Metadata priorities and embedding covers

Help
1

My music library is pretty cleaned up already - at least on the file level. But when I do an import, beets disagrees on some artist names, track titles and it skips some albums. So I basically end up with a database that isn’t really better at all.

Is there a way beets to just use the metadata from my filenames?

TBH all I want to do is to embed my cover.jpg files into the mp3/m4a/flac files - without moving or renaming the files. Removing genres and other metadata would be nice, too.

Is that possible?

2

Yo! If you don’t want to move your files, I’d recommend an in-pace, non-autotagged import, as described in the last bullet of the “Configuring” section of the “Getting Started” guide:
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/guides/main.html#configuring

And the end of the “Importing Your Library” section:
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/guides/main.html#importing-your-library

Namely, disable the importer’s default copying, tag-writing, and auto-tagging behavior.

3

I’ve already followed that guide and have

import:
  copy: no
  write: no

but it still seems to be skipping albums on import.
IIUC this should not be the case when I use import -A?

4

Yep, sounds about right. Can you elaborate on what you mean by “skipping albums on import” (perhaps with pasted output) and also include your full config?

5

I assume it’s because I used import -q. So there also isn’t much output. But then I again I would have thought “skip” in this context means skipping the tagging, not the import.

As for the skipped: After moving, I’ve gone through the library and quite a few albums didn’t have the specified track naming scheme. I didn’t double check but assume those were skipped albums.

I’ll give it a try with import -A

That’s the current config I working with:

directory: path/to/music
library: path/to/library.db
per_disc_numbering: yes
original_date: yes
languages: de en
ui:
  color: no

import:
  copy: no
  write: no

sort_album: albumartist+ year+ album+ disc+ track+
sort_item: albumartist+ year+ album+ disc+ track+

plugins: fromfilename discogs inline the edit duplicates missing fetchart #scrub #zero #rewrite

duplicates:
  full: yes

discogs:
  user_token: <token>

embedart:
  ifempty: yes
  maxwidth: 1024

keep_fields: title artist album year track images

replace:
    '[\\/]': ' '
    '^\.': _
    '[\x00-\x1f]': _
    '[<>:"\?\*\|]': _
    '\.$': _
    '\s+$': ''
    '^\s+': ''
    '^-': _
asciify_paths: yes

item_fields:
  disc_and_track: u'%i-%02i' % (disc, track) if disctotal > 1 else u'%02i' % (track)

format_item: Bands/%the{$albumartist}/$year [$album]/$disc_and_track $title
format_album: Bands/%the{$albumartist}/$year [$album]/$disc_and_track $title

paths:
  default: Bands/%the{$albumartist}/$year [$album]/$disc_and_track $title
  singleton: Singles/[$artist] $title
  comp: Compilations/$album/$disc_and_track [$artist] $title
  albumtype:soundtrack: Soundtracks/OST $album/$disc_and_track [$artist] $title
6

I now did an import -A but how can I see what metadata beets has on my files?
list just shows the path, fields just the fields. Isn’t there a way to see the populated fields for the various tracks and albums?

7

Aha, yes, it does mean “skip the import.” To change that, use the quiet_fallback config option:
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/config.html#quiet-fallback

8

See the -f flag to the list command or the info plugin (in library mode).

9

So I guess quiet_fallback: asis should make it work the way I thought it would.

Well, the -f flag needs me to specify a format, but I rather want to see a all fields.
But it looks like info -l is what I am after.

Not sure what “library mode” is though. Searching in the docs did not help either.

Thanks for the help!