Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tkozakis]

I just downloaded JRiver and imported my songs from an existing iTunes library. There is one album in the new JRiver library named "Unassigned" and it contains many of my songs from many albums. Can anyone please give me the steps to clean up this mess and put songs under proper albums? I would be greatful. Thank you.

[BradATIMA]

It sounds like it wasn't able to grab the information from the "Album" field in the tag for these files. If this field is blank, they will end up in an unassigned album. You could select this "unassigned" album so it shows all the files within it. Then activate the tagging pane, either by selecting Edit -> Tag, or right-clicking a file and selecting tag (or just hit Alt+Enter). Then, just makes sure the "Album" field is filled out appropriately for these files.

I'm not sure how many files ended up in the unassigned album, but if it's a lot, other users probably know a more efficient method.

[tkozakis]

Thanks Brad, I'll give your suggestion a try, but what if the information or "album field" is not correct? How does one correct it? And if corrected, will that create a new & correct album with the appropriate art work and the appropriate tracks? There are approximately 150 songs/files in that "unassigned" album that should not be there and some of those files, as I said should be in other albums - some shown, some not. Thank you again.

[BradATIMA]

I'll try to explain this clearly. I apologize if it seems a bit confusing because this can get a bit tricky and the terminology is a bit messy.

Probably the easiest way to fix this is to select all the files in the unassigned album, right-click, and go to Library Tools -> Lookup Track Info From Online Database. I usually don't do this because the information is not always accurate, doesn't look the way you want, or isn't available.

To do this manually, go into the tagging window (that smaller window on the left-hand side). By default, it will probably only display the default tags. Right-click anywhere in the window and select "Display All Tags" to see all the tags. You can edit the "Album" field to whatever you would like. If the song belongs in an album that already exists in your library, you should be able to select that album from the dropdown list in the "Album" field. That should put that song in the appropriate album. If the album doesn't exist, just manually type in the appropriate name.  There is one important thing to note if you're trying to merge songs into a single album. If the "Album Artist (auto)" field for that song matches the "Album Artist (auto)" field for all the other songs in the album you want that song in, it will be added to that album without any problems. However, if those fields do not match, or the album has multiple artists, you will need to make sure that all the tracks you want in that album have "Various Artists" selected for the "Album Artist" field. Otherwise, you will end up with two (or more) albums of the same name, one for each artist. Multiple artist albums can be a bit tricky to get to work properly.

There are a couple of important things to note. You can select multiple files at once, but any tagging changes you make will be applied to all the selected files. This is great for making the same change to multiple files (and for using expressions). If you don't have any files selected, any changes you make will be applied to every file in the list. It's a good idea to make a library back-up before making any major changes. And, you can use Ctrl-z to undo any changes you don't like. Hopefully this explains it clearly.

[BryanC]

I'm adding to Brad's answer because I know that iTunes keeps a tidy file structure based on tags. It is possible to take information from the file path and filename to recreate the tags using the Fill Properties From Filename tool.

[tkozakis]

Brad, thank you again, but I do not see any of the items you talk about. What small window on the left? Left of what? Is there any way we can communicate my telephone to work thru this?? I just dont understand what you are asking me to do. Would that be possible please? Thank you.

[ferday]

select any file (song)

in the bottom left corner of the screen is the action window (see image).  click tag in that window, and a new window will pop up (see other image)

in the new window, change the album name to match the right one...do this for all the files that belong to that album.  MC will automatically make an album out of all the files once this is done.

[tkozakis]

Thank you ferday, but there are hundreds of songs. Are you saying I need to do this for each line item, each song? That would take me days, if not weeks. And what happens if the album is not listed (it was there before the migration from iTunes)? A new one would be created? Thanks.

[blgentry]

It's really hard to help in situations like this when we can't see any information on the files.  Can you post a screen shot of some of these files with columns that show a minimum of Name, Album, Artist, Album Artist, and filename ?

Brian.

[blgentry]

If I still used windows I would tell you how to make a screen shot.  It used to be alt-printscreen.  I'm not sure anymore.  (I use a Mac mostly)

Maybe you could highlight and copy a short list of songs that is representative?  You can add or remove columns from your file list by right clicking on the header and selecting which columns to add or remove.

To address an earlier question you asked:  You can tag individual files, or you can tag many files at once.  So if you highlight all the songs that belong in a specific album, you can just type the album name in the Album field in the Tagging Window and it will set that album name for all of the files you have highlighted.

Another poster mentioned using Fill Properties from filename, which might get you fast results.  Brad also mentioned that you might try Lookup Track Info From Online Database.  You can find both of these selections in Tools > Library Tools.

Brian.

[dtc]

First, MC uses the tag [Album Artist] to group tracks into an album. All tracks have to have the same [Album Artist] to be part of an album. MC creates [Album Artist] for you from the [Album] and [Artist] tags. So, once you have the artist and album tags set correctly, those tracks will show as an album.

If the file structure contains the artist and album name, the easiest way is to have J River use the information in the filename of the imported files to populate the tags. The most popular folder format is to have a folder with the artist name and a sub-folder with the album name and the tracks names as track number track name. That is [Artist]\[Album]\[Track #] [Name]. The idea is to tell MC what folder structure you have and then let it read the data and create the tags. To do that Select a track and highlight it (left mouse button) and then right click and select Library Tools - Fill Properties from Filename. The Automatic option should work. Otherwise you can set the specific options for the Directories and the Filename. Try that on one track and see if it fills in the album and artist correctly. If that works correctly, then try a few more and eventually do all of them. If you want to look at the filenames, look for it in one of the columns of the list.  If it is not there, you can right click on the header (like Album) and choose Filename from the list. That will crate a column with the filename in it. You can also display [Album Artist[] this way. (I am assuming you are in what is called Standard View, which displays the album cover and the track list below that.)

If the album/artist information is not in the filenames, then you have to do the tagging manually. As long as the album name is there, it is pretty easy. In your list of tracks, sort it by album name by clicking on Album in the header and choose Sort Inside Group by Album. Then select all the tracks in an album using standard Windows conventions (Control Left Mouse to do individually or Shift Left Mouse to select a group).  Right click on the highlighted tracks and choose Tag. In the tag window (lower left) enter the artist name.  You can also look at Album Artist to be sure they all have the same value. Repeat for each album. Otherwise, if the album tag is blank but the artist tag is populated, you can so a similar process based on artist. If neither artist or album is there, you will need to either fill in the artist and album  for each track, or you can select all the tracks from one album and tag them as a group. If you need to do this, you can sort the display by Filename and that should group the tracks from one album together if there is a common file structure based on album or artist.

Hopefully, you will be able to get the tags populated from the filenames. That is the easiest way.

As far as album art, once you have the tracks separated into albums, you can right click on an album and choose Cover Art - Get from Internet. That will search for the cover art and if it is not an obscure album it will find it for you. You can select multiple albums at one time and it will work through each one. If that does not find the cover art, there are other options, but I would start there.

Give it a try and ask for more help if needed.

[tkozakis]

Brian & dtc, thank you both. I'll go thru your instructions tonight .... will advise. Thanks again for the attention. Thomas