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[JH]

I have ripped a few opera CDs. The online CD info for the track names was not consistent. Sometimes the track name begins with the act number ("Act 1: Aria"), sometimes the act number is at the end in parenthesis ("Aria (Act 1)"), sometimes the act number is missing altogether ("Aria"). I want to make every track name start with the act number. So my questions.

1. Is there a way to add something to the beginning of the name? That is, change "Aria" to "Act 1: Aria".
2. Is there a way to move all occurrences of of some to another place? That is, change "Aria (Act 1)" to "Act 1: Aria". Changing to "(Act 1) Aria" works, too, because, I can then "find and replace" all occurrences of "(Act 1)" to "Act 1:".

I know how to do these one track at a time, but I am wondering if I can select multiple tracks and then make global changes.

[Matt]

1. Is there a way to add something to the beginning of the name? That is, change "Aria" to "Act 1: Aria".

You want to pick all the tracks, edit the name and enter:
=Act 1: [Name]

The equal tells MC to use the expression language and evaluate that way.

[Arindelle]

2. Is there a way to move all occurrences of of some to another place? That is, change "Aria (Act 1)" to "Act 1: Aria". Changing to "(Act 1) Aria" works, too, because, I can then "find and replace" all occurrences of "(Act 1)" to "Act 1:".

I know how to do these one track at a time, but I am wondering if I can select multiple tracks and then make global changes.

you can use the find and replace tool for that (select tracks then right click=>Library Tools=>Find and Replace. You can selectively choose the field (in your example it would be name) or fields you want to apply this to.  Ctrl+Z will undo the operation.

The combination of the two are very handy when you want to create a "Work" field for example, reduce the name by the work. A 75 track opera or symphonic set takes only a couple of  minutes as you can use =[a field name] in another field's tag box to bring over the data with out typing in one shot, copy it then "replace" it out in the name field

[JH]

"=Act 1: [Name]" works great. It's exactly what I needed. But I don't understand Arindelle's reply--"use =[a field name] in another field's tag box to bring over the data with out typing in one shot, copy it then "replace" it out in the name field". Would you please provide a bit more detail or an example?

[ferday]

By saying =[a field name] it's the same thing you did with =[name], all arindelle was saying is you can use it with any "field" like album, artist, composer etc

[Arindelle]

thanks Ferday ... that's what I meant to say

I mentioned it because it was not obvious to me that you could just not only alter the data using the field name of the field that you are in but also use the data in one field and transfer it to another.

"=Act 1: [Name]" works great. It's exactly what I needed. But I don't understand Arindelle's reply--"use =[a field name] in another field's tag box to bring over the data with out typing in one shot, copy it then "replace" it out in the name field". Would you please provide a bit more detail or an example?

So lets say I wanted to be able to search and play just a Work - symphony or string quartet, Opera whatever.

Most Classical internet metadata is at the very best inconsistent and lots of characters long ... it incorporates not only the symphony name for each mouvment but often the Opus, key signature etc ..This is often globbed into one lengthy track name.

So you have a box sets of Mahlers Symphonies and Lieder arfff ... 15 cds so that becomes painful to do it manually

as an example

1) I create a field; call it [Works]
2) I select all tracks and in the field [works] I type =[Name]  -- afterwards, everything in the works is the same as in the [name] field, per track.
3] With all tracks still selected I stick my cursor in the works box (which will say varies) -- another little choice box comes up and I choose one (any one)
4) I go back in the works box erase the track info I don't want, and before entering it I select and copy the work data wich is what I want to remove from the track name
5) Then I use the Replace tool paste the work name in the find box and leave the replace box empty ... this will remove all of the information.

Now for an opera you can do this all at once.  For the Mahler box set you have to do it for each "work" which is more of a PITA, but it better than doing 75 tracks or more manually. (euh just checked ... 146 tracks )

There are other expressions too, but when you are removing, replacing or inserting from the beginning or end of a track name, I find this the easiest way. What you have to look out for is that some times the first cd might have Act. 1 and the 2nd Atto Primo. But CTRL+C, V and X are my friends.

If any one has a more elegant way though, please chime in ..

[JH]

Thanks guys. I am learning stuff. This is great.

Speaking of Mahler symphonies (or any other music albums for that matter), if I have a "definitive" list of track names in an Excel file, can it be imported into MC? So, for example, if I want to rip 3 versions of Mahler's symphony no 1, then it would be great if I could ask MC to grab the track names from an external Excel file sitting on my computer. Perhaps too much to ask for but then MC seems very powerful.

[Arindelle]

Thanks guys. I am learning stuff. This is great.

Speaking of Mahler symphonies (or any other music albums for that matter), if I have a "definitive" list of track names in an Excel file, can it be imported into MC? So, for example, if I want to rip 3 versions of Mahler's symphony no 1, then it would be great if I could ask MC to grab the track names from an external Excel file sitting on my computer. Perhaps too much to ask for but then MC seems very powerful.

Don't think so .. maybe you could import the excel into a playlist then copy that in ...

As for multiple versions of classical music, if your good track names are in the library once, you can copy them to another album provided that they have the exact same number of tracks. So with a 4 mouvement symphony it should work. For Operas this would seldom work as they are often broken down differently. Bear in mind you would be pasting ALL the tag information so it might not be worthwhile. Try it by selecting the tracks and then on the editing menu chose paste tags. Backup your library first CTRL+Z only goes so far

[ferday]

Thanks guys. I am learning stuff. This is great.

Speaking of Mahler symphonies (or any other music albums for that matter), if I have a "definitive" list of track names in an Excel file, can it be imported into MC? So, for example, if I want to rip 3 versions of Mahler's symphony no 1, then it would be great if I could ask MC to grab the track names from an external Excel file sitting on my computer. Perhaps too much to ask for but then MC seems very powerful.

i haven't played with it myself, but you can import .XML into MC so potentially you could use excel's ability to rename windows files and then import that information into MC directly

http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/rename-multiple-files-bulk-excel-googl-docs/2481/

[JH]

Thanks for the XML link. I will have to study it more and let you know how it goes.

I have another question. Is there a way to select tracks that have certain words in the name. I have a bunch of files whose names contain either waltz, polka, or march. (A product of ripping all of the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concerts from 1979 and 1987 onward.) Sometimes, I only want to play waltzes. So what I plan to do is enter waltz under the "genre" field for all waltzes. Then, I can sort by genre and play them.

[ferday]

Can Search with =isequal([name],waltz,8)

Even better, make a smartlist, and choose a rule "filename (name) contains waltz"

The smartlist is better cause it's easy to work with, when you're done tagging your waltzes you can change the rule to,polls and so on

[JH]

I typed "=isequal([name],waltz,8)" in the search window in the top right corner. Nothing comes up. Am I doing it right?

[JH]

I still don't know where to type "=isequal([name],waltz,8)" but the wizard in the search box was easy enough to use.

[ferday]

My bad.

Try

[=isequal([name],waltz,8)]=1

In the search bar.  I think that should fix the formatting

[JH]

Thanks, ferday. That worked.

I have one more question. Is there a way to keep only a portion of the string in the [Name] field? Some of the track information from the Internet has the disc and track numbers at the beginning of [Name]. The look like
101 yesterday
102 let it be
201 hey jude
etc.

It would be great if I can take the sub-string of [Name] from the 4th position until the end so that the track names now look
yesterday
let it be
hey jude

[ferday]

for just pure searching, using isequal([name],waltz,8) will ignore the leading numbers.  that is what the "8" does in the expression, a substring search that looks for waltz anywhere in the string so it will ignore the 101, 102, etc.  if you used isequal([name],waltz,1) then only tracks whose name is 'waltz' (and nothing else at all!) will be returned so 201-waltz would not be returned

if you want to actually change the names so that it is now stored as 'hey jude' instead of '201 hey jude', you can either:

do it one by one by clicking the name and deleting the '201' (boring)

or select all the files that have the offending track names, click Tag in the "action window", then in the [name] field (which will now say [varies]), type in (exactly...my formatting is correct here lol)

=removeleft([name],4)

this removes the first 4 characters starting from the left.  if you want to remove 3, or 5 or whatever just change the number.

[JH]

This is beautiful. Thanks, ferday!

[JH]

By the way, is there a place where these things (such as isequal, removeleft, or concatenating something to [Name], etc) are described? I would like to see what other functions are out there that I should know about.

[ferday]

ask and you shall receive

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Expression_Language

keep in mind that the formatting may change depending on where you use the expression

for example, in an "expression field" you'd use isequal([name],waltz,8).  in the search you needed [isequal([name],waltz,8)]=1.  and when typing it into a field, like for the removing of characters, you'd use =isequal([name],waltz,8)

[JH]

Great. Thank you.

[JH]

Is there a way to add a number to [Track #] and insert it to [Name]?

For example, the disc info from the internet says
the name for track 1 is "C major" and
the name for track 2 is "D minor".

The full/real name for
track 1 is "Variation No. 3 in C major"
track 2 is "Variation No. 4 in D minor".

I imagine something like the following in the Name window
=Variation No. [Track #]+2 [Name]

My wish would be that [Track #]+2 resolves to 3 if it's the first track. But it doesn't work. Is there a way?

[ferday]

Yes, probably...but you might be looking at a math() function to use any operators like +
The math() can get messy, I only use math() with variables so you'll have to check that wiki link I posted for proper syntax

try =variation no. math([track #] + 2) [name]
or =variation no. math(formatnumber([track#],0)+2) [name]  **this just ensures that track # returns an integer value

You might look into counter() as well, which simply adds a number in order from a chosen start so counter(1) would count up starting at 1

[JH]

math() worked beautifully.

In my example, typing the following in the name window does the job.

=Variation No. math([Track #] + 2) [Name] in