Picard wiped out filenames of unknown recording

MusicBrainz Picard
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I was using Picard to add some extra tags on a directory of MP3 files. The particular album was not already in the MusicBrainz database, so I figured I’d submit it myself. I added in the catalog number and date to all the files (which already had the Title, Artist, Track#, and running time in the files tags, so I figured it would be OK to save them (I have the application set to correct file names).

It wiped out the filenames and replaced them with “_mp3 (##)” filenames, even though the tag information was already available. Now I need rto look for a command-line tool to read the tag info and do a rename on them (under Linux). EasyTag can’t do it without doing a rename anyway, just to get the .mp3 extensions back.

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What’s your file naming script and what settings do you have in Options > Renaming? The script.probably relies on some tags your files didn’t have.

With a proper naming script you can use Picard for that :wink:

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I have investigated and tested this a bit and have found both the cause for this and a possible solution for you.

The cause:
This happens if the filenaming script would result in an empty filename. I filed a bug at https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/PICARD-2219, we’ll get this fixed.

But the main cause here is really your renaming script. Obviously it does rely on some data your files don’t have. If you post the filenaming script we can get this sorted out.

Recovering your files

To recover your files please do the following:

  1. Disable “Move files” for now, to simplify things

  2. Make sure “Rename files is enabled”

  3. Copy and paste your current renaming file somewhere and replace it with the following:

    $set(_extension,$if2(%_extension%,.mp3))
%artist% - %title%

  4. Load all your affected MP3 files and save them again

I don’t know exactly how you want your files named, but just for the cause of restoring this the above script is very simple and only uses artist name and title, both of which you said are set in your files. It also assumes that all the affected files are MP3. If not, repeat the above for other file types, but change the extension in the script to what is needed.

That’s just to recover the files to something useful with extension. We can figure out how you want your files named exactly once you have posted your current file naming script and we figured out why it doesn’t work.

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