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Topic: Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie) (Read 5601 times) previous topic - next topic
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Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

I’ve only really started using Foobar2k over this weekend and I absolutely love it. I am thrilled by how customisable it is.

I have a few questions (mostly about tag fields), if anyone can help with any of them…

General questions
1. Is there any way to adjust the leading (spacing between lines) for custom font styles? Or any way to force antialiasing for custom font styles? That would be nice.

2. Is there any way to edit what information is shown in the information panel (under Metadata, General, & Location)?

3. Is there any way to have two album art panels instead of one? The vast majority of my music collection is compilation albums, so I would like to view both the album cover and the single cover for each track.

4. If I click on the column headers to re-order the tracks (for example, if I want to order by date) — how do I then get back to the normal order, grouped by album? I have the “Album” column hidden, and the only way I can find to do this is to first click on the “Track” column, then to show the “Album” column, click on it, then hide it again.

In case you were wondering, the reason I have “Album” hidden is I don’t see the point in having common album fields (e.g. Album, Album artist, Date) repeated over and over down the screen, wasting space, when I can have this displayed once at the top in the group name.

Questions about tag fields
5. Any way to have my custom fields in a customised order? (They are listed alphabetically.)

6. I am going to want to add custom tag fields to every single track I encode, with default values. Any way I can tell Foobar2k to add these fields for me automatically?

7. Is there any way to bring the artist or track names into the tags from the filename itself? It would just save a lot of typing, and prevent additional typing errors.

8. Is there any way to have custom font styles that are based on tag fields? (For example, all the number 1 songs appear blue; or all the songs I’ve marked as favourites appear in italics.)

9. Any way to edit tag fields directly from that metadata side panel? I notice you can’t edit tags in there but, when you actually edit tags, that panel goes blank. I think it would be neater if this panel simply changed to the tags dialogue, which would be more direct and save popup windows. No?

10. Is there any support for dates in tag fields? I would like to enter the dates of my tracks as days, months and years; have it show up as written months (e.g. “February”) but still have a date that is numerically searchable. I am guessing this is not possible though. At the moment, I’m just using two separate fields for dates: one numerical one for searching and one written how I want it to appear in the playlist.

If you reply, please bear in mind I am only new to Foobar2k. I realise some of the things I’m asking for might be based on the fact that I’m not using the software correctly yet. I haven’t even looked at media library or playlists yet (let alone searching) — I’m still just experimenting with the basics right now.

Any answers would be appreciated

Moderation: Corrected several instances of "tab" to "tag".

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #1
2. I'm almost sure that this is not possible.

3. Yes: enable "Layout Editing Mode" (Edit > Layout) and add a second Album Art panel to your layout (use splitters). I don't think that you can configure the art panel to show individual tracks' art if the general album art is present, though.

4. Edit > Sort > by Album.

7. Use the "Automatically fill values" dialog (select the tracks > Right-click > Properties, click Tools > Automatically fill values). Choose "filename" as the source, then specify how the filename is constructed (for example "%tracknumber% %title%").

10. See here.

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #2
Thanks, Cutter!

I have more questions!

11. Is there any way that Foobar2k can access the Freedb database directly and fill in the tags based on that? I think that would be a much better way of doing it rather than getting EAC to access Freedb and copying that to the filenames, then taking that information back out of the filenames — because filenames cannot contain certain characters and are sometimes truncated, so you’re losing information.

12. Any way of changing the font styles/colour of individual columns? (For example, if I wanted the artist and track names to be more prominent than the other column information, by making it bolder or a stronger colour.)

13. Any way to get Foobar2k to automatically scan and apply ReplayGain to tags for every track it encodes, so I don’t have to do that afterwards as a separate process?

14. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to arrange the panes/windows how I want them. I keep trying to delete panels and they turn into ‘blank’ panels that won’t go away. How do you get rid of a blank panel? And also, how do you split a panel into two? I can remove the splitter, but I can’t seem to put one back in. Help!

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #3
11. Is there any way that Foobar2k can access the Freedb database directly and fill in the tags based on that?
Never used it but, if I'm not mistaken, it should be an installation option: so just reinstall foobar2000 and make sure you select it.

Alternatively, you can perhaps try foo_discogs.

HTH.

Alessandro

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #4
11/ Just a reminder - you generally shouldn't uninstall to enable additional components or upgrade, see relevant FAQ entry.

12/ Not currently possible in Default UI.

13/ When you are using the Converter, there is an option like "
  • ReplayGain-scan output files as albums", isn't it?

    14/ Maybe this article could help you understand the Layout Editing Mode better?
Full-quoting makes you scroll past the same junk over and over.

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #5
9. Editing data can be done in the properties for a selection of tracks. Be sure to note Tools > Automatically Fill Values, which is a very powerful tagging utility. This might also help with question 5, 6 and 7.

[all fontstylecolour things] The playlist currently offers only what's under [Prefs] Display > Default > Colors & Fonts. While I as well would enjoy a few more options for subtle information effects, FB usually runs minimized anyway, and I have no trouble finding tracks or building playlists, so I'm not too upset.

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #6
Guess what? I have another question!

15. Automated adding of chart statistics from a file
As the majority of my music collection is singles, I plan to give each track a release date and highest chart position (in tags). I have all the data (in text/html format) and was going to type it all in manually, but it occurred to me that with all the excellent plugin work in this comunity, maybe someone has already come up with a way to read a text file and convert that data into tags, for the purposes of tagging tracks with statistical information.

Anyone know anything that might do this?

Ideally, I want a plugin that searches through text files for similar artist/titles to my tracks (offering me a choice where more than one similar result is found). I would then tell it where to put the associated data into (which tags). The result would be that I could add statistical information for every single and album I own with relative ease.

(If not, I’m still going to do it manually.)

it should be an installation option: so just reinstall foobar2000 and make sure you select it.

Alternatively, you can perhaps try foo_discogs.

Thanks for that — I have installed the Freedb component, although it doesn’t seem to always work for me. I will select all the mp3s of a CD and select Tagging > Get tags from Freedb, but often it comes back with the error that there is no information on freedb for those tracks. Now, I know there is because when I ripped the wavs in EAC, EAC was able to find the freedb info straight away. Incidentally, Foobar seems to always find Freedb informtaion for the original wavs (before I convert them to mp3) but it can’t store tag information in wavs, otherwise I would just use it first.

I also had a go with Foo Discogs, too. I found that very hard to get a matching album for almost all the CDs I tried it with. Most of my CDs are compilations, which doesn’t help when you have to search by artist! And then when I used it for an artist CDs, the track listings seemed different! (Never mind, Fredb is fine for me anyway.)

13/ When you are using the Converter, there is an option like "
  • ReplayGain-scan output files as albums", isn't it?

Yes, there is, but I don’t want to scan my music as albums. I would say 99% of my albums are compilations, or greatest hits. I have very little need to scan as albums as every track on my CDs is unrelated to the others on the albums. I deliberately never buy any CD that has mixing or overlap, because I love playing singles in a random order and I like them to be separate!

14/ Maybe this article could help you understand the Layout Editing Mode better?

Very useful, thanks. I am definitely getting to grips with it much more now, thanks.


9. Editing data can be done in the properties for a selection of tracks. Be sure to note Tools > Automatically Fill Values, which is a very powerful tagging utility. This might also help with question 5, 6 and 7.

Wow, I absolutely LOVE this feature. It is a great replacement when freedb isn’t available. (Although it’s a pity the “auto capitalisation” changes to both upper and lower case, and you can’ just specify one or the other. I like every word in my songs to begin with a capital letter, but I don’t want upper case letters removing just because they occur after a hyphen!)

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #7
Not sure what problem you are referring to with regards to discogs and compilations;  i've tagged loads of comps with this plugin and it works like a charm.  With the discogs window up, you just have to search for an artist that you know is on the comp and then type a partial title in the filter box.  Not trying to sway you over if you don't need it, but it sounds like you are the type that likes alot of metadata around his media and foo_discogs can add alot of metadata if you opt to - including release year/month/day, label, country of origin, credits data (if available) etc.  Also, you might want to take a look at Mp3tag - it has the ability to pull metadata from a number of web sources like Musicbrainz, Amazon, freedb, discogs, etc and is generally a very useful tag-editing application.

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #8

13/ When you are using the Converter, there is an option like "
  • ReplayGain-scan output files as albums", isn't it?

Yes, there is, but I don’t want to scan my music as albums. I would say 99% of my albums are compilations, or greatest hits. I have very little need to scan as albums as every track on my CDs is unrelated to the others on the albums. I deliberately never buy any CD that has mixing or overlap, because I love playing singles in a random order and I like them to be separate!


ReplayGain-Scan as Albums also produces a TrackGain value, to use this you just have to choose in Preferences > Playback > ReplayGain Source Mode: "Track"
So you should be fine with it using random...
fb2k on OSX: flac q8 > rockboxed Sansa e280v1: Vorbis q5.0

 

Loads of questions (from a Foobie newbie)

Reply #9
[quote name='Grand Dizzy' date='Aug 25 2008, 08:33' post='584567']
Thanks, Cutter!

I have more questions!

Quote
11. Is there any way that Foobar2k can access the Freedb database directly and fill in the tags based on that? I think that would be a much better way of doing it rather than getting EAC to access Freedb and copying that to the filenames, then taking that information back out of the filenames — because filenames cannot contain certain characters and are sometimes truncated, so you’re losing information.


I'm no expert (and have been having quite a time trying to figure out how to access art to display from the music folders) but having foobar tag from freedburg is pretty simple. I just "enqueue" the album folder, highlight the tracks and right click to tagging from freedburg. There is an option to tag from CD text but I only use that for CDs I haven't ripped yet. I hope this is what you meant and that it helps.