Topic: FLAC Tagging Questions (Foobar 2000 / Live Show Tagger)

[stevetoney]

For various reasons none of which was intentional, I hadn’t started tagging my FLACs until recently.  I’m using Foobar2000 along with the Live Show Tagger plugin, so I’m still a noob at this.  I expect that my questions have all been encountered by everyone and they’ve been asked before, but seriously I’ve searched both our archives (which was rough going using the webrowser method since our search tool is down) and the web and come up empty.  I have three problems I hope someone can help me with…

So Problems 1 is, when Live Show Tagger tags my FLACS, it seems to interpret song titles correctly because prior to accepting the tags, I get a window that displays all of the song titles, but then after they’re written into the metadata, they USUALLY get displayed in the players (both Foobar2000 and Winamp) as the filename, not the song titles.  What’s strange to me is that this doesn’t happen all of the time…now and then the song titles are properly displayed in Foobar2000 and Winamp.  So what’s up with that?  Why won’t track titles display in Foobar2000 and Winamp instead of filenames?

Problem 2.  I keep all of my shows in separate subdirectories on my harddrive.   The file structure on my harddrive is Year Recorded (e.g. 1999) > Band Name (e.g. Phish) > Show Name (e.g. ph1999-12-31.mk4) > FLACs.  Sometimes the year and band name are reversed, depending on whether my drive is my own recordings archive or my phish archive.  Naturally, I’ve got the information text file that contains the tagging info (setlist, band, date, etc) saved the same directory as the FLACs.  When I tag my FLACs, Live Show Tagger never assigns an ‘album’ in the metadata.  I’d like the show name tagged as the album…this is how I do it in my itunes directory.  Anybody know how to tell the tagger to do that? 

Problem 3.  The problem with not having an album assigned is that, when I add my shows to the library into Foobar2000 or Winamp, since I have no album tags, my files aren’t sorted conveniently in either player, so there’s no way to sort or play my shows so that the songs play consecutively as they were played during the show.  If I sort by track number, all of the track 1’s for all shows play.  If I sort by track title, all of the A songs are listed first.

So how do I get the libraries of either Foobar2000 or Winamp to sort on more than one sort term?  What I’d like to do is sort on album (if I could figure out how to tag albums) and track so that my entire library is sorted by band, album or date, and track…then I can simply pick an album to play from my library without having to build a playlist for every freakin’ album.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

I have the same questions... 

As for "Album", I've been cutting and pasting the "Date" and then hand-typing in the Venue and City/State info...  There's got to be a better way...

Terry

[Gordon]

can you post and example of a textfile where the song titles do not display?

my titles show song names in foobar.  also check which columns are displayed as some could be messing something up.  on the toolbar above where it says "artist", " track no" etc right click and select column.  you can pick which ones you want to display.

you don't need to hand type anything for album except maybe the date.  highlight all tracks > right click properties.  I then copy the "venue" tag and paste it in the "album title tag".  I put the date before it like this 1983/12/11 Laker Hall - State Univeristy of New York - Oswego, NY

I do the year first so everything sorts correctly.

[page]

I do the year first so everything sorts correctly.

+1

[vanark]

I do wish the Live Show Tagger populated the Album title with the date - Venue info.  I, too, manually deal with populating it.

[Gordon]

yea but it only takes about 2 secs once you got it down.

[vanark]

yea but it only takes about 2 secs once you got it down.

Yep, but if I can do it manually, it is easy for a program to do it.

[stevetoney]

can you post and example of a textfile where the song titles do not display?

Thanks.  I'll be able to do so later, unless someone else beats me to it.  I'm at work and all this is on my home machine.

my titles show song names in foobar.  also check which columns are displayed as some could be messing something up.  on the toolbar above where it says "artist", " track no" etc right click and select column.  you can pick which ones you want to display.

you don't need to hand type anything for album except maybe the date.  highlight all tracks > right click properties.  I then copy the "venue" tag and paste it in the "album title tag".  I put the date before it like this 1983/12/11 Laker Hall - State Univeristy of New York - Oswego, NY

I do the year first so everything sorts correctly.

perfect.  Thanks alot.  That addresses Problem 2 and I think probalby also Problem 3.

Bottom line for the noob...I didn't realize that when you right click to display the metadata info that's autopopulated, that you can manually enter additional info for the other fields.  Thanks alot!

[Gordon]

you can also custom add tags.  properties > tools > add new field.  I put "source" and "recorded and transferred by" in there.

[stevetoney]

With my newfound edu-muc-tation, I'm going to tag all my files with 'fuck Prince'. 

Not really.

[Crumbo]

you can also use the masstagger to create a script to fill in the album info

highlight all the files
right click > tagging > manage scripts
add > format values from other fields
Destination field name: > ALBUM
Formatting pattern: > add whatever you want here %venue% - %date%
(I have Live At %venue% - %date%)
name it and save it

then you right click on all the highlighted files and apply the live show tagger plugin
then you right click on all of the highlighted files > tagging > scripts > name of script
then you're done tagging

[phil_er_up]

Item #3 - Files do not sort properly for me in winamp either . If u go to "Misc" button at bottom of winamp and click on it then click on  "Sort List" there are 3 options to sort by:

1) Sort list by title
2) sort list by filename
3) Sort list by path and filename

If I sort by using 3) above then everything sorts just fine for me.  It works for me because it sorts by path then filename.

Can not find a way to set this so every time I open winamp it sorts that way.