Make Album Artist and Year Propagate in Export Multiple

[KenBushaw]

I am using 2.0.5 installed by the .exe installer on WinXP SP3 latest updates.

I have a project whose content is one track of what I consider one album of "songs" all by the same artist and year and genre.
I have labeled the songs but when I export multiple, the metadata editor does not remember the common information
from one song to the next so I have re-enter it manually for every song.
I understand and appreciate that it wants to set track name and number.
But why wipe out other metadata instead of keeping it?

I have not been able to find any way to make it automatically propagate metadata from the previous song and, so far,
do not see it described in a way I can find on this forum.

It seems to me this ability should be what most people would want in what I think should be a very common situation.
Is there a way to do this? Sorry it it's already described somewhere.

Thanks.

[Gale Andrews]

But why wipe out other metadata instead of keeping it?

We know this is unintuitive, and we'll add your vote that we should improve this (we're already tracking it as fairly high priority to do so). However the current behaviour is useful for those who are working with compilation albums.

The workaround is detailed in the Metadata Editor page in the Manual:

When using Export Multiple, it's often easier to uncheck "Show Metadata Editor before export step" in Import / Export Preferences, then enter any tags common to all tracks at File > Edit Metadata... before exporting. Audacity will then add the automatically generated Track Title and Track Number tags for each exported file without the Editor appearing.

Gale

[KenBushaw]

When I brought up the Metadata Editor directly, I decided what you must have meant was for me to fill in the fields I wanted to have preset values and then click "Set Default" and then close the editor window so I could actually initiate the export.
AND, that seemed to work like I wanted it to.

If you meant me to do something different, please describe it here more specifically for me and others who may be interested.

Thanks.

[KenBushaw]

Some comments about the following statement:
"However the current behaviour is useful for those who are working with compilation albums."

I probably do not well-understand the many ways such users would want things to work but offer the following for consideration anyway.

The assumption seems to be that "blank fields to always be filled in" are preferred for exporting compilations.

Observation 1.
Most form editors are coded to automatically select the entire field contents when a field is first selected so it can be immediately replaced by over-type. One typically has to click again to insert a position-specific editing cursor. Just note how the URL field of a browser typically works.
So, a user who needs to enter some other unique fields per exported item should have no wasted motion whatsoever if the editor is rightly coded.
Just select the field (blank or not) and just start typing.

Observation 2.
If it's a compilation, the compilation would typically have one name common to all tracks being exported (the album name).
Else, the user is exporting multiple albums concurrently in which case it's all over-typing anyway.

Somewhat-related Observation 3.
Field-to-field tabbing stops in the ID3 attribute name fields as well as their value fields.
That makes no sense at all since the field names appear to not be editable.
Tabbing should advance to the next entry field.

Food for thought.
Thanks for listening.

[Gale Andrews]

When I brought up the Metadata Editor directly, I decided what you must have meant was for me to fill in the fields I wanted to have preset values

Yes.

then click "Set Default" and then close the editor window

No, just click OK to close the window.

Although using "Set Default" would work for that occasion, it would mean that the values you typed will always load in those fields when the fields are are not already filled (they would be "already filled" if you imported a file that had metadata).

You could change the values before export and the changed values would be used, but if you closed the project window or otherwise opened a new project window, the values loaded will be the values that you originally set as default.

See http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/me ... l#Template .


Gale

[KenBushaw]

Thanks.
I guess I never considered the values would be "sticky" between editor window sessions.

[Gale Andrews]

Most form editors are coded to automatically select the entire field contents when a field is first selected so it can be immediately replaced by over-type. One typically has to click again to insert a position-specific editing cursor.

You can just TAB into a field or single-click select it, then type (or overtype the current content). It just doesn't select all the text until you double-click or F2.

Field-to-field tabbing stops in the ID3 attribute name fields as well as their value fields.
That makes no sense at all since the field names appear to not be editable.
Tabbing should advance to the next entry field.

Audacity tries to be an accessible application . The tag field values are read out by screen readers, and the customised tags that you can add are editable.

Yes perhaps we could TAB straight between values for the default uneditable tags, if it was possible to read out the associated tag name, but this would then be "inconsistent" because we would have to TAB into the custom fields.

If you prefer, use UP arrow and DOWN arrow to navigate directly between values.


Gale

[Anders_Martinson]

I am using Audacity 2.3.0 for Windows and got the result I wanted by editing the metadata before exporting. The menu location seems to differ from the explanation given in 2014.

Select tracks and assign labels
Select the entire recording in the editor.
Under the Edit menu select Metadata...
Fill in the Artist, Album, Year, and Genre
Click OK

Now to File:Export:Export Multiple

The album metadata will now appear and export with each track.