Auto-increment track # not changing in MM5 view

[svillardi]

Hello. Another question... (thanks to all who read and reply!)

Been reorganizing using the auto-organize function, and all of my tracks are <track:#2>. Works wonderfully if I go to Windows Explorer and I see my tracks in order. However, it doesn't seem to update the listing in MM itself.

So some tracks have
1 Title
2 Title

Some have
01 Title
02 Title

or a combo. How do I get them to appear all the same way?

[IanRTaylorUK]

Outline steps I would use are:

Entire Library
All Tracks
Show and sort by Track#
Select ALL 1 / 01 Tracks
Right Click / Properties and set Track# to desired format
Click OK and Confirm you want to change xxxx tracks

Wait for the process "xxxx database entries to be updated" then "xxxx files to be tagged" to complete.

Repeat for other numbers!

To downside is that the TimeStamp will be updated for ALL files selected for edit.

In MMW4 the addon "RegExp Find and Replace" has an option to "Add leading zero to single-digit Track Number" or "Remove leading zeroes from Track Number" plus a number of other Track / Disc manipulations. RegExp can be used in cautiously in MMW4 to update tags for a MMW5 library!

[IanRTaylorUK]

To downside is that the TimeStamp will be updated for ALL files selected for edit.

Also, take a look at Tools / Options / Library / Tags & Playlists. Specifically, the options to Update Tags when Editing and Modify TimeStamp when updating tags.

[svillardi]

I looked at those options, and they are both checked.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that when you edited tags they updated automatically. I know that the file gets changed, but why wouldn't the tracknumber show the same way as the file? Isn't that the whole point of <track#:2>? 2 characters?

[Timo_Beil]

Auto-Organize and Tags are different things.
Auto-Organize changes the filenames in your OS.
Tagging changes information inside these files.
After Auto-Organizing, your filenames have the two-digit number, not the Track#-Tags.
One possible solution could be, to "auto-tag from filename" of the corrected files.

[IanRTaylorUK]

Personally I prefer to keep filenames on the PC simple:

D:\FLAC Music\Eagles\Hotel California\Hotel California (Remastered).flac

But on the device I include things like Track# and Disc# from the Tags e.g.

\Android Device 1\Small Card\Music\Eagles\Hotel California\01 Eagles - Hotel California (Remastered).mp3

\Android Device 2\Good Sized Disk\Music\Eagles\Hotel California\101-Hotel California (Remastered).flac

In fact I normally take out things like Remastered / Deluxe / Special to the comment tag. Another edit to do!

[svillardi]

Auto-Organize and Tags are different things.
Auto-Organize changes the filenames in your OS.
Tagging changes information inside these files.
After Auto-Organizing, your filenames have the two-digit number, not the Track#-Tags.
One possible solution could be, to "auto-tag from filename" of the corrected files.

Ah! I kina like this. I mean, it is another step but I could do it, I guess. There should be a setting on how to display the track number, I would have thought.

It's annoying because it's inconsistent.

Thx!

[Timo_Beil]

It's annoying because it's inconsistent.

The inconsistency is intentional, otherwise the file structure on disk would always have to match the tags in a fixed pattern. A) what pattern? and B) changing the tags would immediately reorder the files on disk.... horrible idea.
You just have to accept that there are 3 levels of information.
1. filenames
2. tags
3. database entries
And MM helps us (mostly?) to synchronize these information. How exactly a user wants to organize that is different, MM can't know that.