What should the setting ‘rename files based on metadata’ be set to before I click ‘start’ when I’m using the automatic ‘Fix Songs’?
I appreciate there are four choices in the drop down but if I am aiming to correct metadata and/or adding artwork to a release which should I select
Thanks!
I don’t know if you are intending to use Fix Songs over your whole collection or one album at a time, but if the former I would recommend setting to No, running Fix Songs and only if happy with results running it again and this time setting it to Yes, if matched to release
This is because if SongKong updates the metadata that is in some way not to your liking, and then renames the file based on the new metadata, you have a double whammy of metadata problem and filename problem. Unlikely that SongKong will match to the wrong album (although compilations and box sets are more difficult) but formatting options may not be quite as you would like. Also some Melco customers get confused because they make modifications in SongKong but then view the results immediately in their control point without updating MinimServer first, so then the files cannot be found !
In fact in the forthcoming SongKong 9.0 I am actually moving the rename function away from Fix Songs and into its own Rename Files task
Then I would recommend Yes, if matched to release instead the other options because only with this option are you guaranteed that the whole set of files have been matched to same album and hence any sensible rename mask will ensure that the tracks are kept together in same folder.
Thanks Paul - I’ve actually (laboriously) been doing it an album at a time.
There haven’t been many issues (I’ve had it set on ‘no’), except, as you mention on compilations and one or two albums that have had multiple very similar releases with the same tracks,
I’m just a little unclear what setting it to ‘Yes’ changes that having it on ‘No’ doesn’t?
Oh okay, when it is set to No SongKong fixes metadata within the file, e,g artistname, albumname ectera, but it doesnt modify the name of the file itself. When set to Yes it will also rename the file according to the rename mask set on the Filenaming tab, and it will do for all files using existig metadata even if SongKong cannot identify the files. When set to Yes, if matched to release it will also rename the files, but only if SongKong has matched all the files in the group to an album, so this is a safer option than using Yes.
You can select the rename mask from the Rename mask list on the Filenaming tab, Various Artist albums will use what is set as the Compilation Rename mask. If you want to modify what a particular rename mask does or create a new one you can do that from Preferences