I am in the process of organising my audio book collection. Part of this involved naming each chapter as xxx - 01 of 23. All is going great. I use the autorenumber to set the track to 01/23 etc then an action to bulk rename and retag. Works fine for mp3 but there is an issue with m4a. The auto number just gives a track number - misses the /xx. I know the documentation says this is because of the track number being held as an interger ... BUT ... if I manualy edit and m4a track field I can change it to 01 of 23 and it works just fine.
So is there any way to chance the autonumber to give xx of xx - or get it to add the extra information into the track field on an m4a?
Even though you may enter the track number like that manually, I am pretty sure that as soon as you save it, the field TRACK shows just the single item.
Check the extended tags dialogue Alt+T and you will find a field TOTALTRACKS that holds the number of the total tracks.
It did wonder that - but it does not seem to be the case. I have manualy updated a track with the extra info - saved then when I re-open it's still there ... so it does look like it is capable of holding the information.
I know I can do it folder by folder but I am getting so close to a bulk update... load in all the folders - renumber then run the bulk action. Works great on mp3 ... just got this little anoyance with m4a. I have an action that does them a folder at a time but ... you know ... that's a bit primative.
Not sure what you mean by that. The field format seems to be fine. The file accepts it - it's there when I load it back up and the file still plays o.k.
These are your files, you can do with them whatever you want.
My suggestion tried to show a way which gives you the output that you want but still keep the preferred tag fields.
I mean: there is a purpose behind the way that MP3tag writes tag fields.
I do not think that the conversion to an lossy format would really be benefical.
The only thing that is currently not quite as expected is the displayed data in the column for TRACK.
But that could be rectified.
The important thing is: is the data for the total number of files there or not.
You could filter for files that are of the type MP4 and have the field TOTALTRACKS:
%_tag% HAS MP4 AND %totaltracks% PRESENT
This might reassure you that the numbering wizard has done his duty.