I posted this recommendation for Foobar2000 and its Live Show Tagger plugin as an answer in another forum, but I thought it deserved a post here in the Tagging forum.
For tagging live shows, I can't recommend strongly enough Foobar2000 together with the Live Show Tagger plugin. This will parse the info.txt file and tag the flac files accordingly. If file names and info.txt files follow etree conventions, then it just works like magic. It will even take track notes at the bottom for special guests and such denoted with * or ^ or % etc and write those to the flac Comments tag! For non-standard file names and txt file formats, you have to shepherd the process more, some times adding numbering to a txt file, or spacing between numbers and titles. I was able to tag a 400 GB live flac collection in a fairly short time. It's the only thing I use Windows on my Intel Mac for. And Album Art Aggregator. Foobar also allows you to apply Replay Gain tags, which allows the slimserver to know how loud the files are, and to play them back at a constant volume level relative to each other. Smart replay gain knows about albums, so adjusts volume between songs if playing random or playlist, but if playing albums/whole shows leaves the relative volume between songs alone. This is particularly useful for the live show enthusiast, as live recordings vary in volume level even more than commercial releases. Yay Foobar! As an example, here is my workflow from downloading live show to archiving. 1. Download show. 2. Leave this file running where it is to continue seeding, make a copy that you are going to tag to the "new needs tags" folder. Delete (or hold as backup for a while) the original after you are finished seeding. 3. Open the copy in foobar2000. Select all, r click > Tagging > Live Show Tagger 4. Opens LST window. On left side check that it guessed the Disc and track numbers correctly. If not, r click on this list > masstagger> auto track number. Sometimes you open properties and assign disc numbers. 5. Check that Artist Venue Date are correct, if not these can be edited to your liking here. If no song titles show up, this is usually because there are no track numbers in the txt file, or there are no spaces between the number and the first letter of the song title. Click on edit text file, fix this, save txt file, click on Reload in the tagger. 6. Click Update tags. FB2K and LST will write the following tags: Artist Track# Disc# SongTitle Date and create the custom tag Venue (with city). 7. I want my Album tag to read "Venue (with city) - Date" Once more I select in LST the all the files r click > mass tagger> format tags from other fields. A box pops up, select Album from pulldown menu (each time), change fields to %Venue% - %Date% (only have to do this the first time then FB2K remembers). Do it. 8. The last thing I do to fix tags (I verge on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)is select all the tracks, r click > Properties and a box comes up. Here you can change anything arbitrarily for all files or for individual files. I write Genre tag, and create custom tag Year for Slimserver. If you want you can add comments here like band members, recording or source notes, special guests, anything you want. All at once or one at a time. 9. I tag a bunch of shows and then I load all of these at once into Foobar, select all r click > Replay Gain > Scan for Replay Gain as Albums (by Tags). Foobar analyzes a while, I usually do this overnight, when you come back and it's done click Update File Tags, and this is done quickly. All done, move the show into its permanent home in your library. (Need I say?) Do regular backup on these files that you have invested some time into. Automate backup if possible. I think I may have made it sound more complicated than it is. As I said, when show files follow the conventions, it works like butter. When they don't, fixing them becomes pretty automatic when you start to do a few of them. I tend to do tagging sesssions of 10-20 shows at a time. It is so wonderful having all my shows tagged up and using slimserver. In which show did they play that cover of The Weight? Search for The Weight and it comes right up, along with The Band's and anyone else's versions for comparison. Debating which is the worst Truckin' of all time? Pull them all up together and settle it once and for all. You ask do I have any Gov't Mule? My God, just look at all the Gov't Mule I have! Click on them to view set lists. Make crazy custom playlists with ease (well that could be easier, but I hear their working on it.) You get the idea. I'm now in the process of ripping from CD those live shows that I don't have the original files for, from before I was archiving these, or CDs received in trade. FB2K and LST help me here too. Usually I can download or quicly cut and paste a txt file from the shows db.etree entry. When I rip, I follow naming conventions, then tag them easily, as above, after ripping. Hope others find this helpful. I had to figure out a lot of this by trial and error, but I think I have a good system now. My torrents currently seeding on dime: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=133024 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=138090 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=128402 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=114281 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=146054 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=127792 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=113991 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=147771 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=146919 http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-d....php?id=140821 As a live show enthusiast, the SB3 is the best music tech I've purchased in a long time. I'm deliriously happy with the system. Rock On. __________________ -- bephillips More than 31291 songs on 3043 albums by 1984 artists. SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - 10713 - Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P135) - EN - utf8 Perl Version: 5.8.6 darwin-thread-multi-2level MySQL Version: 5.0.22-standard On a 1.2GHz G4 Mac iBook with 768MB RAM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bephillips's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2588 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35676 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
