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Library Management Dashboard


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Nuno Vitorino

To organise a music library we sometimes need to have some operations that change the music files in bulk as changing them one by one is simply too much work. For such cases, we envision having a Library Management Dashboard on innuOS. The Library Management Dashboard would be a separate area in innuOS that could do the following:

  • Analyse the music library for covers or other metadata missing and automatically try to obtain the missing metadata
  • Allow to consolidate genres and artists
  • Automatically organise the folder structure according to Artist/Album folder structure

More features could then be added there whenever they involve changes to multiple files.

Feel free to suggest other types of bulk changing operations and we can complete this area.


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Activity Newest / Oldest

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mountainview

I would really love to see a bulk editing feature! Got my Zen Mini MK3 on Saturday and spent the whole Sunday cleaning up a couple of hundred compilation tracks (which do have the compilations tag in the track Metadata, but no „Various Artists“) in Innous UI only to give up after a while. Tried editing the files on the Zen Mini HDD server with an app from my Mac, but the Zen Database would not update the info (although it shows that it recognized changes). Tried deleting the corresponding albums in the music folder (they would disappear from the UI), but when copying back edited ones (with „Various Artists“ in the Metadata) they would not show up in the Albums list anymore. Tried the rescanning and compacting but to no avail. Deleted/cleared the whole database from the Zen. Now reimporting the (edited) albums step by step. Hope I have more success now.


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mountainview

Interesting insight. I did a factory reset of the Zen mini in addition to the cleanup of the database. Did some test imports. Zen mini would not (!) recognize files which were edited on my Mac with Audioranger. Did a test with Mp3tag and these would be correctly imported.


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FitmanNJ

I agree. I have well over 1000 albums that I'll never listen to and would like to delete. Without bulk editting functionality, you're talking about days of work. I've already invested a ton of time getting the "to be deleted" list down to the point it's at now...🙁


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Clean up ghost artists

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guardajoias

Some artist names that had type or wrong names in metadata and that I corrected continue to show up despite not being linked to any albums anymore. This doers not always happens, maybe it was for early instances, but I cannot get rid for example of "Johannes Bach" (instead of Johann Sebastian Bach" ) or "Bach Cantatas"...


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Merge album tags option

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ISP

I'd like to be able to merge similar tags into one for easy searching/playlist creation.

After importing 15-ish cd's a list with loads of apparent duplicates is created. For example 'Pop' and 'pop' are obvious, but then you get "Synth-pop", "synth-pop" and versions without the - and/or space making up to 6 possible versions! Yes this can be done manually but is quite a task.


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Luca

One of my needs would be a clear indication of: EP vs LP - LIVE vs STUDIO album and COMPILATION vs ORIGINAL. It would be very appreciate (sorry if is not here the thread to post it) to be able to sort album for YEAR of realize, not only in Artist/Album page but also in QOBUZ. When I decide which one to add to the library, during a preliminary search of a new Artist I don't know yet, I love to start from the first albums he/she published until the recent one. Using Sense and Qobuz at the moment I'm not able and the albums are presented without useful order and lacking of indication (LIVE, EP etc etc). Thank you Nuno.


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Nuno Vitorino

Why not use Tags for EP/LP/Studio? Compilation there is a specific field to mark the album as a compilation. But tags are very flexible way to add any additional information the way you like it.


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Luca

Hi Nuno, because I'm lazy .-) and I expect these informations will be available as it is. Like format or data rate, title, resolution and so on. It means that I consider them fundamental to complete what I need to know in two moments: 1) on Qobuz/Sense during searching process to decide what I want to add to my library and 2) When I am on Artist/album page to decide which album play.

For instance:

1) when I discover a new Artist on Qobuz page of Sense (Tracy Chapman) I want to add to my library only LPs and not EPs, only studio albums and not Live or compilations. To create a complete discography. Sorted from the oldest to the newest release (like Sense already shows in Artist page, I'd love to have them ordered for year also in Qobuz page of Sense).

2) Once these selected albums are added to my library I want to play them, starting from the oldest to the newest one, in order to follow the artistic evolution of the artist during years of work.
If all these data were already at my disposal, (like already are resolution, duration, title tracks and so on) why should I have to edit them? Thanks.


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Graham Kennedy-Smith

It might be useful to allowing Roon users, for example, to migrate to Innuos Sense if their Library Album/Track preferences could be imported into a Innuos Sense library.


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Nuno Vitorino

AFAIK, that will not be possible as Roon does not expose an API that would allow this be done.


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sharif zakhary

Have to comment here that this function is desperately needed and hoping for some insight as to when. I just bought a Mini MK3 and so far my import experience has been pretty terrible.

Compilations are a mess (with no good, fast solution)
Multi-disc Albums show up as different albums
Identical copies of Albums show as duplicate tracks (which also tend to be my favorite albums making the problem feel even worse)

Please help me Nuno! My library is a mess!!!


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guardajoias

Hi Sharif! I am also impatiently waiting for the Library Management tools. For now, I use (preferably before importing) Yate on the Mac to edit my metadata, but being able to to it directly and in bulk in Innuos is badly needed. However, you should not have that terrible of an experience with your imports. Innuos does a good job with multi-disc Albums as long as they are tagged with the same Album name and numbered correctly. If they show as separate albums, maybe review Album name and disc numbers. When you talk of identical copies of Albums, do you mean that you keep copies of the same albums in different resolutions? As long as there is a a difference in name or resolution, you should not see duplicate tracks.... Cheers


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sharif zakhary

Thank you so much for the Quick Response. Please understand that I just plugged in my Zen Mini 4TB and imported about 7000 albums. When it finished I was a little disappointed with the "smarts" of the import.

I spent several hours "joining" all my Christmas compilation albums. Clicking an Album, clicking edit, clicking "Compilation", saving, waiting, going back and finding the next one, repeat for each track. Saving was taking forever, but a restart made it go faster. Can we agree this falls somewhere near the realm of terribleness? :-) It wouldn't have been so bad if I at least had some kind of bulk operation.

In regard to duplicate tracks, I would like to respectfully offer the opinion that the scenario you are describing is a bug. Sense should simply be smarter than this and never double up tracks on an album. Can we also agree this should be the ultimate solution?

Finally, I know this will all take time... What I'm looking for today is understanding that your customers are having a hard time with the above and perhaps some acknowledgment that some things you perceive as minor (like duplicate tracks) are really disappointing.

Thanks,
-S


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sharif zakhary

Update,
Not being a Mac User I did some research and came across Media Monkey. Installed it on my PC and pointed it to the Zen Mini SMB Share.

After scanning the library (and making sure not to auto -update anything in the process) I can now fix all my remaining import issues quickly and in bulk in MM with the results showing almost instantaneously in Sense. Yeah!

MM seems pretty powerful for the nominal cost so I can foresee continuing to use it in tandem with Sense into the future.

Thank you guardajoias for making me think outside the box.
-S


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guardajoias

Glad you found a solution. Certainly it will be great to have the Library Management inside Innuos Sense, but being able to use third party tools in the library helps a lot for now, and indeed Sense seamlessly reflects the changes. Innuos 2 has brought tremendous progress and is overall a fantastic system, but it is still young and growing.


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FitmanNJ

Hello. I did a search for "Yate" in the Mac App Store and didn't get any hits. Can you help me out regarding how to explore your file editing method? Thanks!


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sharif zakhary

2manyrobots.com/yate/


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FitmanNJ

Many thanks, Sharif!


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ugo angel

Hello,

It would be useful to be able to Tag the artiste (and not an album) in order to access to the library and album, through these tags.

Ex: Lou Reed could be tagged as Classic Rock, then I could request all Albums from artists tagged Classic Rock.

I have around 2000 albums and tag all, one by one is not really a solution.

Roon offers this functionality and it's the only reason why i continue to use Roon and not Sense.

All the best
Regards
Ugo


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Tag artist then access Library by tag

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Nuno Vitorino

Hi Ugo,

This could be done via our planned Library Management Dashboard, which enables batch operations on the Music Library. I'll merge this feature request there.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Select multiple tracks to edit common metadata

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sharif zakhary

I'd like to have a way to select multiple tracks so I can change metadata in bulk. For Example If I have a compilation album that's been broken into multiple albums I want to select them all so I can hit the compilation checkbox only once.


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John Harris

I'm not sure this feature fits perfectly within the Library Management Dashboard feature, but thought I would suggest. Related to bulk operations, it would be great to be able to bulk add a group of tracks to a playlist based on certain filters. As an example, If I'm in the track view, and then filter by favorites, and then again by a genre tag (ex: Rock) I could then very quickly select all filtered tracks and create a playlist of my favorite rock songs. Maybe this could even work in coordination with other filters, so you could do my example above, but then also add an "HD" filter so it only shows my favorite rock songs that I have in hi resolution.

Thanks!


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ahm

Thanks for the last update, very useful to be able to sort music by tags. I've discovered that for the same category I could have two groups depending on wether I had written with capital letter or not, for example "Opera" and "opera". But to get only one group, I must correct each album in turn and that takes a long time. I started my library on my computer with Foobar which allowed correcting a whole group with one click. Would that be possible? Thank you


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Tags correcting

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Nuno Vitorino

This is covered by the Music Library Dashboard Feature


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Ludo B

Hi,
I think you should make the tags case-INsensitive. So when we use the album filter, 'Pop' and 'pop' are grouped together.
Ideally, you may also make the tags accent-insensitive so 'Opera' and 'Opéra' are grouped.
Regards


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Tags case-insensitive

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Nuno Vitorino

Status changed to: Planned

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Panos D.

If during ripping from a compilation cd forget to check the compilation button you end with 12, 15 or as many tracks existed in the album, albums. There is no keyboard shortcut to choose all the albums (in fact one album) and combine them to one.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: What if during ripping forget to check compilation button

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Nuno Vitorino

Indeed you do not. You need to go into each entry and tick the compilation box. This can be potentially part of the Library Management Dashboard so I will merge there


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Adrian Holmes

Albums imported via the recommended Auto-Import method always used to be loaded into one of three folders; either high-res / cd-quality / compressed.

In late 2021 this changed so now files are left in individual import folders leaving a messy and confusing folder structure in the Music library.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Revert to Auto Import loading to high-res / cd-quality / compressed

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C Cook

I made an earlier request about music import organizing music, which is a feature missing from the new OS. Not sure where this is. Another organization issue arises when the artist names are not identical when adding music to the library. IE The Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones, The rolling stones etc are all seen as completely different artists. This in part makes finding a particular album by search very cumbersome....i have been spending days editing all of these files so that i can find my albums....not something i ever had to worry about with Roon. Also very frustrating when an album that i bought from Qobuz is entitled NEIL YOUNG and my scanned albums are Neil Young.....pretty much forces me to have two different artists unless i want to edit my entire library to match Qobuz Artist titles, which BTW are not consistent


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Organization

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Michael Horgan

I think the way auto import is working is a big step backwards. Can we have the previous automatic smart folder structure.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Automatic smart folder

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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: File sorting when importing new music

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mvesterinen

Pre 2.0 there was an option that automatically sorted all new files in a correct file structure Artist/Album… this seems to missing in 2.0?


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Alexis Nolte

It would be nice to be able to group several ripped CDs into a set when the ripper doesn’t do it automatically (so disc 1, disc 2…). That would avoid having to fix this with the computer and a tagging program. A nice to have. Not essential.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Multiple update of tags

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J

would it be possible to provide a facility to "mass update" empty tags.

e.g. I have over 120 albums with no tags assigned - I can list these in the current facility - if they were displayed in a list format with the option to add tags alongside each in the list it would make for a very quick update facility.

similarly - having the ability to change the tag in a list format (e.g. from "rock" to "soul") would also aid rapid update and improvement in the integrity of the library


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Constantin

Pre 2.0 with import via auto import folder there was an option to choose between quick import and import. The import option created a folder in the file structure "high-res", "cd-quality" or "compressed" according to the quality of the music files. New files were sorted Artist/Album...
It is absolutely essential to get this option back in InnuOS 2.0. Without, you have to manually sort the files on the server. Absolutely annoying!


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C Cook

I agree...bring back the tidy database and ability to identify duplicates.


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Catharus

The tags I need to apply in bulk are:
- genre
- album artist
- cover (photo)
- lyrics (I use this for comments about the recording across tracks)


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Editing tags

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Mike Hughes

I would like the ability to remove those tags I do not use on a permanent basis. This would make a search by tag far easier.


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Auto Import - store music in folder structure

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danfoord

Can we bring back the ability to store music in a artist / album folder structure. I appreciate the change to perhaps not use quality at the top level, but right now auto-import means all files are unstructured / end up in individual import folders and then artist / album, which makes it even worse :-(

I know this feature is being discussed to move in bulk, however, would be good to not have to do this manually all the time...
innuos.upvoty.com/b/feature-requests/library-management-dashboard/

Right now, the only way appears to be to import.... delete the album (but save the files)... manually put the files in the right place i.e. Artist / Album... then refresh / reindex the music DB (not ideal).


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Nuno Vitorino

Please note with innuOS 2.0, you can actually copy the files / folders directly to the folder you want and this will be automatically added to the library - no need for rescan anymore. Auto-Import is useful if you want to use it as a "shopping cart" - pick some music and copy it there until you're done and want to import. It's also useful when it's a quick import and you want the ability to delete what you imported afterwards.


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thanks Nunio - I didn't realise that ... so just to be clear ... instead of moving my files to Auto-Import (as I used to do in v1) you mean I now move them to Music/cd-quality (or compressed or hires) and it will do the rest ?? ... or do I have to move it within the Artist sub folder within cd-quality etc ... sorry - I'm a bit confused by this


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J

oops Nuno misspelling :-o


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danfoord

I hadn't noticed that sense automatically polled the folders this is definitely a good feature.... I've noticed that changing album names post import now also does not update the respective folder name - is this intentional?


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Nuno Vitorino

Merged with: Auto Import - store music in correct folders

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danfoord

Not sure if this is a bug or intentional. Prior to v2.x when auto-importing, you had the option to allow music to be automatically placed in the correct file structure i.e. music / cd quality / album / artist (for example). This option does not seem to exist anymore, and all the auto imports go into it's own folder i.e. / music / auto import date / album / artist. This makes your library unorganised / untidy. Can we get the option back?


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J

Agree that having Artist/Album structure (as held when cds are ripped) is a really tidy way to hold the underlying files.

Previously, having this structure for the 3 files “types” cd/compressed/hires was also a very easy way to see the data held following import when viewing via Finder / file manager.

I hope you can re-introduce the feature to move imports into the 3 file types as part of the planned library management update


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StewB

Sounds good to me, it is a pain changing them individually.


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danfoord

Definitely would like "Automatically organise the folder structure according to Artist/Album folder structure" as there is no way to organise at the moment during auto-import :-(

Bulk update of genres would also be super useful, as would album artists


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guardajoias

This would be a good place to change the spelling of an artist, composer, conductor etc...


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Nuno Vitorino

Hi Marko,

Organising automatically based on Artist/Album brings a number of issues during importing as there can always be something with files that then causes the import to be interrupted, which is annoying when you're importing a very large import. Instead, we add the option to allow to perform this organisation later. The previous version would also separate albums with mixed formats which isn't great.

Check this feature and let me know if that would suit instead:
innuos.upvoty.com/b/feature-requests/library-management-dashboard/


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mvesterinen

Thank you! To me your suggestion sounds great!


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Nuno Vitorino

Status changed to: Under review