Hiya,

I've got a bunch of folders with incorrect names.
Those folders have album art and pdf booklets sometimes.
They also have music files.

I'm using SongKong to update the metadata in the music files.

I'd like to clean the Artist, Album Artist and Album fields so they don't have odd characters like semicolons, rename the files

disc-track - artist - album - songtitle
e.g.
01-01 - Four Tet - Beautiful Rewind - Gong

and I'd like to move the results and the associated files to a new folder structure; Album Artist/Album

If the action could delete the empty source folders when it's finished, the would be a bonus.

I'm having trouble getting it all to happen in one go, though I've got most of it in parts.
Have not figure out the associated files thing at all yet.

Everything ends up in Roon, if that makes any difference.

Thoughts?

1. Yes, I am indeed seeing semicolons at the ends of fields, or sometimes where there should be an ampersand.
I think "invalid characters" might be a better description. I know that Roon thinks files are corrupt if they have a triple semicolon in Artist, Album Artist or Album fields.

2. I'm using this for Various Artists right now: [Various Artists - Chicago Blues - A Living History]
Appending date would be great.

3. Good! I've not been able to figure out how to keep the tracks with their non-audio files yet.

4. Oh! I didn't realize that. I know that JThink are trying to be Roon-friendly, and even have a basic template for Roon. I use SongKong because it's easy and usually correct. I don't mind switching my methods if it makes more sense.

Thanks very much for your help.

2. I'm using this for Various Artists right now: [Various Artists - Chicago Blues - A Living History]
Appending date would be great.

Is this .../Various Artists/genre/album/filename

I'm assuming the Various Artists folder does not directly contain all the tracks. That would be messy. Personally I use:

/Various Artists/Genre/Album/filename

Some people argue that the above can have duplicates and append the Year to the Album description ... which theoretically can still have duplicates. I've used the above forever and have never had an issue.

Sorry I got tied up today. I'll send it tomorrow

Download the file at:

https://2manyrobots.com/actions/Clean-Move.zip

Drag it to the file list area of the main window. This will give you an action named Clean and Move. It will also give you a rename template named DD-TT - Artist - Album - Title. You do not have to use the rename template. The action lets you pick which template you want to use. I included it as I think it represents what you asked for ... and does duplicate testing.

The action is designed to run in immediate mode or through the Batch Processor. In immediate mode it only processes selected files. When running in the UI it will handle multiple loaded folders correctly. The first time you run the action it will guide you through a configuration process. You won't be asked on subsequent runs if you hit the 'do not show this again' checkbox. If you want to change the configuration you can force the process to run again in one of two ways:

- hold down the Option key when starting the action
- start the action with no files selected.

When configuring, you select a destination path. This is where the Artist folders get created. You also select if you want to check for inconsistencies in the Album Artist and Album folders by running a validation process. The validation process works on a per folder basis.

You also select which fields you want to clean and which rename template you want to use for the file naming.

If you are using Roon and you have not yet done so, I strongly suggest you go to Preferences-Audio and from the Application Presets control, select Roon.

Always test actions first! You can do so in immediate mode and in the Batch Processor by selecting a single folder as the root. When running in the Batch Processor I always recommend checking the Verbose Log option. It ensures that you have a record of where everything was moved. It will also contain any validation errors. The Batch Processor Auto-Save option is irrelevant for this action as the action always saves any files which were modified during the cleaning process.