How to see Picard's "Total Disks" tag in MP3Tag?

Hi,

Does anyone know how to see Picard’s “Total Disks” tag in MP3Tag?

You can press ALT-T in Mp3tag on your selected tracks to show (nearly) all tags.

“Total Discs” is called DISCNUMBER in Mp3tag.

(BTW: Mp3tag shows the Picard «Disc number» and «Total Discs» combined in one value as “1/2”)

If you look at Appendix B: Tag Mapping — MusicBrainz Picard v2.11.0rc1 documentation you’ll see that ID3(v2) (and APE(v2) and iTunes MP4) tags, in fact, only have one value for storing both the current disk and the number of total disks: TPOS. So ID3 tagged files do not have a way to separate out the two natively, which is why both values get stored in the same tag.

There was some more discussion about this (though for track numbers) in another topic:

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Thank you for your reply.

I have weird behavior in MP3Tag.

If Picard has Total Discs tag written, MP3Tag will not display the track number in the format disc_number/total_discs, though sometimes it does, maybe since it was tagged that way in MP3Tag in the first place, I’m not sure).
If I tag in MP3Tag the disc number in the format disc_number/total_discs Picard sees the total_discs value.

Here is when it gets really weird. I use a script in MP3Tag to rename the files, so if total discs is greater than 1 to rename the file (disc number)(track number) - title (e.g. “112 - song_name.mp3”), and if there’s only one disc to rename it as (track number) - title (e.g. “12 - song_name.mp3”)

Having Picard set total discs value doesn’t guaranty it will work, having it tagged in MP3Tag in the format disc_number/total_discs doesn’t guaranty success as well.

Sometimes it works (in MP3Tag) even if the disc number tag is in the format disc_number without total_discs, sometimes it fails when it is tagged in the format disc_number/total_discs.

I couldn’t find any logic there.

MP3Tag doesn’t have TPOS.

I don’t know how to rename in Picard in that way, esp. since it is automatic so in case of various artists album I will want to add the artist name, but I’m not familiar with the script in Picard.

Hope I was clear :slight_smile:

@Clonimus74 I’m not sure if you are mixing different things:
a) A single track has tracknumber, like 1
b) Multiple tracks together sums up to the total track numbers, like 12
So your tracks get the number 1/12, 2/12/, 3/12 to 12/12

c) A single disc has the discnumber 1
d) A release with multiple discs sums up to the total of discnumbers, like 2 for a “double album”
So your discs get the number 1/2 and 2/2

If you want to rename your tracks (in Mp3tag), you can use the tracknumber and discnumber from your ID3tags OR you use a part of the filename. In your example the first “1” from “112”.

Which one do you like to use?

Mp3tag don’t show the official tag name like TPOS. Mp3tag - and many other software - map this cryptic abbreviations to a more readable description like “DISCNUMBER” (or “Total Discs” in Picard).

TPOS is the abbreviation for ‘Part Of a Set’. You will find all the official abbreviations here.

Yeah, that part is clear.

For me a single disc has discnumber 1/1
A release with multiple discs has 1/2 & 2/2 as you specified in your example, just as I wrote before.

for release with single disc , track number 2 will be named “02 - song_name.mp3”
for release with multiple discs, track number 2 will be named “102 - song_name.mp3” when it is disc number 1 and so on.
in the case of various artists the above examples will be “02 - song_name - artist.mp3” & “102 - song_name - artist.mp3” respectively.

As I said MP3 doesn’t always recognizes the release has more than 1 disc even if the disc number is tagged 1/2.
Oddly enough it sometimes recognizes it when the disc number was tagged just “2” (tagging was done by Picard and I’m not sure why sometimes it is not displayed in MP3Tag as 2/2 while Picard shows “Total Discs” = 2

Unfortunately, I don’t have a clue why this «sometimes» doesn’t work for you.

May I ask you, how do you rename the song number 100 from a “Top 100” collection?
And how do you rename the songs number 5 and 12 from disc number 23?

That would be “9100 - song name.mp3” (if, say, it was on CD #9)
Following that logic, song number one would be “1001 - song name.mp3”

“2305 - song name.mp3”
“2312 - song name.mp3”
ex
and so in disc #1 song 5 would be:
“0105 - song name.mp3”

for these variations I use MP3Tag and not Picard, though a scheme where the naming would be in the form:
“disc number-track number song name” e.g “01-05 song name.mp3” would be easier to script in Picard

Maybe this thread can help you with the Picard renaming script:

and you can find many useful scripts here:

Thank you, I will look into it.

For all those interested in using MP3Tag, here is my solution:

$ifgreater($cutLeft(%discnumber%,$strchr(%discnumber%,/)),1,$ifgreater($cutLeft(%discnumber%,$strchr(%discnumber%,/)),9,$num(%discnumber%,2)$num(%track%,2) - %title%,$num(%discnumber%,1)$num(%track%,2) - %title%),$num(%track%,2) - %title%)

The above requires the discnumber to be in the format discnumber/totaldiscs, the naming will be as such:

  • if there’s one cd in the release: “[track number] - [song name].mp3” e.g. “05 - song name.mp3”
  • if there are 2-9 cds in the release, one digit to discnumber, two digits to track number: “[discnumber][track number] - song name.mp3” e.g. “105 - song name.mp3” for track #5 in CD #1
  • if there are 10 or more (assuming no more than 99) cds in the release, two digit to discnumber, two digits to track number: “[discnumber][track number] - song name.mp3” e.g. “0105 - song name.mp3” for track #5 in CD #1
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