This action is used to interactively search Discogs or Musicbrainz attempting to match releases and import metadata. The action can be run in immediate mode or via the Batch Processor. Four actions are provided:
- Search Discogs
- The action you call to search Discogs.
- Search MusicBrainz
- The action you call to search MusicBrainz.
- Search DCMB
- This is a helper action and should not be directly called.
- Search DCMB - Config
- This is the configuration action. While it may be directly called, it is automatically called by Search Discogs and Search MusicBrainz if configuration has not occurred or if the Option key is held down when the actions start.
Configuration
The following items are configurable:
- The set of files which are processed
- You can choose to process only those files which are selected or all loaded files
- How files are grouped into releases
- You can treat all files as a single release, group files by the Album field or group files based on folders. When running in the batch Processor the grouping mode is always based on folders
- Which files if any are to be ignored
- You can choose to process all files; only those groupings which do not have a consistent non empty release ID; or only those groupings which have consistent release IDs and sufficient metadata to correctly identify track associations. Track associations for Discogs are specified by Discogs Release Ordinal Position and Track Position UDTIs. Track associations for MusicBrainz is specified by a MusicBrainz Recording Id UDTI.
- The maximum number of results to be downloaded for a search
- You can select 25,50, 75 or 100.
- How to display Discogs results
- Unfortunately Discogs does not return disc and track counts when searching. This action can populate those fields but it takes one request per search result. You can elect to have the action get the additional information or not. When the extra information is being downloaded you will see a progress message on the main window's status bar. You can stop the downloading at any time by holding down the Option button until it stops.
- Do you want to import metadata other than the release IDs
- After selecting a match, IDs identifying the release will be imported.
- How much additional metadata do you want to import
- You're only asked this question if you elected to import additional metadata. A 'loose' download should always work but can only download metadata which is not unique for each track. A 'full' download must match tracks in order to download per track metadata. 'loose' or 'full' both require that you have configured a Discogs or MusicBrainz import set to discribe what metadata you want to import. The sets must be named Search Discogs Import Set or Search MusicBrainz Import Set. The action will import these sets automatically when installed and they will initially import all metadata except the retained import settings. You can change the import sets to import whatever fields you're interested in. Note that the preferences settings for Discogs and MusicBrainz may also affect what or how metadata is imported.
- What to do with skipped releases
- At various times when the action is running you can elect to skip a release. You have the option of writing UDTIs to the files so that subsequent runs can test for the skipped state. During execution, the UDTIs are removed if metadata is imported. The UDTIs are named Skipped by Search Discogs and Skipped by Search MusicBrainz. Note that some audio file formats will write the UDTIs all in upper case. The action accounts for this.
- What to do if tracks already have the Skipped by UDTIs
- When executing you can choose to not process any track grouping which has a skipped UDTI in every track or to ignore the skipped UDTIs and process the files.
- Do you want to save changes made to files
- When running the action in immediate mode not saving the changes allows you to view what was imported and to revert the files if desired. When running in the Batch Processor, if you choose 'do not save', the changes will still be saved if the Batch Processor's Auto save files option is set.
Workflow
The workflow proceeds as follows:
- If running in immediate mode and all loaded files was chosen, the action will ensure that all loaded files are processed.
- If not running in the Batch Processor and the grouping option was not Treat all files as a single release, the files will be grouped such that multiple searches are performed.
- If every file in the group being processed has the appropriate skip UDTI and the action is honouring the UDTIs, no search will occur.
- If every track in the group being processed meets the specified criteria for available metadata, no search will occur.
- An attempt will be made to extract consistent Album and Artist metadata from the grouped tracks. Either but not both may be missing. If consistent metadata cannot be extracted, you will be given the opportunity to manually edit the Album and Artist metadata. At this point you can skip a release if desired.
- A search will be issued to Discogs or MusicBrainz. The results of the search will appear in a database window.
- If searching Discogs and you specified that you want to display the disc and track information, the database values will be populated at a minimum of one row per second. At any time you can stop the downloading of the disc and track metadata by holding down the Option key until it stops.
- A Count column will display a ✓ character if the displayed Tracks (track count) is equal to the actual file count. With Discogs, this column will only be filled if you are downloading the disc and track metadata.
- The Action Pending panel will be displayed asking you to select a single row in the database as being the desired release. At this point you can elect to skip the release, change the metadata or to continue. If not exactly one row is selected, the panel will repeat.
- If a release is selected the appropriate release ids will be extracted.
- If you did not request that additional metadata should be downloaded, processing of the track grouping is done.
- If you specified that a loose extraction should be performed, the metadata will be extracted, processing of the track grouping is done.
- If the track mappings can be determined as being 100% accurate, the full metadata will be extracted, processing of the track grouping is done.
- You will be presented with a panel showing the mapping choices that were made. You can skip the release, do a partial (loose), accept the mappings and do a full metadata extraction or choose to change the mapping criteria and try again.
- In immediate mode if there are additional groupings, the process will repeat with the next.
- If batch processing, the next folder will be processed.
Content List:
Action: Search DCMB
Action: Search DCMB - Config
Action: Search Discogs
Action: Search MusicBrainz
Discogs Import Set: Search Discogs Import Set
Export Set: Search Discogs
Export Set: Search MusicBrainz
MusicBrainz Import Set: Search MusicBrainz Import Set
Requirements:
Yate v6.5
History:
- 2020-07-01 v1.0
- Released to Preview list.
- 2020-07-07 v1.1
- First general release.
- 2020-08-10 v1.2
- Changes for Yate v6.0.1.
- 2020-09-13 v1.3
- Added documentation link.
- 2021-04-01 v1.4
- Uses new markup to make it easier to find mappings which are not 100%.
- 2021-04-03 v1.5
- Added the Count column which displays a ✓ character if the Tracks column is equal to the actual file count.
- 2021-05-18 v1.6
- Added support for remapping and selecting the number of results.
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