I have several suggestions for improvements to amaroK\'s tagging capabilities which (for me) would ensure that it remained the best music player around.

Tagging multiple files
Currently, if I want to update the tags on more than one file I have to go through and edit each one individually. I have thought of two possible solutions to this:
[ol][*]When editing a track\'s tags get amaroK to look at which fields the user has changed, and then go through every other file in the scope*, see if they had the same original content on the changed fields, and if so copy the new value over. An example hopefully makes this monster sentence a bit clearer:
I want to change the the artist tag on an album from \'Bach\' to \'Bach, J. S.\'. If I changed this on one track, amaroK would then search through the other tracks for those which also had the artist set as \'Bach\' and change these. If there were any tracks which had the artist set as \'Haydn\', these would remain the same.
[*]Another (and my preferred) method would be to have a multi-state checkbox next to each field in the tag editor. If you have ever used \'make xconfig\' to compile your kernel you\'ll know what I\'m talking about. A picture:
[img]http://www.soton.ac.uk/~dph104/xconfig.png[/img]
This checkbox would define the scope of the change to the field. It would cycle through 3 states:
[ul][*]Unselected - Change only this track.[*]Change this field in all tracks in the scope* if they had the same initial value (works the same way as number 1 above).[*]Force change of this field in all tracks in the scope*, regardless of initial state.[/ul]I realise that this could have some major usability issues, it is only one way of implementing the idea.[/ol]*scope: This could be implemented as options to change all tracks on this album, by this artist, etc... However in my opinion, a better method would be to have an \'apply to whole playlist\' option, harnessing amaroK\'s playlist handling power.


Updating filesystem locations
My scenario:
I recently ripped all my tracks to flac using KAudioCreator. This put them in a logical directory tree, composer then album with specific fields off CDDB being included in the filename. KAudioCreator also tagged all these files. If I want to change a field of one of these files, I have to edit the tag in amaroK and then rename it in my filesystem (probably no good for the amaroK music DB either). Again I have thought of two possibilities for implementing this:
[ol][*]When changing tags, search through the path of the files for matches and try to intelligently change them.
[*]Let the user specify how they have arranged the files. This could be done in the same format as KAudioCreator (e.g %{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{number} %{artist} - %{title}.%{extension}). This approach is very powerful, as it would mean that if a user added some files which were laid out logically they could be automatically tagged (and vice versa).
My personal preference is that this arrangement could be specified for each location in the collection, so I could have my CDs under one layout and other music under another. I realise that this could be very difficult to implement as it would require redoing the directory selection for the collection. The new one could have a list of directories composed of the base path and then the layout, e.g \'/home/foo/music/cds/%{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{number} %{artist} - %{title}.%{extension}\'. This would also mean that tagged music could be imported into these directories and automatically laid out. Some of the possibilities are awesome. If the files were already tagged and laid out in the directory, amaroK could try to guess the 2nd part of the path like in number 1. This is all getting a bit complicated, I realise it is probably never going to happen . The first part of the idea would still be very useful.[/ol]

I have no knowledge of the amaroK codebase, so some of these may be very difficult/impractical to implement. You may consider them overkill for amaroK. This may be true, but to me it seems that amaroK alone has the basic tagging support and all the necessary components to handle these features (MusicBrainz, great collection and playlist handling, ...). Also just using one app is much better than using two . I know that these suggestions would solve all my tagging problems and probably the vast majority of everyone elses.

I hope you can at least take something from the ideas I have presented. If there is anything that is unclear please reply and I will try my best to clarify it. Finally thanks for a great progam. The rate of improvements to amaroK is astonishing and puts other pieces of software to shame!

dom wrote:

Let the user specify how they have arranged the files. This could be done in the same format as KAudioCreator (e.g %{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{number} %{artist} - %{title}.%{extension}). This approach is very powerful, as it would mean that if a user added some files which were laid out logically they could be automatically tagged (and vice versa).!

This has been requested before and I once again favor it. Using two apps is frustrating when one is so close to doing it all and already has al of the hard stuff (tag editing, editing multiple files, musicbrainz) done.

Dominic Harries wrote:Tagging multiple files
Currently, if I want to update the tags on more than one file I have to go through and edit each one individually.

If you go to the file browser, select a group of tracks and choose to edit the details you can change the album, artist, and composer fields for all of them in a single whack. For the track name/number you would have to select and edit each one individually.

When you are done you can choose to organize them which will move/rename them according to the specified layout.

My personal preference is that this arrangement could be specified for each location in the collection, so I could have my CDs under one layout and other music under another.  I realise that this could be very difficult to implement as it would require redoing the directory selection for the collection.  The new one could have a list of directories composed of the base path and then the layout, e.g \'/home/foo/music/cds/%{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{number} %{artist} - %{title}.%{extension}\'.  This would also mean that tagged music could be imported into these directories and automatically laid out.

Not sure why you would want to have a different layout for CDs than you would for other music, if you just want to seperate them, you can do than now. If you have your root music directories organized as:

/Some/Directory/Music/CD
/Some/Directory/Music/Other

: If you choose '/Some/Directory/Music/CD' and '/Some/Directory/Music/Other' as the locations where your music is stored instead of choosing '/Some/Directory/Music/Other', then when you select some tracks and choose to organize them you will be asked which directory to send them to. And for other players that don't let you specify multiple music directories you can still point them to '/Some/Directory/Music/Other'.

I would like to have the ability to use diffferent layouts for different directories, but for my personal usage, the only real reason I have for this desire is so I could have a separate root directory for various artists that I could use a layout of '/Album/Track_-_Artist' instead of the normal '/Artist/Album/Track'.

Later, Seeker

Seeker, have you seen the date of the post you were answering to?

Oops. The thread was color coded like there were new posts, I swear.

Later, Seeker