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[MrHaugen]

I know I've been over this before, but with the new Copy & Paste Tag feature we have a way of doing music and album replacing much more efficient. The big problem is that the play stats are NOT copied. So, I'm thinking about how this can be done.

Everything would of course be much simpler if the Copy & Paste function could include Number Plays and Skips as a minimum. Date played and such could be somewhat weird to include as it could be a date much earlier than the actual import date. I hope this will be added in time, but I don't have the time waiting for it right now. So, I'll start with the two best options that comes to mind. I hope you can help me out.

Most of these files are going from MP3 to flac

The easy way
- Import new album
- Copy tags from old album
- Paste tags to new album
- An expressions use the new Save global variable to copy the Number Plays from the old track to the new track with identical name, track number etc.
- Delete old album
- Move new files to the old location within MC

I'm not sure at all if the last one here can be done at all. I would need some help by some expression experts to get some answers here.


The hard way....
- Import new files (preferably to a secondary local library, so you can trash it later on)
- Rename New files so they are identical to the old files, including file extension
- Delete new files from library (if you are using the same library. Otherwise it can be done in one go later on)
- Move new files and overwrite old ones outside MC
- Rename the files to the original extension
- Use "Update tags from library" from file tags
- Use "Update library from tags" to get the correct format data

Even though this last one has only one more step, it does require much more time to do than the first one. It would be a nightmare to update lots of albums this way, but it is almost identical to how I did it before.

That's why I so desperately want the first method with expressions to work. People have some comments here? Ideas as how to do this, or perhaps you have simpler methods of doing the album replacing without trashing the play stats?

[MrC]

- An expressions use the new Save global variable to copy the Number Plays from the old track to the new track with identical name, track number etc.
- Delete old album
- Move new files to the old location within MC

There's no way to assign a field with a value, so I don't know how you'd accomplish this directly.

One method after you've copied and pasted the tags is to export an MPL playlist of the files so that you capture the Number Plays, Skip Count, etc.  The important identifier is the Filename field.  A script could be written to remove all fields but the Filename, and the desired fields such as Number Plays, Skip Count, etc..  The Filename suffixes can be changed by the script from the old (e.g. .mp3) to the new (.flac).  Now you can import the .MPL playlist and the stats will be updated.

Finally, you can delete the old files.

So it would go:

- Select files
- Copy
- Export playlist (MPL, Selected Files)
- Delete selected files
- Paste tags
- Run script on MPL
- Import MPL

Using this order would preserve the selection, minimizing the steps.  Probably the script could initiate the import, if desired.

[MrHaugen]

There's no way to assign a field with a value, so I don't know how you'd accomplish this directly.

That was what I was afraid of... If you don't know how to accomplish this, I don't think it's possible to do at all.

I don't like to script things for something that should have been a check box in MC. But it might have to do it this time.

With the addition of the Copy & Paste function, I really hope that JRiver will introduce some sort of Replacement manager soon though.  I imagine a wizard of sorts where you can:
- Select the old files to be replaced
- browse to the new files
- drag and drop to change ordering and if they are not correct
- select to overwrite values, which source to use (new files, old files or Yabdb perhaps?)
- Write tags to new files (choose to overwrite fields or not, and to include play stats?)
- move files to old destination and change extension if necessary

That would be a dream come true. For me at least.

[vagskal]

There's no way to assign a field with a value, so I don't know how you'd accomplish this directly.

Maybe the paste tag dialog could just be enhanced to support the same assign tag feature as in the import dialog? Then you could choose to paste your global values to the relevant fields (or make any other adjustment necessary). I use the Excel method of assigning tag values from global variables for a lot of files with several fields to assign a value and as it is now I have to do each field separately, so a paste custom tags feature would be welcome.

[rjm]

It would be interesting to hear from Matt on why he decided to not support play stats with copy/paste.

[Lasse_Lus]

It would be interesting to hear from Matt on why he decided to not support play stats with copy/paste.

It depends what edit type the fields have, stats fields have "clear Only", sys fields has "can not be editable"

[rjm]

It depends what edit type the fields have, stats fields have "clear Only", sys fields has "can not be editable"

Yes but I assumed stats and sys fields were like any other field except for their properties bits. Matt is master of the bits and can do whatever he wants.

[Lasse_Lus]

Yes but I assumed stats and sys fields were like any other field except for their properties bits. Matt is master of the bits and can do whatever he wants.

i think it's be design, you can't tag it if it's locked...you cant use the function move/copy fields either to update a locked field

but hey, i've got an idea..lets unlock the fields 

[Matt]

Next build:
Changed: Play stats can be copied using Paste Tags.

[MrC]

The restless natives overwhelm the chieftain overlord!  Reign-in the terror!

[rjm]

Anything for peace and quiet.

[MrHaugen]

Thank you Matt! These changes done the last days will save tons of work for the music collectors.

[Gl3nn]

Could you not do this by renaming the mp3 files to flac and then overwriting the fake flacs with the real flacs (and then using 'library tools-update tags from library-update library from tags')?  Seem to remember that worked for me.

[MrHaugen]

It's a hell of a lot more work. I've described the process in the first post. But, yes. It works.