This feels like a newbie being stupid question, as it feels this ought to be easy but…
I’m trying to add a multi CD release. For the first CD, I go through lookup CD on picard, submit the CD to the site, go through the process to check it doesn’t match an existing release, then add release.
For subsequent CDs, it makes sense to me that I should be able to do Add Medium and autopopulate things with the correct number and length of tracks at this stage, together with the Disc IDs. But I can’t find a way of doing this. The only option seems to be to fill in the entire release, and then subsequently go through the CDs to link Disc IDs to the release individually. (Which is more tedious than it should be as you have to repeat the search each time: why can’t you just go straight to the release by ID?)
The documentation seems to imply that it ought to be possible though. One route is by loading CD stubs, but I cannot find any information on how to create them. The other seems to be by going via DiscIDs (or the TOC) which I have access to from Picard, for instance in the URL it passes to Picard when you look the second CD up. However, the DiscIDs available are only the one for the first CD or blank (you can’t enter one) and I can’t see how to get anything out of Picard that the manual entry tool can parse.
Please can someone let me know what I’m missing? Thanks.
The first thing that comes to mind is to add new releases for each medium, and then merge them after, which should be pretty straightforward.
Maybe someone has a better method or I’m missing something obvious as well?
re. improvements that seem obvious, MB isn’t a big commercial beast, a volunteer or one of a few staff have to put the time in, and there’s 4k + open tickets in the tracker
A tweak that would make the process easier is if the Search box on the Lookup CD page would accept a pasted MBID URL like so many other search boxes do.
Many other edit boxes throughout the database will accept and resolve a pasted URL. A good example is when adding artists. A feature that is a great time saver.
If this search edit box could be tweaked to also accept and process a URL it would make this so much simpler.
That 14 disk HitchHiker’s boxset took a long time to check the 14 disks as I kept having to manually type the album title into that search box and hunt a list 13 times…
The EAC lookup page does make this quicker as it is simpler to work with 14 separate web lookups than having to feed all 14 CDs back in to let Picard look them up.
Oh dear… that ticket is 2011… Can’t see boxsets ever wining the popularity contest for Ticket fixing in this age of digital media
You’re not alone with your sentiment when it comes to boxsets. The Kodi mediacentre software relies primarily on musicbrainz for identifiying albums in user collections and grabbing art. for them. That is one of my main motivations to keep adding stuff to musicbrainz so I can benefit when using Kodi.
The developers of the music part have added a “hack” to deal with boxsets, by extending the “RELEASETYPE” tag with the keyword “boxset”.That allows Kodi to present each disc in a boxset by its subtitle and with a unique cover. For more info, see https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=349695
It would be really great if Musicbrainz could add that keyword officially at some point!
@Jorgosch I’m also a fellow KODI user and it was the tagging of a boxset three years ago that first sent me over here to MB. I’ve been addicted ever since getting the whole of my collection into this MB database with proper scans. I didn’t realise how weird some of my music was
Notice that the KODI boxset feature can also work from the disc subtitles. Many boxset will have separate names for the discs which are correctly documented here at MB. Usually easy to add if they are missing - as long as it stays in the MB guidelines. That then gives KODI something to work with.
I’ve seen conversations come and go about boxsets and better defining them at MB, but they never seem to get to a solution and just run out of steam. Doesn’t seem to be enough interest.
What Black Eagle has created is a very neat solution using the data that is currently available from MB that can easily be tagged into the files and automatically spot that difference.
Just for the record, I’m known as HeresJohnny over there and we’ve probably read of each other. After I have tagged my files from Musicbrainz I usually customize them to suit my personal needs, without breaking the metainfo available from here.But we’re slightly OT now
Thanks for the help and info - gives me some good ways forward. (Gradually merging releases in seems like the best way of dealing with the bigger boxes I have, and might try and contribute over time.)
I’m glad to know about the pasted URL feature - that’ll save a lot of time.
If you are building a release up disc by disc it would be handy to leave a “work in progress” type not in the annotation. That stops someone from complaining that not all the discs are in the release or trying to “correct” it when you are part way through working on it.
