How to set directories and name files for vinyl albums (and technically cassettes too) to include the album sides and correct vinyl numbering?

MusicBrainz Picard
,
1

Most of my music collection is CDs, second would be digital albums. But I do have a few vinyl records that have been digitised.

I am using a heavily customised version of @rdswift ‘s file naming script and can handle CDs just fine.

My directory structure is essentially /Artist/Album/Disc no. (if there is one)/01. File Name.flac

I understand that Picard will treat vinyl track numbers numerically the same (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4 instead of A1, A2, A3, A4, etc.) for compatibility and that’s all fine. But I want to structure the directory and file names the same as the record:

e.g. /Artist/Album/Side A/A1. File Name.flac
/Artist/Album/Side A/A2. File Name.flac
/Artist/Album/Side B/B1. File Name.flac

etc.

The part of the script that handles this for CDs is unchanged from this:

https://github.com/rdswift/picard-scripts/blob/master/naming_scripts/Bob_Swift/Bob%20Swift’s%20Naming%20Script.pts

But I have no idea how to do the same thing for vinyl :confused: Or if it’s even possible to do via a naming script. Also happy to install a plugin if it will get me this functionality.

Help much appreciated :folded_hands:

2

I don’t have any specific ideas, but I’m sure you probably need %_musicbrainz_tracknumber%, as that gives you the track numbers as entered in MusicBrainz

3 Likes
3

Thank you! That put me on the right track (no pun intended!)

In case this helps anyone else, I first created a variable to check whether something is vinyl and then to set the variable to “Side” (as in Side A or Side B, etc.,) or to “Disc” for everything else.

$noop(
# Change disc text depending on whether something is a Disc or
# Vinyl album.
)
$if($find(%media%,Vinyl),$set(_MediumText,Side),
    $set(_MediumText,Disc)
    )

You don’t have to call it “_MediumText” - call it whatever you want. I just wanted vinyl albums to have a “Side X” directory and CD’s to have a “Disc X” directory.

I then changed this

$set(_nDNum,$if($gt(%_nTotalDiscs%,1),%_PaddedDiscNum%,))

to

$if($in(%media%,Vinyl),$set(_nDNum,$left(%_musicbrainz_tracknumber%,1)),
$set(_nDNum,$if($gt(%_nTotalDiscs%,1),%_PaddedDiscNum%,))
    )

And changed this

$set(_nTNum,$if(%_nDNum%,%_nDNum%-)$if(%_PaddedTrackNum%,%_PaddedTrackNum%. ))

to

$if($in(%media%,Vinyl),$set(_nTNum,%_musicbrainz_tracknumber%. ),
    $set(_nTNum,$if(%_nDNum%,%_nDNum%-)$if(%_PaddedTrackNum%,%_PaddedTrackNum%. ))
    )

The path (in my modified script) looks like this:

$set(_nFilePath,%_cArtistAlbums%/$if(%_aNoArtistSort%,%_vAllAlbumArtists%,%_vAllAlbumArtistsPrimarySort%)/%_nYear% • %_vAlbumTitleAddInfo%$if(%_nDNum%,/%_MediumText% %_nDNum%))

And the file name is like this:

$if($eq(%_isAlbumType%,Standard),$set(_nFileName,%_vPrimaryAlbumArtist% - %_vAlbumTitle% %_nYear% - %_nTNum%%_vTrackTitleAddInfo%%_nFeat%))

Hopefully using the original script linked in my first post gives folks enough to go on if they want to use this sorting for themselves. I’m only a few days new at this so I would imagine there are better/more efficient ways of doing this but this is what I have that works lol :slight_smile:

2 Likes
4

As an historical side note, most commercial music formats since 78s were first produced had multiple sides:

  • 78s
  • 45s
  • LPs
  • Cassettes
  • 8-track (though it appears that these may NOT have labelled each track separately).
  • etc.

With the exception of Edison’s wax cylinders, it was only when CDs were introduced that we switched (back) to not needing to number tracks with “sides”.

And there were also, of course, a few vinyl pressings that had two or more tracks on the same side wound inside one-another - so-called multi-sided records - so it was pot luck which track the needle actually dropped into. An example of this is The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief where the B-side has two grooves, with musicbrainz track names of e.g. B3#1 & B3##2. A more extreme example is Mad Magazine’s It’s a Super-Spectacular Day which had 8 grooves on a single-sided flexi-disc each of which started the same but finished differently each (confusingly) named on Musicbrainz as track A.

8-track releases came in various formats: 8x mono, 4x stereo, 2x quadrophonic, and looking at From Elvis in Memphis as a single examples, the cover art shows that there were a handful of songs per 2x quadrophonic track with the tracks numbered 1 & 2, however the musicbrainz record (incorrectly?) shows different songs numbered sequentially rather than by 8-track number.

So, if you are checking for specific types of media which have sides then the algorithm probably needs to check for various media types, and check for the format of the musicbranz track number before deciding how to name the file.

4 Likes