Noob help: Can i achieve my goals with SongKong and if so how?

[steveyg777]

i just had an issue with the database being corrupted. it told me to create support files. what is stored in the database? if it is the files it has processed then maybe it was caused by my methods of processing?; i am moving several artists into a “tagging” folder, processing them then moving them into a “tagged” folder, and then moving a new batch of artists in. I’m doing this because i have a lot of artists to process and don’t want to do them all in one go and i thought i could only select one folder to process from at a time. i realised now that it is possible to select multiple folders which is really useful.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

but when i go to the folder i can see that all tracks have an entry in the title field. so I’m confused by this and wondered am i misunderstanding something here or is this a bug or something?

i’ve created support files. the folder in question is “1989 Round Trip”

Thankyou, so for unknown reason there was a filesystem problem retrieving file descriptor as shown on the Errors and Warnings tab

and this error was not handled correctly, causing the issue in the Basic Metadata Inconsistencies tab, if you look at the tab it says contains 0 songs which is obviously incorrect but caused by the earlier error

I have raised an issue for this https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-2786

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

i just had an issue with the database being corrupted. it told me to create support files. what is stored in the database?

Details of each file loaded into SongKong is stored into database, so that when it has to get metadata from a song it go back to the database rather than having to reread from the file each time. Of course if the file has been updated by an external process then SongKong rereads from the file, also all changes made with SongKong to files are also stored in the database.

The database can be recreated at any time with Admin:Empty Database, this wont break anything or lose any data except you will not be able to to use the Undo Changes task to remove any changes made - since everything wil be scrubbed from the database.

I dont know if what you are doing is causing the issue, but probably be more efficient to just process the files from their original location rather than copying them.

I think the database issue is caused by the file descriptor issues that occurred in each of the support file you sent me but for different files.

What filesystem is /Volumes/Music-1/Audio Library/ ? - I dont know if the file descriptor issue is caused by the filesystem or by SongKong.

[steveyg777]

It’s on my synology nas. The drives are btrfs format and shared over samba. Sometimes smb is a bit flaky between my nas and m1 pro Macbook Pro. I believe m1 chips were a bit dodgy at coping with smb.

[paultaylor]

Okay, so the error handling is fixed but I cant prevent the error occurring sometimes as caused by your setup, possible alternative would be to install SongKong directly on the nas using the docker version.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

when trying (experimenting) to create correct code for filename masks and scripts allow an undo feature - simply with command + z - i’ve noticed i can’t do that with sk

Hi, now added this feature in SongKong 11.8

SongKong 11.8 Violator Released 13th August 2025

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 11.8 Violator, this release has a number of improvements and fixes Work and Movement from Discogs When our songs are not matched to a MusicBrainz but are matched to a Discogs album we can now automtically extract thr Work and Movement fields from the match for Classical Releases. Inconsistencies Summary now has hyperlinks The inconsistency tabs are only shown if inconsistencies are found and are highlighted in red to indicate there are poten…

[steveyg777]

i missed your message. i AM using the songkong docker container version.

i’ve realised I’m having an issue with the mask. when using the rename files function and it has to create the first letter of the artist for a folder to file it under, for example “deadmaus”, it doesn’t make sure that the letter is a capital so i am seeing folders such as:

B
C
d
D
E
f
F
etc

My files are stored on a Btrfs, Synology (linux based) system, so it respects capital/non-capital letters and creates both.

how can i modify the artist mask to always create capitals for the first letter, Paul?

[steveyg777]

I’m also seeing this error, at least when using SK container version:
Invalid Javascript Mask Eval …
i’ve created support files

[steveyg777]

I have experienced another issue. (i’ve created support files)
so i processed some soundtracks but SK gave me the japanese title for the album for my ‘Tenchu 1 - Stealth Assassins’ album. when i went to the musicbrainz page, for the title, it said Tenchu (translated). is it possible to tell SK to always use translated/english data/titles?

i also have Titanfall 2 (2016) (FLAC) and Titanfall 2 (Bonus Tracks) (MP3) folders but SK didn’t match them. looking at the metadata in the songs there isn’t much to go on, but can SK utilise the folder names and search for a match that way?

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

how can i modify the artist mask to always create capitals for the first letter, Paul?

Simply use the Javascript function toUpperCase(), so in !Ste - Artists mask modify the writeArtist() function from

function writeArtist(type)
{
   return r(type
    + "/"
    + ifnotempty2(ignoreThe(albumartist).substring(0,1),ignoreThe(artist).substring(0,1),'/')
    + ifnotempty2(albumartist,artist,'/')
    + formatReleaseType()
    + ifnotempty(album + ' ' + brackets(yearOnly(year)),'/')
    + ifmultidisc(squareBrackets('CD' + pad(discno,2) +  formatSubtitle(subtitle)) + ' ')
    + ifnotempty(pad(trackno,2),' - ')
    + ifnotempty(title,' ') 
    + squareBrackets(formatTrackArtist()))
}

to

function writeArtist(type)
{
   return r(type
    + "/"
    + ifnotempty2(ignoreThe(albumartist).substring(0,1).toUpperCase(),ignoreThe(artist).substring(0,1).toUpperCase(),'/')
    + ifnotempty2(albumartist,artist,'/')
    + formatReleaseType()
    + ifnotempty(album + ' ' + brackets(yearOnly(year)),'/')
    + ifmultidisc(squareBrackets('CD' + pad(discno,2) +  formatSubtitle(subtitle)) + ' ')
    + ifnotempty(pad(trackno,2),' - ')
    + ifnotempty(title,' ') 
    + squareBrackets(formatTrackArtist()))
}

@steveyg777

i missed your message. i AM using the songkong docker container version.

So I thought you were using on the mac. So you if you are using SongKong directly on the Synology and the files are also on the Synology then Samba does not matter but I dont know what the issue is.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

I’m also seeing this error, at least when using SK container version:
Invalid Javascript Mask Eval …
i’ve created support files

Hi, it failed processing this file

/music/Audio Library/!To Organise/!SORTED Library Workflow/4 SORTED LIBRARY/(2) 01 Outta My Life (Touch Mix).mp3

but I cant work out why the mask is just failing for this file, could you please email support@jthink.net this file so I can try to reproduce issue.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

is it possible to tell SK to always use translated/english data/titles?

Not currently, transliteration of titles is a relatively new and unused feature within MusicBrainz so unlike artist names we don’t currently offer an option for this in Fix Songs

But you can use Match to One Album and specify the MusicBrainz Id in the Enter MusicBrainz Url or Discogs Url… field

[paultaylor]

@paultaylor

/music/Audio Library/!To Organise/!SORTED Library Workflow/4 SORTED LIBRARY/(2) 01 Outta My Life (Touch Mix).mp3

Hi, are you able to send me this file please so I can resolve this issue for you.

[steveyg777]

i’ve sent the file now

[steveyg777]

i’ve also had issues with another run. i’ve created support files. they are under “not loaded”. for example "/music/Audio Library/!To Organise/!SORTED Library Workflow/4 SORTED LIBRARY/06 Pain_m4a6058061314608407817.m4a

Cannot invoke “java.util.List.size()” because “this.numbers” is null"

[paultaylor]

Found the issue, in the !Ste - Compilations mask we have the formatTrackArtist() function and the first line of this is

mainartist=artists_index[0]

but his assumes you have at least one value for the artists tag, you dont have an artists tag for this song, probably because it was matched to MusicBrainz by MusicBrainz Picard rather than SongKong

Changing first line to

mainartist=indexValue(artists_index,0);

fixes the issue.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

Cannot invoke “java.util.List.size()” because “this.numbers” is null"

Raised an issue, seems to be something it doesn’t like about discno field, if you could send me the m4a file please that would be useful.

[paultaylor]

@steveyg777

"/music/Audio Library/!To Organise/!SORTED Library Workflow/4 SORTED LIBRARY/06 Pain_m4a6058061314608407817.m4a

Hi, can you send me the file please - would make fixing and testing this alot easier.

[steveyg777]

i’ve just sent it Paul

[paultaylor]

Thanks, issue was the discNo field in this example file is stored as type text but it is normally stored as a number, raised issue https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-2796 and fixed for next release.