OCR ID3 tagging improvements - DONE!

[Radiowar]

As for the album name though, I thought the default album tag was "http://www.ocremix.org" for everything downloaded from the site?

this in conjunction with "OverClocked ReMix" in the album artist tag works best imo. i also tag site projects that way so OCR stuff gets organized in its own folder, as opposed to being scattered around the compilations folder.

[RECKENEFIN]

My two cents on the matter. I divided it up by game/series. Example: "OCReMix: Mario's Mixes" for an album title, and then I just organized within there by game chronology. If a game wasn't represented by more than one track, they got throw into the "OCReMix" album.

Just throwing out another option. It wouldn't be too horribly difficult since the game name is included at the beginning of all the default track names. The chronology bit was kinda tedious, but then again that was my choice.

[Liontamer]

Here's the thing: The idea of having 1430 ish tracks with no cohesive album title is not appealing to me in the slightest. What is the best way of altering the tags such that they will show up as one ginormous album?

As Wes pointed out, the URL is the album for all the individual ReMixes, so I don't get why iTunes wouldn't sort them with that as 1 album. Elaborate?

Use the Compilation feature, just highlight all of your remixes, edit the info and, under the Options tab, there should be a field that says "Part of Compilation?" Select yes, and now all of your remixes will be neatly sorted as a compilation, so you can view them all in one place.

Practically speaking, what's the benefit/functionality of doing this? I mean, doing that for every track wouldn't take me more than a few minutes, but can anyone explain what that actually does?

Would be helpful for http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

[EC2151]

man and I thought I had a lot when I have a measly 433 OCR songs in my library.

Then again my tastes are often selective.

[Liontamer]

Still waiting for answers to my previous questions. Can anyone answer them?

[BardicKnowledge]

As Wes pointed out, the URL is the album for all the individual ReMixes, so I don't get why iTunes wouldn't sort them with that as 1 album. Elaborate?

First, sorry for not reading this sooner Larry -- had a busy weekend.

In any case, the default for my iTunes is to list songs by different artists under different albums, even if the album tags line up. This happens unless I highlight them all, edit the tags under "Get Info" (with all selected still) and check "Part of a compilation". I've now done that and have one massive OCRemix album, which is what I wanted.

Practically speaking, what's the benefit/functionality of doing this? I mean, doing that for every track wouldn't take me more than a few minutes, but can anyone explain what that actually does?

Would be helpful for http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

Benefit is that they all appear as one album as opposed to a few hundred different albums (which all have the same http://ocremix.org/ tag, but a separate album is created for each artist, leaving us with hundreds of albums by default).

[prophetik music]

Still waiting for answers to my previous questions. Can anyone answer them?

the issue is that they all need either the same Album Artist (I usually use OC Remix or something similar) or the Compilation tag checked.

honestly, it's easier to organize by album artist, because it allows you to pull every single OC Remix - whether a site release, project release, or anything else - into one playlist by simply selecting that artist on your ipod. album compilations exclude each other, generally, so you'd have to manually assign them to a playlist to get every track from OCR. this is problematic since it doesn't update itself when you add music.

[Liontamer]

Thanks for clarifying, y'all. Well, as far as my project for re-tagging every individual ReMix for re-release, we won't need compilation checked in iTunes, because everything already will have OverClocked ReMix as the album artist. Thus everything should be grouped. I've actually been tagging the Album Artist field for recent ReMixes. Try any of the last hundred ReMixes in iTunes and that field should be filled out.

Ryan, to answer your question, you could have downloaded MP3tag and batch tagged every mix with "OverClocked ReMix" as the album artist before dropping them into your iPod and you'd have been pretty much set. You wouldn't have needed to use the compilation field.

[prophetik music]

Ryan, to answer your question, you could have downloaded MP3tag and batch tagged every mix with "OverClocked ReMix" as the album artist before dropping them into your iPod and you'd have been pretty much set. You wouldn't have needed to use the compilation field.

or just selected everything, right click -> get info in itunes, and set album artist as whatever you want.

[BardicKnowledge]

I'll do that when the 2000 torrent comes out and I redownload the second batch. Thanks, everyone!

[Liontamer]

or just selected everything, right click -> get info in itunes, and set album artist as whatever you want.

True. I'm not used to using iTunes for natch tagging since I don't normally use it and MP3tag is just a much better tagging program (being that tagging is its sole function). I highly recommend everyone download MP3tag.

I'll do that when the 2000 torrent comes out and I redownload the second batch. Thanks, everyone!

It'll already be done in the new torrent, so you won't actually need to do anything. Excitement!

[The Biznut]

As for sorting songs further, I have a few smart playlists set up

OCR 5 star

OCR 4 star

OCR unrated

I rate tracks as I listen, 5 stars if I like the song and it is upbeat and energetic, 4 stars if I like the song and it is more mellow. 3 stars if it is an okay song, and 1 star if I never want to hear it again.

Upon resyncing, the songs are autmatically added to the appropriate playlists so I can shuffle the 5 star or 4 star playlist and get OCRemixes I know I like in a style I prefer at the time.

I can also keep listening to random unrated songs to get them sorted.

Seems to work for me.

[BardicKnowledge]

As for sorting songs further, I have a few smart playlists set up

OCR 5 star

OCR 4 star

OCR unrated

I rate tracks as I listen, 5 stars if I like the song and it is upbeat and energetic, 4 stars if I like the song and it is more mellow. 3 stars if it is an okay song, and 1 star if I never want to hear it again.

Upon resyncing, the songs are autmatically added to the appropriate playlists so I can shuffle the 5 star or 4 star playlist and get OCRemixes I know I like in a style I prefer at the time.

I can also keep listening to random unrated songs to get them sorted.

Seems to work for me.

This is smart -- definitely going to start rating my tracks like that.

[Emunator]

That's a good idea, but it really makes me wish there was an easier way to "tag" songs with iTunes instead of going in and editing the Comments field, which is oftentimes taken up with other information anyway, so I wouldn't have to automatically update a bunch of different genre-based playlists every time I get a new song in my library.

[prophetik music]

That's a good idea, but it really makes me wish there was an easier way to "tag" songs with iTunes instead of going in and editing the Comments field, which is oftentimes taken up with other information anyway, so I wouldn't have to automatically update a bunch of different genre-based playlists every time I get a new song in my library.

i agree. i also wish that itunes used a character - a semicolon, maybe - to separate artists within the field. so, a track done by zircon and sixto wouldn't show up as different artists than zircon, or sixto. this would allow you to listen to, say, every track by sixto, by just selecting the artist's name, and not digging through a zillion other artists. realplayer back in the day had that, and that was the only reason i used it as long as i did. i don't understand why they haven't fixed that, honestly.

[Tyler Gill]

i agree. i also wish that itunes used a character - a semicolon, maybe - to separate artists within the field. so, a track done by zircon and sixto wouldn't show up as different artists than zircon, or sixto.

It's a pain sometimes. The ID3v2.3 standard uses / to separate artists, but unfortunately, WMP is (sadly) the only media player I've see that supports it. It might be nice to have that built in for the complete retagged OCR collection, just in case anything else ever comes around to support it though.

[Liontamer]

It's a pain sometimes. The ID3v2.3 standard uses / to separate artists, but unfortunately, WMP is (sadly) the only media player I've see that supports it. It might be nice to have that built in for the complete retagged OCR collection, just in case anything else ever comes around to support it though.

Thanks for bringing that up. Neither djp or I could find where it says / is an ID3 standard for separating artists. Either way Windows Media Player is a poor program for sorting music in the first place (it isn't even intuitive how to show disc #), so it's at least OK if we don't cater to that standard. Same with RealPlayer as Brad referenced.

All of that aside, / just isn't in common or trending enough usage to bother using it. It's the same reason we don't use OGG. OGG is good, but doesn't have enough support. If anything else comes up that would in fact be successful addressing this issue, definitely let us know.

JUST FYI, I've basically looked at iTunes/iPod and Winamp as the two standard MP3 players. If there's any other broad-use robust MP3 player I should look at, lemme know.

[Tyler Gill]

From http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0 -

TOPE

The 'Original artist(s)/performer(s)' frame is intended for the performer(s) of the original recording, if for example the music in the file should be a cover of a previously released song. The performers are seperated with the "/" character.

The ID3.org spec for ID3v2.3 defines it (even though, yes, it is technically an informal standard), but yeah, no one supports it. It's kinda sad to see that even good programs like Winamp don't do it, but oh well. Not much we can do. Personally I just use commas and &s and figure then I can just search for them in iTunes if I want to retag it ever.

[Liontamer]

Running everything through BPM Analyzer today to see if I can get a complete BPM list for all of the ReMixes.

http://download.cnet.com/MixMeister-BPM-Analyzer/3000-2169_4-10290906.html

From what I can tell, the prog is generally accurate, but it has its flaws as far as determining BPM, like giving slow songs a fast #, when it should halve the #.

Anyway, giving it a whirl to see how it is. I may even make a Google Doc spreadsheet to share and troubleshoot with.

[SubNormal J3]

Wow. You're really going all out on this. Hopefully it's not too much of a hassle to get the BPMs.

[Liontamer]

Well, the BPM results are certainly informative, but based on what I've seen and staff feedback, we're not going to go whole hog and include BPM data in the MP3s. If we knew it was 99% accurate, we would. But what I've found from running BPM Analyzer can be useful for the genre/moods/instrumentation tagging system in the database as far as broadly hitting what are uptempo or downtempo mixes.

[Clairval]

Post - #2000 OCRemixes progressively had a new way to standardise ID3 Tags : track number, author comments, and http://ocremix.org as the album (instead of http://www.ocremix.org). While the change is great, I bet people using media sorting software (iTunes, Banshee, Rhythmbox...) are often frustrated to see thousands of old remixes alphabetically sorted in a separate album. Here are the two downsides of cleaning up the old remixes tags :

• Someone will have to retag track number, album and mainly comments for about 2000 remixes.
  
• The torrents we've been fightning for years to keep online will be obsolete.
  

Are these issues big enough for us to keep things as they are ?

[Liontamer]

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32414

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

Before the end of this year (or after MAGFest at the latest hopefully), everything on the site will be corrected/updated and we'll have brand new torrents.

[Clairval]

Gureto, thanks ! Couldn't find info on that.

[Rexy]

So while browsing around the site within the past week, and ultimately even downloading some tracks that I hadn't heard before, I've noticed when looking towards a handful in Windows Explorer that some of them were tagged as track '0' in the track number tag.

I first noticed it with a mutagene track that I thought should've been taken down in one of the lockdowns (thanks for the clarification Larry), though then I noticed it again when going on a Link's Awakening download spree tonight and noticing it on both of Scott Peeples's contributions.

Is there any explanation why some of the tracks were tagged this way? Is it a marking to suggest that they should be taken down when the new torrents were up (just as stated with the mutagene track), or is it seen as some kind of error? Whatever's up with these tracks, I'd definitely appreciate the response