What does a red marked title mean?

[Ben]

I’m doing some small test runs with Auto Correct of Jaikoz. After such a test run, many of the titles (but not all) in the Title column were marked red. Some of the titles were purple, and some titles were white. (There is no red in other columns.)

I suppose that the color red means “Deleted”, but I’m not sure because there is an obvious error in the color coding table in the Jaikoz Help:

Table 4.1. Colour Coding
Name – Default Colour – Description
Deleted – Delete – When a field has been deleted from the file

Now my question is: What does it mean when a title is marked red after an Auto Correct action?

Added later: I ran Auto Correct again on the same files, and this time there were no red marked titles at all. So, for whatever reason the red marking appeared earlier – it seems to be a one-off thing. → Added even later: With this, I ran Auto Correct again after {closing Jaikoz, opening Jaikoz again, and loading the files again}.

Added even later:

I think I found out what caused the red markings to appear.

When trying different preferences with small test runs on the same audio files, I used “Edit/Delete all metadata except Acoustid data” as a way to remove the metadata of an earlier test run, before the next test run with changed preferences. This time, there were red markings in other columns than the Title column. Now I guess the red markings are being caused by removing the earlier metadata from the Edit Panel. If so, that is rather confusing to me, because after a new Auto Correct test run, only a part of the fields gets red, suggesting that something special has happened with those red fields, while this does not seem to be the case.

After looking more closely at those red marked fields:

• In the Genre and Grouping and Track No columns, all red marked fields are empty fields. I guess this suggests these fields were not empty before removing all metadata. If so, this would make sense.
• However, in the Title column, all the red marked fields are NOT empty (they contain the title). This does not make sense to me. [In a later test run, there were also non-empty red marked fields in the Artist column that contain the artist name.]

If red marked fields would always be empty, then such a red marking would mean that such a field has not been empty before, and that it has been emptied by an Auto Correct action, or by something like “Edit/Delete” or “Edit/Delete all metadata”. (Or does the red marking just mean, that a red marked empty field in the Edit Panel, is not empty in the corresponding audio file?)

[paultaylor]

@Ben

Edit/Delete all metadata except Acoustid data

Yes, this will delete the contents of all fields except Acoustid and Acoustic Fingerprint, then when you run Autocorrect I think most fields gets replaced with the newly added data, but not genre and grouping because by default they are not added (as the data for these fields is rtaher subjective).

However if you are saying the title field has a value but still has a red background I suspect this is a bug. This rendering of fields with colours is quite problematic and is one area which is rather OS specific because it is part of the Look and Feel of the platform which varies on MacoS, Windows and Linux. Also in the last release we moved from Java 8 to Java 11and this affected things.

So could yo please post a screenshot showing the issue and then I can address this.

@Ben

If red marked fields would always be empty, then such a red marking would mean that such a field has not been empty before, and that it has been emptied by an Auto Correct action, or by something like “Edit/Delete” or “Edit/Delete all metadata”

yes, that is how it is meant to work.

[Ben]

@paultaylor

this will delete the contents of all fields except Acoustid and Acoustic Fingerprint , then when you run Autocorrect I think most fields gets replaced with the newly added data, but not genre and grouping because by default they are not added (as the data for these fields is rtaher subjective).

I do not understand the logic of this. When I run Auto Correct for the first time on some files, the genre and grouping data is just as subjective – as when I run Auto Correct for a second time (after removing metadata). Moreover, in “Preferences/Remote Correct/Discogs”, at “Genre”, I chose “Always replace value… From Discogs Genre… Max no of Genres 1” – and at “Grouping”, I chose “Always replace value… From Discogs Style… Max no of Genres 9”. If Jaikoz would work according to these preferences, it would always download new values for its Genre and Grouping column (with a successful match and data available at Discogs).

So I would expect this behavior of Jaikoz: When I run Auto Correct for some files, I will get some result of added/updated metadata. After that, after I remove the metadata for those files in Jaikoz, and run Auto Correct again for those files (without changing the Jaikoz preferences), I would expect to get exactly the same result as the fist time I ran Auto Correct for those files.

Well, this is the behavior I would expect when there are no initial metadata in the files involved. When such initial metadata do exist, they may influence the result of an Auto Correct action, because Jaikoz will take the initial metadata into consideration when doing an Auto Correct action. When there is a second Auto Correct action without initial metadata, the results of that second run may be different from the results of the first run with initial metadata.

But for fields that Jaikoz should always update (because of preference settings), the original value of those fields should always be replaced, whether this original value is “empty” or something else.

I did the following experiment with two sets of files (the first set without initial metadata, and the second set with initial metadata):

1. Load files in Jaikoz, when the Edit Pane is empty.
2. Run first Auto Correct action.
3. Remove metadata with “Edit/Delete all metadata except Acoustid data”.
4. Run second Auto Correct action.

I use Windows 8.1. The result of this experiment is in the two images below.

A. Files without initial metadata

B. Files with initial metadata (partly incorrect metadata)

While I can consider the red markings in filled Artist or Title fields as a ‘cosmetic’ problem that does not ruin the metadata – it is a problem, when initial incorrect metadata are not corrected. In the experiment with the files with initial metadata, the incorrect initial Album values are being corrected by an Auto Correct action, but incorrect initial Genre and Year values are left untouched. In some of my earlier test runs with Auto Correct, Genre and Grouping fields have been populated with data from Discogs, but not anymore. Perhaps there is a problem with the way my preferences in Jaikoz are set up now. (I can send a Support File if that would be helpful.)

Extra experiment: After removing “Correct Metadata from MusicBrainz” from the Autocorrector Tasks, running Auto Correct with files with initial metadata, only leads to a change in the fields “Artists”, “Sort Artist” and “Sort Artists” – which may be nothing more than a local correction. It seems that no Discogs data are being downloaded with my current preferences.

PS. In the second to last song of the experiment with initial metadata, it can be seen, that the quality of the result of an Auto Correct action with files with initial metadata, is (usually) better than with files without initial metadata. That was to be expected. (However, it is rather weird, that the last song seems to interfere in some way with the second to last song.)

[paultaylor]

I think the red background when corrected value equals original vale before it was deleted is a cosmetic problem that needs fixing.

And I think the missing genre data is due to a configuration issue, if you could send your support files we should be able to clear up that issue.

[Ben]

I sent both my support files and the audio files for the above “B” experiment.

Today I did a new experiment with the new version of Jaikoz. For this, I used the same set of audio files that I used above for “B”.

After removing the earlier version of Jaikoz, and after removing “C:\Users\user_name\Jaikoz”, I installed Jaikoz 10.1.1 Swervedriver. After that, I only changed some columns in the Edit Panel. So, except for those columns, the preferences of Jaikoz are the default preferences of a newly installed Jaikoz. With this version of Jaikoz, and with the same audio files as with “B”, I did the above experiment again. The result of this new experiment is in the image below.

C. Files with initial metadata (partly incorrect metadata) - Jaikoz 10.1.1 Swervedriver - Default Preferences

Some notes on this new experiment, comparing the image of “B” and “C”:

• In B2, album data have been added/corrected, but not in C2.
• In C2, genre data have been added/corrected (where available), but not in B2.
• In both B2 and C2, year data have not been added/corrected.
• In B4 there is a cosmetic problem with red markings, but not in C4.
• In C3, there is no red marking for deleted metadata in the Mood and Artwork column.
• The titles in B4 are not the same as in C4. In both B4 and C4, one incorrect title has been introduced (caused by either incorrect online data, or by something else).

There are some issues here, that seem to be more serious than being just cosmetic. I hope some light can be shed on this. Thank you.

[paultaylor]

Hi @Ben

So I think any differences between B and C are due to changes in preferences, since I dont know what your preferences were in B I will just try and address the issues with C.

@Ben

• In B2, album data have been added/corrected, but not in C2.

Since the songs are in the same folder Jaikoz will usually expect these to match to a single album, and since it could not find a match to one album it could only match Song Only, and therefore album specific metadata is not added.

@Ben

• In both B2 and C2, year data have not been added/corrected.

Usually users are interested in the earliest version of a song, so if the current YEAR is earlier than any year found by Jaikoz then by default it is left alone. Since your starting year was 1000 A.D and you have MusicBrainz:Format:Year set to Replace if date earlier they are not going to be changed.

@Ben

• In C3, there is no red marking for deleted metadata in the Mood and Artwork column.

That is because the value is same as the values in the originally loaded file, i.e they were empty to start with so nothing has actually changed.

@Ben

• The titles in B4 are not the same as in C4. In both B4 and C4, one incorrect title has been introduced (caused by either incorrect online data, or by something else).

This match was based on Acoustids only, and in this case seemed not seemed to have picked the best option.

[Ben]

Thank you Paul, for your helpful explanations. I am clearly still in the process of getting a better understanding of Jaikoz.

@paultaylor

Usually users are interested in the earliest version of a song, so if the current YEAR is earlier than any year found by Jaikoz then by default it is left alone.

Choosing the year 1000 as a deliberately wrong initial value for a test, was clearly not a good idea. With the year 3000 as initial year, the year was updated for all songs as expected.

@paultaylor

That is because the value is same as the values in the originally loaded file, i.e they were empty to start with so nothing has actually changed.

So a red marked empty field in the Edit Panel means, that that field is not empty in the corresponding audio file. Now I fully understand that.

All my questions except one, have been answered satisfactorily. Thank you for that. I will start a new forum topic about my remaining question.