FileBot and bliss for music file renaming and album art

[DanGravell]

Hi, I'm Dan; I run the bliss project (https://www.blisshq.com). bliss is an automated organizer for music. It aims to make your library complete, consistent and correct. I emailed rednoah to suggest we write a post on each other's websites, because we share a similar type of user; technically savvy, storing their own large media collections.

I came up with an idea of how Filebot and bliss can be used together. In this example I'm going to install Filebot Node on a Synology, point it at a folder of assorted, untagged music files, then get it to rename the files and then have bliss tag and provide the album art.

Like Filebot, bliss's functionality extends beyond this simple example, but I thought it was a good introduction.

Using Filebot to rename music files
I'm going to assume, given I'm on the Filebot forum, you are capable of installing and using Filebot!

I've pointed Filebot at a large folder of assorted untagged music files:

Code: Select all

gravelld@ds216j:/volume1/music/untagged$ ls
10241.flac  12518.mp3   1684.flac   2203.mp3    2626.flac   32447.mp3   5034.mp3   8477.mp3
10284.mp3   13141.mp3   17305.flac  22080.mp3   28576.flac  32625.flac  5672.mp3   8524.mp3
10638.flac  13285.mp3   17810.mp3   23448.flac  29163.mp3   3808.mp3    5774.flac  854.flac
11528.flac  13481.mp3   1792.flac   24425.mp3   29974.mp3   3958.mp3    6150.flac  862.mp3
11627.mp3   14476.mp3   20331.mp3   25328.flac  31789.flac  3962.mp3    6543.mp3   8852.flac
11924.flac  15212.flac  21323.flac  25557.mp3   31842.mp3   4600.mp3    7406.mp3   9668.mp3
12252.mp3   16249.mp3   21979.flac  25690.mp3   3208.flac   5020.mp3    7978.mp3   9742.mp3

I ran Filebot on the command line and it has fingerprinted and renamed these files into folders:

Code: Select all

gravelld@ds216j:/volume1/music/untagged$ filebot -rename --db AcoustID /volume1/music/untagged --output /volume1/music/renamed --action copy -non-strict --conflict auto --lang en --def 'ut_label=music' 'music=y' 'deleteAfterExtract=y' 'excludeList=.excludes' --log all --format '{artist}/{t}'
Rename music using AcoustID
Stripping invalid characters from new path: Richard Hawley/Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?
[COPY] From [/volume1/music/untagged/10241.flac] to [/volume1/music/renamed/Richard Hawley/Last Orders.flac]
[COPY] From [/volume1/music/untagged/10284.mp3] to [/volume1/music/renamed/Pulp/Sorted for E’s & Wizz.mp3]
...
[COPY] From [/volume1/music/untagged/9668.mp3] to [/volume1/music/renamed/The Verve/(Reprise).mp3]
[COPY] From [/volume1/music/untagged/9742.mp3] to [/volume1/music/renamed/Pulp/Pencil Skirt.mp3]
Processed 56 files

(Forgive my predominantly-British indie rock leanings). Now it's time to run bliss to tag and fetch some album art!

Installing and configuring bliss
bliss is installed from a manual SPK; download it from our Synology page. Install it (the instructions are on that same link), and then I'd also strongly advise upgrading to the embedded version of the Java runtime (see the end of the instructions).

Once bliss is installed and running, go to its web page. bliss runs on a Synology (or another NAS, or a "normal" computer) and hosts its own website. In DSM, you can open the bliss web pages by clicking the URL on the package page or the "bl" icon on the main start menu:



Let's set bliss up. Click the settings cog at the top right. The folder that bliss monitors is pre-configured on Synology to the default Synology music folder. In our case, however, we want to point bliss at the files that Filebot renamed, so let's set it to /volume1/music/renamed.



Let's enable the cover art rule. Under Cover art click the ON/OFF button to enable cover art. Check the settings are as you'd like them; in some cases you might want to specify minimum or maximum resolutions, for example.

Once the cover art rule is enabled, bliss will check your albums have album art and, if it's missing, automatically fetch it and install it.

Click Apply rules and bliss will begin scanning your music library.

Tagging untagged files
Filebot only renames files, it does not add tags (texual metadata describing the music) into the files. So earlier, when Filebot renamed the files, it won't have added tags. On the other hand, bliss does add tags. When bliss sees untagged files, it attempts to fingerprint them itself and shows the files on the Untagged page. After allowing bliss to churn through these files, here's what we see:



bliss shows something different to the folders Filebot created earlier. Here, bliss has combined the tracks in each folder to work out the album. By clicking the show tags button you can see the actual suggestions for tagging that bliss has come up with. To tag the files, click Tag files. You can also fill in the tags, or edit them yourself, before tagging.

Once the files have been tagged, they will show on the Albums page. And once bliss recognises these as albums, they will also begin to be assessed for compliance against the rules you set up on the settings page (in this case, just album art).

Because the files were untagged in the first place, and now just contain textual tags, the album art will be missing. As a result, bliss finds album art for these files, and installs it as per the settings:



You can change the album art either via the album page, or the Cover art alternatives link.

So there we have it - a folder of un-named, untagged music files, run through Filebot and bliss, and we have a consistent music folder structure, tags and even album art to make things look pretty!

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what bliss can do; as I mentioned it can also be used for checking tag accuracy, consolidating genres, resizing art, renaming files, padding track numbers and more.

I'll be monitoring this thread so do ask me any questions you have.

[niXta]

Does it work for audiobooks too?

[DanGravell]

For finding cover art it depends if the information is present in our source databases; primarily MusicBrainz and Discogs. In many cases, that probably means no.

However, given that audiobooks are audio files, stored in the same way as music, you can use the manual tools to edit the audiobooks in the same way.

[Tdoc]

thanks DanGravell

looks good but it is way to expensive

Look at what filebot is charging for an excelent service

wishing you luck with your enterprise

[DanGravell]

Thanks for the feedback @Tdoc!

[the1337moderate]

looks good but it is way to expensive

I also agree with this. While probably not nearly as clean of a user interface, has a steeper learning curve, and may be an apples to oranges comparison, MusicBrainz Picard will also do AcousticID matching and ID3 tagging as well. Combine that with a Filebot preset to name the files into your own folder structure and you can get nearly the same output that can be recognized by whatever media management solution you may have.