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[Absinthe]

While playing around with MCUTILS I brewed up an method by which I could call either the Discogs.pl or the AMG.pl script using the send to command from MC.  Unfortunately, I had done this prior to reading all the forum notes on MCUTILS and discovered this is a baaaaaaaaad idea.  The strain it puts on the discogs and amg servers Is immense and it takes seconds longer than running the jobs from a command line. 

<schmooze mode> Now I really like the MC environment so much, I would prefer not to leave it when tagging songs and such </schmooze mode>

so it would be really, really nice if there was a batch orientated Send To function that I could access from the standard view.

[glynor]

Why not automate it instead? You can use MCAutoQueue to automatically send as many of them as you'd like to your command line tool, one by one, and do it on a schedule:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,76147.0.html

If you're worried about overloading them in one fell swoop, just add a limit (say, 30 files) to the Smartlist you use to feed MCAutoQueue, and then schedule it to run daily or every three days or whatever works for you. It'll eventually get them all.

Even better, combined with a Tag On Import rule, you can have it automatically add newly imported files to the queue, and they'll get processed later.

[Absinthe]

Why not automate it instead? You can use MCAutoQueue to automatically send as many of them as you'd like to your command line tool, one by one, and do it on a schedule:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,76147.0.html

If you're worried about overloading them in one fell swoop, just add a limit (say, 30 files) to the Smartlist you use to feed MCAutoQueue, and then schedule it to run daily or every three days or whatever works for you. It'll eventually get them all.

Even better, combined with a Tag On Import rule, you can have it automatically add newly imported files to the queue, and they'll get processed later.

OK, you've seriously piqued my interest on this.  Just one question though.  How do you get the MCUTIL scripts to work within the context of a script or batch file if nothing is selected in the MC view?

[lepa]

It would be great if send to could be used just to launch program without any parameters. That way we could start a script program which would then  just read selected files data to clipboard and do its thing.

[glynor]

Oh, I didn't actually realize you were talking about MrC's old scripts. The way those were written way, way back in the day was that they operated based on what files were actually selected inside MC (rather than operating on them via the command line), which means you can't really automate them (not easily anyway, you'd have to script MC to select the files for you, which is dumb). It is possible he modified them to have a mode that takes a file reference at some point, though, as I never used them and didn't follow it closely.

Since you were asking for a batch-oriented Send-To function, and MCAutoQueue is essentially a way to automate the Send-to > External function, I thought you had an external script that would handle being sent the file via the command line.

MCAutoQueue is very general-purpose, but was really built to automate transcoding and other external "processing" (like Comskip) for video files. But, really, it is a way to automatically do the same thing as Send to > External in MC. It will take files, and one-by-one send them to an external script or application, where you can customize the command line arguments, and include any metadata from MC about the current file in the queue (usually but not exclusively the [Filename] field).

So, for this to work, you'd essentially need a script or command line tool that will take a music file somehow (via it's filename, probably), and then do the processing on it specifically.

I'm sure MrC's scripts could be modified to work this way, but if it still works like I remember it working from way-back-when (and it still only acts on which files are actively selected in MC) then that won't work without modification.

[Absinthe]

Oh, I didn't actually realize you were talking about MrC's old scripts. The way those were written way, way back in the day was that they operated based on what files were actually selected inside MC (rather than operating on them via the command line), which means you can't really automate them (not easily anyway, you'd have to script MC to select the files for you, which is dumb). It is possible he modified them to have a mode that takes a file reference at some point, though, as I never used them and didn't follow it closely.

Out of curiousity, what do you use to scrape Discogs and AllMusic metadata?

MCAutoQueue is very general-purpose, but was really built to automate transcoding and other external "processing" (like Comskip) for video files. But, really, it is a way to automatically do the same thing as Send to > External in MC. It will take files, and one-by-one send them to an external script or application, where you can customize the command line arguments, and include any metadata from MC about the current file in the queue (usually but not exclusively the [Filename] field).

I don't typically transcode video files, its not an applicable usage.  However, I like the premise of post rip processing and an automated way to handle such processing!  It speaks to my inherent laziness and hatred of all processes that are repetitive 

I'm sure MrC's scripts could be modified to work this way, but if it still works like I remember it working from way-back-when (and it still only acts on which files are actively selected in MC) then that won't work without modification.

I'm sure there's a way, but given that MrC's scripts work so well for my application, id rather pursue an MC batch command rather than the other way around.  As I become more conversant in the MC scripting language, I may just create my own solution.  Thanks for the feedback, its always good to know where things are at

[glynor]

Out of curiousity, what do you use to scrape Discogs and AllMusic metadata?

I don't. Really all I need for metadata for my music is the simple stuff (Artist, Album, Disc #, Track #, Track Name). I always want to set Genre manually, and don't much care about anything else.

When I do want to look up additional metadata, I use the Links feature to just access AMG or whatever directly on the web. But that's me!

However, I like the premise of post rip processing and an automated way to handle such processing!  It speaks to my inherent laziness and hatred of all processes that are repetitive

Yup. That's what it is for, and it works quite well. Been running automated on my MC server for 5 years solid now. One other thing the package excels at is replacing files in MC's Library. Included in the installer is a general-purpose applet called MCFileIngester which can automate many "import and replacement" tasks. The idea of that is so if you transcode a video from one format to another and then want to replace the original (un-transcoded) file in your Library while preserving all of the metadata and playstats and everything.

But, it also works great on its own if you need to replace some music files with new versions (replacing old, cruddy MP3 rips with new FLAC versions, for example). Demo: https://vimeo.com/85110224

It is free, of course. You should check it out anyway, even though it won't help with this particular task (without some scripting elbow grease).

PS. It is also possible if you ask nicely that Nathan (jmone) might be able to mod the script(s) to work with it. He knows them much better than I do, and it would really be nice to be able to automate that task and have it just "happen" in the background while you sleep.

[Absinthe]

PS. It is also possible if you ask nicely that Nathan (jmone) might be able to mod the script(s) to work with it. He knows them much better than I do, and it would really be nice to be able to automate that task and have it just "happen" in the background while you sleep.

Lets see how the rest of my tool belt settles in.  I'm just beginning the process of pimping out my theater views and have added and removed so much metadata because its either not readable from 15 feet away, or not adding to the experience of a home theater system.  I've been operating on the same 15 newly ripped CD's for the past month and will not replicate the "process" to the remaining library until I can finalize things   Nothing sucks worse than populating tons of metadata on 100,000 files only to realize you forgot something    Thanks always for your help and information.  You guys and the support of this forum are several of the prime reasons I came back to J River