The Multi Field Editor provides a convenient means of doing various text manipulations on one or more fields. The Multi Field Editor always works with the current file selection.
The top of the window displays a list of all the field types supported by Yate. This is where you select which fields you want to edit. Note that not all fields are valid for every function in the editor. When a field which is not valid for a particular function is selected, it is ignored. The count in the banner of the leftmost column, is the number of fields which are selected. You can easily select all, unselect all and invert all items in the list by right clicking in the list and selecting the appropriate menu item. You can also save the current set from the context menu. You can load a saved tag set, created in the application settings, from the context menu.
Typically you are specifying the fields that you want to process. It is also possible to specify those fields that you do not want to process. You change the mode by clicking on the button at the right of the table's header bar. The table's field column displays the current mode. The all but mode makes it easy to handle the case of custom fields being added in the future. More information can be found in the Field Selection Modes in Tables topic.
Clicking on the 🌐 button will open the Action Updater. Actions targeted to the Multi Field Editor will always be listed, even if already installed). This is a quick means of identifying new Multi Field Editor actions. Note that other actions with available updates will also be listed.
The following functions are supported:
A list of actions with an M association in the Action Manager is displayed. These are intended to be actions which provide simple text manipulation to the fields currently selected in the Multi Field Editor's list of fields.
The control on top of the list can be used to filter which items are displayed based on their grouping. All implies all actions associated with the Multi Field Editor. . . . implies those actions with an empty grouping.
The Actions function provides a means of extending the capabilities of the Multi Field Editor by allowing you to run the listed actions. Note that when running an action from the Multi Field Editor, the Action Manager's All Files, Always and Hidden columns are ignored.
You can display a popup window which contains an action's description by means of the Description... context menu item. (Only available if there is a description). An action's description is the first non empty content in a Comment, Force Grouped, Tooltip or Version statement. A search for a description is terminated at the first enabled statement which is not one of the preceding statements or an Empty Line or Constrain Execution to a Single File statement. Hitting the space bar has the same effect as selecting the menu item.
You can also display the online resource documentation (if any) by means of the Resource Documentation... context menu item.
You can open the action for editing via the Edit... context menu item.
You can highlight the action in the Action Manager via the Show in Action Manager... context menu item.
Double clicking on an action item is equivalent to clicking on the Run button.
More information on constructing actions to be run in the Multi Field Editor can be found in Running Actions from the Multi Field Editor.
You can click on the 🌐 button to import actions designed to extend the functionality of the Multi Field Editor.
The Case function is used to change the alphabetic case of text in the fields selected in the field list. See Alphabetic Case Transformations for more information.
The Clear function will completely erase the contents of the selected fields. Whenever a field type has more than one item, all of the items will be erased.
The Credits functions allow you to perform modifications on the Involved People and Musician Credits fields. This function does not use the list of fields at the top of the window. You must specify if you want to modify the Involved People or Musician Credits field. While all of this functionality can be performed in the Combined Credits Editor, this is a convenient alternative method of working on the fields.
If the Multi Field Editor is launched from an Involved People or Musician Credits field's function button, this Credits function and the appropriate field will automatically be selected.
The disclosure buttons to the right of the Credits and People fields, display a menu representing the current values in all selected files. With the exception of the Rename functions, inserted values are appended using a comma delimiter. The menus will display all representations of an item, however the functions are always case insensitive.
An Ⓧ control clears the contents of field to the left of the control.
If you want the Credits or People fields to be larger, resize the window.
The following functions are available:
After any of the above functions are performed the working field will be resorted. You can choose None (which will leave the representation however it ended up after performing the function ... possibly non deterministic). You can also choose to sort the Credits, People or both. You can also elect to merge all people associated with a single credit into a single line or to list them one person / credit. When sorting by Credits & People and Merge names is enabled, duplicate items will be removed.
By default, the credit functions will work on all selected files. When manually specifying credits it can be tedious to change the file selection so that only the appropriate files are modified. The Track list field can be used to specify a list of tracks to be modified. When the field is empty, all selected files will be processed.
The field can contain a list of files with track numbers and/or ranges of track numbers to be modified. eg: 5,6,10-13 means modify any selected files with a track number of 5, 6 or 10 through 13.
You can also explicitly associate tracks with disc numbers. eg. 1:1,3-5,3:4,5 means modify any selected files on disc 1 with a track number of 1,3,4,5 and on disc 3 with a track number of 4 or 5. Disc associations persist until the next #: sequence is encountered.
Note that all or no tracks must be specified with a disc number. ie. 3,2:5 is invalid.
You can used the preview button to display all current Musician Credits and Involved People values in the Log Viewer. The fields are displayed with credits and people sorted and no merging. Note that the preview persists. See Involved People/Musician Credits Preview for additional information.
The Auto clear fields will automatically clear the contents of the function's data fields whenever the Modify Credits button is hit.
The Copy function is primarily used to copy the contents of a selected field or property to the chosen destination fields. You can elect to copy only if the source data is not empty and/or if a destination field is empty.
Note that actions are available which extend the Copy functionality so that a named Comment or UDTI can serve as the source of the copy. You can click on the 🌐 button to import the actions. After importing, the actions will be displayed in the Actions section of the Multi Field Editor.
The Copy function can also be used to split a field (not a property) at a particular pattern. When a field is split the destination is truncated at the pattern and the text following the pattern is saved to a different field (the remainder).
When splitting only one destination field can be specified in the field list at the top of the window. You can elect not to do a copy first by leaving the copy from field unspecified. If the single destination and the copy from field are the same, the copy will not be performed.
After the optional copy, the destination field will be searched for the space significant specified pattern. The search can be from the beginning or the end of the field.
If the search succeeds, all text following the pattern will be copied to the remainder field. Leading spaces will be removed. The pattern and all subsequent text will be removed from the destination. Trailing spaces will be removed from the destination.
If the search fails, the remainder field will be cleared if the clear if not found setting is enabled. If the setting is not enabled, the remainder field will not be modified.
The Exchange function swaps the contents of two selected fields. This function does not use the list of fields at the top of the window.
The Find & Remove function is used to look for an occurrence of a pattern in a field and to remove all text either before or after the matched pattern. The text representing the pattern may optionally be removed.
The Case insensitive checkbox, when selected, specifies that alphabetic case should be ignored when searching.
The Diacritic insensitive checkbox, when selected, specifies that diacritic marks should be ignored when searching.
The from end option specifies that the last occurrence of the pattern should be matched as opposed to the first.
Assuming the supplied pattern is found, the following applies:
The following lines describe the effects of the Remove, before and after checkboxes when the pattern is My and the searched field's value is 01-MyAlbum-02.
- Remove, before
- Album-02
- Remove, after
- 01-
- before
- MyAlbum-02
- after
- 01-My
This function is used to insert sequential decimal integers or Roman numerals.
You can either search for a pattern and insert the values after the pattern or you can insert the values at a specific index in a field.
The sequence is incremented at most once per file. ie. every modified field in a given file will have the same sequence number.
At the top of the panel you select the insertion location criteria.
If you select Insert sequence at fixed offset, you are inserting at a specific index in a field:
- Insert at the beginning
- will insert at the start of a field.
- Insert at the end
- will insert at the end of a field.
- Insert at index from the beginning.
- will insert at (before) a specified index from the beginning. Index 0 represents the first character in a field. 1 the second, etc.
- Insert at index from the end
- will insert after a specified index. Index 0 represents the last character in a field. 1 the next to last character, etc.
If you select insert sequence relative to pattern, you are searching for an insertion point based on searching for a pattern in a field.
You must specify a non empty pattern. You can choose the following insertion points:
- before first match
- The sequence will be inserted before the first occurence of the pattern in a field.
- after first match
- The sequence will be inserted after the first occurence of the pattern in a field.
- before last match
- The sequence will be inserted before the last occurence of the pattern in a field. ie. the search is performed backwards in a field.
- after last match
- The sequence will be inserted after the last occurence of the pattern in a field. ie. the search is performed backwards in a field.
You can also elect to make the search case insensitive and/or diacritic insensitive.
The settings at the bottom of the panel are used to configure the sequence to be inserted.
You specify a first integer to be inserted and an increment. The increment is added after processing a file which has had at least one field modified. This means that every modified field in a given file has the same inserted integer.
The Padding field can be used to specify a minimum width for inserted decimal integers. Decimal integers can inserted as is (None) or padded to 2, 3 or 4 characters. Roman Numerals implies that the values are to be inserted as Roman numerals. If a value is be inserted is not a valid Roman numeral, it is represented as an empty string.
You can optionally specify text that is to be prepended and appended to the inserted value. Use the Prefix and Suffix fields.
You can specify that redundant spaces are to be omitted. When enabled and a field is modified, leading and trailing spaces are removed. Further, all sequences of two or more spaces are converted to a single space.
Example: if you want to add -## to the end of every Title field you would selected Title and then set:
The re-encode functionality is described in the Re-Encoding Text topic.
The Remove & Insert function will remove a counted number of characters at a specified index from the beginning or end of a field. It will optionally then insert a string at a specified index from the beginning or end of the modified field. If you do not wish to remove characters before inserting, set the number of remove characters to 0. If you do not wish to insert anything, leave the then insert field blank. Please note that the indexes start from 0 not 1. When from the end is specified, the last character is at index 0, the next to last character is at index 1, etc. When inserting from the beginning, characters get inserted at the specified index. When inserting from the end, characters get inserted after the specified index. Note that only the insertion text field will process escape sequences.
- If you want to remove the first five characters, specify:
- Remove 5 characters at index 0 from the beginning
- If you want to remove the two characters before the last character, specify:
- Remove 2 characters at index 2 from the end
- If you want to insert after the first character
- Insert text at index 1 from the beginning
- If you want to append text
- Insert text at index 0 from the end
- If you want to insert text immediately before the last character
- Insert text at index 1 from the end
The Multi Field Editor can be used to rename files without the use of a rename template. This can be useful for the quick renaming of files to a specific pattern. Note that only filenames can be renamed by this function. Containing folder names are never modified.
The field selection at the top of the Mult Field Editor's window is ignored.
You specify the pattern for the rename by entering text and escape sequences. The available escape sequences can be inserted from the text field's context menu. If you are renaming more than one file, the text field must contain at least one escape sequence to differentiate the names. Note that if the \1 escape sequence (insert sequential integer) is used, the initial value, pad and increment are taken from the Insert Sequence panel.
As in the rename template editor, spaces are displayed as centered dots for visibility. Tab and newline characters are ignored.
On a per file basis the rename template is effectively:
unescaped text ❨IfDup❩ (❨Dup #❩)
If you want to use a different duplicate handling sequence, you cannot use this function.
When the Rename settings field is set to default, the settings used to control the rename are identical to those that would be set if a new rename template was to be created. This includes the Settings - Rename - Settings options and any default advanced setting which might have been configured. If you want to use settings other than the defaults, specify a rename template. The template's configuration, but not its token list, will be imported.
Remember, you can revert a file's filename via File>Rename>Rename to Initial Filename.
The Replace function replaces matched text in the selected fields with new, possibly empty, text.
There are four modes of matching:
You control what and how much text gets replaced by choosing one of:
You can select Case insensitive and make the function case insensitive when matching the Replace text. When matching characters the function is always case sensitive.
You can select Diacritic insensitive and make the function ignore diacritic marks when matching the Replace text. When matching characters or a regular expression the function is always diacritic sensitive.
When replacing via contains, starts with or ends with you can specify Match words. In this mode you match whole words only.
You can specify that you want to match and replace one of a number of supplied strings by specifying the Or matching option and separating the strings with | characters. Replacements will be successively attempted with each string in the supplied list. If one of the strings is matched, the Or matching will terminate immediately after the replacements are applied.
The replacement template can contain a \1 escape sequence (insert sequential integer). The initial value, pad and increment are taken from the Insert Sequence panel
The Set function allows you to set fields to specific values. The text field's context menu allows the insertion of a subset of the escape sequence described in Escape Sequences. Using these escape sequences you can set a field to the current or initial value of other fields. Note that if the \1 escape sequence (insert sequential integer) is used, the initial value, pad and increment are taken from the Insert Sequence panel.
There are three modes:
If the Comments field was selected the following pattern world set each file's Comments field to: artist - album - year.
\[Artist] - \[Album] - \[Year]
The Sort Form function is used to set or remove sort formatting or to sort multiple items in one or more fields. There are seven modes to the statement which are described in the Sort Form action statement.
The Set Last Name, First Name mode differs from the action statement as it allows you to disable use of the Sort Form Name Prefix Replacement set and Sort Form Ignore Suffix Replacement set. When using the Sort Form action statement you can disable the sets via the Modify Application Settings statement.
The Trim function is used to remove characters in one or more character sets from specified fields. Note that Remove Invalid is a special mode which performs a context appropriate removal of invalid characters for each of the selected fields. For more information see the Remove Invalid Characters action statement. Note that the Default processing mode is always used.
When Remove Invalid is not selected, the functionality is the same as the Trim action statement. The contents of the custom character set can be configured via the gear button to the right of the custom checkbox.