Actions, Renames/Edit - Scope

Support
1

Renames being hidden within "Quick (!) Actions", i.e. in "Actions" (where I would have searched first), they can not be found. Then, gracefully, the last-used "Action" is remembered, so that then, shift-alt-6 will bring back the previous "Action", "Rename" here (and with the previous values as defaults).

For renaming PATHS, I select scope "_Directory", and it seems the scope is then NOT the current selection BUT the whole set, loaded into Mp3tag; this obviously can become very dangerous:

Given I want to change just ONE CD title (applies to other groups of files accordingly, obviously), I would spontaneously select the files in that CD = having all the same "Path" value, then trigger the Rename command, in order to restrict the changes to that CD (=renaming just ONE folder in the file system), but since Mp3tag's rename scope seems to be the "loaded files set", (except for just correcting typos where that behavior would even be welcome) that might unwantedly change other folder titles, too.

Thus, I can not change just some SUB-string oldstring to newstring, but I need the whole path as oldstring, then again the whole path as newstring (in their respective old/new fields within the rename dialog), in order to then edit the newstring into a real newstring, comprising the rename I want to be executed.

Thus, I spontaneously just select ONE file within that group (CD in my case), in order to GET that oldstring, onto which I then will have to make the changes in question.

As expected, "F2" will not get the "Path" string, but will scroll to the "Filename" field (of the current row) in the grid, in order to make it available for manual editing; in the "Actions-Rename" dialog, though, and with selecting (as said) the field "_Directory" (which should inform the program WHICH "tag" is "needed" here), the dialog fields oldstring and newstring either remain empty, or then get filled with the values of the previous rename (which will be another folder name than the current one); this way, in order to edit any sub string within the path (incl. the immediate parent folder of the files in question), I need to type the needed paths, more or less in complete length (depending on my previous renames and their "path similarity" to the current one), into the oldstring field, then copy it from there into the newstring field, then only I'm able to edit the newstring field for the desired (perhaps very minor) change - it's obvious that switching to some file manager, in order to do the rename in there, will take just a fraction of the time.

Hence my questions: Have I overlooked any way to get the "Path" string of the current row into clipboard?

Or maybe you could amend the "Edit" menu by some entry "Get Path" (with alt-shortcut)... and with another one, "Get filename" (also with alt-shortcut, in order to avoid the "F2, then control-a, then control-c, then Enter to close the in-line edit field again" detour for getting the current file name?

Ideally, of course, Mp3tag might fill in the fields within the "Actions-Rename" dialog, accordingly to the selected scope code (here "_Directory") in there... whenever the "old" value isn't an array of several ones, i.e. when there is only 1 row selected within the grid, or when the values in the field in question, for several selected rows, is identical.

2

Renaming a folder/directory always moves all the files in that folder to the newly named location.
This also happens in the explorer if you rename a directory.
If you want to treat only a single file, you have to rename the file and not the folder.

I don't know how often you rename files and folders in the life of a file.
But if you have unifiying pattern consisting of tag field data, then it would be easier to create an action of the type "Format value" for the filename or the folder and apply that.
The pattern would stay the same but the contents would vary according to the applied tag data.

That is why I do not agree with

As your impression comes from a workflow that does not use the variables but seems to rely on text constants.
It would be so much nicer if you could show us real examples and there will probably be a solution that will avoid the problems that you have described which - IMHO - are only due to a lack of knowledge of the MP3tag functions.

And to put it straight: I do not know an action called "Rename".

Action Types

Also,

is not correct as any manipulation of _DIRECTORY applies to all the files in that particular folder. If all the loaded files are in the same folder, then, of course, all of them get moved.
If you want to distribute individual files to a new folder, then you have to treat the individual file names and not the folder name.
Please check that again.

3

My bad memory; I had thought though that "Rename" would have been recognizable as "Replace". So I'm speaking of that "Replace" dialog, and _DIRECTORY in there, from the dialog's internal drop down menu.
I applied a simple typo correction, with the two fields oldstring/newstring (they are named otherwise, too, but should be recognizable as such) as:
special )
and
special)
i.e. I replaced a special word plus space plus closing parenthesis
by the same special word without space plus closing parenthesis

In other words, I did NOT fill out the whole paths, just
special )
and
special)
nothing else in there, and the folder name was corrected accordingly, SINCE that special sub-string wasn't BUT in THAT special folder name.

So it seems the _DIRECTORY setting in that dialog sets the column scope and is thus a synonym for the column with the header "Path", for all loaded files (2000 here) but not a particular path scope, or then from WHERE would it get it?

From the current SELECTION? Would the program restrain the renaming, pardon, string replacing, to the given selection within the grid? Within the grid, there are only files, no folders, the folders possibly being identified by the paths of the selected files then?

What is the scope of such "actions", then, when in the string fields (oldstring/newstring) here I do NOT enter a path, as in this real-life example?

P.S.

Since you wonder about that: I need folder (i.e. in my case CD title) renaming even much more than I had thought, since I want to put the max of info (common for the CD) into the (then obviously not "original" anymore, but with parentheses), also from the filename, in order to allege the filename as far as possible; as said, web meta data is mostly bad, and also way redundant, often.

Similar for filenames: I want to put some info from metadata into it, e.g. when in one CD there are files with different artists, then the original filenames do NOT contain the specifics (whilst in the folder name, specifics don't design the sub set of just SOME files to which they apply, so I need the specific meta data from the "artist" column, into just SOME of the file names of the CD. I hope that makes it clear why I need such "specific (sic!) i.e. SUB-group shuffle".

P.P.S.

Mp3tag combines file system access with meta data access; I don't know of any file manager which would display / make available / editable .wav meta data (it's a lot better for more common file formats though); at the end of the day and if I can really not establish any speedy "workflow" with Mp3tag, for the whole set of tasks, I might try to find another "music tagger" which speeds up semi-automatic selection (i.e. manual selection for specific (sic!) subsets (!) to be renamed then in bulk), do the renames in that one's metadata columns...

and then I would use Mp3tag again, in order to bulk-copy my "special target metadata column" (I first empty the "Album" column anyway, so it becomes available as "target column" within a "tagger" which does not allow internal editing of the file name) into its "file name" column, and then I'll have the end result possibly easier.

Before that, I would like to understand how it would be done in Mp3tag though, preferring the use of ONE tool, instead of mixing it all up.

4

An actual example of what you have now, and what you would like it to be would be more helpful. Include a screenshot of your extended tag window so you can share what fields you have available to work with.

5

Long text - and no real example.

If you want to rename a file and perhaps even distribute it from a collective folder to the target folder, the easiest way would be Convert>Tag-Filename
Format string: d:\music\%albumartist%\%year% - %album%\$num(%track%,2) _ %title%
(where you replace the fixed part of the path with the settings in your environment)
This function would treat every file individually and apply a consistent pattern of data parts, all originating in the tag data - you would not have to bother whether someone spelt the path wrong where the album is mentioned - you do not replace individual parts, you set the whole path.

The same applies more or less to _DIRECTORY: do not fiddle with individual letters in the path, simply set the whole path.
Use an action of the type "Format value" for _FILENAME
Format string: d:\music\%albumartist%\%year% - %album%\[CD%discnumber%\]
to get paths even for multi-disc albums if %discnumber% is set.

If you really need

then create a number of actions (not quick actions) that you name as you like to recognize them e.g. one for Filename_with_Artist
with Format string: `$num(%track%,2) _ %artist% _ %title%

and another one Filename_without_filename
Format string: $num(%track%,2) _ %title%
And I bet that only very few file renaming programs feature such templates.

And yes, the benefits of batch processing are to select only those files that need the same treatment and leave out the others.

6

It can be done even shorter:

"Actions (shift-alt-6) work on the currently selected files (vertical grid scope), the selection in the respective action's dialog's "Field" field (drop-down menu) determining the action's target column (horizontal grid scope)."

(Well, I haven't checked all of'em "actions" for that field...)

7

Reading this thread has been an exercise in frustration. Two of our most knowledgeable members have spent much time trying to help you and have repeatedly asked you for specific examples:

And yet you still have not provided these examples. Why not? If you had done that at the start, I suspect that your questions would have been resolved very quickly. There is no good reason to keep our responders in the dark about exactly what you want to accomplish.

And what exactly is "It"? Please give us examples!

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