I end up having to use “Scan” and it will find the file, or at least a version of it. (And that’s another thing, there are a LOT of missing Albums/songs in the database, most I’ve tried doesn’t find my actual song/album for very common stuff too, nothing exotic.)
I mean, I have in the Tags already the Title, Artist, Album, Date, and Length.
I’ve changed the “Album Artist” for these particular songs, for example to “90s Music” so I can find stuff easy in Windows Media Player.
Is that the problem? I mean, Lookup should find the songs with the other info also?
(p.s. I mentioned it in the other thread, but can we get a “Tool” to also search for the Album info, not just the track info?)
I know we have the “search bar” which can do that, but I would like a link as we have for Track Searching, easy and quick, don’t have to type out all the song info and then search.
Also, something else I noticed… Instead of “right-clicking” on the Cover Art in order to tell the program which Image we want to use, old or new, could we get a “button” instead for each image which also changes color or something so it’s easier to select which we want, as well we have some “indication” that we’ve selected that particular image to be saved?
Lookup for individual files does a search on MusicBrainz by the existing tags for track title, artist, releases, track no., total no. of tracks, duration and ISRC, depending what is set.
Most commonly you will likely have track title and artist set, maybe release.
Why it does not find something for your particular case cannot be answered without knowing what the existing tags are. Picard will also ignore matches if the similarity to the existing tags is low. You can try to lower the theshold on Options > Matching > “Minimal similarity for file lookups” to allow also less good matches.
You can use the cluster functionality to have Picard group files in what it thinks belongs onto the same album. I’d recommend this anyway if you are dealing with albums. There is a “Search for similar albums…” function for clusters, and also a lookup on clusters will do an album search instead of searching track by track.
Ya, as I mentioned, my mp3’s have the “main tags” included already in them (Title, Artist, Album, etc.) so I don’t know why the Lookup is missing so much. And I’m not talking about anything “unique”, they are ALL mainstream songs from the last 50 years.
Scan WILL however find essentially everything… The one problem I’m having with either one is there are SO MANY Albums missing from the database. I end up having to use what comes up, and even Track Lookup doesn’t often find me the album I’m needing.
Both of these things are happening ALL THE TIME, not just occassionally too as I’m going through my collection adding the info I want in them. In fact, it’s actually the “exception” to the rule to find the EXACT Album for the track I have. I’ve also gotten all these tracks from Spotify, so these are “mainstream” songs and albums with the correct Tags.
Ya, I’ve tried the Cluster thing, and it’s name is appropriate, it’s a cluster **** to be frank.
I just want a nice Right-Click “Album Lookup” for Albums as we have one for Tracks… It would make things much easier.
Hmm, what are some examples of common albums that are missing from MB, that you’re trying to tag? MB is missing heaps but I’m curious to know what the gap is that you’re dealing with. e.g. any genre in particular? Compilations?
It clusters based on your existing album tags. If they’re missing it applies some logic based off folders they’re in and others tags (not sure how exactly). Anyway you can’t have good existing album tags and have cluster go wrong so it’s being fed crap or something else is going on.
Cluster > Lookup on Cluster is the ONLY way I use Picard (unless I’m working with totally busted files/tags, then Scan) so if that’s not working for you I would take a closer look and see what’s going on before moving on
In conclusion, the issue was that I wasn’t following the proper process…
I needed to Cluster first, then Lookup, and then Scan if I needed to. Also, changing the particular Title/Release by Right-clicking and “Search Titles” or to see other Releases by Right-Clicking and going to “Other Versions”.
Picard Dev’s are looking to change the UI some to indicate the “process” more intuitively with mine and others’ input and help. My intuitiveness was thinking using Lookup or Scan alone were the process LOL, hence my problems.
