Announcing flactag

[adhawkins]

Hi all,

I posted about this in the unix / linux list, but thought I'd post here in
case anyone is interested.

I've just written a tagging utility for tagging single FLAC files with
embedded cus sheets, written for the linux console. It retrieves data
from MusicBrainz for the album by determining its disk ID from the embedded
CUE sheet. This data can then be written to the FLAC file.

If anyone's interested, I've released a very early version (I've called it
v0.01 even though it appears to work well). I'd appreciate any comments
anyone might have.

Full information is here:

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactag

Cheers

Andy

[adhawkins]

Hi,

v0.02 now available. This includes the ARTISTSORT tag, and also handles
multi-disc album sets correctly.

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactags

Comments welcome.

Andy

[adhawkins]

Hi,

I released v0.03 after finding a fairly crucial bug in the submission URL
generation code.

v0.04 will follow in the next day or two with the ability to rename a FLAC
based on its tags

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactag

Andy

[adhawkins]

Hi,

As promised, v0.04 has just been made available. This version can now
automatically rename the FLAC file based on a configurable template. It can
also download album art from Amazon if the MusicBrainz service has the
appropriate link to Amazon.

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactag

Comments welcome

Andy

[adhawkins]

Hi all,

I think this is now 'feature complete', so the latest release is called 1.0-RC1.

I'd appreciate any comments.

New in this version:

* Handles console size changes
* Album art embedded into tags
* 'Batch' mode to check tags, write tags and rename file
* Fix for bug that occurred when more than one 'release' matched the disk ID

Available for download here:

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactag/

Andy

[adhawkins]

Ok, my prediction of 'any day now' for the next release was a little optimistic, but v1.0-RC2 is now out there. Some highlights:

* Add install target to install application and associated scripts

* Documentation now generated using asciidoc

* Scripts for ripping now included (including modification of TOC files where necessary)

* PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN can now be used for scrolling in windows

* Always use index number 1 when calculating TOC for FLAC file (fixed a nasty bug when calculating disc IDs for albums that used INDEX markers to subdivide tracks)

* Convert accented characters to standard characters in filenames

* Add —discid option to report calculated discid for FLAC file

* Fix various compilation errors on some systems

* Report differences in tags when using —check option

* Compare real path of file (not path used in command line which could be relative) to see if renaming should be allowed

* Don't write ALBUMARTIST tag (causes problems with artist sorting in current SlimServer software)

* Add —force-write option

* Correctly write UTF8 values for tags

As always, the software is available here. Comments and feedback always welcome.

Andy

[reverber]

I have now tagged 8-1/2 hundred CDs with flactag and have been very pleased with how it has performed. I have started revisiting some of my "problem children" now and thought I would post here to see if anybody else has noticed similar problems.
Non-latin characters are supported pretty well for me now, save for (for some reason) Bulgarian cyrillic. I have several titles that import empty tags when I try to flactag them.
Also, I have noticed that some band/title entries seem to obliterate the artwork. None of my Husker Du album covers are displayed . I assume flactag be supporting the new PICTURE metadata block, which will probably alleviate this problem, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

All in all a great little program, and highly recommended.

Cody

[adhawkins]

Hi,

In article <reverber.2nwhx01174657502 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com>,
reverber<reverber.2nwhx01174657502 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> wrote:
>
> I have now tagged 8-1/2 hundred CDs with flactag and have been very
> pleased with how it has performed. I have started revisiting some of my
> "problem children" now and thought I would post here to see if anybody
> else has noticed similar problems.

Glad you're finding it useful.

> Non-latin characters are supported pretty well for me now, save for
> (for some reason) Bulgarian cyrillic. I have several titles that import
> empty tags when I try to flactag them.

What version are you using? The later release candidates correctly handled
Unicode tags.

> Also, I have noticed that some band/title entries seem to obliterate
> the artwork. None of my Husker Du album covers are displayed . I
> assume flactag be supporting the new PICTURE metadata block, which will
> probably alleviate this problem, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I haven't even looked at using the PICTURE metadata block yet, as Slimserver
doesn't yet support it in 'stable' branches. I'm surprised at band entries
obliterating the artwork though.

If you're not already using the latest version (v1.0 RC2) then please give
it a try. If you're still having problems, then post details on the
bugtracker and we'll see if we can track them down.

Full project details are on the web here:

http://www.gently.org.uk/flactag/

> All in all a great little program, and highly recommended.

Thanks for that. Glad it's useful!

Andy

[reverber]

OK, the problem was not Flactag, it was (I believe) Slimserver.
Or, to be more precise, it was Perl not liking filenames that contained extended characters. As soon as I changed the filenames to plain vanilla roman alphabet, the artwork magically appeared.


Cody

[adhawkins]

Hi,

In article <reverber.2q2dmb1178291102 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com>,
reverber<reverber.2q2dmb1178291102 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> wrote:
> OK, the problem was not Flactag, it was (I believe) Slimserver.
> Or, to be more precise, it was Perl not liking filenames that contained
> extended characters. As soon as I changed the filenames to plain vanilla
> roman alphabet, the artwork magically appeared.

The most recent flactag attempts to map Unicode characters to straight latin
equivalents when using tags as filename components.

Give it a go if you're not already using it.

Andy