Backticks and apostrophes changes

That is a standard apostrophe. Or “Typographical Apostrophe” as they get called. It’s a Unicode thing.

So change it all to old fashioned ASCII which matches your keyboard.

1 Like

There are dozens of variations of this stuff.

https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/User:Jacobbrett/English_Punctuation_Guide
(None of these things are on your standard keyboard…)

The perfectionists love it and have to put them into place “because the keyboard is limited”.

Personally I am like you and wipe them out of my filenames and tags and wrote my own plugin to go further.

It is especially confusing if you have folders with three different types of dashes\hyphens side by side… it also confuses searches on a computer…

image

It makes the file name look like this and it’s horrible as you think there’s some kind of spacing error but it’s not.

2 Likes

image
This looks much better.

Once again thanks for you help.

Cheers

2 Likes

It is the font being chosen on your device that make it look funky like that. The device is expecting plain ASCII I expect.

Use a more common font and you will not get the problem. Like in this forum, you don’t see them change. But it is not “as you type”. (Compare the right window to the left window and you’ll see it)

Speechmarks, Apostrophe’s and hypens all get “the treatment”.

Yeah - you may want to get that powershell script out on your hyphens too… otherwise any sub-folder with a dash in it will now be different to sub-folders you tag in future… first time that happened to me it confused me as to what was happen-ing! :rofl:

2 Likes

Maybe I’m missing something, but why PowerShell and then re-analyse?

Wouldn’t you let the Picard plugin do it for you?

Picard couldn’t go back and fix the already tagged files. Much quicker to write an OS repair script.

Especially as they had not spotted the “Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII” option. All Picard would do it keep the Unicode stuff from the database.

(Yes, I know, pedant hat on… now they have ticked the option Picard can correct everything… but powershell is quicker)

I’m not sure I follow - If the files are already tagged (including MBID tags) it’s just as matter of dragging into Picard and hitting ‘save’.

Yes, that would have been easier but I didn’t have the reason why it was putting in that particular symbol, the 2nd headache I had was that the metatag had them too but I was able to use another problem to eliminate them manually/painfully till again I found that there was a quicker way, all a learning curve for me, these programs are very powerful when you know how.
Thanks to @IvanDobsky the remaining ones I did drop back into Pickard and it sorted them.

2 Likes

And Picard would have just put all the Unicode punctuation back. @winston79 had not spotted the option to turn that off so had to resort to external means.

When you are an old hand with Picard, you know of “Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII”. But when just trying to quickly tag some files the whole thing is a huge complex mystery of options.

1 Like

I must be missing something… change the setting (obviously), drag all the files in, and hit save again, done. Unicode gone.
If the files have been previously tagged there are no other steps?

Yes. You are missing something. You keep assuming @winston79 had hit the switch to disable Unicode. Even to the extent of saying “obviously”.

This is not an obvious option to new users of Picard.

When the script was written @winston79 had not found the switch. So Picard just kept putting in Unicode.

AFTER asking in this thread I taught them about the switch. Only then did Picard get the ability to use ASCII and the script became obsolete.

You are seeing the world through your eyes. You are someone who is skilled in the use of Picard. You are forgetting the confusion the first time you picked the app up. :wink: There are solutions outside of the MB world that work well - Powershell\MP3TAG\etc.

To repeat my above comment from earlier - I am not saying Picard can’t fix the problem. But it can only fix it when you find (and understand) “Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII”. Most people in The RealWorld™ will not realise it is Unicode that is messing with their text. :grin:

1 Like

I’m not saying it’s obvious for new users, I’m addressing the current question.

Why use PowerShell when you can just run it through Picard again with the plugin (or setting) activated.

I am sorry I am being really unclear with my answer. I am sorry I am not making sense. The Powershell solution was BEFORE the switch in Picard turned Picard into a tool that could covert Unicode to ASCII.

Read the history in order. Powershell solution existed before the user knew of the Picard solution.

It is natural to revert to solutions that make sense to us when we cannot make sense of a new tool.

Once Picard had been changed to use ASCII due to the switch, then Powershell is not needed and Picard can do the same task.

Read the NINTH post and see what it is replying to. The ninth post tells you about the Powershell solution. And only in the ninth post does the OP learn of the ASCII switch. And once learning of the switch the user eventually uses Picard to complete the task

Also Powershell would be far faster and more efficient at renaming files than waiting for Picard to reload a large number of releases. Never dismiss external tools and knowledge. There is always more than one way to solve something. This is not dissing Picard.

Hi, @aerozol In a nutshell, I’m not good with picard or powershell, another forum had given me the code as I was trying something different then I found picard, then researching that I found I was able to use scripts to change the layout of the titles etc, as the updates went on I noticed this change hence why I asked here, I’m kind of learning every day and putting things together, also some of the tunes were not recognised by picard and I did try submitting some music but also sucked at that, just on a massive learning spree here which has really helped.

2 Likes

MASH THE TOOLS… always the best way.

Hack with the whole toolkit. Its why I love MP3TAG alongside Picard.

@winston79 Post the Powershell script to help educate and confuse people.

:hammer: :fire: :jlpicardwhistle: :beer:

That’s so crazy, I didn’t realise mp3tag and picard work along side each other, it’s gonna be a long night, what took me years is now taking me minutes and all I had to do was ask :joy::joy:

This is what I was using to change file names, it was a headache as I had to do one folder at a time as I couldn’t figure out how to work it with the recurse switch.

I asked this question 5 years ago and only just getting it now lol

get-childitem *.mp3 | ForEach { Move-Item -LiteralPath $.name $.name.Replace(“old”,“new”)}

2 Likes

I find Picard’s biggest plus is the database. Being able to update and change things based on newer data. And pull in all that artwork.

Others can also teach you some very complex scripting from within Picard to change filename patterns. The more you poke at it, the more customised it becomes to your exact needs. The scripting can get very clever.

There is another bonus of Picard - always someone around on the forum to work out a puzzle…

Personally I like the simplicity of MP3TAG for a quick change of bulk tags. Sometimes I just want to renumber a heap of MP3 files, insert some missing disc numbers or quickly make a new filename from current tags without updating the tags.

Everyone uses a toolbox in a different way. :smile:

The Powershell command is interesting to see as I still lean on DOS batch files… It has now been added to my “handy little fixes” box. :wrench:

2 Likes

I won’t be needing powershell anymore :joy:

After enough lessons on here, the multi-skilled Picard will also do your cooking and cleaning…

2 Likes