Hi,
I’m a total noob with Musicbrainz Picard. I’ve been using it for a while to tag my music, with some success, but I also have a lot of records that are not in the database. I’ve been encouraged to add these to the database, and I’ve (obviously) signed up and have read a lot of the information as to how to go about it.
I get to the section of adding a release where you enter the tracklist and it says you can copy and paste it from somewhere else. My “somewhere else” is either the filename itself, or the information tagged to the file (accessible with mp3tag). I already have all the titles, I don’t want to type it all in manually. I could cut and paste from the mp3tag tagger, but it has other information not just the track titles and I don’t know how to just extract the title and not the other stuff (such as path to the file on my computer).
Can anyone please give me some guidance as to how to copy the track information from the tags into musicbrainz without retyping it? thanks.
Try Picard with the Add Cluster As Release plugin installed.
Once installed, load the files into Picard and hit a cluster. Picard will try to cluster the files by album. Right click the cluster and select Plugins > Add Cluster As Release. Picard will open the MusicBrainz release editor in the browser with the tracklist prefilled.
Thanks, that helps. Is there a way to save when you are trying to enter the information so that you don’t lose everything? It’s telling me I’ve done something wrong, and I need to do some more reading to figure out what.
Musicbrainz (that’s the database isn’t it?), I think. It’s ok, it was telling me I had to put an artist for each track and I had to look up who is the “artist” for classical. There’s a lot to learn. I just wanted to park it and do it later, but I went through and did it all (hopefully correctly).
Thanks, those track titles just came from the cd itself, I didn’t type them in. I spent a lot of time having to put in the artist for each track, I ran out of puff. Do I need to take out the extra information and just leave the title?
Track titles don’t contain composer/s or performer/s.
But extra information like “excerpt” does remain.
Is this the album you have?
If yes, then there are differences between the track titles encoded into the CD and those on the rear cover art. I’ll ask others here which way to go.
Differences I’ve found (including diacritical marks):
1 La Réjouissance
2 Che farò senza Eurydice?
5 The Swan’s Dance: Allegro moderato
6 Baïlèro
11 Viens, Malika…Dôme epais le jasmin
14 Rhondo alla Turca
15 Vedi! Le Fosche
17 The Marriage of Figaro Overture
Thanks, I had not compared the cover to what was “sucked into the computer”, I’d assumed them to be consistent. I don’t know how to enter diacritical marks if they are required, something else to figure out.
It is certainly much more difficult entering a classical release than a “pop record”. Probably not a good choice for my first attempt at entering to the database. Thanks for your help
Characters with diacritical marks (which I used to call “accents” in those simple obvious days before I started adding releases on MB) are easy to copy and paste. You could use the ones above.
So that album art/cover art (which includes the rear tracklist) is the same as the album you have?
(Technically: If the album you have lacks the “double CD value” sticker on the front then there are 2 different releases. Once you’ve got this release all nice, adding another version of this release to the parent “release group” is very quick and trivial.
If you wanted to scan your album’s cover art and have better quality cover art in your tags then we could delete the coverart I’ve added. And put your nice cover art in its place. Then I would make another member of the release group and add the current coverart to that.)
EDIT: Sorry, I had drafted an earlier reply (in which I confirmed that it’s the same) and then lost it, when I rewrote it, I forgot to confirm that it’s the same cd…
Yes, it’s the same album/cover art. I don’t know about stickers on the plastic case, because I’ve been taking my cds out of the cases and putting them into this cabinet with sleeves (keeping the inserts, just not the cases).
As for scanning the cover, do I do that on the printer? (Are you sensing a theme of “I don’t know how”? :D) If I scan it from the printer, do I then have to resize it somehow (printer set to A4 paper)?
edit: The following assumes that you have a combined scanner/printer.
If you have only a plain printer then you can’t scan. (I spend a lot of time with people who find IT a complete mystery. I am in the habit of stating what, to many here, is very obvious. )
Here is https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Scan_Cover_Art
If it is too complex then scan the coverart as best you can and crop the images without cutting off any of the artwork. 1Mb or 2 MB images are fine. (Even bigger are good too.)
Compare the ones you make to the ones I’ve added from ebay by holding the physical cover art up next to your monitor.
If yours look closer to the physical cover art then upload them. https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Add_Cover_Art
(The booklet is coverart too. And very useful usually as they often have details like performers and recording dates in them.)
Thanks. Yes, I do have a multifunction printer that scans. I do have gimp (somewhere, not on the computer the printer’s attached to, probably, but I can install it.) I’ll check out the link properly later and see what I can do.
The booklet has a lot of information. It’s several pages.
Just one question about copyright. The sleeve is owned by the publisher, isn’t it? Are we allowed to copy them and put them online, without any “drama”?
The release has automatically been applied. Should I go through and amend the titles to take out the artist name? Should I change Le Nozze di Figaro to The Marriage of Figaro? Do I need to get those diacritical marks in there?
Yes to taking out artists names from track titles.
The style guidelines above give details about punctuation and extra title info.
The Style Guidelines point at using the most detailed tracklist that is part of the release.
From memory, ( I’m on a tiny screen here) that is the one with Marriage of Figaro title and diacritics.
Worse case you can copy diacritics from my post above.
I’ll ask others here which way to go.
Thanks for your help
)