Why isn’t it possible to tell Picard that I only want the original album, no matter what?

It still refuses to find anything, but collections (almost). Why isn’t it possible to tell Picard that I only want the original album, no matter what? It knows it already, since it has found the song, and thus know the artist and the name of the song. Doing this manually takes so much time (at least when you’ve downloaded torrents with thousand of songs to sort trough) that it’s a complete turn off. :frowning:

Earlier thread for reference:

I can’t really tell what the problem is, as there’s little detail given. Seems like a lot of it would have been covered in that other thread.

Suffice to say that a ‘no compilations at all’ option has not been added to Picard since. I wonder if this would be a possibility or if there’s a technical reason there’s no way to fully disable it?

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How have you set your preferred release types? Do you use Lookup or Scan?

Since Picard 2.3.1 if you move the slider for a preferred release type completely to the left (set it to zero) then this release type will be ignored.

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Also I just noticed your files all have no artist tag (and probably also no title tag). That definitely affects the search results if you use Lookup.

But your files all follow the same naming scheme it seems. Try using “Tags from Filenames” to create artist and title tags. See Generating tags from file names — MusicBrainz Picard v2.8.1 documentation

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This thread’s title isn’t giving any information about what it is about, plus it suggests to forum readers Picard didn’t improve over (an undefined) time, and such statement is almost insulting for people that are building Picard since 20+ years.

As said above, the feature you asked in January 2020 ( Is there a way to deny MusicBrainz Picard the ability to put anything, and I mean anything, into a compilation album?) was added in 2.3.1, released in February 2020 (Picard 2.3.1 released – MetaBrainz Blog PICARD-1771).

If I understand correctly, you complain about a free and open source application using free collaborative open data not auto-taggging thousands of (likely illegally downloaded) random tracks that don’t even have basic metadata correct.

Our community and especially people answering here are tagging thousands of files (sometimes much more) and all know tagging (and all what it implies) isn’t an easy task, and takes a lot of time. Building a database containing needed information too.

So if “Doing this manually takes so much time (at least when you’ve downloaded torrents with thousand of songs to sort trough) that it’s a complete turn off.” may be you should just download less stuff, buy your music to actually support artists and to get decent basic metadata, and lessen your expectations regarding tagging applications.

Tagging audio files, especially if badly sourced, with incorrect or missing basic metadata or even audio, is taking time.
If you rely on Acoustid, even if AcoustID is associated with MB recording, Picard cannot know from which release the track is coming from, if there are multiple releases containing this recording.
This is why Picard will let you chose whichever release you want, among existing ones.
If the release you think the track comes from doesn’t exist isn’t yet in the database you’ll have to add it (and this will take time too, a lot). This is what was said in Is there a way to deny MusicBrainz Picard the ability to put anything, and I mean anything, into a compilation album? - #17 by Freso already (thread initiated by you).

So, if you feel something can be improved, explain clearly what you expect, and create a matching ticket so Picard devs can keep track of it.
Be very specific, give details and examples, suggest how it could be improved, don’t forget you’re only one user among millions.

If you have an issue, describe it, with details, and follow hints provided by the community.

When creating a thread, think about a title that’s useful for the community and future readers.

Yes, all this takes time, but open source/data community is still giving it for free.

EDIT: Original poster changed the title from " I was hoping Picard had gotten better" to “Why isn’t it possible to tell Picard that I only want the original album, no matter what?”, thanks.

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Wowwww our Picard devs and volunteers are amazing :heart_eyes::heart_eyes::heart_eyes:

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That is not correct. It found a single for me earlier today, and that was for a very famous artist and a top ten song (don’t remember which). I had to manually over ride, as usual. Picard was probably right, because of the length of the song, but I don’t really give a crap about that, I want the original album, that’s all, and if we’re talking Tubular Bell in 1 minute or 20 minute isn’t any of Picards concern, as long as I said nNO singles, EP’s ort anything else. (It wasn’t Tubular Bell, I just used that as an extreme example).

Actually it would help if you provided exact details about recording you are trying to match, or at least few screenshots.
Also it would be good to provide full debug log, as explained at General Troubleshooting — MusicBrainz Picard v2.8.1 documentation

We need details about your Picard settings, and your workflow, else it is impossible for us to help, and to determine if the behavior is expected or not.

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It was a frustrating outburst. Sorry for that. And to provide you with anything when we’re talking hundreds of songs, that’s a bit hard.

There is one thing that might have a bad impact on the release type filtering: Picard only requests the first 25 results for each search (that’s actually the MB API default, but Picard also explicitly sets this). In some cases the best result with matching release type might be after the first 25 results, hence Picard’s own weighting and filtering by release type does not give this result.

We should probably increase this limit by default and also make it adjustable. 100 would be the maximum. I added PICARD-2504 to track this.

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