Genre Finder 5.0 - Updated 05/08/2012

[Guest]

Just checked out the scipt for musibrainz, looks nice allthough i would have to tag all my music again with musicbrainz, but maybe it can be an inspiration for further scripts? You can find the code there as well.

http://tiptoes.hobby-site.com/mbz/lastf ... n_Comments

[Guest]

I'm new to both MediaMonkey and this script, and I've been trying to use it for genres and moods, but it seems to be returning a lot fewer tags than the MusicBrainz Picard last.fm plugin - sometimes no tags at all for songs that the Picard one does find tags for. Since they are both getting their tags from last.fm, does anyone (especially trixmoto) know why Genre Finder wouldn't be finding all the same tags and/or a way to get it to find more? I don't know VBS, so looking at the code won't help me figure it out, but the only things I could come up with are that maybe Genre Finder only searches for tags for a track for a set amount of time before moving on to the next one or only finds tags that meet a minimum popularity threshold.

I'd prefer to use the Genre Finder script for MediaMonkey over the Picard one because it seems faster and easier to use, lets me use wildcards in translations, and (unlike using Picard) doesn't mess with titles, artists, albums, or track numbers, but unfortunately it does not seem to work for as many songs or retrieve as many tags.

(BTW, I have run mode set to Track, "tag with multiple values" checked, "check library" and "only overwrite blank values" unchecked. I have tried setting "use top results" to both 0 and 10 and have also tried using both a custom whitelist and just putting in an asterisk to see what it found. The test tracks are mostly pretty mainstream - from AC/DC to ZZ Top.)

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Guest]

I just went to last.fm and saw that it is down. That might explain why my results with Genre Finder (today) weren't as good as my results with Picard's last.fm plugin (yesterday). I'll have to try again when last.fm is working again. Has anybody else tested both the Genre Finder script and the last.fm plugin for Picard when last.fm was working and noticed a difference in the number of results, or was it probably just because last.fm is having issues today?

[trixmoto]

There's certainly no timeout except when it completely fails to get any results. It will use all the results the Last.Fm returns unless you have set the "Use top results" option in the GenreFinder settings.

[Guest]

Now that last.fm is back up, I tried again and I'm still having issues. I think I figured out (part of) what's going on, but not how to fix it. I noticed that I got different results depending on which field I set it to write the tags to, even though the whitelist was an asterisk for all of them. I had it create a log, and it looks like it's behaving as if "Check library before querying" is checked, even when it's not. The log is showing a whitelist that corresponds to what I have entered in that field for other tracks (ex: "Genre whitelist is Alternative, Blues..."). I don't know how to get it to use all found tags. Looking at the log, it also still does not seem to be finding all of the last.fm tags. For example, the log for the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week," shows that it finds just Classic Rock, '60s, The Beatles, Rock, and Pop (filtering out all but Rock and Pop for genre, and everything for other fields). Looking at its tags on last.fm(http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles/_/ ... Week/+tags), there are a lot that it's not finding, such as British, British Invasion, Love Songs, Romantic, etc. Any ideas what's going on? Is the previous version of the script available? I wanted to see if it got different results (especially since I read in this forum that people seem to be having more trouble with the latest version), but I couldn't find where to download it.

[Guest]

Sorry for the multiple posts - I just realized that I was a little confused about the whitelist. I thought that asterisk returned all results, but now I see that it should be blank to return all and asterisk uses only those tags already used in the library. Still not sure why it's not returning all the available tags, though (with the whitelist blank).

[Guest]

I keep thinking of new things not long after I post. Now I think I figure it out: last.fm's 2.0 service is not as thorough as it's 1.0 one. Compare its 2.0 and 1.0 tag lists for the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week." The 1.0 list has a lot more tags. Is there an advantage to using the 2.0 service that I'm not seeing or could the script go back to using the 1.0 service while still keeping its current features? I suppose 2.0 is good if you just want basic genres (not moods, occasions, etc.) and don't want to bother with making your own whitelist, but I definitely prefer the variety of tags in the 1.0 service. I would just use the 3.2 version of the Genre Finder script (which I found after some searching), but it lacks the ability to specify the whitelist in a file, bypassing the 2,048 character limit. (My whitelists go a little over that limit if I include translations.)

[trixmoto]

Yes, the star (*) means all existing values in the that field in the database, blank should be used for any value at all. The 2.0 webservices not only have an album mode instead of me hacking something with multiple track calls, but they are also supported. The 1.0 webservices are deprecated so they can now switch them off any day without warning (because the warning has already been given) - this is the main reason I would not consider switching them back. I imagine the 2.0 results, whilst having less results, actually has much more accurate results and just trims out the rubbish.

[Guest]

Thanks for the explanation, Trixmoto. (And the script, too. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining about it; I just had some questions.) Since I use some of the "rubbish" tags to create playlists for moods and other non-genre things (instrumental, brassy, graduation, etc.), I guess I'll have to get my music tagged using Genre Finder 3.2 before last.fm decides to do away with their 1.0 service. It's working really well for me now that I've trimmed my translations a bit. (Learning that % stood for zero or more characters rather than one or more was a big help since I could do things like "%Jazz=Jazz" instead of "Jazz, %Jazz=Jazz" and cut out a handful of characters per genre.) Anyway, thanks again, Trixmoto.

[aprzybylo]

I keep thinking of new things not long after I post. Now I think I figure it out: last.fm's 2.0 service is not as thorough as it's 1.0 one. Compare its 2.0 and 1.0 tag lists for the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week." The 1.0 list has a lot more tags. Is there an advantage to using the 2.0 service that I'm not seeing or could the script go back to using the 1.0 service while still keeping its current features? I suppose 2.0 is good if you just want basic genres (not moods, occasions, etc.) and don't want to bother with making your own whitelist, but I definitely prefer the variety of tags in the 1.0 service. I would just use the 3.2 version of the Genre Finder script (which I found after some searching), but it lacks the ability to specify the whitelist in a file, bypassing the 2,048 character limit. (My whitelists go a little over that limit if I include translations.)

Actually the difference is that in 2.0 last.fm limit the number of tags to 5. That means that if top tags are something "album I own" or something like that it leaves very little room for true tags. Also if you use this to let say set a custom field to nationality, it worked very well in 1.0, but now those tags ("british", "French" etc) will be cut in many cases.

[aprzybylo]

Is it possible to get somewhere the version 3.2 of this script till the artist mode doesnt work?

[corkabias]

Genre Finder doesn't seem to be working. I have two different tracks by the same artist with different genre's. Genre Finder doesn't offer suggestions for changes to either one.

[trixmoto]

@aprzybylo - http://trixmoto.net/files/old/GenreFinder32.mmip

@corkabias - if you're using Artist mode then it won't, yet.

[Guest]

Since some people still want the variety of tags offered by the 1.0 webservices while other prefer 2.0, would it be possible to have a drop-down box in Genre Finder allowing users to choose which one they want? That way, those of us who prefer the 1.0 webservices can still get the advantages of Genre Finder 4.0, such as having whitelists in text files, rather than going back to version 3.2. Since the code is already written for both services, would this be a fairly simple change?

[trixmoto]

No, the webservices work very differently so when I changed I restructured must of the script, it would not be at all simple to have both working within the same script.