Workflow to manage library

[jh9238]

I am very new to moOde -- but I was able to easily get it up and running on a pi and connected to a SMB file share with a large, legacy music library (~20K songs)

*Most* of my music is properly/consistently tagged, but not all -- notably compilation/VA albums.

My question is -- does anyone have a recommended workflow for importing or managing a library? 

i.e. if I find an incorrect tag while browsing via moOde, what is the best way to fix it? can I do it directly via moOde, or do I have to manually edit the underlying meta and then force a library update?

i.e. if an album doesn't have a cover file, moOde appears to use the embedded cover of the last file in the folder. Is there a better way to update the cover other than manually supply a new cover.jpg into the folder, and then force a regen of the thumbnail cache?

TIA!

[the_bertrum]

The short answer is, yes you need to manage the tags, including images outside of moOde then rebuild your library afterwards.

Longer answer, my workflow looks like this:

1. Understand how moOde uses tags and set up the preferences to control how your tags are used (album art preferences, what metadata to show, sort orders and so on).
   
2. Use a good tagging program to analyse your current tags, add in any missing tags, correct any inaccuracies, and remove any duplicate, invalid or unnecessary tags.
   
3. Rebuild your music database in moOde, clear the tag cache, and all your browser caches.
   
4. Apply your tag hygiene to any new files before scanning for them.
   

As to what is a good tagging program, well there's a heap of advise in other threads on this topic.  I find that there isn't just one, you'll probably need to combine two or three different tools to be sure you've not missed any hidden tags, or tags that are in the wrong schema for the file, or any number of other nasty stuff that lesser music players either introduce to your files, or ignore, or both.  I find that Musicbrainz Picard is pretty good as a starting point if you like using their database to provide the values for the metadata and you can ask it to remove any tag that isn't in its database which does a good job at killing all the duplicate or invalid tags that can get into files from time to time.

[Tim Curtis]

Your question:
"i.e. if an album doesn't have a cover file, moOde appears to use the embedded cover of the last file in the folder. Is there a better way to update the cover other than manually supply a new cover.jpg into the folder, and then force a regen of the thumbnail cache?"

Correct. The last track in an album is used to extract an embedded image. This is because normally if tracks in an Album contain embedded cover art it will be the same image in each track.

There are rare exceptions to this for example Nine Inch Nails - The Slip. In this Album each track contains a different cover image but the Album cover itself is an actually the image contained in the first track.

To handle this type of Album, although it's not documented :-0 do the following:

Code:

Cover search = Embedded
Audio formats = Default+

Image file in the Album dir
Note that its the last file in the dir

pi@trx:~ $ ls -l /media/VFAT128/FLAC/Nine\ Inch\ Nails/The\ Slip/
total 949248
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  27384806 Jan  8  2021 '01 999,999.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 102507596 Jan  8  2021 '02 1,000,000.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  95723922 Jan  8  2021 '03 Letting You.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 106626788 Jan  8  2021 '04 Discipline.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 101937964 Jan  8  2021 '05 Echoplex.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 107364472 Jan  8  2021 '06 Head Down.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  62039902 Jan  8  2021 '07 Lights in the Sky.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 140543833 Jan  8  2021 '08 Corona Radiata.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  98035406 Jan  8  2021 '09 The Four of Us are Dyng.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 129636624 Jan  8  2021 '10 Demon Seed.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     52174 Oct  5 08:27 'The Slip.jpg'

Generating thumbnail images

For Cover search = Embedded, the thumbnail generator uses the last file in dir to create the thumbnail for the album but if no embedded image is found in that file it uses the first image file it finds in the dir.

So in this example the file ’The Slip.jpg’  is assigned as the thumbnail image for the Album and is what appears in the Library and Queue, and since Cover search priority is to use the embedded image if one exists then each tracks embedded images is shown as the main (non-thumbnail) cover in Playback view and CoverView.

Also, for compilation albums populate the Album Artist tag with a consistent string for example "Various Artists".

[jh9238]

I appreciate the replies! This helps!

[PJVervoorn]

I use Picard to manage the tags, cover art and directory structure.