Export multiple labels adding album?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Audacity 2.1.2 on Windows 8

Love the program and have been using it a long time. There is one item that I cannot find an answer to in any of the areas suggested.

I can import a file use analyze silence to find the breaks. add labels in the correct order. Then edit the metadata to include the artist, album, year all this is no problem.
When I select the export multiple option it works just fine. However is there a way to have Audacity name the files Artist - Track Title - Album ?

As it is now I use the Artist - Album - # option, then I have to use another program to select those files and rename the files in the order I wish.
It seems like the data is all there as the option to export using just the labels is there.

Thank you.
Steve

2

The file names you export come from the Audacity track Names (if you export multiple by tracks) or label names (if you export multiple by labels).

So in your case if you are importing a single file you could type the metadata-based names you require into the labels. You may find it helps to use SHIFT + HOME after typing the first label, right-click in the label > Copy (or CTRL + C), then in the next label, right-click > Paste (or CTRL + V). Then you only have to change the Track Title.

The labels have no access to any already stored metadata. That would be a feature request.


Gale

3

Normally I am starting with a single mp3 or mp4 file that is a full album. No metadata present. I use Audacity to break that up into individual tracks and export multiples using labels. I use the “edit metadata” to enter the album name and artist. Audacity then adds the track name and number as it exports. The resulting files can have file names of Artist - Album - Track Number OR Track Title Or Track Number- Track Title. I’m just looking for a way to combine them so I get Artist - Track Title - Album . Audacity seems to be able to name files with all the parts, just not in the correct combination. If that means a feature request, then where do I ask for that???

4

As I explained, what you type in the label is what you get in the file name that you see in Explorer.

The exceptions are that you can choose in the Export Multiple dialogue to add a number incrementing from 01 in front of whatever you type in the label, or you can add a number incrementing from 01 after a file name prefix that you specify. This latter choice ignores whatever text is in the label.

If you want “Artist - Track Title - Album” in the file names then that is what you have to type in the labels.

If you are looking at the song in a specific media player that player might list the file name in its own way based on the song metadata that has nothing to do with the actual file name that you see in Explorer. Where exactly are you looking at the exported songs where you see “Artist - Album - Track Number OR Track Title Or Track Number- Track Title”? Perhaps it would help if you gave a specific example of exactly what you type in a label and how that turns out wherever you are viewing the song.

Given Audacity cannot guess the Artist, Track Title and Album when there is no prior metadata in the project, the scope for sensible feature requests is limited. I suggested you could copy and paste the label content you require, but I suppose there could be a shortcut to use the content that is in the preceding label.


Gale

5

I start with an MP3 file in win explorer. That file might be named something like Lost Tatters - Broken Glass.mp3 Lost Tatters is the groups name, Broken Glass is the album name. This file is actually 9 different songs in order in the file. (recorded from a line in through Audacity.
I load the file in Audacity. Use silence finder to mark the breaks. Then go in and adjust those and add the individual track names using the label track. That gives me 9 songs with their track names in the label track.

Now I go to edit and select Edit metadata. In there I add the Artist name and the Album title, Year of release.

Next I select Export multiple and Audacity gives me a file name of Lost Tatters - Broken Glass - 01.mp3 (01 - 09 covering all the tracks)

Or if I select a different option in Audacity I get a file name of 01-Roadside.mp3 (Roadside being the track name for the first song) or the other option which gives me Roadside - 01.mp3.

If I look at any of these files in Windows Explorer I see the file name on the left, then track numbers, then artist then track title and album in the individual columns. So the information is there.
Now If I open these files in my antique copy of Musicmatch Jukebox. I see everything except the correct album art (which Audacity doesn’t handle). That is fine.
Now in Musicmatch I load in each song/file in correct album order then add the cover art and volume level the album. Then I use it to rename the files and add the track title into the Artist. This gives me a file name of
Lost Tatters - Roadside - Broken Glass.mp3

The other labels that Audacity puts out are sort of useless if you have a larger library of music. I have over 20,000 songs.
So say I have 10 albums from a group and they have recorded 8 versions of a song on different albums.

Artist - Album - 01 doesn’t work because there is no title.
01 - Track title or Track Title - 01 doesn’t give you the artist or album. Which get’s compounded when you have 15 artists who used the same song title!

The reason why I think this would be easy to “correct” is that in every naming system Audacity is using the label track to divide the longer file into smaller files, and it can read either the metadata or the input file name and adds the 01, 02… to the new files. If it couldn’t then it couldn’t give you a file name of Lost Tatters-Broken Glass 01 or 01 Roadside. It’s reading the info on both sides.

Probably the easiest thing is to just ignore it and look for a program that will do what I want.

6

I explained what the options in Export Multiple do. These accord with the behaviour you describe.

I also explained that Audacity does not name the exported files according to chosen items of the metadata. If you import a file as the first action in a project, it does add that file’s name to “File name prefix” which you can see in the Export Multiple dialogue.

I agree that a possible feature request would be for you to type a “placeholder” such as “%t” into that File name prefix, so that you typed “Lost Tatters - %t- Broken Glass” and then the exported file name would replace “%t” with whatever the Track Title metadata value was for each file. That still would not help your case because you don’t want track numbering in the file names. What you would need is a freeform fIle name box that did not add the track number.

So as it is now you could do what I already explained in my first reply, which is to copy and paste in the labels.

In the case you give, type in the first label what you want to appear as the file name:

Lost Tatters - Roadside - Broken Glass

Copy that by CTRL + C or right-click, as I described.

When you create the second label, paste into it (using CTRL + V or right-click, as I described). Click in the label to left of the “R” of “Roadside”. Press DELETE on your keyboard until you have removed “Roadside” then type the name you want for the second track.

Repeat the process for the other labels.

This isn’t perfect, because the Track Title in the metadata will read exactly as you type in the label, so it will include the group and the album name. To fix that, you could enable “Show Metadata Editor prior to export step” in Import/Export Preferences. This will cause Metadata Editor to appear for each of the separate exported files after pressing “Export” in the Export Multiple dialogue. You could then amend the Track Title metadata there.

And even then, this still isn’t perfect because you are degrading the MP3 audio by re-encoding it into new MP3’s. If you are not applying effects in Audacity, only splitting the file up, you should use a lossless MP3 editor such as mp3DirectCut to do the split. It can also do volume changes to the files.


Gale