Newbe asking for help to work with plug in Classical Extra

MusicBrainz Picard
1

Good afternoon
@MetaTunes: It’s really a fantastic helpful plug-in - Thanks for all the work!

I try to configure the plug-in “Classical Extra”. And I do have some questions:
Works and parts
It is possible to define different tags for the content "Tags for top-level (canonical) work (for capable library managers). The default tags are [top_work], [style], [grouping]. As far as I understand this tags get the same value? I guess there are three different tags as the names used (“top_work”, “style” and “grouping”) cover the most used software of library managers? OR there is another reason - which I overlooked - to define three tags with the same (?) value?

Genre etc.
I tried to use [style] as name for the sub-genre tag. Later I switched back to [sub_genre]. I failed to populate the tag. Even if I change the “allowed genres (filter)” for Sub-genres to make sure the work-type is allowed - I fail to generate the sub-genre tag.
(As JRiver MediaCenter has a default library field “style” as a field for sub-genre I try changed the name to match MeciaCenter.)
Any suggestions why I failed to populate the sub-genre tag? Any suggestions how I could find the mistake?

A more general question
I guess the plug in might have unwanted effects on non-classical files. Do I have to “switch off” the plug in for non-classical files or is there some kind of “internal” procedure to make sure the plug-in does only process classical files?

---- some information on my workflow / files

  • working with FLAC files - some .iso (but that’s not relevant here I guess)
  • Picard 2.5.6, MacOS
  • JRiver MediaCenter as Library software (and Player software)
2

Hi @henning65. Sorry for the delayed response (maybe an admin could move this to the Classical Extras thread).

Absolutely - whatever suits your music system best. IIRC, style and grouping were there for the benefit of iTunes (which I no longer use) and for certain FLAC->mp3 conversions. The system is deliberately flexible for you to integrate it as well as you can. You can see how I do my integration at https://music.highmossergate.co.uk/
I don’t have JRiver, so can’t advise on that.

Perhaps you could post an image of your genres tab?

I originally thought that too, but in fact I haven’t found it an issue in practice. If you do find it causes problems, you can try turning off the part that is causing problems (e.g. the works and parts tab), using a different config for non-classical, or just disabling the plugin. Another alternative might be to use some scripts which operate after the plugin. But I suggest you wait and see if you get problems first.