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Thread: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Aug 2020
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    Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away (or at least a much earlier version of dbPoweramp)I started ripping my CD collection. I put that aside for awhile, and just returned to it, and found that I no longer like my earlier scheme for tags. To start with, there weren't many (any?) sort tags then. So I need to do some fairly significant editing of tags - particular artist, album artist, conductor, etc, and there seems to be two ways to do that, both using batch conversion. Plus a third, not using dbPoweramp.

    The first is using scripting, and it seems like this uses VBS as its scripting language - is that the case?

    The second is using rule based manipulation. For example, one of the things I want to do is change artists of the form "Foobarbaz, The" to "The Foobarbaz" and add a sort artist "Foobarbaz, The". So can I do that by with rules like:

    IFCONTAINS Artist=", The"
    SET Artist="The "[REPLACE]", The","",[TRIM]Artist[][]

    IF Artist=[anyvalue]
    SET Artist Sort=[IF][GRAB]1,4,[TRIM]Artist[][],=,"The ",[GRAB]5,,[TRIM]Artist][][]", The",Artist Sort[]

    IF Artist Sort=
    SET Artist Sort=Artist

    Or syntax to that general effect. And the same for Album Artist, Conductor, etc.

    Assuming the rules are processed in order, does this (more/less) work?

    But the rule-based manipulation seems rather limited. For example. in the first step I would like to check for ", The" as the last 5 characters of the string, but the condition testing seems limited to testing tag equality, non-blank, blank or contains. Is that the case? And of course, the dbpoweramp naming functions, while fine for constructing path names, are also limited.

    Which leads to option 3 - scripting. I was just going to build/install metaflac on my Linux box and then do a find/do script on the exported NAS audio filesystem, that reads the tags with metaflac, manipulates them with bash and then writes them back. (All my audio files are flac.) This is certainly the more general option - has anyone tried metaflac?

    Another option for scripting is mp3tag, but it seems to be yet another scripting language, although being task-specific, that would be preferable to VBS. Again, has anyone tried mp3tag (or both mp3tag and metaflac) for updating tags with scripts?

    Btw, this isn't intended as a criticism of the tag updating options in dbPoweramp - they're fine for most purposes. And I won't even get into the issue of why there isn't a single great tag database instead of 4 (or so) crummy ones. This shouldn't be so hard.

    Thanks,
    Doug

  2. #2
    dBpoweramp Guru
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    Re: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    Have you had a look at PerfectTUNES?

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Aug 2020
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    5

    Re: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    Yes - own PerfectTunes as well. Another very useful program. But the tag editing in Perfect Tunes is still manual - yes, I can edit "Beatles, The" to "The Beatles" for the Artist tag, and then edit/add a "Beatles, The" (or just Beatles) sort tag, but then I need to manually do the same for Band, The and Beach Boys, The et cetera.
    Or does Perfect Tunes have scripting built in or maybe a more general tag update language/logic? I should have mentioned that VBS is a non-starter with me - the simpler path for me is to install/build/port metaflac to Slackware 15 (when/if it ever gets released) and do scripting with bash+awk+cut+sed+etc. For those who don't know, metaflac is a tool that can read/write tag data from flac files (maybe others?), and at a gross level, can read the tags and output them in a format:

    tag1 = value1
    tab2 = value2
    ...
    and vice versa.

    So I could then use the standard Unix text manipulation tools to do what I want, much more easily than learning yet another bad Microsoft design point. What I was hoping for was the ability to do most of what I need to do in the meantime (before Slackware 15 gets released) using dbPoweramp.

    Any other thoughts?

    Doug

  4. #4
    dBpoweramp Guru
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    Re: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    For the type of editing you describe, I use MP3Tag.

    I have created numerous scripts (called actions in MP3Tag) as MP3Tag supports regular expressions, something I wish Illustrate's software supported.

  5. #5
    dBpoweramp Guru
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    Nov 2007
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    Re: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    Quote Originally Posted by mville View Post
    For the type of editing you describe, I use MP3Tag.

    I have created numerous scripts (called actions in MP3Tag) as MP3Tag supports regular expressions, something I wish Illustrate's software supported.

    I also use mp3tag for such work. Great program (and obviously does many file types other than only mp3).

  6. #6
    dBpoweramp Enthusiast
    Join Date
    Feb 2020
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    69

    Re: Tag editing via batch convert - scripting vs rule based manipulation

    Mp3tag is the best option for this kind of work. I found almost all the answers I needed on scripting and shortcuts in the forum through posts by DevletD and dano.

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