To extract Artist and Title from the file name

MusicBrainz Picard
1

I am new; only an hour into this software. I have tried to read the help documentation. However, there is a lot. I want to cut to the chase.

This is the situation. I have thousands of MP3 files with the filename format:
Artist - Title.mp3, a space, hyphen, and space separating the two. However, many of them have empty Artist and/or Title fields. All I want to do is to pull in the Artist name from the first part of the filename to the Artist field and likewise, the Title. Nothing more, nothing less. I got as far as Tools | Scan, but I am not sure what exactly this accomplished. Also, How do I save ALL files after they have been processed? Just simple, concise instructions would be most appreciated. I am using ver. 2.4.1 on Windows 10.

Thanks.

Harry
http://harry.cckerala.com

2

First off: As you are new to Picard make sure you have a backup of your files. Also first try the following with a few files to see if it does what you want and to get used to the procedure.

If all you want is getting the artist and title tag from the filename, then select the files loaded into Picard and use the “Tags from Filenames” tool. You’ll need to select or enter an appropriate pattern. In your case %artist% - %title% should do. There is a preview showing the result. Afterwards check the tags by selecting a file and look for the artist and title tags.

If this worked you want to save the files. First check you have “Save tags to files” enabled. You likely want to disable “Move files” and "Rename " files for now to keep your existing names and folders. Then select all files and hit Save.

If you want to go deeper:

The Lookup and Scan tools are for looking up metadata for your files on MusicBrainz. This is the core functionality of Picard. You’d normally use lookup first unless your existing metadata is really bad or lookup gives no results. Then try Scan, which analysis the actual audio of the files to identify them.

You can also configure Picard to rename your files and sort them into folders based on the tags.

Take a look at the usage documentation for details:

http://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/en/usage/using.html

4 Likes
3

Thank you very much for your detailed instructions. Let me try that.

1 Like
4

Works beautifully. THANKS!

1 Like