Linux Multimedia Hacks

Clean Music Metadata with a GUI

Use the Picard GUI tool to access the MusicBrainz functionality for cleaning up your music files.

This hack focuses on the GUI version of pimpmytunes. If you prefer GUI tools over command-line tools, this hack presents the best way for you to clean up your music metadata. [Hack #31] explains pimpmytunes and why you should clean up your music metadata. For an introduction to MusicBrainz and its approach to metadata cleanup see [Hack #30] .

To install Picard, go to the Picard Tagger homepage (http://musicbrainz.org/wd/PicardTagger) and follow the download and software prerequisite instructions listed there. Once you have Picard running, take a look at the Settings dialog box and tweak the settings to fit your tastes. In particular, notice and adjust the Directories and Naming tabs in the Settings dialog. The pimpmytunes hack talks a bit about file masks—please refer to it for a quick introduction to file masks.

Now that you’ve set up the basics of Picard, its time to take a closer look at the user interface (see Figure 2-12).

Picard has three main user interface areas:

Directory/file browser

This is on the left half of the screen. The top half of the panel allows you to browse your file system and find directories that contain your music collection. Click on a directory and the lower panel will show all the files Picard can work with. Note that Picard shows unsupported files in gray and does not let you drag those files.

Album browser

This panel on the right ...