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Just a small update, there’s a new artists section in preferences which allows auto complete in the artists fields. Enjoy!

For years now I’ve been maintaining a database which describes the albums I own. I did this because at times I purchased the same album a number of times. It was also useful to sort my albums by acquisition date so I could easily find my recent stuff to listen to. (I buy a lot of albums).

I’ve been so busy with Yate that the quality of my database has started to suffer. I purchased an application whose sole purpose is to maintain music collections for about $50. While the app has some nice features it is primarily oriented towards CD collections and at this point my collection is all ripped or purchased digitally. I figured it would take me about ten years to manually enter my data into the app.

I realized that all the information I wanted to collect was available in my tracks and could be accessed by Yate. For this reason we’ve added support for Album Databases. Album Databases are stored in CSV files so that they can be displayed on a variety of devices. I take my database with we on all my devices. There are also a wide variety of CSV Viewers/Editors available for Macs, iPads, iPhones, Android devices, etc. Yate uses a sidecar file to contain additional information it can use when displaying the files.

Export sets, also new, are where you describe what fields you would like to export. It also supports additional special fields such as: folder, calculated track count, calculated album duration, lowest rating, average rating and highest rating and tag source.

The Create, Open and Close Album Database action functions are what you use manipulate the databases.

The Create function can be run in batch processing mode and you can even create multiple Album Databases with different content in a single run.

As usual things sort of got out of control. Once we could create and view the files we had to add bi-directional editing between the database and the file list.

The good news is that I no longer have to manually maintain my album database. The bad news is that I have thousands of albums where my ‘acquired date’ information was not stored in the tracks I’m now using Yate to save the information to the Purchase Date field. One side effect of the CSV implementation is that Yate can pretty much open any CSV file. I open my exported database and the Yate Album database at the same time. I open albums and use the album database and the file list to edit.

This is a new feature. Let us know if you like it and what you’d like to see added to the functionality.

Added the ability to pass start time, stop time and volume adjustment to iTunes. Couple of bug fixes. Check the release notes for the full details and enjoy!

I’ve noticed that a number of my albums either appear to have missing artwork or occur multiple times in the new iTunes 11 Album view mode.

This appears to be an iTunes database issue and unfortunately simply refreshing the files in iTunes does not solve the issue.  As far as I can tell the problem disappears if the name of the album is changed.

The Fix Duplicate Albums in iTunes action will change an album’s name, save it and change it back.  This corrects both the missing artwork and multiple occurrences of the same album issues.

To use the action, make sure Yate’s Open options are: Album mode, Replace the File List, Do not Process Subfolders.  With iTunes viewing albums, drag an album into Yate.  Once the album is displayed and linked simple run the Fix Duplicate Albums in iTunes action.  You should see the album’s issues corrected in iTunes.

You can download the action here.

Enjoy!

Hi there.  I’m going to be using the blog portion of the forum to post tips from time to time.   I recently decided it was time to update the artwork on for my personal collection.  Much of my music had been ripped from CDs years ago and the most common size of of my existing artwork is 200×200.  I am attempting to update my collection so that the artwork is at least 500×500 using up to 600×600 when I can find it.

The actions and search template I’m using can be found in the Fixing Artwork file available in the actions section of the forum.

My first step was writing an action to produce a log of all albums which have artwork less than 500×500.  This is the Entire Library Poor Artwork action.  The action is run in the Batch Processor Wizard and the root of my music collection is the source of the run.

The action was written so that it could be run multiple times and makes a couple of assumptions.  First,  I don’t want to log any albums where I’ve already attempted to find artwork which meets my criteria and have failed.  Secondly I assume that every track in an album has the same artwork.  This is true for my collection.

In order to retain the fact that I’ve already searched for artwork, I utilize a User Defined Text Info item called ArtworkSearchDone.  The value associated with the  item is irrelevant but I store the date of the search there.

The first three steps in the Entire Library Poor Artwork action test if the ArtworkSearchDone item exists and if it does the action terminates:

Export value of User Defined Text Item ArtworkSearchDone

Exists User Defined Work field (test)

Test: if true, then exit

The last step performs the search once per set of files and logs the test track if the artwork is less than 500×500.  The search template used does not really matter as the action is being run in the Batch Processor Wizard and the URLs are never issued.

Search for artwork (Google (500×500) 500×500 (once)

The run on my collection took 23 minutes, processing 37386 files in 3845 folders.  My collection is kept off my Mac on a NAS drive.

Once the run completed, I saved the log file which identified a extremely large number of albums which had unsatisfactory artwork.  I now had a record of what had to be fixed.

When I have some spare time I’m going through the saved log file processing an entry at a time.  Each entry looks like:

——————–

Folder: /Volumes/Music/John Mayall/A Hard Road [Expanded]

Action: Entire Library Poor Artwork

Step: Search for artwork (Google (500×500)) 500×500 (once)

File: A Hard Road.mp3

Reason: 200×196 artwork smaller than 500×500

I select a folder path and copy it to the clipboard. In the example above that’s /Volumes/Music/John Mayall/A Hard Road [Expanded].  I then right click in Yate’s file list portion of the main window and select Open Path in Clipboard.  This opens the folder’s associated tracks in Yate.

I then simple run the Fix Artwork – Google action

Important:  I only keep one artwork item in each of my files.  DO NOT run the Fix Artwork – Google action if you want to retain more than one artwork item per file!!!!!!!

When the Yate Action Pending window is displayed, I browse the Google results to find my missing artwork.  When I see something that looks good, I click on it to see the artwork at its full size.  I then drag it into Yate.   Now this is import. I dismiss the Yate Action Pending window by selecting Skip for all files and by clicking on the Skip Step button.  If you don’t do this the same condition will arise as the artwork has not yet actually been fixed.   I always proceed with this method even if I couldn’t find artwork.  When the action terminates, saving the files if necessary, I either have better artwork or the ArtworkSearchDone item has been set to ensure that I don’t bother looking at this album again.

I also set the Preferences-General When adding artwork scale down to option to 600×600 as that’s the largest size I want for my artwork.

I’ll briefly go over the steps in the Fix Artwork – Google action:

Link to iTunes

All my music is referenced from an iTunes library.  The above step creates the linkage to the library so that if I get new artwork, iTunes is updated.  If you do not reference your music from iTunes you can remove the above step.

Search for artwork (Google (600×600) (Show sizes) 500×500

The above step performs the search.  I’m using a modified version of the built in Google template.  The template has been included in the ‘Fixing Artwork’ file.  It causes Google to display image sizes by default.

Rearrange artwork: size priority

The above step rearranges the artwork so that the ‘largest’ comes first.

Clean artwork

The above step removes all artwork except for the first item.

Search for artwork Test 500×500

The above function checks to see if the remaining artwork item is at least 500×500 and sets the action’s test state.

Test: if true, run action (Set ArtworkSearchDone) then continue

Test: if true, run action (Clr ArtworkSearchDone) the continue

If the artwork is not 500×500, the ArtworkSearchDone item is set otherwise it is cleared.

Save all modified files

Any files which have been modified are saved.

Sitting down and running the Fix Artwork – Google action has become a form of doodling or killing time for me.

You can download the action here

Let us know in the comments or the forums if this was useful and feel free to share your own actions in the forums as well!

Thanks again to everyone for their suggestions and bug reports.

We had a few requests for AIFF support, which is now implemented in v1.3. We also added a Playlist mode which allows you to…you guessed it, create playlists. You can then export the list to m3u with the new m3u button or action.

Keep the suggestions coming and be sure to join us in the forums!

Here’s a full list of the changes:

• Yate will now tag AIFF files (.aiff, .aif, .aifc)
• The Open Modes can now be separated into two global states: Album Mode and Playlist Mode. Album Mode is what existed prior to this release. When in Playlist Mode, opening a track will not automatically open all other audio files in the same folder. In Playlist mode the other mode options are always Add and Do Not Process Subfolders. Note that while running a batch process, you are effectively in Album Mode.
• There is now a status bar available for the file list. The status bar displays the number of tracks and duration of the tracks. If more than one track is selected (ala iTunes), the displayed information refers to the selection. The status bar is toggled on or off via the Window>Hide/Show Status Bar item. The state is maintained separately for the Album and Playlist open modes. The status bar will also provide feedback when a large number of files are being loaded.
• There is a new Action menu item and associated action function called Create m3u files. When in Album Mode one m3u file will be created for each folder represented by the current file selection. When in Playlist Mode you will be prompted for the name and location of a file to be created. Every open track will be written to the file regardless of the current selection. If all of the filenames can be represented in Latin1, an m3u file will be created. If this is not the case, an m3u8 file will be created with UTF8 encoding. Yate will place relative file paths into the produced files as long as all the files are descendants of the folder where the file is placed. If this is not the case, absolute paths will be written.
• When in Playlist Mode, m3u and m3u8 files can be opened or dragged into the file list.
• Preferences-General no longer has the performance/responsiveness sliders. They were intended for the initial beta period and have now been set to the most appropriate values.
• The Done button used in the advanced editor panels and the action editor can now have a shortcut applied. This can be set in Preferences-Shortcuts. There is a new section item called Key Bindings which contains the Done item.
• Added an option to Preferences-General so you can choose the Picture Type for artwork dragged into Yate. You can choose a default value of Cover (front) or Other.
• Added an option to display track numbers padded to two digits in the file list display and the associated edit fields. The option is found in Preferences-General-Pad track display. Note that this is a display-only option and does not affect how the information is stored in the tag.
• Rename templates can now specify Genre.
• File to tag processing has been expanded. All tag fields found in Rename templates can be specified. There is now also an Ignore token used to skip data. There is also a new Folder Start token used to specify the extraction of information of a file’s folder name.

A note about online help: Apple strongly caches the help files associated with applications. As the help for Yate is updated fairly regularly, it is possible that you will download a new build and have older help displayed. Unfortunately, there is no current method to work around this issue from within Yate. Typically the issue only arises when additional help anchors are implemented. The forum section Yate-Issues contains a sticky item describing how to flush and automatically rebuild the help cache.

We’re proud to announce the release of Yate 1.1!

Thanks to all the users for sending in feature requests. In this release we’ve tried to implement the most asked for features relating to the iTunes integration.

• We’ve added the ability to Show Files in iTunes.
  This is available via the File menu, the context menu, toolbar buttons and via the Link to iTunes action step. Two methods are available:
  • Show Albums will essentially display a linked album in an iTunes playlist called Yate-Work. You can elect to automatically delete this playlist, if created, when Yate closes. SeePreferences>General; for a new option.
  • Show Track will display a single linked file in the main Music playlist.

• We’ve added the ability to sync Skip When Shuffling with iTunes. This is another metadata field that iTunes does not write out to the audio files. A new field has been added to the Info tab to support this functionality. When linkd to iTunes and the Skip When Shuffling values differ, a ✖ character will be displayed in the iTunes column.

• We’ve also added a File>Compare iTunes Values menu item. This feature will display a window comparing the linkable values as they exist in iTunes and Yate. You can selectively import and export any value regardless as to the linked field indicators you chose to display in Preferences>General>iTunes Linked Fields. You can also change the Yate values from this display.

• There’s also been some minor rearrangement of the General preferences.

• Bug fix: Growl notifications were not being issued for patched location in iTunes during a rename.

We hope everyone likes these new features, and be sure to join the forums to post your actions, feature requests or suggestions!

MacTrast recently reviewed Yate, giving it 4/5 stars! Follow the link for a full review!

http://www.mactrast.com/2012/09/review-yate-organize-audio-files-effortlessly-on-mac/

Today we’re proud to announce the release of our newest app, Yate. Yate was designed for people who are serious about tagging their audio files. Check out the Yate page for more information. Happy tagging!