Can I simplify/speed up my tagging procedure?

[SadGamerGeek]

I can't help thinking the steps I take to get new music from a CD into slimserver seem a bit long-winded. I'd be most grateful if anyone can tell me how I can simplify the process. Here's what I do:

1. Rip CD with EAC (using freedb/MusicBrainz gateway) to FLAC
2. Run MusicBrainz Picard to set MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME etc...
3. Run mp3tag action to copy MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME to ARTISTSORT
4. Use Google Image search to get album cover & save as folder.jpg
5. Move album folder from "working" area to "library" area
6. Scan for new music (or await overnight scan) in SlimServer

A you can tell, I'm keen to have ARTISTSORT set (I like to see artists sorted by surname). I could remove one of the steps if Slimserver recognised MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME. Are there any plans to do this? Is it worth logging a development request?

FLAC.pm refers to MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME, but I don't quite understand how it is using it, and only a lowercase version of the tag seems to be associated with ARTISTSORT. I'd be grateful if anyone can explain what is happening here:

my %tagMapping = (
        'TRACKNUMBER'                   => 'TRACKNUM',
        'DISCNUMBER'                    => 'DISC',
        'URL'                           => 'URLTAG',
        'musicbrainz_sortname'          => 'ARTISTSORT',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID'     => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST_ID',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID'           => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUM_ID',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMSTATUS'       => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUM_STATUS',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMTYPE'         => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUM_TYPE',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID'          => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ARTIST_ID',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME'          => 'MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID'           => 'MUSICBRAINZ_ID',
        'MUSICBRAINZ_TRMID'             => 'MUSICBRAINZ_TRM_ID',

I do my ripping on Windows XP, but SS (now 6.5.4) runs on a Linux (Fedora FC5) box.

Any thoughts on reducing any of these steps gratefully received.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[JJZolx]

That's pretty close to what I do, except that I don't use MUSICBRAINZ to get ARTISTSORT. I'm not sure I'd trust that approach completely.

Instead, I simply have a couple of Mp3tag actions defined to set ARTISTSORT. One for groups and one for individuals. The one for groups strips leading articles, while the one for individuals swaps first and last names. So it's just a matter of identifying the artist as one or the other and selecting the right action. On compilations I use Ctrl+Click to select all the groups, run the Groups action, then Ctrl+Shift+A to invert the selection and run the Individuals action. In cases where there's more than one artist I don't add an ARTISTSORT tag.

See the attached Mp3tag action files. Change the extensions from .txt to .mta and place them in the Mp3tag actions folder. On my XP system it's at:

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim\Application Data\Mp3tag\data\actions

I used to use Google image search for finding album covers, but increasingly find myself using an image from Amazon.com. So I keep browser windows open with both, but usually check Amazon first. I also go an extra step and resize all of my covers to 300x300, plus I put a one pixel black border around each of them.

[amcluesent]

mp3tag has a web sources framework so it can query MusicBrainz etc. and cover-art sources - http://www.anytag.de/forums/index.php?showforum=23

[funkstar]

I don't use MusicBrainz, but for album art and all other tagging i use Tag&Rename. Lets me grab album art from Amazon. Also adds the Amazon review to the comment field if i want it. You can choose Amazon UK, US, Canada, France, Germany and Japan. Only a few albums out of 1100 are missing a cover now.

The Amazon data can also be better with regards to track titles tht FreeDB. It's easier to let Tag&Rename replace the data with that than manually put in capitals etc.

[egd]

mp3tag has a web sources framework so it can query MusicBrainz etc. and cover-art sources - http://www.anytag.de/forums/index.php?showforum=23

It can also query allmusic.com, which is my preferred tagging source. On the rare occasion that allmusic doesn't have a album cover I get same via google.

My ripping process:
CD -> EAC/GRIP -> WAV ->
batch/scripted FLAC encoding ->
mp3tag/allmusic.com tagging, including embedding of album cover and addition of COMPILATION =0/1 depending on whether or not it is a various artists album ->
MusicIP analysis & archival ->
NAS & update slimserver.

[corbey]

dbPoweramp reference 2.2 > FLAC

And I'm done.

- Gets tags from All Music Guide (or FreeDB)
- Securely rips at speeds of up to 40x on my PC
- Checks AccurateRip database
- Automatically retrieves cover art
- With a dual-core processor, rips in one, encodes in the other
- Includes DSP effects
- Highly configurable

dbPoweramp reference isn't free, but it's well worth the price.

Cheers.
(and no, I don't work for them)

[corbey]

Just wanted to mention that while I don't use the ARTISTSORT tag, you can easily add it, or any other tag, to the metadata while ripping with dbPoweramp.

[studley]

It can also query allmusic.com, which is my preferred tagging source. On the rare occasion that allmusic doesn't have a album cover I get same via google.

Mp3tag, which is my favorite tagger, removed AMG support due to a request from AllMusic. It's a shame cause it has some wonderful information.

Cheers,
D.

[SadGamerGeek]

Wow - thanks very much for all the advice & info! This has given me lots to investigate.

I take it no-one (who has answered so far) knows why FLAC.pm mentions MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME, but SS doesn't seem to support it. I think this is probably worthy of a separate topic. I'll post one in the near future....

dBpoweramp looks the most likely to simplify everything for me, but I can't quite work out how I'd be able to use it to pull in MUSICBRAINZ tags such as MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID. I believe these tags are very useful for apps such as audioscrobbler (which I use) and MusicIP (which I plan to use). Is it possible to pull in these MUSICBRAINZ specific tags with dBpoweramp? If so, it'll be well worth the money!

Cheers,

Richard

[egd]

Mp3tag, which is my favorite tagger, removed AMG support due to a request from AllMusic. It's a shame cause it has some wonderful information.

Damn, I wasn't aware of it - I have the scripts and they still work so I guess I'm at least ok until such time as the allmusic layout changes. Seems allmusic have requested same of MediaMonkey.

Hopefully this means that there will be a "commercial" app of some sort allowing access to allmusic for tagging and playlisting purposes soon. I'd be quite happy to pay if the application warranted it and I was able to mass update my entire collection against allmusic's db, explore relationships amongst artists etc. within my own collection. As far as I know, dbpoweramp doesn't support masstagging existing files and/ or playlisting.