Hydrogenaudio Forums > iTSfv - iTunes Store file validator

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~*McoreD*~

Mar 14 2008, 15:44

Jose, great catch. Indeed "Various Artists" was the trick. You might have also noticed the iTunes Store files has the Compilation tag filled for such albums so the hack was much easier.

5.48.0.2 iTunes Store artwork was not retrievable for Compilation Albums [Jose Hidalgo]
5.48.0.1 Prevent crash while reading track metatags as part of Validating Library [hbokh]
5.48.0.0 Support for batch exporting iTunes Artwork from an alternate Music folder e.g. FLAC
5.47.5.0 File formats handled by iTSfv are now customizable using Advanced - Formats tab
5.47.4.1 Attempts to search artwork using Album Art Download XUI by clicking iTunes Store tracks, crashed iTSfv [Jose Hidalgo]
5.47.4.0 Minor tweaks for more sensible Progress Bars and Job completion progress in Applicate Title [NearlyGod]

I am going to jump the gun and release this version.

The Export Artwork Batch function inherits the same Artwork export settings in Options > Validate > File System > Artwork - to keep things simple.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=243989

Enjoy,
McoreD

~*McoreD*~

Mar 15 2008, 01:19

QUOTE(Jose Hidalgo @ Mar 15 2008, 03:35)

Oh, maybe one suggestion :

The "dummy mp3" iTMS artwork download thing doesn't seem to work when in the iTMS the first track belongs to an artist but the album itself belongs to another artist (e.g. "Various Artists" albums).

Maybe there's room for some improvement here ? (a second test on "Various Artist" if the first test fails, etc.).

5.48.1.0 Retry downloading iTunes Store artwork with "Various Artists" as the artist tag if iTunes Store artwork was not retrievable with default tags [Jose Hidalgo]

Jose,

In iTunes I noticed there were Compilation albums
- with IsCompilation tag checked
- without IsCompilation tag checked

iTSfv will not have to retry downloading Artwork for those Compilations albums with properly tagged IsCompilation tag. However for those Compilation albums without the IsCompilation tag checked, iTSfv will internally retry adding the same dummy mp3 with "Various Artists" and retry.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=243989

Cheers,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 15 2008, 12:51

I totally agree with your analysis. Let's try it out !

FYI, there is a cover I haven't been able to download yet, because I believe it contains asian characters or something like that : even in the iTS they are displayed as unknown chars (you know, little white boxes

).

It's the cover for the Final Fantasy X sountrack, by three artists : one woman, Nobuo Uematsu (of course), and a third person. It's this person's name that was unreadable.

I've tried almost everything I could think of for that cover, without success. Has anyone succeeded ?

EDIT - it doesn't work either with iTS names which have unusual characters (like the french character " œ " for instance). Example in the iTS : Artist = Dionysos / Album = La mécanique du cœur

~*McoreD*~

Mar 15 2008, 18:34

Hi Jose,

In these cases, does iTSfv crash or simply does not find the artwork? I will include more debugging information to get this issue sorted (hopefully).

By the way, the batch export artwork feature is available in OneTouch > File System tab in this new build.

Cheers,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 16 2008, 06:34

Hi McoreD, it simply doesn't find the artwork. No crash at all. You're welcome to include more debugging info and I'll do the testing.

NearlyGod

Mar 16 2008, 11:47

Compilation album art ...lovely.

In the mean time, my submission of iTSfv to the Tweakers.net website was recently accepted.
You can see it here, but it's all in Dutch: http://core.tweakers.net/meuktracker/17340...54732-beta.html

I can assure you it's nice to be recognized by this well-visited website (over 250,000 registered users, currently 7000 people online with 2100 pageviews per minute) , but I have no idea if it will lead to extra users of iTSfv, though

Cheers

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 16 2008, 13:08

You should know : aren't you Nearly God after all ?

~*McoreD*~

Mar 16 2008, 23:51

Jose,

One more question to verify something: Are these albums covers which aren’t downloadable using iTSfv, downloadable if you manually create a dummy mp3 and let iTunes to download artwork?

If the answer is yes, then iTSfv has a Unicode support issue that I will need to look into. If the answer is no, then I am afraid it is an iTunes issue because the artwork downloading part is done fully via iTunes.

I am unable to test this so far in Australian Store because there is no album/artist with œ character. I will keep trying.

Nearly God,

That’s one helluva busy web site – thanks for spreading the word about iTSfv.

Cheers,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 17 2008, 05:35

McoreD,

The answer is : both !

For "La mécanique du cœur", I've been able to DL it without problems using a manually created dummy mp3.

For "Final Fantasy X", it remains impossible no matter what I do. At least in the french iTS, but maybe in other iTS you will have more luck. Would someone care to try this one ?

Cheers,

Jose

xanadu1979

Mar 17 2008, 08:47

Hey, I'm loving the program so far. It makes iTunes the program it should be.

I'm having trouble with one thing and think it might be a bug. When I validate my entire library, the report that is produced at the end is blank. My library is pretty clean so the only thing that should show up on the report is low-res artwork. The low-res txt file is written properly. I've gotten the report to produce correctly a few times but I can't think of what setting I could have changed that caused it to stop working. The last two times I tried it was blank.

NearlyGod

Mar 17 2008, 11:06

Hey McoreD,

Using the latest beta, 5.48.1, I am seeing some strange values in the titlebar:
Time remaining, which I have not set to ETA, but to a countdown, is showing a negative value, which keeps counting down (getting lower).
A process that is now almost finished, is said to have -277 seconds remaining

Also in the titlebar, when I validate tracks with the options to Fill Missing AlbumArtist and Fill Track Count (etc), the %-progress jumps back in-between those two actions.
It is very honest, because for the second action the program is indeed going back to track 1 of an album of which it just tagged track 18, but it is slightly surprising to see!

EDIT:

Also for the first time, although not limited to 5.48.1, I noticed that several albums are not getting their AlbumArtSmall, Artwork and Folder.jpg created when I ask to Export Artwork.
About three out of 250 albums I worked on tonight showed this behaviour - no clue what they have in common, unfortunately. Will try and find out.
EDIT2: The three jpegs *are* created when I first embed the artwork in every track of an album, instead of just in the first one... Hmmm.

Cheers

PS Do you think there is a somewhat reliable way to auto-fill the Year tag? From either the ITMS info, or another source?

~*McoreD*~

Mar 18 2008, 04:03

xanadu1979,

Thanks - indeed that was a bug.

5.48.1.2 Tracks with low resolution artwork list was not sometimes written to XHTML report depending on the settings chosen [xanadu1979]

Please replace iTSfv.exe with the updated exe in this zip file.
http://wmwiki.com/mcored/research/itsfv/Ne...8.1.2-patch.zip

NearlyGod,

Ouch. That had gone untested by me when the changes were made to Progress Bar behavior to make it more accurate. It is fixed in the updated build.

5.48.1.1 Option to display number of seconds remaining count down was showing negative values [NearlyGod]

About progress resetting for writing TrackCount etc - it is possible to carry over progress from last session to the next session. However the time required to write TrackCount, DiscCount etc. is very small compared to other tasks under Validating Disc. So you would see slow progression to 50% and sudden jump to 100%.

5.48.1.3 Progress for writing TrackCount, DiscCount etc. is integrated into the progress of Validating Disc [NearlyGod]

You can test this behaviour using this build:

Please replace iTSfv.exe with the updated exe in this zip file.
http://wmwiki.com/mcored/research/itsfv/Ne...8.1.3-patch.zip

I have looked at Last.fm data for year tag but the database is not sometimes complete for Year tag. Hopefully, I get to understand the MusicBrainz API during the free times in the future and integrate functionality to fill Year tag. If anybody else know a good alternative to do the job, I would like to hear too.

Jose,

For "La mécanique du cœur" could you please test this in iTSfv.

When you click the track in iTunes Store, and ask iTSfv to download the Artwork, iTSfv will have a state where "Waiting for iTunes Store artwork download to complete...". Now quickly close iTSfv and go to Recently Added playlist in iTunes. I wonder if the tags are wrongly written.

FYI: Dummy mp3's tags are read back via iTSfv 5.48.1.2 just after it is added to iTunes, so we could know if the tags were properly copied over for sure.

20080318T190402 Job Started: EXPORT_ARTWORK_MANUAL
20080318T190408 Duration: 0 Hours 00 Minutes 5.5108016 Seconds
20080318T190408 Cleaning Temporary Files... in G:\Users\McoreD\AppData\Roaming\iTSfv\
20080318T190408 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Belinda Carlisle", Album: "Runaway Horses"
20080318T190412 Saved Track Artwork as G:\Users\McoreD\Desktop\Belinda Carlisle - (2003) Runaway Horses.jpg
20080318T190412 Job Finished: EXPORT_ARTWORK_MANUAL

Thanks,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 18 2008, 16:36

Hi McoreD, here's the requested information about the dummy mp3 :
Title : Le jour le plus froid du monde (Oh Madeleine)
Artist : Dionysos & Emily Loizeau
Album : La mécanique du cœur
Year : 2007

The tags look properly written, and indeed they are. But I've found what's wrong with them !

The artist for the first track of the album is "Dionysos & Emily Loizeau", while the album artist is Dionysos alone. So if you simply erase the "& Emily Loizeau" part, it works.

I've often noticed that iTS sometimes has trouble finding artwork when tere are several artists involved, with "&" as separator.

The solution in that case would be to truncate the artist field before the "&" sign. You could probably implement that easily within iTSfv : if the first attempt fails, look for "&" in the artist (or in the title) field, truncate the corresponding fields before the first "&", and try again.

What do you think ?

~*McoreD*~

Mar 19 2008, 03:17

QUOTE(Jose Hidalgo @ Mar 19 2008, 07:36)

What do you think ?

Hi Jose,

Cool - I guess those tags you read off from the dummy mp3 file. So the AlbumArtist tag "Dionysos" was filled in the tag? That's surprising! For every iTunes Store track I checked, the AlbumArtist tag was empty. It is nice to hear at least some are not empty. If the AlbumArtist tags wasn't empty, iTSfv should have used that instead of the Artist tag. I will see what exactly happened.

I should also point out that "Dionysos & Emily Loizeau" being the Artist tag while the album artist was just "Dionysos" without the rest after "&" could be for this specific album only. For another album, the AlbumArtist could have been a completely different artist. So like I said before, if the track has AlbumArtist tag filled, then iTSfv should use that tag instead of Artist tag. Otherwise it should check for the bit after "&" truncated for those Artist tags that contains "&".

Cheers,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 19 2008, 05:59

Hi McoreD,

No, that's not it at all, so I guess I haven't been clear enough.

The Album Artist tag "Dionysos" doesn't exist in the iTS tracks, so it's empty also in the dummy mp3. That's the reason why iTSfv couldn't get the track :
- iTSfv was looking for "Dionysos & Emily Loizeau"
- And indeed it's the right artist for the track : "Dionysos & Emily Loizeau"
- But NOT the right artist for the album : it should have been "Dionysos"
- And of course we would need only "Dionysos" to get the artwork

In other words, the iTS tracks are not properly tagged (which is not a scoop), they lack the album artist information, while the iTS artwork needs that.

So your conclusion is right anyway : if the track has AlbumArtist tag filled (which is not the case here), then iTSfv should use that tag instead of Artist tag. Otherwise it should check for the bit after "&" truncated for those Artist tags that contains "&".

But I should point that I've already had problems with albums with several artists but without an album artist : e.g. "Herbert Von Karajan & Berlin Philharmoniker" as artist for ALL album tracks. For some of those albums, if you try with the full artist name it doesn't work. But if you truncate it before the "&", it works.

So I guess the "truncating the part after the "&"" method should be performed anyway when all other methods fail.

~*McoreD*~

Mar 19 2008, 06:37

Hi Jose,

Thanks for the clarification, that cleared things up. In the mean while I was also testing if iTS was having AlbumArtist, and you are right, it doesn't.

I also tested if truncating artist info after "&" still worked for tracks that successfully downloaded artwork with the "&" character.

For example,

20080319T211140 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Simon & Garfunkel", Album: "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

I removed " & Garfunkel" and checked if iTunes still managed to grab the artwork for the song but it didn't. It did grab the artwork with "Simon & Garfunkel". I guess truncation method works for tracks that weren't successful downloading artwork with "&" sign.

Please replace iTSfv.exe with the updated exe in this zip file.
http://wmwiki.com/mcored/research/itsfv/Jo...8.2.0-patch.zip

This build will check if Artwork downloads with default tags.
If that fails, then it will change Artist to "Various Artists" and retry.
If that fails, if the "&" sign is present, then it will truncate the bit after "&" and retry.

I haven't been able to test in my local iTS yet because I couldn't find an Artist with "&" that didn't download the Artwork properly. Could you please try this and tell us the results.

Thanks,
McoreD

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 20 2008, 07:05

McoreD, could you please add one more check ?

- Check if Artwork downloads with default tags.
- If that fails, then it will change Artist to "Various Artists" and retry.
- If that fails, then it will change Artist to "Compilation" and retry.
- If that fails, if the "&" sign is present, then it will truncate the bit after "&" and retry.

"Compilation" is often used here in Europe as a replacement for "Various Artists"... I've checked and it exists in the iTS.

Some months ago, I had found about a dozen albums where the Artist contained "&" and where the artwork wouldn't download properly unless I truncated the Artist name before the "&". Unfortunately I can't remember which ones...

~*McoreD*~

Mar 20 2008, 19:09

Jose,

Sure, done in this build:

5.48.3.0 Retry downloading iTunes Store artwork with "Compilation" as the artist tag if iTunes Store artwork was not retrievable with default tags [Jose Hidalgo]

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=243989

20080321T091556 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Laliya", Album: "Just Like River"
20080321T091602 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Various Artists", Album: "Just Like River"
20080321T091608 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Compilation", Album: "Just Like River"

Edit - For next release:

5.49.0.1 Possibility of crashing iTSfv while capitalizing AlbumArtist tag in tracks in a Smart Playlist. This function is now limited only in playlists safe to perform the task.
5.49.0.0 Convert embedded non-JPG Artwork (PNG or GIF) to JPG Format as part of validation. Results are logged to file. [Chris Daniels]
5.48.3.1 Created blank iTunes metatags playlist if Check for metatags option and Save results as iTunes Playlists checkBoxes were checked

NearlyGod

Mar 21 2008, 16:58

Hey McoreD, only have time to leave a quick note - looks like some great improvements again! Convertion png/gif to jpg should prove useful for me.

Looks like a bug: 5.48.3.0 always give the message "Last Action: Could not find Artwork from iTunes Store..." - even if I have only added Disc Numbers or filled the AlbumArtist tag.

Hopefully some more play-time with iTSfv during the Easter weekend!

Cheers

~*McoreD*~

Mar 21 2008, 17:06

QUOTE(NearlyGod @ Mar 22 2008, 07:58)

Looks like a bug: 5.48.3.0 always give the message "Last Action: Could not find Artwork from iTunes Store..." - even if I have only added Disc Numbers or filled the AlbumArtist tag.

Hi NearlyGod, Indeed.

I noticed this just after releasing the version to SF.net. Bummer. It's nothing major functionality wise other than a cosmetic bug.

~*McoreD*~

Mar 22 2008, 06:05

I managed to test the Download iTunes Store Artwork method using a Beethoven album. The 4th retry was broken in 5.48.3.0 build - sorry Jose.

Here is an updated build which tested working:

20080322T204843 Job Started: EXPORT_ARTWORK_MANUAL
20080322T204850 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Günter Wand & NDR-Sinfonieorchester", Album: "Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Remastered)"
20080322T204856 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Various Artists", Album: "Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Remastered)"
20080322T204902 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Compilation", Album: "Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Remastered)"
20080322T204916 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Günter Wand", Album: "Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Remastered)"
20080322T204920 Duration: 0 Hours 00 Minutes 36.4021448 Seconds
20080322T204920 Cleaning Temporary Files... in G:\Users\McoreD\AppData\Roaming\iTSfv\

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=243989

5.50.0.0 Support for appending for prepending strings to Name, Album, Artist, AlbumArtist or Genre using Selected Tracks - Editor
5.49.3.1 Fixed bug where %DiscCount% in patterns were returning %DiscNumber% values!
5.49.3.0 Support for %Grouping% syntax for dealing with Box Sets
5.49.2.0 Clipboard preview is now multiline compatible and supports preview of all the selected tracks
5.49.1.0 Support for new line character "\n" to be used when copying Tag Information to clipboard. Do not use it for file names.
5.49.0.1 Possibility of crashing iTSfv while capitalizing AlbumArtist tag in tracks in a Smart Playlist. This function is now limited only in playlists safe to perform the task.
5.49.0.0 Convert embedded non-JPG Artwork (PNG or GIF) to JPG Format as part of validation. Results are logged to file. [Chris Daniels]
5.48.3.1 Created blank iTunes metatags playlist if Check for metatags option and Save results as iTunes Playlists checkBoxes were checked

Cheers,
McoreD

Edit:

QUOTE(Jose Hidalgo @ Mar 20 2008, 22:05)

To increase performance, I have swapped these steps around for the next build:

- Check if Artwork downloads with default tags.
- If that fails, if the "&" sign is present, then it will truncate the bit after "&" and retry, else go to next retry.
- If that fails, then it will change Artist to "Various Artists" and retry.
- If that fails, then it will change Artist to "Compilation" and retry.

Edit 2:

Discovered something even bizarre.

20080323T013243 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Josef Krips & London Symphony Orchestra", Album: "The Nine Symphonies"
20080323T013249 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "Josef Krips", Album: "The Nine Symphonies"
20080323T013255 Successfully added dummy file with Artist: "London Symphony Orchestra", Album: "The Nine Symphonies"
20080323T013255 Duration: 0 Hours 00 Minutes 18.2040016 Seconds
20080323T013255 Cleaning Temporary Files... in G:\Users\McoreD\AppData\Roaming\iTSfv\
20080323T013305 Saved Track Artwork as G:\Users\McoreD\Desktop\London Symphony Orchestra - (2006) The Nine Symphonies.jpg

It is not always the first artist before &!!

Edit 3:

5.51.2.0 Increased accuracy for downloading iTunes Artwork from Albums such as "Mozart: The Symphonies" by "Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood & Jaap Schröder"

20080324T144305 Job Started: EXPORT_ARTWORK_MANUAL
20080324T144311 Temporarily added dummy file with Artist: "Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood & Jaap Schröder", Album: "Mozart: The Symphonies"
20080324T144319 Temporarily added dummy file with Artist: "Academy of Ancient Music", Album: "Mozart: The Symphonies"
20080324T144319 Duration: 0 Hours 00 Minutes 14.445838 Seconds
20080324T144319 Cleaning Temporary Files... in G:\Users\Manno\AppData\Roaming\iTSfv\
20080324T144323 Saved Track Artwork as G:\Users\McoreD\Desktop\Academy of Ancient Music - (1997) Mozart_ The Symphonies.jpg
20080324T144323 Job Finished: EXPORT_ARTWORK_MANUAL

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 24 2008, 19:14

QUOTE(~*McoreD*~ @ Mar 22 2008, 13:05)

I totally agree !

QUOTE(~*McoreD*~ @ Mar 22 2008, 13:05)

Discovered something even bizarre.
[...]
It is not always the first artist before &!!

Yes, I have been noticing this quite often in fact. I have to say that the iTS is quite full of small errors, typos, etc., and in case of several artists (e.g. %artist% = "ARTIST1 & ARTIST2"), it may happen that the iTS displays ARTIST1 & ARTIST2 but uses ARTIST2 & ARTIST1...

QUOTE(~*McoreD*~ @ Mar 22 2008, 13:05)

5.51.2.0 Increased accuracy for downloading iTunes Artwork from Albums such as "Mozart: The Symphonies" by "Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood & Jaap Schröder"

Looks great to me ! So you've taken commas into consideration, right ?

~*McoreD*~

Mar 25 2008, 05:34

Jose,

That's correct - commas are now take care of and the overall multi artist scenario is re-coded from scratch.

I have uploaded the build here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=243989

5.51.3.0 Artwork Sources are now configurable using Options - Advanced - Validation [Jeff]
5.51.2.0 Increased accuracy for downloading iTunes Artwork from Albums such as "Mozart: The Symphonies" by "Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood & Jaap Schröder"
5.51.1.0 Added Options - File System - Rule to Always Fix Artist Folder Icon during Validation of Selected Tracks
5.51.0.0 Support for changing Picture type from Other to Cover (front) [williamsardar]
5.50.1.0 Retry downloading iTunes Store artwork for tracks with the second Artist that is seperated by "&" character
5.50.0.0 Support for appending for prepending strings to Name, Album, Artist, AlbumArtist or Genre using Selected Tracks - Editor

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 25 2008, 10:06

[workaround found - see the end of the post]

All right, now on for a new challenge (but is it really one ?

). Let's talk a bit about large box collections.

I have bought and ripped myself the enormous Brilliant Classics' Mozart Complete Works (170 CDs, no more no less

).

I have also designed nine custom covers for each of the nine CD categories (Symphonies, Concertos, etc.).

What I'd like to do is to :
- Select one of my designed covers at a time (e.g. "cover 1.jpg")
- Select in iTunes all the relevant albums (e.g. from "01-01 - Symphonies KV 16-19-19A-22-43-45" to "01-11 - Symphonies KV 550, 551 'Jupiter'"
- Press a button

- Then iTSfv would automatically :
1/ Duplicate the cover as many times as needed (11 times here)
2/ Name each duplicated cover the way I want (e.g. "%album artist% - (%year%) - %album%.jpg")

This would save me a LOT of time duplicating / renaming 170 covers by hand !
(besides, I've got Chopin and Schubert's Complete Works on the way (80 more CDs currently being ripped), and I'm thinking about buying Bach (155 CDs) and Beethoven (100 CDs), so... well... I could REALLY use such function !!

)

What do you think McoreD ?

(maybe there's already another tool that could do the work, I don't know)

EDIT - I've found a workaround, although more complicated :
- Create 170 dummy mp3 for iTunes with dbPowerAMP (yeah, that's me, the dummy mp3 guy

)
- Embed each of the nine custom artwork in one mp3 of each category (01-01, 02-01, 03-01, and so on)
- Copy / paste them for all other mp3 (01-01 goes to 01-02 ... 01-11, and so on)
- Then use iTSfv to extract all 170 artwork the way I want.

It takes a bit of time, but in the end it WORKS.

This tool is incredible !!

~*McoreD*~

Mar 25 2008, 17:10

Jose, excellent challenge- I like it

To my understanding

Cover1.jpg is common to 11 discs: Disc 01 to Disc 11
Cover2.jpg is common to 18 discs: Disc 12 to Disc 29
Cover3.jpg is common to 23 discs: Disc 30 to Disc 52
Cover4.jpg is common to 16 discs: Disc 53 to Disc 68
Cover5.jpg is common to 13 discs: Disc 69 to Disc 81
Cover6.jpg is common to 15 discs: Disc 82 to Disc 96
Cover7.jpg is common to 21 discs: Disc 97 to Disc 117
Cover8.jpg is common to 9 discs: Disc 118 to Disc 126
Cover9.jpg is common to 44 discs: Disc 127 to Disc 170

(I would have actually have 170 different Artwork from the CD Cover but that's besides point

)

Am I right to assume, creating 170 dummy mp3 files is a must for both automatic or workaround method?
To create 11 different files using 11 discs means that you will need at least 11 files (one file from each disc) - that's just Volume 1. There are 8 volumes to go. So for each other volume, you will have to create dummy mp3 files to create Artwork file name, wouldn't you? So I guess it is a must.

OK so let's assume you have 170 mp3 files that represent each disc, in iTunes.
Each dummy mp3 file is in the proper FLAC album folder location.

You select disc 01 to 11 in iTunes.
Right click in iTunes, Get Info and browse for your Cover1.jpg
You select disc 12 to disc 29.
Right click in iTunes, Get Info and browse for your Cover2.jpg
repeat for 9 categories (Volumes).

Now select all 170 mp3 files in iTunes
Using iTunes, create Artwork in the Album folder with the pattern %album artist% - (%year%) - %album%.jpg

Is this another workaround or a solution - I am not sure but I didn't
- Copy / paste them for all other mp3 (01-01 goes to 01-02 ... 01-11, and so on)

Jose, what you think?

I have also dealt with box sets in the past and I realized songs needed a %BoxSet% tag – where in this case %BOXSET% tag will be “Brilliant Classics' Mozart Complete Works”. iTunes would then ideally organize the songs like:

Music\%AlbumArtist%\%Boxset%\%DiscNumber%-%DiscCount% %Album%\ opposed to the usual way:

Music\%AlbumArtist%\%Album%\

For example:

D:\Music\The Beatles\The Beatles Black Box\1-16 Please Please Me
(this is the first of the 16 albums of the Beatles’ box set)

D:\Music\ABBA\ The Complete Studio Recordings\9-09 Rarities\
(this is the last of the 9 albums of the ABBA’s box set)

Let’s stop dreaming - my workaround for grouping all the albums of the box set was by actually using the %Grouping% tag by iTunes. It is a dirty way. The %Grouping% tag is read in WMP11 as Subgenre.
Here is the result:

The other workaround (popular) I have seen is to actually use the Box set name as the %Album% tag.
The drawbacks are:

You will lose the album name of each disc.
You will be only limited to one album art (but I guess it will be the box set cover art)

It is interesting to know your workaround?

I have asked this question in public here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=554131

Jose Hidalgo

Mar 26 2008, 05:22