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Thread: Metadata Wish List

  1. #1
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    Metadata Wish List

    I have been using dbpoweramp ripper for a couple of months now, and it is far better than what I had been using, Winamp. I had ripped about 1000 CD's over the last two years, and was very upset to find many (several percent) bad rips. Also, I had ripped to AAC only, for use on my Ipod (and when I heard a bad rip, I could never remember what album it was after I got back home...) Now I have added a large NAS and a very good quality reproduction system in my listening area, and the poor quality of AAC on some material was more than evident. So I decided to start over again, re-ripping everything to two formats, AAC for the Ipod, and FLAC for listening at home.

    Now my issues, pretty much concerning metadata, the bane of my existence:

    First, I have never been able to make either of the "Submit Changes To" choices work, they are always greyed out. I know others have them working, I must have something set wrong... Any ideas? I have no trouble obtaining metadata from any of the sources. I just can't submit what I have entered or corrected myself.

    Second, the metadata entry system badly needs an "undo" button, particularly for the actions which change a lot of metadata with one (wrong) click. All too many times, after entering a whole album's metadata, I have accidentally clicked on the "Meta" icon at the top of the page, instead of the drop down arrow next to it, and had all my newly entered metadata wiped out! There are several buttons on the full screen metadata page that can also wipe out a lot of data.

    Related to this, there is a box at the top of the page labeled "composer". It appears to be a duplicate of the composer box for the first cut, but it seems to wipe out all the entered composer data on all the tracks if you try to clear it, as there is often no album composer, usually the composers are different for each cut. There is also confusion in my mind about the difference between the boxes at the top of the screen labeled "Artist" and "Album Artist" I would presume that "album artist" is the overall artist, if there is one, otherwise if it is a compilation, it would be "various Artists" or something similar. What is "artist" then?

    There needs to be some way to store entered metadata in a file, even if you don't rip the CD or abort the rip (because of a bad CD, for instance) and then be able to use that file to repopulate the metadata page from the file if you go back to rerip the CD. Many of my CD's are from the Caribbean, and either have no metadata available online, or what is online is seriously in error. It is a royal pain to have to enter the metadata more than once if you have a problem ripping a CD.

    On a similar note, Many of my CD's already were ripped and are on my computer as MP4 files (in a different directory from where the re-ripped ones are going. As I said, many lack on-line metadata, requiring manual entry. But I already did this once, and while the rips may sometimes be bad, the metadata is already there, accurately, on the old files. I often uploaded it to Gracenotes in Winamp, but there is no straightforward way to load that metadata I typed in before into dbpoweramp's metadata page. I can either type it all in again from scratch, or, almost as inconvenient and time consuming, I can open the old MP4/AAC files in explorer, select "properties" and copy and paste the metadata into the dbpoweramp page. Boy, it would be nice if there was a button I could click that would bring up a browse window, and let me select the old file, click on it and have the metadata read from that file and entered in the dbpoweramp metadata page, like it reads CD Text and uses that if you tell it to.

    A Spell checker for the metadata would be nice. Not a major point, but I usually discover the spelling/typing errors immediately after ripping the CD

    Finally, if there were some way to start a search engine to find album art from within dbpoweramp, let us say when you click on the + above the album art image. Right now, I open Firefox, search within Firefox, and copy the JPG (or whatever) image to a folder I have called "temp album art", then go back to dbpoweramp, click on the "+" and click on "Load from file" to enter the art. Not a major issue, just a thought

    Again the program is far superior to (horribly buggy, and inaccurate) Winamp. These enhancements would make it even better.

    John Schmidt
    Last edited by schmidj; 11-25-2013 at 11:48 PM. Reason: Typo

  2. #2
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Well, now the "submit" links suddenly started to work! Do you have to be registered with Illustrate for them to work? I bought the paid version, but never registered until I wanted to post here.

  3. #3
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Well, now I'm totally confused. The Submit Metadata worked for two CD's, now it is greyed out. I thought it might have been because I actually played a little bit of the two that it worked on, but I just tried that with another one, and the submit data choices are greyed out. None of these four CD's were in any of the databases. What is going on?

  4. #4
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Submit requires you to change some of the track titles, it was just a requirement for the commercial metadata providers.

    Album Artist is the overall artist, then you have artist which is per track, if you select one track you can change artist.

    You should be able to copy / paste the art from a web browser, rather than save to a temp file.

  5. #5
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    The CD's I was ripping last night all had no entries in any of the databases, all of the information was new, including all the titles. This was true both of the two where submit worked and the two when it was greyed out. Note, when submit was greyed out, the access to information FROM the databases still was working. Any ideas? Also, the field at the top of the detail metadata page labeled "artist", are you saying that entries there end up in the artist field for the selected cut, the same as if I typed it directly in the artist field for that cut?

    Thanks for your help.

    John Schmidt

  6. #6
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    If you select a single track, then the artist field changes colour to indicate it is per track.

  7. #7
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    OK, I think I figured out what was going on with the metadata submission and in the process uncovered what appears to be a bug, or at least an "undesirable feature".

    In order for the submission links to ungrey, you have to have put something, anything even a single space, in the overall composer field. This is true even if you have filled out the composer field on each track and the program has inserted "<various composers> in the overall composer field. And, here is the "undesirable feature" - Whatever you type in the overall composer field replaces the individual composer entries even without clicking on the "to all" box next to the composer field UNLESS the compilation box is checked. My understanding of a compilation is that the artists on the different cuts are different, many albums by one artist have multiple composers. The only time multiple composers is considered a compilation is for classical music, not pop music. It would be much safer to only have the overall composer propagate to the individual track composers only if the "to all" button was clicked. Another reason for an "undo" function...

    If the requirement for an entry in the composer field to submit is supposed to be there, an entry in the FAQ stating that would be a good idea.

    I do appreciate your replying to my suggestions/questions. Not too many places on the web do that any more.

    Thanks

    John Schmidt
    Last edited by schmidj; 11-26-2013 at 03:37 PM. Reason: typo

  8. #8

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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Hi John,

    I sympathise entirely. Having carefully set up each track, a simple click in the wrong box can reset them all! The CD in question had Elgar's Enigma Variations and Holst's Planets Suite on it. In the end i set up the metadata for Elgar and only ripped those tracks. I then reset for Holst and re-ripped the rest. Result was two 'albums' with all the correct details, including the correct orchestra for each. There seems to be a slightly odd relationship between 'artist' and 'album artist'. However, I am astonished at how poor the metadata is for many CDs (spelling mistakes, lazy track naming etc) and do agree that some slightly more sensitive and flexible metadata tools would be a most desirable enhancement to what is pretty excellent software.

  9. #9

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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    I agree to this old theads final wish. Often, there is no art available for an album and it would be great to be able to change the search parameter in that window until it finds the art. Usually when I google for the art it gets found...

  10. #10

    Re: Metadata Wish List

    I am a newbie, but have read everything thru about naming. Here's my wish, to keep filename shorter, can I program to use only the last name of the artist? I don't see fields for first, last name, but they must exist for swapping to work.

    Second: Please point me to an explanation for the difference between metatags and filenames. None of my rips are appearing in my W8.1 WMP Library with Artist, Title, Genre info. They are listed below, unsortable. All the metadata is working to create folders and file names in my directory structure. P.S. I am not a newbie to programming, just dbpoweramp and the world of ripping CD's. Paying upfront for dbpoweramp seems to have been a really worthwhile decision, and I have figured out quite a bit, with reading and experimenting. It's very well documented, thank you!

  11. #11
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Which format do you rip to?

  12. #12
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    Re: Metadata Wish List

    Quote Originally Posted by Deltadiva View Post
    I am a newbie, but have read everything thru about naming. Here's my wish, to keep filename shorter, can I program to use only the last name of the artist? I don't see fields for first, last name, but they must exist for swapping to work.
    There is only Artist and Artist Sort and Album Artist and Album Artist Sort. There is no First Name, Last Name.

    So you might have:
    Artist = David Bowie
    Artist Sort = Bowie, David

    OR

    Artist = The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
    Artist Sort = Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The

    To shorten the Folder/File pathname consider using the MAXLENGTH naming function.

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