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Author Topic: Replacing albums... Again  (Read 1787 times)

MrHaugen

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Replacing albums... Again
« on: November 10, 2012, 04:53:59 pm »

I'm on my second round of replacing a few hundred MP3 albums to Flac versions. After I remembered how much time it took the last time, I simply closed the folder and decided to wait again. It's just so time consuming...
Around a year ago you added the ability to copy most tags between tracks. That made it much simpler to replace tracks, but we still have to do a lot of work to replace albums.

Would you please consider adding a right click command or something that allows you to choose new files to import and replace the existing files? It could be so simple as browsing to a folder containing the new album, drag and drop to rearrange the files so they match the existing album, import new files, copy all relevant values, deleting the old files and moving the new files to the original location.

It would simplify things so much, and it would make things a LOT more newbie friendly. Today, you really have to know what you're doing before going at this task. I would not mind a better system than what I'm describing. I'm sure there are plenty that have some good ideas. But this would do the trick for me.
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bunglemebaby

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2012, 09:55:07 am »

Quote
'm on my second round of replacing a few hundred MP3 albums to Flac versions. After I remembered how much time it took the last time, I simply closed the folder and decided to wait again.
I feel you. I'm in the same boat with respect to upgrading my audio quality. As it is now, I may never get there. I've gone through and replaced the albums that were particularly noticeable due to either music style or low mp3 quality, and the amount of manual effort to finish the job seems overwhelming.
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Vocalpoint

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2012, 09:28:23 am »

It would simplify things so much, and it would make things a LOT more newbie friendly. Today, you really have to know what you're doing before going at this task. I would not mind a better system than what I'm describing. I'm sure there are plenty that have some good ideas. But this would do the trick for me.

+100. This has to be one of the most frustrating parts of the MC ecosphere - since you REALLY need to know what's happening (and practice it a lot) and be very careful while you do it. Not to mention it's all manual at this point.....

VP
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rjm

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2012, 10:25:28 am »

Definitely a big hole that many people including myself would appreciate filled.

Matt, please think about your leverage here. A modest amount of your effort will save huge effort for every user that upgrades their albums.

And we need something exciting for MC18. Its been a little dreary to date.
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InflatableMouse

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2012, 01:36:17 pm »

I'm actually doing this myself at the moment, about 7000 mp3's left to do.

At first I bothered, renaming the mp3's in MC to flac, replacing them physically with flacs on disc and then use update tags from library to write the tags to the files.

I quit doing that, too much work. I just import them, correct tags and delete the mp3's.
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Sauzee

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2012, 02:13:52 pm »

It's just so time consuming...
Around a year ago you added the ability to copy most tags between tracks. That made it much simpler to replace tracks, but we still have to do a lot of work to replace albums.

I find the process very quick now. Just import the new rip, control +C all old tracks, control +Shift +V on all the new tracks (make sure they are in track number order). Then delete old rip. Couldn't be easier. You can do this for all the album's tracks, ie. you don't need to do it track by track. Excluding ripping time, takes about 5 seconds per album.
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Vocalpoint

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #6 on: November 12, 2012, 03:32:34 pm »

I find the process very quick now. Just import the new rip, control +C all old tracks, control +Shift +V on all the new tracks (make sure they are in track number order). Then delete old rip. Couldn't be easier. You can do this for all the album's tracks, ie. you don't need to do it track by track. Excluding ripping time, takes about 5 seconds per album.

I am finding this a bit confusing...especially the part about "Just import the new rip". So...

1. You have an older version of the album - in whatever format...MP3, FLAC etc
2. Then you "import" the new rip?

Questions (and concerns)

1. When you "import" the new rip - where are the track located?
2. What naming convention do the old tracks have vs the newly ripped tracks?
3. What if (like ALL of my replacement activity) you are replacing a version of an album that was originally in FLAC but you now have a new rip of a better version of the same album - also in FLAC? I only import tracks into my main library - from a specific network location. So if I copy the new tracks out to the folder they need to be in - they immediately overwrite the old ones anyway. (this also can be useful in certain situations) - where I then use Update Library from Tags.

I think you process is assuming the old tracks are MP3 and the new ones would be something like FLAC...but as you can see - this replacement process become much more annoying if the formats and naming conventions are identical.

I do use CTRL-C and SHIFT-CTRL-V all the time to copy paste tags....but i would be much easier to have a command (or interface) within MC to handle the replacement activities with a little more finesse.

Cheers,

VP
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MrHaugen

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Re: Replacing albums... Again
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2012, 04:58:04 pm »

I find the process very quick now. Just import the new rip, control +C all old tracks, control +Shift +V on all the new tracks (make sure they are in track number order). Then delete old rip. Couldn't be easier. You can do this for all the album's tracks, ie. you don't need to do it track by track. Excluding ripping time, takes about 5 seconds per album.
It could be much easier. You forget about moving the files to the old album directory. Renaming the files after they have been imported. The directory that's left after you delete an album. JPG's and txt files and what not that's left in the directories preventing it to be removed. Some might not care about this, but I certainly do. I believe MC could easily do this automatically with little programming effort.
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