New Happy User: Last Few User Interface Queries {Solved}

MusicBrainz Picard
1

Hello,

I’ve loved using Picard to sort out my music collection, and am now sorting a DJ’s collection. FYI I’m an ex-Mp3tag user and ex-Windows.

But this is far far better software. Most things have made sense without even having to read the manual.

I’ve set his Picard suite not to do ANY scanning or recognition on file of folder or renaming until I’m ready to.

But when I select a folder that I know contains 22 mps, 13 appear in un-clustered (left panel) but only 8 appear modifiable (right panel). Is this purely as I understand that Picard is not designed as a general purpose tag editor?

It’s the use of the plugins and the editor that are still very very helpful
Taken me a couple of hours over a few days to tidy up what was taking him weeks. As he was manually doing individual files!?

  1. Why is this please no loading into Picard happening? I’d have thought I’d see all files selected on left. I feel like I’m not seeing something obvious due to my own prejudices/expectations

  2. Out of the ones it does see, why is only a subset on the right available to amend?

  3. Is there a way to change the view so that I don’t see a full album listing with only the tracks I have without using the ‘non album track’ plugin - once I load everything in and process all files with this and save it just loads as is. But still not all the files. I’m baffled as to why when it’s set to not scan anything a full album can appear on the right. This DJ collection is all single tracks.

  4. And semi-seperately, even when sorting my own collection and clicking save I couldn’t clearing see a save or processing progress bar? I can scroll down and watch the tick appear per file. But I’m looking to do a lot of files, and waiting and clicking close app is an inelegant solution. I left my personal collection running overnight so wasnt an issue. For this task I’ve got limited access to someone else kit.

I’ve done some help/manual seaches but I’m going around in loops.

Many thanks.

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2

A screenshot of what you’re seeing might be helpful. Sometimes if files seem to be lost, dragging everything back to “unclustered files” (from within Picard or from the file browser) can help sort it out.

3

Some Picard basics that may help (some you may know, but let’s cover the bases):

  • The left-hand panel in Picard is a holding zone for your local files.
  • The right-hand panel in Picard shows loaded albums/tracks from the MusicBrainz database.

Populating the right-hand panel with albums/tracks from the MusicBrainz database is usually done by:

  • Pressing ‘lookup’ on files loaded on the left (searches using tags/clusters)
  • Pressing ‘scan’ on files loaded on the left (searches for the audio fingerprint, last resort)
  • alternatively, right click the file > Lookup in Browser to manually search the database

The aim is to get your files on the left matched to the matching database items on the right, and then save them.

Once you have database items loaded on the right, you can drag and drop your files between albums, or back to the left, at will. In your example, try dragging the files from the right to the left, and vice versa.

Why some files may already be matched:

  • If you search for database items using scan or lookup, then the files that were matched (or deemed close enough) by the search will already have moved to their matching item on the right. Those database tracks have a green mark next to them.
  • If files already have MusicBrainz ID (MBID) tags saved to them, Picard will move them straight to the right panel, to their match.

So, either only some of your files were matched when you pressed scan or lookup, or only some of the files already had an MBID. Either way, they are all equally modifiable - just drag them to where you want :ok_hand:

If that doesn’t help then further details would be helpful!

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Thanks… I’m running around for work in week. May get time to play later in week and/or give screenshots.

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[Album] Picard Learning Curve..

Thanks for your patience. The explanations here have helped me see what it’s actually doing. Appreciated.

This link should work. I’m working on a test folder. I don’t want Picard to load as albums. As a workaround I’ve change the files it sees as ‘non album tracks’ so I don’t see all the tracks that aren’t there.

I thought I’d set it “NOT TO SCAN” anything while I fiddled around parsing some plug ins.

If this isn’t possible I’ll have to do a first parse on both found and unfound sides of the register to wipe that out.

I do need to verify artist/names and a few other things.

From what you’ve replied I just need to work out my order of operations

Ideally I want

“alternatively, right click the file > Lookup in Browser to manually search the database” To be the final action when I’m ready.

6

Maybe those files already have MBIDs in them? Options \ General \ TICK “Ignore MBIDs when loading new files”.

And you can embed images in this forum without using Imgur. Just paste them direct into your post.

Also if you are just tagging a random heap of files, you may want to adjust Options\Metadata\Preferred Releases to match Album\Single\EP higher, and Compilations Lower. Then you are more likely to get the source album\single and not some odd VA compilation

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As IvanDobsky says, ticking ‘ignore MBIDs’ will stop any tracks loading on the right/matching to database items as soon a you add them.

But for the sake of getting to grips with Picard, I would leave it for now. And drag-select them all and pull them to the left with your mouse. Then you can click ‘cluster’ again. Then hit delete on the remaining unmatched database items on the right.

Pulling things back and forth is such a core part of Picard, so have a play!

Note: you can’t break anything unless you hit ‘save’ so have at it! When saving do it on a backup of your music :+1:

8

I will give both of those a go. I’m always learning

JOY! “ignore MDIB” was what I needed

Thanks for the advice!

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