Hello all,
can experienced users help?
As a use case, I want to do a simple thing.
1) Tag purchased Qobuz / Bandcamp albums: clean up some tags, add or change genre.
2) Rename and move files including non-audio files.
Forum searches left me none the wiser so far.
The folder structure MC gets to import is Artist/Album (where these names come from Qobuz or Bandcamp).
I thought I could clean up the folder names inside MC, as Qobuz delivers “The-Wilhelm-Scream” as Artist folder name and I need “The Wilhelm Scream”. The “Rename, Move & Copy Files” command however creates a new folder with the desired name and leaves the non-audio files behind in the original folder with dashes. So I am using a Mac OS zsh find, rename command to get rid of the dashes in directory names without moving anything. Not a nice workaround... So this is the first instance where I am unable to realise the use case.
The other instance is:
The target folder structure is Genre/Album Artist/Album/Disc#_Track#_Name_Artist (where the values come from the polished tags.
The rules I have in “Rename, Move & Copy Files” are:
Directories: /[Genre]/[Album Artist]/RemoveCharacters(Clean([Album], 3), '‘’"“”., 0)/
Filename: [Disc #]_[Track #]_RemoveCharacters(Clean([Name], 3), '‘’"“”., 0)_[Album Artist]
The above Rename preset takes care of the audio files. The non-audio files however get left behind and I am looking for a solution to move them alongside without renaming.
The image files (e.g. cover_small.png) and PDFs sit in the album folder. They are imported into MC and are visible when selected in the tree. Additionally, there are image files with artist portraits which sit in the artist folder themselves, not in the album folder. They are in the database too.
I am stuck... ?
“Fill properties from Filenames” doesn't work universally for this use case if executed on the whole list of non-audio files, because the image files are at two different depths. Also, I am not getting the Genre tag from that. Furthermore, my newly hand-updated tags might not be identical with the folder names received from Qobuz or Bandcamp. Another inconsistency that will break things when moving.
One line of thinking is: if there were a way to automatically tag the non-audio file fields Artist, Album, Genre? Album would be empty, if the file sits in the Artist folder itself, and get the album tag filled when residing in the Album folder... Then build a second “Rename, Move & Copy Files” for all non-audio files... Keeping in mind the two different depths at which the image files reside... I have a smart list, which is half-way there listing all the non-audio files but I lack the skills to go further.
Could this be achieved somehow?
Or is there maybe a way to rebuild the “Rename, Move & Copy Files” functionality with Expressions? Or another avenue to solve the use case?
Also, I don’t get the escape character / to work in expressions. replace() does work with a letter of the alphabet, but not with /[space character]. This would be for replacing space characters with dashes for example. I tried /# #/ as well, no luck.
Lastly, how do I get expressions to accept folder names /grandparent/p a r e n t/child/? Seems to be an escape character or quotation mark thing? I tried various options without luck.
Any ideas?
Thank you for your patience. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Kind regards.
Edit: I found a partial solution, by ticking ‘Move all non-imported files in folder with selected media files’. The import is different (no non-audio files), it takes care of the non-audio files in the Album folder itself. The non-audio files in the Artist folder remain behind and the original Artist folder remains...
Edit2: Thank you, @Zybex, in your post in the thread
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,135180.msg936246.html#msg936246I found a workaround for the /[space character] issue – use char(32) instead...