Strip out part of album title to create a playlist file

Support
1

Hi, I have several album titles that could have a (CD1), (CD2) or even (CD1 - Bonus) at the end of them, whenever they consist of more than 1 CD. For example:

The Best Rock Album In The World (CD1)
The Best Rock Album In The World (CD2)
Deep Purple - Made In Japan (25th Anniversary Edition) (CD1 - Remastered)
Deep Purple - Made In Japan (25th Anniversary Edition) (CD2 - The Encores)
Most album titles of course don't have that at the end of them as they are single albums

I am trying to write a playlist export function for these and I want to strip off the part at the end

When I have the following syntax I successfully create the m3u8 file with #EXTM3U as the first line

$filename(M:\Playlists\%album%.m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U

A second script then successfully creates the rest of the playlist

$filename(M:\Playlists\%album%.m3u8,utf-8)$loop(%counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

But when I try to strip out the (CD1) etc using the following I get the output file correctly named but its blank

$filename(M:\Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\(CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U
$filename(M:\Playlists\%album%,'^(.+?)\s(CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-)$loop(%counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

The regex appears to be stripping out the part at the end of the album title but for some reason I get no data in the file. Any ideas
Thanks

2

I think that should be
$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\(CD.*',$1).m3u8
and then I do not know why you repeat the $filename() statement. One should be enough.

3

Ah typo in my original post. Sorry. I have the following but I get a blank file (but with the correct file name)

$filename(M:\Artist Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\(CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U
$loop(%counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()
4

I think that the counting variable is called %_counter%.
I am not sure that this is valid: $loop(%_counter%) as it either would count to infinite or not at all as %_counter% gets initialized inside the $loop()
If you want to use the sequence of the files in MP3tag's file list, use $loop(A).

5

$loop(%_counter%) is a valid statement. It has a different value for each of the files, effectively creating one entry per file while keeping the order of the files in the file list.

6

Interesting. I have been running this action successfully for over 5 years and had mispelt %_counter% as %counter%. But it worked! So I figured that maybe I could just use $loop() but the action then fails. So I am a bit confused as to why the following has worked as part of creating the playlist.

$loop(%counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

G

7

It worked because Mp3tag sorted on a non-existent field. I'm using a stable sort algorithm, i.e., the original order is preserved in case there is no difference in the comparison. It's the same as using

However, all of this is a side-effect of Mp3tag's implementation. Using $loop(%_counter%) is defined behavior here.

8

OK that makes sense thanks. Have now updated the action to correct this.

My next challenge whilst I was updating these actions was whether I could get the 2 actions merged into 1

Currently I have 2 actions:

Action1 (One file per directory)
$filename(M:\Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\.CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U

Action2 (Append and one file per directory)

$filename(M:\Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\.CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)$loop(%_counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

The above works
But if I merge them into 1 action (1 file per directory) as follows it does not!

$filename(M:\Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\.CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U
$loop(%_counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

Am I stuck with 2 actions on this or can they be merged?
Thanks
G

10

It looks good to me. Can you describe what doesn't work with your merged action?

11

Just found cause of error but not sure why it is doing it, The code I had in the combined action was not quite the same as what I have pasted here

$filename(M:\Playlists\$regexp(%album%,'^(.+?)\s\(CD.*',$1).m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U
$loop(%_counter%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
%_path%
$loopend()

In the $regexp, instead of the dot before CD I had previously used ( in order to trap the opening bracket as in (CD1) after the blank space. but if I do that I get no output file at all. If I change it to a . it works. It seems to be getting confused with the extra opening bracket but I had escaped it so don't really understand why that did not work.

12

Good catch. This is a bug in the filename parser which I'll fix to the next release.

13

I've fixed the issue at parsing the filename with Mp3tag v2.91a. Thanks again for pointing!

14

Hi. Thanks for the information
Currently I have 2 actions as per below and this is working in creating multiple playlists for different artists in a single playlists folder

Action 1 (1 file per directory)

$filename(\\NAS\Music\Artist Playlists\$if($or($eql(%albumartist%,Various Artists),$eql(%album artist%,Various Artists)),$regexp($cutleft(%album%,6),'^(.+?)\s.CD\d.*',$1),$if($or($eql(%_parent_directory%,1Pop),$eql(%_parent_directory%,Music)),Miscellaneous Artists,$regexp(%_folderpath%,'^\\\\.+?\\.+?\\.+?\\(.+?)\\.*',$1))) - Rated Tracks.m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U

Action 2 (1 file by directory and Append Data)

$filename(\\NAS\Music\Artist Playlists\$if($or($eql(%albumartist%,Various Artists),$eql(%album artist%,Various Artists)),$regexp($cutleft(%album%,6),'^(.+?)\s.CD\d.*',$1),$if($or($eql(%_parent_directory%,1Pop),$eql(%_parent_directory%,Music)),Miscellaneous Artists,$regexp(%_folderpath%,'^\\\\.+?\\.+?\\.+?\\(.+?)\\.*',$1))) - Rated Tracks.m3u8,utf-8)
$loop(%_path%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
$replace(%_path%,'\\NAS\Music\MP3\','M:\MP3\')
$loopend()

However if I merge them into a single action (with 1 file per directory and append data) as per below

$filename(\\NAS\Music\Artist Playlists\$if($or($eql(%albumartist%,Various Artists),$eql(%album artist%,Various Artists)),$regexp($cutleft(%album%,6),'^(.+?)\s.CD\d.*',$1),$if($or($eql(%_parent_directory%,1Pop),$eql(%_parent_directory%,Music)),Miscellaneous Artists,$regexp(%_folderpath%,'^\\\\.+?\\.+?\\.+?\\(.+?)\\.*',$1))) - Rated Tracks.m3u8,utf-8)#EXTM3U
$loop(%_path%)#EXTINF:%_length_seconds%,%artist% - %title%
$replace(%_path%,'\\NAS\Music\MP3\','M:\MP3\')
$loopend()

I am getting additional #EXTM3U at each path/folder change of the original files throughout the playlist file. Using the 2 actions above I correctly only get this row appearing on the first line of the playlist.
Is there any way to get this working with a single action or am I stuck with using 2 actions?
Example output below:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:226,Dire Straits - Lady Writer
M:\MP3\Dire Straits\1979 - Communiqué\05 - Lady Writer.mp3
#EXTINF:277,Dire Straits - Angel Of Mercy
M:\MP3\Dire Straits\1979 - Communiqué\06 - Angel Of Mercy.mp3
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:313,Dire Straits - Expresso Love
M:\MP3\Dire Straits\1980 - Making Movies\04 - Expresso Love.mp3
#EXTINF:207,Dire Straits - Solid Rock
M:\MP3\Dire Straits\1980 - Making Movies\06 - Solid Rock.mp3

Thanks
G

15

The problem relies in having the M3U playlist header #EXTM3U in the configuration and appending data. Each time you perform the export, it would evaluate the complete export configuration and also write the #EXTM3U part.

If you really want to have a playlist that you append new entries to, a combination of both exports is not possible. Except if you would make the playlist a simple list of filenames, without any #EXTM3U and #EXTINF— most players also support those.

16

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