is of '\[]\' between [artist] and [album]?

This backslash creates / separates subfolders.


Dat Ei

[QUOTE=Oblique;193640]btw: could you explain to me what the effect is of '\[]\' between [artist] and [album]?[/QUOTE]

Sorry, the example should read:
[IFCOMP]V\Various Artist[][IF!COMP][GRAB]1,1,[artist][]\[artist][]\[album]\[origfilename]

Although a long term user of dBpoweramp, I am new to Tunefusion. I have a very large library of music in my 'serious' system consisting of a mixture of Hi-Rez downloads, Hi-Rez LP rips, and CD-Rez CD rips; initially sorted under original source (e.g. /DOWNLOADS HI-REZ/LINN/[Album artist]/[Album title]/[file]. This enables me to use the various sources of my Hi-Rex downloads automatic downloading apps.

I want to use Tunefusion to create and maintain libraries of CD Rez music for my Sonos system; and Ogg Vorbis for my car stereo.

I tried using the standard CD-Ripper folder&naming - i.e. [IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title].

But this gave me incredibly long folder names - e.g. 'Montserrat Figueras, María Cristina Kiehr, Guy de Mey, Gerd Türk, Gian Paolo Fagotto, Pietro Spagnoli, Roberto Abondanza, Daniele Carnovich, Coro del Centro di Musica Antica di Padova, La Capella Reial'.

So I made a new folder with copies of a few of the largest folder titles, and started experimenting with a new sync using those folders and additional conditions, e.g. [WORD]string, wordcount[21],[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title].

{21 was a mistake - I thought I was specifying letters, not words.}

But that generated a folder name of [WORD]string,wordcount[21]Montserrat Figueras, María Cristina Kiehr, Guy de Mey, Gerd Türk, Gian Paolo Fagotto, Pietro Spagnoli, Roberto Abondanza, Daniele Carnovich, Coro del Centro di Mus.

AND THEN, when I tried editing the formula, by changing '21' to '4' (e.g. '[WORD]string,wordcount[4]'; and then by inserting a comma after '[WORD]string,wordcount[4],' and rerunning my manual sync, it just tells me that the sync has already been done.

No doubt I'm doing one or more really dumb things, but blowed if I can see them.

What should I do?

In the end I simply want to end up with simple short folder names that still give me enough info to roughly distinguish between my music - I can really on the playing systems to pull out the meta-data as necessary.

Assuming the original path has the correct length of artist and album in the folder name, then you can use that:

[trimfirstfolder][trimfirstfolder][origpath][][]

removes the first 2 folders.

Sadly that's only true for the Hi-Rez downloads - everything else has just one top folder. I guess I could create a dummy folder layer between the top folder and the [Artist name] folder in those other examples...?

You could yes.

Thanks Spoon. Or...

If I set up two syncs - one sourced from the DOWNLOADS HI-REZ\[SOURCE]\ which trims two folders, and another sourced from all the other top-level folders which only trims one folder, could they both have the same destination drive? Or would they interact in an undesirable way?

FOLLOW UP - I have done so and am running a test to a spare partition.

Basically working so far, BUT...

Something odd. In the case where I only trimmed one layer of folders, I used '[trimfirstfolder][origpath][][]\[track] [artist] - [title]'.

But that added '[]' to the end of all the album names, e.g. 'Ahmad Jamal\Cross Country Tour_ 1958-1961 [Disc 1][]'

So I edited the sync on the run to take out one of the '[]' in the naming convention - e.g. '[trimfirstfolder][origpath][]\[track] [artist] - [title]'

But that didn't change anything. Is that because that's not the solution, or because making an edit to a running sync doesn't change anything? Or...?

Removing [] is correct, you would have to delete the files and resync, with the option set 'On Sync Check File Size' on the advanced tab, this will detect removed files and resync.

Thanks. That was going to be my next question - I removed the files but it didn't resync them.

Thanks for all your help. It must be infuriating when we don't see things that are obvious to you.

EVENTUAL NAMING CONVENTION + A REQUEST

FYI:
So, after much experimenting, and finally reading the F...ing manual slowly and properly (as in the old engineering saying RTFM!) I ended up with [TRIMFIRSTFOLDER][TRIMFIRSTFOLDER][origpath][][]\[track] - [WORD][artist],4[] - [WORD][title],5[] (and a second sync that only trimmed one folder for the other music), and so far it is delivering me exactly what I want.

My two (very minor) requests are for some way of exporting (and possibly importing) configurations so one can save them and refer to them - especially when experimenting with different configurations. It may be just my way of doing things, but I set up a series of experimental operations to a spare partition - and then realized that the one thing you can't edit in the sync is the destination drive/folder - for good reasons no doubt - but it means that you have to set up a new sync and then recreate every setting you've arrived at.

The second is to perhaps set up a database (on the forum or the support pages?) of formulae that people have arrived at using the naming conventions

But both are just a minor things - overall this is a marvelous piece of software. And thanks again.