[zag]

Introduction
If you are having trouble importing your music and getting missing data or covers then there is an easy way to fix your tags and get perfect scraping every time. Musicbrainz Picard is a great bit of software but has a steep learning curve. Once you get it setup though it can fix an album with about 3 clicks automatically. Since XBMC can now read MusicBrainz tags, it will always match an album perfectly if you have run it through Picard and saved the new tags.

Download
http://picard.musicbrainz.org/

Picard Settings
Options >> Coverart - Untick Embed Cover images into tags (you can keep save cover images as separate files but I prefer to let the scrapers download the covers)
Options >> Fingerprinting - Use AcoustiID (You can get an API key here)
Options >> Tags >> Tag compatibility >> ID3v2 Version 2.4

Step 1
Load up picard and click "Add Folder" to show the album in the left hand, it should show as unmatched files
Click the "Cluster" button to put them all in an album
Click Scan to read the existing tags


Step 2
Now the album name should be showing on the right hand window.
If there are multiple albums on the right then drag and drop any individual tracks into the correct album name
If you cant find the correct album, you can click "Lookup" to manually find it on MusicBrainz.
The album should be yellow and show all tracks present you can now click "Save" and the tags will be saved. If it is not you can fix it manually with a drag and drop.

Step 3
Now the album has MusicBrainz tags you should be able to scan it using the universal album scraper and it will find all cover art or details. If coverart or description does not show up then it may not be on the metadata sites. Sign up for Fanart.TV and TheAudioDB.com to enter this information for everyone in the future.



Conclusion
MB picard is a great bit of software when you learn how to use it. It should take only a few clicks to fix any album. If you want to automate the process even more then turn on in the options >> general >> automatically scan new files.

[docwra]

One thing to say is that with the remove "feat." plugin it doesn't remove the multiple MBID's from the artist field.

This means XBMC will still pick it up as a various artist.

You can still remove them manually if you want.

Also you will need to use the latest Helix versions as they have some fixes for sorting music in.

[steve1977]

The Picard guide is very great. Thanks zag!!!

docwra, yes, this is a major issue. I am facing the same issue and waiting that one of the developers helps to allow an option to ignore the MBIDs. Any chance?

[beesmyer]

Zag,

Since you seem to know about Kodi and music tagging I’m wondering if I can get some feedback on a couple questions.

I use picard to meticulously tag all my music. Everything is organized in “Drive:/album artist/album (year)/track. Artist – title.ext” format. I prefer to scrape all music collection off line and store the artwork and nfo’s locally like I do with my video collection. I do this since I have issues with how kodi exports the music library nfo’s, I have recordings from unpublished artists, and fanart.tv will reject a lot of artwork due to not having copyright notices. I organize by album artist folders instead of artist folders due to cleaner compilation and mix structure.

One problem…. I have artists that only appear on compilations. They will have a folder on my local drive with nfo’s and artwork. But kodi will not load this ionformation. I’m assuming since there are no music files in these artists folders. IF they have information online then Kodi will load this. IF they don’t then it won’t load any local data. If I do have music in their local folders then kodi will load and give preference to my local data just as I would like. Even if there is no online data but they have music in their fodler, like for my wife and friends who have recorded songs, I can get it to load all my local data. Is there a way to get kodi to load my local data from artist folders even though they only appear on compilations, just like it will load data online if it’s available? I’ve tried all the scrapers.

Problem two. Kodi seems to read the musicbrainzalbumID tag since this is what is written to nfo’s when they are exported from Kodi. I have started using mediaelch to scrape and store information locally. I find that ME does not look up the albumID, instead it looks up and writes the musicbrainzreleasegroupID to the nfo in place of the musicbrainzalbumID tag. If I let this happen, I find I can still add custom information to the local nfo and it shows correctly for the given album in Kodi. Kodi must be referencing the local nfo due to it’s physical location in the album folder or referencing the album name. I don’t like having the releasegroupID where the albumID should be but have not gotten a response back from the mediaelch forums yet. I guess I’m ok with it if kodi does not need, and will likely never need this tag to be correct in the NFO to work properly. What are your thoughts on this? Is it of no consequence that mediaelch replaces this ..albumID with the releasegroupID?

Thanks for any help.

[zag]

Me neither! I don't use local nfos myself.

[zag]

For some coming new features in a future version of Kodi its worth enabling

- Use release relationships
- Use track relationships

[jinux]

I do not know where to put my question. It is about the music library. I cannot find out why it is not working.

My library is scanned and scraped in the first time. Some artists are not scrapped automaticly, so manually it works.
All music tags are correct and the setup of music directories is like: d:\Music Library\Artistname1\Album1 etc.

After i have set things manually with some artists all is oke. But then after i delete the location in kodi and put it back, everything is messed up again and i have to do the same manual things. Exporting in seperate files does not work. Sometimes after i scrape again The Beatles suddenly become the Baseballs in the nfo file. But the nfo file is in the directorie The beatles. I can not get my head around this. How can i make a good backup of the library after i have set all things manually and everything works as accordingly?

Some other different thing with logo.png. The name of the directory is the same as the name of the artist. There is a logo.png in the artist directory, but it does not show up in kodi. I do the same with another artist and this does show up. I checked several times, deleted the nfo changed names but never get this logo.png from this artist to show up in kodi as i can do with other artists.

Also when i export in several files, random nfo fanart and folder.jpg are exported to the directory d:\musiclibrary. But this is the root of my library. Is there anyone who can explain some things to me i searched internet wiki's the only thing i find is make sure tagging and library setup are good. Well this is good, so what am i doing wrong

[Rovastar]

Hi Zag,

Not sure how to start this post but briefly about me I'm an old time friend of the project (I helped out with some code for one the devs with the visualizations but that was (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=22532) 10 years ago. (is MrC even around?), 15 years in the Winamp community and now I help out with Musicbrainz community. Moderator the forums and helping out with Picard scripting.

Nice to see you spreading the word of using Picard and I can see that this nice guide and you have all the best intentions but:

This guide doesn't seem right? In fact it is wrong (I hope)
The plugin "Feat. Artist in title to comment field plugin" is a destructive metadata plugin.

We would not recommend using it and it is not what is expected by the default in Picard or how we would expect the Musicbrainz data to be used.

Are you sure the rest of the KODI dev team are expecting the data like this with the feat. removed?
I expect they are not aware of your advice on this thread and these misstagged files are causing havok in any troubleshooting featured artists.

Cheers,

Rovastar

[zag]

Hi Zag,

Not sure how to start this post but briefly about me I'm an old time friend of the project (I helped out with some code for one the devs with the visualizations but that was (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=22532) 10 years ago. (is MrC even around?), 15 years in the Winamp community and now I help out with Musicbrainz community. Moderator the forums and helping out with Picard scripting.

Nice to see you spreading the word of using Picard and I can see that this nice guide and you have all the best intentions but:

This guide doesn't seem right? In fact it is wrong (I hope)
The plugin "Feat. Artist in title to comment field plugin" is a destructive metadata plugin.

We would not recommend using it and it is not what is expected by the default in Picard or how we would expect the Musicbrainz data to be used.

Are you sure the rest of the KODI dev team are expecting the data like this with the feat. removed?
I expect they are not aware of your advice on this thread and these misstagged files are causing havok in any troubleshooting featured artists.

Cheers,

Rovastar

Hey mate, good to see you back. Yes Mr C still pops in every so often. Check out the new visualizations if your interested, shadertoy is awesome and creates many possibilities!

You are correct about the feat. plugin. Now we are supporting the ARTISTS tag Kodi should fine without removing featured artists.

I never quite understood how an "Artist" (singular) can be "50 cent ft. Eminem" but I guess that was a decision Musicbrainz took a long time ago.

I'll remove the destructive plugin from the guide as assuming people use picard, the artist should now show separately instead of combined like they used to when I originally wrote this guide.

P.S. Loved rabid-hamster back in the day

[docwra]

Just confirming the guide works fine without the feat plugin, now Kodi supports the ARTISTS tag.

[guandms]

Can you please explain how do i create my own playlist or Album via Picard ?
I have a lot of personal collections that Kodi recognize as a million different albums and that sucks ...

[zag]

Can you please explain how do i create my own playlist or Album via Picard ?
I have a lot of personal collections that Kodi recognize as a million different albums and that sucks ...

Just use any tagging app to set the Album correctly, that should work.

[dRwOOD]

Can you please explain how do i create my own playlist or Album via Picard ?
I have a lot of personal collections that Kodi recognize as a million different albums and that sucks ...

Just use any tagging app to set the Album correctly, that should work.

"Tagging app"??.. so picard isn't suited for this type of album IDing??

[zag]

Can you please explain how do i create my own playlist or Album via Picard ?
I have a lot of personal collections that Kodi recognize as a million different albums and that sucks ...

Just use any tagging app to set the Album correctly, that should work.

"Tagging app"??.. so picard isn't suited for this type of album IDing??

Not for personal music collections that do not have unique MBID's no.

Something like mp3tag would be more useful.

[dRwOOD]

Thanks