Track number ignored in export multiple

using Audacity 3.3.2 on Win10
I have several tracks in my project with labeled clips, which I want to export with consecutive track numbers.
So I “export multiple” for the first track, and specify to name by lables and add numbers before labels.
For track 1 I then export let’s say 01-label11, 02-label12 and 03-label13 (all flac)
For track 2 the metadata editor comes again up suggesting to start with track number 1 - I change this manually to 4, and 5, 6, etc. for the following clips on track2. What I would like to see is 04-label21, 05-label22, 06-label23 and so on.
However files still get exported as 01-label21, 02-label 22, etc – so the tracknumbers I specified in the metadata editor are ignored!
Ideally I would like to see the meatadata dialog count up from the track number I specify first in an export process. Or being able to specify a start number for the track number in the dialog before the editor pops up.

But first of all I think it’s a bug that explicitly specified track numbers are ignored in the editor.
Or am I missing something?

I don’t really know but MP3Tag is pretty easy to use (and it works with all of the popular formats, not just MP3.)

You can select all of the files in a folder and edit the common information at once (album, artist, artwork, year… whatever). The track number & title can be edited individually. You can actually re-name files from within Mp3Tag and I think there’s a way to copy the file name to to the title field or vice-versa but I haven’t used those features.

Or there are other metadata editors or most player-software can do it too.

MP3Tag is my favorite tag editor and I use it for ongoing fine-tuning of tags in my music collection.
The point I want to make is: If the metadata editor offers an editable field, why does it ignore my edits in the track number field, if it accepts edits in all other fields?
In a test project I made the following observations (two audio tracks with each a label track associated, each track has 3 labels defined):

  • the track number (in the respective tag field) is indeed correct, what is unexpected is the numbering of the file which gets prepended to the exported clip name. I would expect this number to be identical to the track number, but it starts at 01 for every export process. See attached tag overview of the clips (BTW made with MP3Tag).

Tag overview of exported clips (MP3Tag)

I added values for album, artist, comment and record date when exporting clip22 which was remembered for the following clip. I manually edited track number and title name for each of the clip2x. As you can see the numbering in the file name does not match the track number. I specified “numbering before label/track name” (along with “separate files by label”) in the “export multiple” dialog.

  • if all labels are in a single label track (across all audio tracks), then numbering of exported clips works OK (“export multiple” completes in a single process).

So the question changes to: Is the fact that the file numbering does not match the track number (for multiple exports) a bug or a feature?

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