make music track number a column

[rnmerchant]

I'd like to be able to sort digitized music albums by the track number in the album. I didn't put this information in the name of the file/tune. I don't see that I can use "track" as a column.

Am I missing something?

Thanks Richard

[Kilmatead]

The '#' property will extract that (the track no.) from media-file metadata, the caveat being that it must obviously be part of the tag (mp3, etc) to begin with.

[dunno]

There are those who prefer music track numbers without a leading zero, some who prefer a leading zero, wars have been fought over this, eventually without leading zeros was the agreed upon format for track numbers, and it was enforced as was first letter capitilisation for the titles.

Publicly there is no standard for the tagging of music which is a pity, and even when there is some have no idea of the purpose and meaning of genre. I have spent hours re-tagging my music collection.

For those interested see ÜberGuide at chrismyden.com
https://www.chrismyden.com/uber/index.php

[nikos]

you gave me an idea to add a "printf"-like function for programmable columns for this and other text formatting

[Kilmatead]

Freud would point out that you just opened a back-door here for variadic-k jokes centred around our anal-ytical fetishes related to our music collections. But-t that would just be an infantile cross between your South-park fascination and Bart Simpson.

God forbid that you would ever stoop so low as to bend-over backwards for user convenience.

Just sayin'. (Sorry... it was just too obvious a thing to waste any semblance of maturity by ignoring.)

And, if ever there was phrase so provocative as to invite anoraks with well-curated music collections to endlessly re-litigate something, it's ending a sentence with "...eventually ... the agreed upon format...". Natural-numerical sorting tends to force the hand when it comes to including leading 0's in filenames, but certainly nothing was ever decided or agreed upon in the non-hammocked world I reluctantly inhabit.

The French actually have two competing camps about capitalisation rules, and the only thing they have in common is the first-letter thing. After that (names, nouns, etc) are almost considered a whim-of-the-moment. The English rules are arcane at best, and ridiculously strict at worst, but fun little tools are rather useful when in doubt...

"make music track number a column" = Make Music Track Number a Column because:

Make is capitalized because it is the first word of the title.
Music is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than five letters.
Track is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than five letters.
Number is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than five letters.
a is not capitalized because it is an article. More information on capitalizing a
Column is capitalized because it is the last word of the title or subtitle.

[nikos]

and i thought (judging from your latest behavior -- or non-behavior) that your new year's resolution was to abandon your flamboyant and exuberant and inflationary verbosity, in favor of a humble succinct prose... well there is always next year

[dunno]

God forbid that you would ever stoop so low as to bend-over backwards for user convenience.

I only stoop low when I look for ice in my chest freezer.

Speaking of convenience and thinking of others, I wonder whether you code with Tabs, Spaces, Double spaces, double tabs, or a mix and match . I know the devs at rockbox are pedantic with the format of code submitted for incorporation, as is Linus Torvalds.

I WAS all for convenience but my casual approach to anything but work and hobbies was rudely shattered when I started ripping my CD collection and wondering what and how to Tag things nicely, I then stumbled upon a den of music but to join one HAD TO COMPLY with the tagging rules or no access to the house full of candy. Meticulous tagging, which was patiently explained to me by the Mod's was because of the P2P search engine, if rips were tagged as you please then it would create havoc with search results, so in order to streamline and speed up the search, strict formatting was enforced or one would lose privilege/access to the treasure trove of music, and the habit has stuck, I retag whatever comes my way so that its easy to find stuff, looks good, and finding music by genre is easy, useful, and makes sense.

*returns to hammock for sundowner*

[Kilmatead]

...resolution to abandon your flamboyant and exuberant and inflationary verbosity

In days of yore, knights were known to recklessly swear exorbitant oaths of fealty and somewhat hyperbolic dedication, such as "I shall not sit down until I wrest your enemies from this mortal coil", and by some strict interpretation of silly honour, they were obliged to so compromise themselves that any success was somewhat fanciful.

Thus, the only resolution I made this year was to wear no other footwear other than moccasins made from the deerskins of animals I had myself dispatched, sewn together with unicorn hair by none other than the priestesses of Vesta herself.

That, alas, awaking New Years morn and finding I had no such footwear, I was forced to break that resolution in favour of my trusty old Wellingtons decorated with the most insulated of socks known to humanity. Needs must, as they say.

"Inflationary verbosity"? Well, I never. I'm just another innocent white kid from the streets with a seething Cuban soul. Even more interestingly, once you've watched the first 2 minutes of that, you'll appreciate my weird penchant of re-inventing the past and the homage of effort that other like-minded souls barter through for hopelessness and art.

I wonder whether you code with Tabs, Spaces, Double spaces, double tabs, or a mix and match

Odd query, but hammocks do as hammocks must: Tabs set equivalent to 4-spaces apiece, with braces attached to function lines, never separate. Mostly that stuff is personal choice these days as anyone is free to use any of a dozen tidy-tools to instantly format existing code from one style to any other to make it easier to read for themselves. If someone tried to demand such superficial conformity from this lost-soul, I'd laugh at their innocence and dance a jig on their grave.

The only thing other programmers really care about these days is clarity and consistency of naming convention - and voluminous code-commenting. Unfortunately, with the meticulous care I place on the former, I fall apart miserably on the latter, even flummoxing myself when looking at code I wrote a year ago, scratching my head desperately trying to remember why I jigged right when I should have jagged left. I am a terribly lax commentator, to my own detriment.

...the habit has stuck, I re-tag whatever comes my way so that it's easy to find stuff, looks good, and finding music by genre is easy, useful, and makes sense

If you really want to see just how many technical faults you may have inadvertently introduced to your tags over the years with your diligence, run your collection through Mp3Diags and sigh with confusion over how many freaky little micro-bugs live on the human body that we were blissfully unaware of until some fool of a scientist thought messing around with a microscope was a good way to pass a dull day.

And when you're done with that give Fakin' the Funk a whirl and see spectrographically just how truly untrustworthy the noble claims of "lossless flac only" P2P denizens really are. What the tags say is meaningless compared to the bits themselves.

But then again, there is something to be said for the bliss of ignorance and, as Chaucer put it in Troilus and Criseyde, "it is nought good a slepyng hound to wake."

[dunno]

If you really want to see just how many technical faults you may have inadvertently introduced to your tags over the years with your diligence, run your collection through Mp3Diags and sigh with confusion over how many freaky little micro-bugs live on the human body that we were blissfully unaware of until some fool of a scientist thought messing around with a microscope was a good way to pass a dull day.

*Sigh* Did you read the Uber standard, did you bother to see what tools are used to verify rip integrity, the specific version of LAME that was mandatory, The specific version of EAC to rip the music, the custom made program called AQScript which verified the integrity of the rip and the tagging. There were several scary bright software developers within the community who developed the tools for verifying the integrity of the ripped music. This music den no longer exists. Which is why I'm comfortable talking about it, back then music sharing was a big deal with ISP's.

I cannot hear a difference between FLAC and MP3 ripped with LAME V2 VBR. The clever folks who set up the music den did extensive research before deciding on a MP3 standard for ripping, FLAC was allowed at the time but because HDD space was expensive in 2001 not many people ripped to FLAC, also tagging with FLAC was a bitch.

Anyway my ears are perfectly happy and MP3 ripped with LAME V2 VBR sounds good to me.

[Kilmatead]

did you bother to see what tools are used to verify rip integrity, the specific version of LAME that was mandatory

I did read that... EAC is an excellent ripping tool, for the era of CD ripping - which isn't "the now". Mp3Diags ain't that - it's about the integrity of the tags themselves, not what's in them (they fragment as you modify them and rewritten over time). Hard to explain. It really is all the bugs on the skin that you can't see. Not overly important, but it surprised the heck out of me when I though my collection was cleaner than the conscience of the king.

Anyway my ears are perfectly happy and MP3 ripped with LAME V2 VBR sounds good to me.

So it is for most people (though Nikos the Heathen actually thinks YouTube is good enough), and I gave up on lower bitrates once I discovered that they struggle rendering things that are best described as "walls of sound" - most of what I listen to is quiet, but every now and then you just have to experience a threnody with a dozen cellos bellowing away into to the darkness to really stir the darkness of your soul.

I more suggested the Fakin' the Funk thing for those in the audience who may use SoulSeek or know what it is... that P2P scene has decayed badly over time - especially with people thinking Spotify's existence is in any way a good thing - they know not the harm they do.

Now rnmerchant's going to come back and wonder what the heck happened to his thread...

[dunno]

I did read that... EAC is an excellent ripping tool, for the era of CD ripping - which isn't "the now". Mp3Diags ain't that - it's about the integrity of the tags themselves, not what's in them (they fragment as you modify them and rewritten over time).

Perhaps that was why the Scary Smart one's were pedantic about the tags, they insisted on the tags being perfect on the first rip and if the tags were modified post rip one had to run AQScript again and it would ask for the reason and they wanted the precise reason,

I gave up on lower bitrates once I discovered that they struggle rendering things that are best described as "walls of sound" - most of what I listen to is quiet, but every now and then you just have to experience a threnody with a dozen cellos bellowing away into to the darkness to really stir the darkness of your soul.

Standing next to a fog horn certainly is a moving experience.
I have attended two live rock concerts and a classical concert, at the rock concerts (Ted Nugent) all I heard was noise, the second rock concert was particularly annoying as some fool was tossing plastic bottles with dry ice and water thinking it was a big joke.
The classical concert was amusing, it was a renown French orchestra, The president of the Island was in attendance, I had a good seat as my companion who had invited me was quite the socialite, a few caucasian french in the audience, unfortunately one of them was sitting behind me, after every performance he would jump up and VERY enthusiastically clap his hands as if he was the only one who appreciated the performance, I resorted to sticking my fingers in my ears every time he clapped, he was that loud, The Islanders found it amusing but this arrogant Frenchman didn't let up, The president quietly disappeared during the interval whereupon the air-conditioning was switched off, obviously the president had the remote fpr the AC system.

I prefer studio recordings for music fidelity along with all the pretentious words that describes a good recording, production, soundstage, "atmosphere" etc.

[rnmerchant]

"Now rnmerchant's going to come back and wonder what the heck happened to his thread..."

RNM considers this an enhancement to his tread. Learned lots of things.

But I cannot remember whether I ever got an answer. That's the problem with aging - short term memory fails.

[dunno]

But I cannot remember whether I ever got an answer. That's the problem with aging - short term memory fails.

Oops.
Track number and name is stored in two separate places, the meta data and the file name, these are two separate entities. the files track name and number can be different to what's stored in the meta data. If you play the music in a dedicated music player like Foobar it will read the meta data and display the track number/name from the meta data and you can sort, do as you wish with the displayed information.

file name:
01 honey Dont mess with my tags
02 ooh honey dont stop

Meta data:
1 Honey Dont Mess With My boobs
2 Ooh Honey Dont Stop

There are several MP3 tag programs, one feature is that you can copy what's in the meta data to the file name, and vise verse. many will automatically search the internet for the albums meta data, but beware, there's some crazy formats that the typing monkies in the basement dream up.

[Kilmatead]

If you don't wish to rely solely upon the '#' column for some reason, our hammock-bound friend (fiend?) is correct, adding the track to the filenames is the way to go.

However...

Curiously, I would LIKE to say that "any decent mass-renamer programme should be capable of this" (prefixing the track to the filename), but the sticking point is that for filenames you absolutely MUST use leading-zeros to force natural-number sorting, preferably at least 3 digits for albums of any size. While x2 has a setting to compensate for this and use natural sorting within itself no matter what the filename says, that's not reliable for files which may be used in other file-managers or portable music players, etc.

Even x2's mass-rename thingy can't do it properly because while the template would just be "${#} $N" which would take the track number from an mp3 and prefix it to the filename, there is no way to force leading-zeros appropriately - so, indeed, any decent mp3 tagger should be able to do this better. For example, the token in the venerable Mp3Tag utility would be "$num(%track%,2) %title%". Take note that it might take some familiarity with the programme first to know how to apply it properly.

As there is no guarantee that track numbers actually be contiguous for any given collection of songs, relying on a naïve-counter-token would not be a good idea in the long run.

I might think that Nikos should add his variadic notion to mass-renaming as well as columns, were he so inclined.

Personally, I just have a music-manager (MusicBee) which does all this and more automatically for me, but setting up that kind thing is much more involved and a significant undertaking to implement properly as it's meant for full library management, not just simple tagging.

I have a modest-sized library of 5,000 albums comprising some 40,000 tracks, so it's easier to have a dedicated manager for it rather than just use a file manager and a simple music player. For example, it's no mean feat to get albums displayed like the following, but it is possible - though it helps to be an OCD musique-fetishist who's familiar with coding.

[dunno]

If you make changes to the file names like change the track order or alter the tracks name in a file manager it will not affect anything in the Meta Data which is why there will be a discrepancy in the Directory/File Managers listing versus the music players scan of the Meta data for the information.

Mp3 players give the option to list by Directory = file manager style, or by Data which is where you'll see the music listed by all the tags within the Meta Data. Album, Genre, Artist, Composer, etc.