A simple tracklist generator

RetroPunk · August 9, 2019, 3:08pm

Hello all,

I have been wanting to learn the Ruby programming language for some time, and I needed a way to generate a tracklist on my Linux/OS X machines in my terminal. I created the Ruby gem track_list as a hobby project to learn the language and also make me more productive on MusicBrainz. You can customize the output of your tracklist as well. Please see the instructions at my GitLab repo if you are interested in trying this program out. And if you need help, please ask.

Please note that I am sure that there are better tools out there to get the job done, but I wanted a simple and fast way of getting a tracklist while I manually added metadata to MusicBrainz. If you have any suggestions or run into any issues, please let me know. Thanks for reading.

jesus2099 · August 9, 2019, 3:23pm

Hello Retro,
It reads some media file (mp3, flac) tags?

RetroPunk · August 9, 2019, 3:24pm

Yes, exactly! It can currently read track, title, length, artist, album, year, genre, and comment. I plan to extend this in the future if needed, but that should be more than enough for generating a tracklist .

Freso · August 10, 2019, 6:07pm

Maybe consider opening a seeded release (add) editor instead of “just” making a text blurb for the track list parser? This would enable you to submit track lengths with millisecond accuracy instead of “just” second accuracy. It would also likely reduce a fair amount of typing as it could also handle adding the release title and the release artist and would remove the need for copying and pasting the track list blurb at all as well.

You can see an example implementation of this (in Python) here:

github.com

metabrainz/picard-plugins/blob/2.0/plugins/addrelease/addrelease.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

PLUGIN_NAME = "Add Cluster As Release"
PLUGIN_AUTHOR = 'Frederik "Freso" S. Olesen, Lukáš Lalinský, Philip Jägenstedt'
PLUGIN_DESCRIPTION = "Adds a plugin context menu option to clusters and single\
 files to help you quickly add them as releases or standalone recordings to\
 the MusicBrainz database via the website by pre-populating artists,\
 track names and times."
PLUGIN_VERSION = "0.7.3"
PLUGIN_API_VERSIONS = ["2.0"]

from picard import config, log
from picard.cluster import Cluster
from picard.const import MUSICBRAINZ_SERVERS
from picard.file import File
from picard.util import webbrowser2
from picard.ui.itemviews import BaseAction, register_cluster_action, register_file_action

import os
import tempfile

This file has been truncated. show original

(Of course, this will only work easily for new releases, so if you use your script for editing existing ones, then feel free to disregard this. )

RetroPunk · August 12, 2019, 6:48am

I will look into making a seeded release editor, however, I don’t know if millisecond accuracy will be possible, at least with the library that I’m using for getting audio file information.

jesus2099 · August 12, 2019, 8:53am

It seems that you can use audio_properties.lengthInMilliseconds() instead of audio_properties.length().

RetroPunk · December 31, 2019, 9:23am

Sorry for the late response on this, it’s been a seriously messed up few months lol. I have tried using that lengthInMilliseconds method but it seems like it’s not actually implemented, maybe the dev started it then forgot about it or something I don’t know. I will try and figure out a way to just convert it to MS.

Edit: Tried to convert directly to MS, seems like it’s rounding which I should have expected obviously. I’ll check out the library’s source code.

jesus2099 · December 31, 2019, 12:02pm

This feature was added in 2015:

I don’t see any open issue about lengthInMilliseconds, yet:

Check if you have a recent version of TagLib, maybe.

RetroPunk · December 31, 2019, 2:02pm

I believe it’s not implemented in the Ruby library, I looked through the source code and I only found it referenced here: https://github.com/robinst/taglib-ruby/blob/master/ext/taglib_base/taglib_base_wrap.cxx#L2819

I tried directly calling it like I call length and it has a method not found error: undefined method `length_in_milliseconds' for #<TagLib::AudioProperties:0x00005643fb4c07a8> (NoMethodError)

The docs in the Ruby library also do not have it referenced: https://rubydoc.info/gems/taglib-ruby/TagLib/AudioProperties

I will create an issue on their GitHub page, maybe I’m doing something wrong but it looks like the Ruby library just doesn’t implement it.

RetroPunk · December 31, 2019, 2:27pm

Actually I take that back, it looks like the developers of that Ruby library just haven’t pushed their code to Ruby Gems. I got it to work locally with a build I compiled. I’ll try and get in touch with them.

RetroPunk · July 28, 2022, 10:26pm

@jesus2099 finally added it in v0.3.0

RetroPunk · July 29, 2022, 9:04pm

I know this is 4 posts in a row here but I forgot to ask this: @jesus2099 or @Freso, how do I actually use milliseconds when adding a track list to MB?

rdswift · July 29, 2022, 10:03pm

I may be mistaken, but I think the only way is by attaching a disc id to a release. I don’t think that you can enter them manually.

kellnerd · July 29, 2022, 10:21pm

The other way is release editor seeding which has already been suggested:

RetroPunk · July 31, 2022, 8:08am

Thanks for the reminder! I can’t believe I forgot the entire context to why I was doing this, haha. Alright, I’ll look into making a seeder.

RetroPunk · July 9, 2024, 10:43pm

If anyone other than me still uses this, I am rewriting it in Rust. The taglib Ruby wrapper isn’t compiling for me on Arch anymore and I did not want to deal with it so I figured this would be a good excuse to dive into Rust.

It’s very preliminary and the format options are missing so far but it works for quickly copying and pasting track list’s to MusicBrainz.

Binaries released for Linux and Windows. Repository URL: DomenicF/tracklist-rs: Output MusicBrainz pastable tracklist given a directory of audio files. - Codeberg.org

Thanks for reading