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winchendonsprings
Asked: 2011-05-02 10:45:16 +0800 CST

Rename folders to music's id3 tags?

  • 772

Anyone know of an application that will rename a folder to the contents id3 tags?

My music directory is a mess with folder names. Not a big deal since I use Banshee to library everything. I have a fairly large music collection on my main hard drive(>140gb) but I keep id3 tags clean.

I'm setting up an ftp server and it will be impossible to navigate the way the folders are now.

In Banshee I have 'Update file and folder names' checked under preferences, but The folder names are not being update. Even after Rescan Music Library.

Any idea why?

I can see when I update an album or track it will update the file and folder names and move them from sub-directory I have them in to the Music folder.

So

  • How can I have my entire library's folders renamed?

and

  • How can I maintain the subdirectories I have now? (such as ~/Music/downloads or ~/Music/audiobooks)(this is less important than just renaming the folders, by the way)

Something similar for movies would be cool too.

music

5 Answers

  1. WARNING: This worked some releases ago and I didn't test it with the current one!

    1. Close Banshee.
    2. Backup your ~/.config/banshee-1/banshee.db (copy it, do not move or rename it).
    3. Execute the following command: sqlite3 ~/.config/banshee-1/banshee.db "update coretracks set LastSyncedStamp = 0 where PrimarySourceID=1"
    4. Start Banshee. It should now update your folder and file names. It takes quite a long time, depending on how many files you have. You can see how it's working in the bottom left corner.

    Oh, and big thanks to gabaug in the Banshee IRC channel for this solution :P

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  2. Both easytag and exfalso will do this.

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  3. Best Answer

    Try to enable the "Library watcher" Extension:

    Edit -> Preferences -> Extensions

    That, with the Organize music and folders option should do it, that's the way I keep my music organized automagically. You don't need to rescan the music library with this plugin enabled, if you drag and drop a file to the window or add it to the Music source folder set up in banshee then it gets added automatically.

    • 1

  4. I had the same problem and tried all banshee and exfalso suggestions posted so far without success. Later on I've found out that my problem was occuring for music files without write permissions (i.e., read-only files). I changed all my Banshee library file's permissions at once by running the following on Banshee's library location in bash:

    find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 660

    This changes the permission (chmod) of all files of file type (-type f) in the current (.) directory granting read and write permission for the files's owner and group only (argument 660 of chmod). I used find -print0 associated with xargs -0 because music file names can have lots of shell unfriendly characters.

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  5. What I did and it worked fine was to right-click on "All Artists" then select "Edit Track Information". This opens a track editor will my whole library selected. Then I added a comment to the first track then pressed the little folder-like button on the right side of the text field. Then click on save. This will add the comment to all your songs and force an update on all the songs including the copy to the right folder with the right file name.

    The process can take a long time. And after all the files are moved you can do the same process to remove the unwanted comment. And be aware that this will erase the comments from all your songs but in my case I had none that were important nor useful.

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