File Renaming Question

[IsaacJ]

Hello all. I'm already feeling a lot of hope for MediaMonkey as it's just about the first more or less free program I've found that both works with Oggs and doesn't crash nonstop on my system. But I am having some trouble using some of the features, and I haven't had much luck finding out more in the documentation. Maybe it's just my own oversight.

Anyway, I've started using the program to catalogue my collection, and I seem unable to get anything from the "auto-tag from filename feature", which by itself would be useful to me. I have a bunch of oggs that have only the album title as the track title, but this feature would save me a couple hours of work. It seems like no matter what mask I try, after I hit OK it just doesn't do anything--the names remain the same as before. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I'm just doing it wrong altogether?

One other thing. I have another program (it actually imbeds itself into Windows Explorer) that lets me rename MP3 tags. It's useless for oggs, but I likes its renaming system a lot. One of the things it lets me do is select a group of tracks, then, when I check the properties, it give me a display kinda like MediaMonkey does with a line for album, title, artist, etc. Well, by each of these lines, this program has a button; if I press the button, then enter in a value, it will let me change that one value in every highlighted song across the board. So, if I want to make a group of songs with the same album and artist title, I can do this with the click of a single button. Also, it will let me go forward/backward from one file to the next just as MM does, so if I want to make minor changes to each file I still can without leaving this screen. I haven't found anything like this in media monkey as yet. Is there a way that I'm overlooking? For me, this is one of the best features I've found so far. It seemes so much easier than going down the list and changing each file, each line, one at a time.

Thanks.

IsaacJ

[IsaacJ]

Yes, I'm a duphus. I see how to selectively pick tag features now, which was my 2nd question. But I'd still like to get the auto rename from filename feature working.

Also, is there an undo button? Or a way to rename files using the Freedb function when they're already on my hardrive? (I'm asking this because I got a group of them named incorrectly using the rename feature and want to change them back)

IsaacJ

[jiri]

Hello,

as for "auto-tag from filename" feature, an example would probably help: Let's say you have a track with a filename "ABBA - Waterloo.ogg", then simply select (or type yourself) the mask "<Artist> - <Title>" and it will properly split the filename to 'artist' and 'title' fields. Should you have anything more complicated, let me know.

There isn't an undo or Freedb support for individual filenames yet. However, if you accidentally modified some fields, you can use Auto-tag feature to retrieve a field back from a filename (if the field is present in the filename, of course).

Jiri

[IsaacJ]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what it's supposed to do then. I thought that by hitting the "Retag by filename" button MM would change my track titles to match the file's actual name. I have quite a few tracks saved that have the correct filename (like "(01) Main Title.ogg" for instance) but the title information may only say the number 1, which is useless. Or it might just have the name of the album where the track title should be as another example. I was hoping that I could change the track title to match the actual filename with the press of a button, as it were, which would save me a lot of work. When I try this now it doesn't do anything at all. Have I got something mixed up?

IsaacJ

[rusty]

Isaac,

I think you're understanding the feature, but overestimating its intelligence. i.e. clicking auto-tag from filename _can_ take information from "(01) Main Title.ogg" and transfer that data into tags, however, it can only do so:
a) if the information exists (in this particular example, only track# and title information can be added to the tags from the filename
b) if you've given MediaMonkey an indication of the format in which your filenames are stored e.g. in this case you'd have to set a Filename Format (in the Auto-Tag from filename dialog) of:
(<Track#>) <Title>

Note that the more common situation is that users have filenames in the format: artist-title.mp3
In this situation, the Filename Format should be set to the one Jiri described: <Artist>-<Title>

Hope this clarifies things.

[IsaacJ]

I get it now. All I needed to do was just set it to <Track> and it worked. Before, it was literally not doing anything, so I started to think the feature was broken until I came here and saw others using it.

Thanks.

IsaacJ