[mythtv-users] Mythmusic issues.

[Timothy Witham]

Hi,

Sorry for a late reply and to start this "new" thread.  I was not
subscribed to the list on October 24 when A. F. Cano <afc54 at
comcast.net> said about MythMusic:

> Issue 1
> 
> The mythmusic documentation (https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythMusic)
> says
> 
>   MythTV will query the Internet freedb database for your CD information
>   and the Import CD screen will show, with the Artist, Album and tracks
>   information.
> 
> It was my understanding that (at least part of) the reason why version
> 1.32 didn't work for importing CDs was that this database wasn't available
> any more.

Yes, after checking the code to confirm, I fixed the documentation to
note that this feature was dropped in 2020.

> Of course, no track info showed up in any field.  Only "Track 01",
> "Track 02", etc...  Being a total newbie with Mythmusic I left it at that
> and imported the CD.  So far so good.  Imported another one, with the same
> track names: "Track 01", "Track 02", etc...  Only later did I realize that
> track names are used as the file names and the second CD overwrote the
> first one, so now when I play what I think is the first one, the second
> plays.

If you manually supply at least Artist and Album, then you should get
unique directory per CD so the tracks won't overwrite.  I think your
problem was that there is only one Unknown/Unknown directory.  The
storage path can be configured in ripper settings of music settings.

> Is there a new automated way to get track/disc names?  Presumbly that
> information is not on the CDs themselves?

CD-Text can put the metadata on the CD itself.  The code for this is
turned off in MythMusic with a note that it is slow when the data is
missing.  I would guess some CDs fail to store this information.
Still, it would be nice to have an option to see this data if it
exists.

>  Some software I remember using had the names, but it might have
> been referring to the same public site which is no longer available.

Commercial software might pay to use Gracenote.  MythMusic might work
with gnudb.org if we attempt to restore the cddb code that left in
2020.  I wrote more about these options at
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Freedb

> The manual inputting of all artist/album/genre/year/track data is
> extremely laborious.  I'm not looking forwared to entering hundreds of
> CDs.

Recommend against that.  Use desktop software to rip and tag.  I
linked a page of options to the Freedb entry on the wiki.  Then just
scan the files with MythMusic.

> Proposal 1: (unique filenames)

Not needed if you supply Artist / Album

> Proposal 2: (user contributed CD database)

Not needed since at least 2 already exist.  But we need to re-teach
MythMusic how to use the free options.  Ideally you would see query
results for MusicBrainz, gnudb, cd-text and be able to choose the best
result or manual entry.  I don't have the skill or time to do this
though.  Next year I might try restore of cd-text or gnudb code and
see if either work.

> Issue 2
> 
> I entered the wrong "Quality" for the next CD, and could not find a way to
> delete a whole CD, so entered it again (with the correct quality) after
> manually deleting the *.ogg files, which is what the above manual page says to
> do.  Predictably, there are now 2 track entries for each track, and I don't
> know which one is the "wrong" one (linked to the deleted *.ogg files) or the
> "right" one (linked to the new *.flac files).  Unless there is some way to
> delete the "wrong" CD, I suspect I'll have to get into the nuts and bolts of
> the relevant mythconverg tables and manually edit them.  Guidance about how to
> do this would be welcome.  Since I entered the same album name/artist/genre
> and year the second time, I only see one entry for the individual CD.

Rescan should remove no-existent files.  However, I have one track
whose file was renamed to fix a typo.  The misspelled duplicate will
not go away after rescan even though the file no longer exists.  I can
remove the whole album and all tracks go away except this non-existent
file!  There is some sort of bug here.

> I have managed to select the tracks (out of the duplicates) that play the
> correct song but I can't find a way to permanently delete the non-selected
> ones.  Presumably this select music -> by album -> all tracks is just to
> select what goes in the play list, not to remove the database entries that
> point to the incorrect files.

Yes, that's right.  We might have to go edit the database for the
files that won't go away, or find and fix a bug.

-Tim Witham