Re: A UI design idea mockup for discussion

[Scott Furry <scott wl furry gmail com>]

On 01/09/14 02:47 PM, David King wrote:
> I think that in those cases, it is also useful to improve automated 
> techniques of filling in tags, with things like acoustic 
> fingerprinting, and CDDB/MusicBrainz searches.
I know there are libraries available to make this happen. My current 
usage involves using MusicBrainz's Picard application to "bulk" fill 
tags for new music - if the tags have been added to the MusicBrainz 
database.

> I do not use the comment fields much myself, but the track number 
> field is useful for library-based music players (so that tracks can be 
> ordered correctly when playing an album).
And using the comments tag to order music "seems" wrong. Isn't that what 
track #/disc # is for?

> The year field can be useful when creating playlists, but the search 
> feature in EasyTAG is not flexible enough to make this good for (as an 
> example) selecting all music from 1985 to 1992, so again this mainly 
> benefits library-based music players.
I've found that the year value is not always applied appropriately. E.g. 
The Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits. Album was released in 2007 but 
contains songs that were recorded in the early '70's. MusicBrainz will 
default to use the id3 tag of YEAR to be the release year of the album. 
There is also a "original release year" tag. It makes things a mess. Do 
you want the original recording date or the date the remix was made? I 
would recommend the year tag have a "defined, best-case" usage. Maybe 
other taggers/media players will follow? (okay, I'm dreaming...)

> > Others would say the important fields (always show up) are Title, 
> > Artist, Album. I added Genre because people have many reasons to 
> > build playlist on Genre, hence needing to tweak this tag. I give you 
> > a funny use case: Chinese would think you highly if you play New Age 
> > music (typically Bandari), and start to talk in civilized way upon 
> > hearing it.  I need to quickly build a playlist of New Age music when 
> > guests visit, but normally I don't like them.
> I have always thought that the genre field was strange, but again it 
> is useful for creating playlists and as a means for categorization. It 
> can be difficult to get genre information from online metadata 
> databases, so having a manual way to set the genre is useful (although 
> it does not need to be prominent).
Genre is an important tag. Problem is that it tends to be a subjective, 
moving-target. Certainly "The Beatles" and "Led Zepplin" would be 
considered "Classic Rock". Wikipedia shows "Imagine Dragons" as an 
"alternative rock" band. But who defines the listing of genres? 
MusicBrainz fills the tag and  its "okay" for the most part (assuming 
the album has been added). Ever listen to someone talk about art? 
"Neo-impressionist cubist interpretation of Van Gogh with hints of 
pointism" Okay, last sentence is complete BS, but you get the point. 
Same issue gets applied to genres. Allmusic's site 
(http://www.allmusic.com) uses a genre with a "styles" list. (e.g. Led 
Zepplin - http://www.allmusic.com/artist/led-zeppelin-mn0000139026).

In short, no easy solution to the genre mess.

> This work well with the new Nautilus extension, which adds an “Open in 
> EasyTAG” item to the Nautilus context menu for files and directories. 
> This is in the master branch, but has not made its way into a release 
> yet. Thanks to Victor Santos for writing it!
Cool...I know clamtk had an extension for Thunar. (NoteToSelf: must look 
into this :-) )

> > There are 2 problems with existing design that this new approach will
> > inherit:
> >
> > 1. Users are unprepared to open a very very long list. In my case I have
> > 3000 hours of collection, and the start of EasyTag took long time.
Only? ;-)

> Eventually, most of the file access in EasyTAG will be done 
> asynchronously, and the UI will be usable while files are being 
> processed. This is, however, a long way from being complete.
I would appreciate start-up folder scanning process be under user 
control. No sense in burning clock cycles when the user is going to 
change folders.

Thanks for reading. :)
Scott