Is there any way to save your progress?

MusicBrainz Picard
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I have about 65GB of music that I’m trying to reorganize. Each time I start Picard, I have to add my source folders and then wait for all of the files to be scanned. It takes about 30-40 minutes to scan all of the tracks.

Is there any way to avoid having to re-add the source folders and scan all of the tracks every time I run the program? In other words, I’d like to be able to save the overall state of the program, quit, and then be able to resume my work later on.

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There’s no way to save progress, sorry. Generally speaking, Picard isn’t set up to “manage” a library in that kind of way.

For a large music collection it’s recommended to drop in sections at a time. If you care about details (like matching to the correct album versions) you will want to manually check results anyway, which is best approached in chunks.

P.S. here’s a few unasked-for tips :smiley:

  • If you’re making mass changes, please make a copy of your music collection first
  • If you have files with OK tags and grouped into albums, use the “cluster + lookup” workflow, with scan only as a backup
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There are many threads like this with other hints and working processes in. To add to @aerozol’s notes, one efficient way to work is have an “unsorted” folder. Then move stuff to a “sorted” folder. This way you can work in smaller batches which are easier to check.

You can’t trust Picard to get everything right. A human check is needed as you go along.

Also to speed you up, do a first pass to get the tags correct. Don’t download any artwork at this time. Once everything tagged and sorted into correct albums, do a later pass for the artwork.

And I repeat the important - make a full backup before you start.

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You might want to have a look at my SongKong Tagger instead.

It is designed for processing large music collections without interaction, it processes folders as it loads them so there is no lengthly initial wait. And It has numerous checks in place to ensure matches are good matches and albums canot be split up, then at the end it create a status report showing all details of changes made. And all changes are also stored in a database so at a later date if you do find an issue you can undo changes made to folder(s) even after a reboot.,

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That is a feature I like the sound of. The “I messed up, now untangle it” option. Neat.

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Thanks, this and some other features that ensure integrity of your collection are demonstrated in this video

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Thanks to all who replied with suggestions. A lot of my issues stem from simply not being familiar with the software. Since I post, I’ve become a lot more adept at using it effectively.

As suggested, working in “chunks” seems to be the best way to use the software. That eliminates the issue with long wait times while the software downloads information. Specifically, I’m mostly working with single albums or artists at a a time.

I doubt my situation is unique so I’ll add a few tips of my own. To set the stage, my digital music collection has become scattered over the last couple of decades. I put my trust in a few other pieces of software aimed at eliminating duplicates, fixing my tags, and just helping with overall organization of my files. Some of these software packages did a lot of damage to my collection, shuffling tracks to the wrong album, isolating single artist compilations into folders away from the main artist folder (Thanks iTunes!), or even nuking tracks with similar titles. I made a few backups here and there, but none of them are complete.

So I’ve been using Picard with a couple of other pieces of software: Everything (a file searching utility), DupeGuru (if it’s not obvious from the name it finds duplicate files), and RED (Remove Empty Directories)

At this point, I have a bunch of folders from old hard drives, each of which contains a copy of my collection form some point in time. If I was able to start over, I’d use DupeGuru to scan all of the folders for exact duplicates, with my “current” collection set as a reference. Then I’d have DupeGuru remove all non-reference duplicates.

Next, I’d use RED to remove all the empty folders left behind form the process, just to make it a little easier to navigate and see what’s left over.

At that point I’d fire up Picard, and start working one artist or album at a time. I’d drag the artist or album from my current/reference into the program and let it do it’s thing. After handling any unclustered files, I’d start working my way through the missing tracks.

This is where Everything comes in. Windows file search is awful. It often fails to find files that exist and is useless for searching multiple large folders. Everything can take up to a minute or so to build it’s database (it catalogs the entire file system) but once it’s built, search are blazing fast. I go through the missing tracks one by one, typing all or part of the song title in Everything’s search bar. If it exists in any of the “backup” folders, it will show up. If I find a missing track I can drag it directly into picard from the Everything interface.

Finally, I save the completed album to a new folder (I just called it “MusicFinal”. The destination is set in Picard Options under File Naming, Destination Directory.)

Anyway, thanks again for all the help. If anyone has any questions about the other tools I’m using, feel free to ask.

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