Then probably something has gotten corrupted here over time with all this testing of mine.
I now can do only one or two albums before I have to close and restart Picard again.
The first album always goes well, and the second (or sometimes third) will hang after the green arrow has count down to zero.
I think it’s easiest and best to do a clean install of Picard and the plugin. I think I’ll do that after 0.8.7 is released.
v0.8.7 now available here https://github.com/MetaTunes/picard-plugins/releases/tag/v0.8.7
I have attempted to fix any bugs I can replicate. If Picard seems to be hanging, please give it a few (10) minutes to resolve before assuming it is stuck. My test database of approx 2000 files takes just under an hour to process. The main constraint is the throttling of XML lookups by MB. Each work needs to be looked up to see if it has a parent. This will take at least one second. Then there is some time for pre- and post-lookup processing (when the app may appear to be hanging).
I have completely removed Picard, including ‘remove personal settings’, and (had to?) manually remove the roaming folder that still had some Picard files.
I clean installed Picard, then the plugin v0.8.7
But my issue remains.
After processing only a few albums, with the plugin active, Picard will hang.
After restarting Picard the same album will go smooth again. But a couple albums later it freezes again.
restart-repeat-restart-repeat
Let me know what you need from me in case you would like to investigate this.
If you are on github you can raise an issue at https://github.com/metabrainz/picard-plugins/issues and post a copy of your picard.ini file there, otherwise email it to me. Also, OS information would be useful. Plus, are the music files local or on a network drive?
Done that.
The music files are on a local drive.
The immediate answer is to make sure that “use cache” is turned on in the “works and parts” options. For a longer answer see https://github.com/metabrainz/picard-plugins/issues/134
1 Like
How can I switch off the Classical Extras plugin for a tagging a single release? I want to have the plugin help me when I’m tagging a classical-style release, but have it do nothing when the next release is a pop music release. I don’t see a “disable” switch for the plugin. I do see the plugin changing fields for some of my pop releases.
My workaround is to disable the Classical Extras plugin in Picard’s plugins preferences, but then I need to quit and restart Picard to make that effective.
Am I missing something? Or is a “disable” switch an enhancement request which I should log somewhere?
Try disabling the flags on the Artists and Work parts tabs - the ones at the top left that say “(MUST BE TICKED FOR THIS SECTION TO RUN)”
1 Like
And BTW it shouldn’t be necessary to restart Picard. If you turn the plugin off, vanilla Picard will run and then the plugin will turn back on again. - just tick or untick the box.
I don’t see any checkboxes which say “(MUST BE TICKED FOR THIS SECTION TO RUN)”. I’m looking in Picard… Preferences… Plugins… Classical Extras…, and within that window, the tabs “Artists” and “Works and parts”.
The “Artists” tab has a checkbox at the top left “[ ] Create extra artist metadata”. If I uncheck that, I no longer get the album renamed as “Composer Last Name(s): Album Name”. So, I guess that “Create extra artist metadata” checkbox does switch off some Artists-related functionality of Classical Extras. Are you saying it switches off all functionality mentioned on that tab? The UI doesn’t make that clear.
The “Works and parts” tab has a top, green, section with two checkboxes: “[ ] Include all work levels”, and “[ ] Use cache (if available)”. Neither of those communicate the meaning, “switch everything on this tab on or off” to me.
Picard gives the version number of the plugin as “0.8” in the list of plugins. I don’t know if I have the version “0.8.7” which you mention above, or an older version. This version is what Picard gave me when I clicked the “Update” button next to the Classical Extras entry in Picard’s list of plugins. I am using Picard 1.4.2 on Mac OS X.
OK I added the bit in capitals later - that is in 0.8.7
Turn off ‘Create extra artist metadata’ and 'Include all work levels’
I think you will find 0.8.7 better - see classical_extras.zip at https://github.com/MetaTunes/picard-plugins/releases/tag/v0.8.7
You should find plenty of explanantions as to what everything does in the readme at https://github.com/MetaTunes/picard-plugins/blob/1.0/plugins/classical_extras/Readme.md
EDIT: Install it by clicking “install plugin” and selecting the zip
Ah, I see, the “Update” button in Picard’s list of plugins does not have access to Classical Extras v0.8.7. I imagine you will update the plugin which Picard uses to update eventually. That sure will make updating easier.
Also, when I install a zip file with a different name than “classical extras.zip” into a copy of Picard which has an older version of the plugin named “classical extras.zip”, then the older version remained. This is probably a Picard bug. Why did the zip file have a different name? I added in the version number and date, so that I could keep that ZIP file different from the copies I have with older versions in them. The fix is to open the plugins folder in the Finder, quit Picard, delete the “classical extras.zip” file with old version, rename the file with the new version to “classical extras.zip”, and restart Picard.
I now see checkboxes with the message “(MUST BE TICKED FOR THIS SECTION TO RUN)”, in the Artists tab and the Works and parts tab.
I haven’t mention before: on my mac, having a high-resolution Retina display and running Mac OS X 10.11.6, the Plugins… Classical Extras… UIs are poorly laid out and partially hard to read.
On the Artists tab, the UI layout is slightly wider and about 40% taller than the space in the Picard window. This means I get horizontal scroll bars, with an X-windows rather than Mac appearance. Yet there is a margin around the UI layout, which wastes space. I would prefer it if the UI adapted itself to the available space so that it did not need a horizontal scroll bar, and the vertical scroll bar matched the host OS conventions.
There is tiny, illegible text in a few places: In the “Tag mapping” tab, in the peach-coloured section at the bottom which talks about “tag mapping”; and in the entirety of the “Help” section. Interestingly, the other text is reasonably-sized and legible. Is the tiny text perhaps being specified in pixel terms? The pixels on the mac’s Retina display are about half the size of pixels in most displays.
The Picard environment places some constraints, as does Qt Designer - the UI development tool, but if you can post a picture I’ll see what can be done to improve things.
Is there a possibility the other thing I mentioned could be improved on?:
When I have only one cd from a large box set, and it already contains all MB-id tags, the plugin will take a very long time also loading the information from all other cd’s that are not present.
That’s a tricky one, since it is Picard that is loading the whole box set (= the release) and Classical Extras just runs off the back of Picard. It may be possible to add a flag to “only run work parts if a file has been loaded”, but I’d like to fix the remaining bugs first. Meantime, if there is a release with just the individual CD (often the case), then you could re-match the files to that.
I’m sure you know what’s happening, but the reason I wondered is that if the album already has all the MB-id’s, Picard will then not load all other cd’s.
If I run the album through the plugin after Picard already wrote all MB-id’s, it will load all other cd’s.
But that might be related to different caching between Picard an the plugin?
After the plugin has ran once, with cache enabled it will go a lot faster the second time.
AFAIK Picard will load all the CDs using the MBIDs to get the metadata
That’s the idea 
Just a quick point on disabling the plugin. Much of the functionality can also be removed by disabling ‘use track relationships’ in the main options. By the same token, if the plugin does not seem to be working fully, check that option (and ‘use release relationships’)
Season’s greetings to all classical music fans. And for any “Classical Extras” users, Santa has delivered v0.8.8. This is intended to allow
- disabling of ‘use_cache’ across releases which may share works (previously, shared works left incomplete look-ups if use_cache was disabled) and
- works which might appear in their own right and also have arrangements.
The request to “prevent loading of all CDs in a box set, when only some files are present” is under consideration and may be incorporated in a final beta release.
The zip file for installation (classical_extras.zip) is at https://github.com/MetaTunes/picard-plugins/releases/tag/v0.8.8. As always, please read the readme if you get stuck - I have tried to make it fairly comprehensive - see https://github.com/MetaTunes/picard-plugins/blob/1.0/plugins/classical_extras/Readme.md
No more coding for a week at least, but I may pop into the community ‘discourse’ from time to time.
1 Like