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30 Most Recent RSS FeedManaging Track Info
UPDATED: Multi-Item Edit v3.0
Multi-Item Edit v3.0 will display the selected track(s)'s tags in a single window for viewing or editing. When working with two or more tracks, the common tags of the selected tracks are initially displayed; when a single track is selected then it displays all tags for that track.
This latest version, first and foremost, will recognize a single selected track. And because it now also stays active and floating above iTunes until quit (no longer quitting after applying changes), you can cursor through tracks in a playlist to view or edit them individually.
I also added auto-complete to the Genre field, added Close and Miniaturize control buttons to the window, improved accessibility tabbing between text and option fields, improved the UI logic between Plays/Skips and Last Played/Last Skipped fields, and made other minor tweaks.
Multi-Item Edit v3.0 is a free update for registered users, free to try full-featured for ten days, $1.99 to purchase. OS X 10.8 or later.
Son of Latest Batch of Updates
Like last week, I hadn't gotten around to posting individual blurbs on all the updated stuff from this week (November 9-14). So, briefly:
Drop to Add and Give Info v3.0 - drop files onto this droplet and it will supply a Get Info-type interface to add basic tags to the tracks once they're added to iTunes. Better Yosemite support.
PDF Adder v5.0 - applet/droplet and PDF Service enable you to supply some basic tags to PDFs added to iTunes, the latter is a PDF Service workflow accessible from any app's Print Dialog. Yosemite support, minor tweaks.
Make PDF Booklet v3.0 - assists with creating lists of track data exported as a text-only PDF. Support for Yosemite.
This Tag That Tag v4.2 - copy, swap and append data between tags of selected tracks. Fixed a progress indicator that wouldn't indicate progress. I hate when that happens.
Delete Selected Files v2.1 - removes selected tracks and can move their files to the Trash or delete them immediately. Fixes a problem when canceling and progress would not cancel.
Drop to Add and Make Playlists v3.0- drop folders of media files onto this droplet and it will add the files to iTunes and create playlists for the tracks based on the names of the folders. Adds better support for Yosemite.
All HD and SD to Playlists v2.0 - creates two playlists containing, respectively, all the SD video tracks and all the HD video tracks in the library. Mostly just a maintenance update since last update in 2009.
Make An EQ Preset Script v3.0 - creates a new AppleScript applet using data from the selected EQ Preset. When that applet is launched it will re-create the EQ Preset in any iTunes (on a Mac). Handy way to archive EQ Presets. This is a major maintenance update, added better options in the applet for renaming.
Subscribe to the 30 Most Recent Scripts RSS or my Twitter feed @dougscripts to stay updated on script releases.
Latest Batch of Updates
So busy slapping 'em together that I hadn't posted I'd updated 'em. Here's the last few updated scripts (October 29 - November 8):
Set Video Kind of Selected v5.0 - change the video kind property of the selected tracks to your choice of "Home Video", "Movie", "Music Video" or "TV Show". Additionally, "Show Name", "Season Number", and incremental "Episode Number" can also be set or cleared for each selected track.
Convert and Replace v2.0 - convert the selected tracks using an encoder chosen on-the-fly (the encoder's current Preferences-set options will be in effect) and replace the originals throughout the playlists of your entire library with the newly converted versions. Additionally, you can opt to Trash/delete or keep the original files and tracks.
Trackographer v4.0 - stay-open applet will monitor iTunes and send tag and time-of-play information of each track that plays (including iTunes Radio and internet radio streams if they provide track info) to a text file. Preferences can be set to include or not include various basic tags and to create a plain text file or a tab-delimited text file which can be imported into a spreadsheet.
Multi-Item Edit v2.1 - mostly bug fixes; edit most track tags (and some additional options) in a single window which emulates the pre-iTunes 12 "multiple items" format; that is, a checkbox adjacent to each tag allows you to select which changes are to be applied to the selection's tags.
Delete Selected Files v2.0 - remove each selected track from all playlists and Trash or immediately delete their corresponding files. Some iTunes delete commands will not move files from outside the "iTunes Media" folder to the Trash. This script worksaround that.
Find Truncated Tracks v2.0 - assists with segregating iTunes Match tracks that appear to get cut-off when played (due to a possible bug which Kirk describes here). Then these truncated tracks can be deleted and re-downloaded intact (by you, not the script).
Playlist Manager v2.0 - iTunes only allows one playlist to be selected at a time. This applet can perform common useful tasks on a multiple selection of playlists: rename (add text, remove text, search and replace text), duplicate, delete, export, merge.
Search Results to Playlist v2.0 - search a chosen category (Library, Music, Movies, etc) or the selected playlist for user-entered text by All, Song, Artist, Album, or Composer tag and copy the track results to a Search Results playlist, which will be created automatically if necessary. Can optionally re-create or append to the Search Results playlist on each run. Floats over iTunes while active for easy access.
UPDATED: Multi-Item Edit v2.0
Gee, from v1.0 to v2.0 in less than a week.
I am extremely happy with the feedback on Multi-Item Edit. So I wanted to get a new version going with more tags as soon as I could manage it.
Multi-Item Edit v2.0 lets you modify the tags of a multiple selection of tracks in a single window—you can see everything without having to dart between tabs.
Version 2.0 adds Artwork, Name, Sort Name, Album Rating, Plays, Skips, Played, Last Played Date, Last Skipped Date, Lyrics and Category tags; sorting tags have been moved to a togglable side drawer. I also added "Checkmark All" and "Checkmark None" commands as a convenience. You probably wouldn't want to apply all checkmarked tags, but you may want a majority of them (or a minority of them) and clicking on checkboxes all afternoon is no way to go through life, son.
This is a free update for registered users. Multi-Item Edit is $1.99 with a ten day full-featured trial period.
UPDATED: New Last Played Date v4.0
New Last Played Date v4.0 will set the Last Played/Last Skipped date of selected tracks to a new user-entered date, with an option to increase or decrease Plays/Skips, or set tracks to no date and no Plays/Skips (effectively making them never played).
This latest version has support for OS X 10.10 Yosemite and iTunes 12, adds a "Check for Update" command, and makes a few minor UI and performance tweaks.
More information and download is here.
NEW: Multi-Item Edit
You may have been surprised, as I was, by the new Get Info panel in iTunes 12. While it provides pretty much the same utility as the previous incarnation's Get Info panel, it's souped-up UI-wise. One function that's missing is the Multiple-Items Edit checkbox feature to designate what tag changes to apply to the selection of tracks. I think what it does now is just detect changes and apply only the changes. I think. Not sure. Anyway, I'm not 100% comfortable with that.
Here's Multi-Item Edit:
It works just like the old Get Info window in Multiple Item mode: It recognizes any common tags and displays them. Just enter/change some text or options and checkmark the boxes for the tags you want applied to a multiple selection of tracks, including "blank" entries.
This was something I was working on over the Summer so I could batch edit tags without having to switch among Get Info window tabs. But I re-jiggered it a bit as a new release for people who like their Get Info panel old-school.
I want to note that if you notice some tags and options missing (artwork, obviously), well, this is only v1.0.
Multi-Item Edit is $1.99 with a ten day full-featured trial period.
UPDATED: Enter Description Tag for Selected v2.0
iTunes 12 no longer provides a means for editing the Description tag of multiple-selected tracks. This oldie, Enter Description Text for Selected, was just updated to v2.0 and will let you enter text for the Description tag of the selected tracks.
Technically (according to iTunes), the Description tag isn't supposed to be applicable to music tracks. But all track entries have an AppleScript description property.
UPDATED: Append to Selected Tag v4.0
Append to Selected Tag v4.0 can append the same user-entered text to the beginning or ending of the existing text in the chosen tag (Song Name, Artist, Album Artist, Album, Composer, Comments, Genre, Grouping or Show Name, and their Sort siblings) in each selected track.
For tags other than "Song Name" and "Show Name", this script may be just slightly less involved than performing a multi-edit on the selected tracks. On the other hand, unlike using the modal "Get Info" panel in iTunes, tracks remain accessible and selectable.
This latest version adds support for OS X 10.10 Yosemite and iTunes 12 (and drops support for pre-Mountain Lion), provides a "Check for Update" menu command, and has other minor tweaks.
More information and download is here.
UPDATED: This Tag That Tag v3.4
This Tag That Tag v3.4 will assist with swapping, copying, and appending data between two user-chosen tags in selected tracks or tracks in the selected playlist:
Swap - swap data between tags, ex: ARTIST<->COMPOSER
Copy - copy data from one to another tag, ex: ARTIST->COMPOSER ARTIST
Append - append data from one tag to the end of another, ex: ARTIST->COMPOSER - ARTIST
Prepend - prepend data from one tag to the beginning of another, ex: ARTIST->ARTIST - COMPOSER
The latter three actions also provide an option to delete the info from the first tag after the copy.
This latest version adds "Category", "Description" and "Episode ID" text tags as options and a few minor tweaks and adjustments.
More info and download is here.
Disc 1 of 1
A Corespondent laments:
My personal preference when dealing with the disc count field (1 of 2, etc) is to leave it blank for single CD albums instead of tagging them as "1 of 1." There is something about 1 of 1 that just bugs me so I try to clear those out. Can you think of anything you have that can search in those fields? Sorting the library by disc number [is an unsatisfactory solution] because every disc 1—regardless if there is a second disc—gets sorted.
Yeah. It would be easy to do a Multi-Item edit on these guys if you could only corral 'em all together somehow. But: sorting by Disc # sorts by Disc Number alone and ignores the Disc Count so the "1 of 1" tracks are not necessarily sorted together; rather, they're sorted by Album (all the Disc 1 albums A-Z, followed by all the Disc 2 albums A-Z, and so on). Smart Playlists are of little use to gather up these tracks since Disc Count is not a smart criterion.
So here's a script that will look at each track in a selection or all the tracks in the selected playlist; if the track's Disc Count is 1 the script will set it to 0, effectively blanking it:
tell application id "com.apple.iTunes"
set thePlaylist to (get view of front window)
set sel to selection
if sel is {} then
# all tracks in playlist
repeat with i from 1 to (get index of last track of thePlaylist)
my processTheTrack(track i of thePlaylist)
end repeat
else
# selected tracks
repeat with i from 1 to (length of sel)
my processTheTrack(item i of sel)
end repeat
end if
end tell
to processTheTrack(t)
tell application id "com.apple.iTunes"
try
if disc count of t is 1 then set disc count of t to 0
end try
end tell
end processTheTrack
You can save that in AppleScript Editor named whatever you like and using "Script" as the file format to your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder whereupon it will appear in the iTunes Scripts menu.
The script iterates through each track individually, so if you run it against your entire Music library playlist you'll have time to file nails, tidy bookshelves, re-string guitar, or perform some other menial task.
UPDATE: To eliminate the disc number as well (although I prefer to keep it) change the handler to this:
to processTheTrack(t)
tell application id "com.apple.iTunes"
try
if disc count of t is 1 then
set disc number of t to 0
set disc count of t to 0
end if
end try
end tell
end processTheTrack
