Is picard re-asking all songs even if they have a AcoustID
Where can I setup to leave the songs alone witch have a AcoustID ?
I am not entirely sure what you mean. What exactly do you want to do with your files and what should Picard not do if they have an AcoustID tag?
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Picard should do nothing if there is a AcoustID tag
Because this song has been taged already.
The default behavior of Picard is to re-tag the songs … this should not be.
Just to be more concrete on what you expect: So if you have a file with an acoustId tag on the left pane, where untagged files are, and you select this file and press Lookup, then you expect Picard to do nothing and keep the file on the left?
I don’t think this is what should be expected. If you do a lookup on untagged files the usual expectation is that Picard does search for matching files. Also an AcoustId alone is an insufficient identifier for full tagging a file with e.g. complete information on the release.
Once you have tagged a file with Picard it will write the appropriate MusicBrainz IDs for the recording, release and release group to the files. These allow Picard to re-match the files to the proper release. If you load such tagged files Picard will by default automatically move the files to the right pane (matched files) and load the corresponding release.
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not quite.
just to not fetch again the data. because a acoustID is a sign it was tagged.
maybe with another tool, or somehow.
If I want the file to be re-tagged I can easily mass-delete with one click all old tags from my whole drive.
following situation
I have a folder with music from a author and after some years I add missing files.
I do not want to re-tagg the old files…
If I want to re-tagg I right click the folder in foobar2000 and delete all tags or just one.
We are a family with 5 persons who have access to the music folder on the samba share.
And I have tonnes of folders and I add 3 songs my son add another 3 and my wife add one and then I come and supply the whole folder to picard, then picard should determine the new files and just submit these to music-brains.
you have less traffic
I just the files tagged that should.
Please excuse my poor English, I am a foreigner.
Ok, I’m still not 100% sure how exactly you use this right now, but I assume you are doing something along the following lines: You add some files to Picard and they show up on the left pane. Then you use either Lookup or Scan on those files. Your expected behavior is that Picard should then do the Lookup or Scan on the files (and move them to the right pane) except for those files that have the acoustid tag set, those should stay on the left. Is this about right?
I think this behavior is problematic for several reasons. Picard has this concept of the two panes, the left one (or middle one, if you also count the file browser one can enable on the very left) is holding your untagged (not tagged with MusicBrainz metadata) files. The right pane holds files that have been matched to corresponding MusicBrainz metadata.
Now you proposal means that Picard should keep some files you consider “tagged” based on the existence of some (rather arbitrary) tag in the list of untagged files even if Picard is explicitly asked (via Lookup or Scan button) to do a lookup on them. The problems I see with this:
- The user expects an action like Lookup or Scan to be performed
- Having files considered “tagged” stay in the untagged list is confusing at least
- It is unclear whether a file stays on the left because there was no match found or because Picard did not even try to match it
- The AcoustID is a rather arbitrary identifier and cannot be universally used to consider a file tagged. Likewise you could say to consider it tagged if it has a barcode tag.
- The assumption that the user never wants to update the metadata in a file just because it has the AcoustID tag set is probably wrong. Many users use Picard also to update tags in their already tagged collection.
May I propose an alternative workflow, that actually makes use of Picard features and UI concept:
- Tag the files in question once against proper MusicBrainz data, so the files have the MusicBrainz recording and release IDs set
- When you load the files into Picard it will automatically move them to the right pane of matched files (make sure to not enable “Ignore MBIDs when loading new files”)
- If the there are not metadata changes to files loaded on the right Picard will indicate this with green check marks.
- You can clear up the list on the right easily using the “Remove Perfect Albums” plugins
- If you see some tags are causing the files to be shown as changed (no checkmarks) but you don’t care about these tags you can add them to the list of “Tags to ignore for comparison” in Options > Advanced (requires Picard 2.3)
That way your actually untagged files are on the left “untagged files” pane, and the tagged files are on the right pane and you can easily distinguish between the files you still need to work on and those that are already complete.
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I’ve only quick-read the thread, but this is the main question I have for now:
Why would you be loading tracks into Picard if you are not interested in having Picard checking them for new and updated tagging content in the first place?
What am I missing here?
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I may be wrong, but I think the OP has a case where untagged files are being stored in directories with already tagged files, so they end up (periodically) throwing the entire directory to Picard to sort out for them.
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Huh? They end up in Picard automatically?
Is there some mechanism for that?
Nope. I wasn’t clear. What I meant was that periodically the OP loads the entire directory (containing both tagged and untagged files) into Picard in the hopes that Picard will ignore everything that has already been tagged. Actually tagged is a misnomer in this case. The files have not been tagged with MusicBrainz information, but have had an AcoustID signature stored in a tag. I believe that the OP wants Picard to ignore any file that has the AcoustID tag set.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. (sorry; me and a saturday night 
So the OP is not interested in having his files that happen to have an AcoustID tag present being checked, and possibly updated with newly available tagging content from the database?
I don’t believe so. I believe that all they want is for Picard to find any file that does not have an AcoustID tag set, calculate the AcoustID, look up some basic information for the recording, and store the AcoustID tag to the file. At one point they talked about having Picard submit the “new” files (those without existing AcoustID tags?) to MusicBrainz, but I think they meant lookup rather than submit.
correct. I do not keep un-tagged files separate from tagged files.
because I keep them in the album folders where they are part off.
And it is a work I like to be done by picard to discern what to tag and what not.
And I think that the NOT presence of a AcoustID should be the trigger to submit the file …
Yes, I have a Music Folder on my samba share and there are folders like
AUTHOR >> ALBUM >> ARTIST -TITLE
When I get a missing song I place it into the folder where it belongs.
Sometimes, like once per month or every 2 month I want to submit the whole music folder to PICARD and Picard should search titles that are not tagged and tagg them. And leave tagged files alone.
As you can imagine the great question is “When is a title properly tagged?”
And my idea was: “when it has a AcoustID tag”.
or another tag that is widely used. Because I was thinking that the presence of such a tagg is the result of tagging.
then I just drop the whole folder into Picard and go sleep 
A file that has an AcoustID tag may well have been tagged a year ago and by now have updated information in MusicBrainz’ database that Picard will retrieve and update for you.
Picard is for tagging your files, AND for keeping your files updated.
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From a Picard perspective that is if you have the MusicBrainz IDs written to the files. I suggest you try the workflow I outlined above, then you will see how Picard handles that.
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