Picard 2.3: Option to generate fingerprints automatically (to submit it)?

I like the newest version of Picard very much! Great work! :+1: :heart_eyes:

Is there any option to automatically “Generate AcoustID Fingerprints”?
I mean, the same as it works now on a right mouse click on the right side and press “Generate AcoustID Fingerprints” or press CTRL + ALT + F?

Could someone explain, why this process doesn’t activate the “Submit AcoustIDs” automatically:
a) Drag & Drop an untagged album to the left “Unclustered Files” side in Picard
b) Press the “Scan”-Button (which IMHO has to generate the AcoustID fingerprint anyway?)
c) Realize, that this step doesn’t find any matching track, aka “does nothing”.
d) Press the “Cluster”-Button
e) Press the “Lookup”-Button
f) See that - after some seconds - a perfectly matching album appears on the right side with a yellow CD icon in front of the Album name. Every track has a green square in front of the track title.

Why do I have to press CTRL + ALT + F to get the “Submit AcoustIDs”-Button activated?

Generate AcoustID Fingerprint
The above AniGif doesn’t show the real time used! It is shortened to show only the relevant things.

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No, there is no option for this yet. But I see how this can be useful. I added PICARD-1749 for this.

Correct, yes. And if you had used “generate fingerprints” before the scan button will use this already generated fingerprint to speed things up a bit.

You should not need to do this, and in my tests this works as expected. But I have one suspicion for a case that might not work. Can you check the following:

  1. Does it make a difference if you enable "Options > Fingerprinting > Ignore existing AcoustID fingerprints?
  2. Do your files have an “AcoustID Fingerprint” (acoustid_fingerprint) tag set? Note that this is different from the normal “AcoustID” (acoustid_id) tag.

If this tag is present Picard would by default use the fingerprint there instead of calculating it. And in this specific case the fingerprint does not get added to the fingerprint submission (that’s a bug, I’ll fix it). But I would kind of be surprised if this was the case here, because Picard does not write this tag and AFAIK the official AcoustID tools (fpcalc, AcoustID Fingerprinter) don’t write it either. But there could be other tools writing it :man_shrugging:

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In addition please enable the “Fingerprint status” column (right click the header fields and select this column) to both panes. It helps us identify if the fingerprint is present or not. A grey fingerprint icon means Picard has the fingerprint calculated, a red one means it is ready for submission.

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beets writes it to files (if the appropriate plugin is enabled) at least.

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  1. No, it doesn’t make a difference in my case.
  2. Yes, my files have an “AcoustID Fingerprint” ( acoustid_fingerprint ) tag set.
    (It will be calculated with the official fpcalc.exe and inserted by my own mp3 command line tagger. The same is true for the tag Acoustid Duration, as you can see on the new AniGif.

I’m aware that @lukz recommend to not write this data into the file itself, because it can be regenerated easily. But IMHO, if you use this data for a huge amount of files, every second you can save is very welcome. :innocent:

I hope you can see the missing information (including the “Fingerprint status” column) from this second AniGif. I have uploaded the file to a 3rd-party-hoster for better quality.


For the record: This is not the same album as in the first example.

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Thanks for confirming. I have the necessary changes to support this already up for review, will be in a 2.3.1 release.

I agree. I’m considering making this an option in Picard to write this tag. Would be off by default, but could be enabled. Could be especially useful in combination with the option to calculate the fingerprint on load, that way it is only done once.

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Fantastic! Just let me know if I can help doing some tests with a beta-version.

+1
This would optimize the acoustic fingerprint handling even more.

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Yes, you could test the current build. I have uploaded the portable version to:

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/artifacts.picard.uploadedlobster.com/MusicBrainz-Picard-2.3.0.final0%2B6982.12f1452c.20200220073034.exe

This version should properly use the fingerprint from the tags. In your specific case this should even mean you don’t need to use generate fingerprints at all, as the fingerprints will be already loaded from the files when you add them. Once you match one of those files to a recording on the right submitting the fingerprints should be immediately enabled.

What is not implemented yet is an option to calculate the fingerprints automatically on file add. But I would like to get a 2.3.1 release with fixes out first without requiring changes to translation files.

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This beta portable version works exactly as expected. It even speeds up the process noticeable. Thanks again for this simplification and speed gain.

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