backing up ratings and playlists to id3 tags

hi doug,

i've tried the script and have a request!! Any chance of changing it so that it works only on selected tracks rather than the whole library? It seems to get a bad case of indigestion on my 20,000 tracks!!

I'm now firmly of the opinion that comments is the only safe place to keep info, at least until apple start using id tags properly. How hard would it be to write a script to store mood/tempo/setting as well as rating in the comments field. I'm thinking of scripts that would allow you to pick e.g. "mood' from a set of predefined terms and add text to the comments field along the linses [MOOD=mellow]. (the difficulty would be if it already existed of course). You'd want sth simple that would work to allow you to charaterize songs with the minimum fuss as you listened to them.

You'd end up with a pretty full comments field i suppose, (with its [RATING=90], [PLAYLISTS=blah blah], [MOOD=mellow] etc) and its a real shame to replicate the functionality of the id3 tag fields, but it would be so useful to find a way to categorise tracks to allow for simple playlist creation.

m

... unless of course there was a programme available in Mac OS X that gave full access to id3 tags. Then we could just script access to the tags and back up ratings and so on to the tags (which is where they should go).

I've looked high and low, but no prog seems to give the same sort of full access to all fields in the tag that e.g. Media Center does under Windows. Anyone come across one?

Meanwhile Doug keep plugging away. i'm waiting with baited breath for the new version of Restore

m

MP3 Rage was the best I found.

Note that iTunes' rating tag is handled internally by iTunes; it is not the same as the "official" ID3 rating tag.

This script will be ready in a couple of days. If you would like to beta test, send me a private message.

Sure...you can post or PM your method for me (and others). I'd like to see it so that I can maybe find out why mine isn't working.

and here is the rating code. Note that I've kind of got it working so that ratings always come before keywords and that keywords only get added if they don't already exist in the comment.

tell application "iTunes"
activate
-- first we set the possible list of ratings as text
set rating_delimiter to "??"
set rating_text_list to {rating_delimiter & "000" & rating_delimiter, rating_delimiter & "020" & rating_delimiter, rating_delimiter & "040" & rating_delimiter, rating_delimiter & "060" & rating_delimiter, rating_delimiter & "080" & rating_delimiter, rating_delimiter & "100" & rating_delimiter}

-- logic to determine whether a selection is active or whether we are dealing with a playlist

copy (a reference to (get view of front window)) to thePlaylist
if selection exists then
set using_selection to true
copy (count selection's items) to idx
else -- its the whole playlist
display dialog "it's the whole playlist!! your forgot to select anything... cancel if you selected the whole library!!!"
set using_selection to false
set selectedTracks to (get a reference to thePlaylist)
copy (count thePlaylist's tracks) to idx
end if

-- and now we loop adding the rating to the beginning of the comment for each track
repeat with i from 1 to idx

if using_selection then
copy item i of selection to thisTrack
else
copy track i of selectedTracks to thisTrack
end if


-- thisTrack now set
-- first we clean the comments field up. ratings always go first. So we find all words containing the rating delimiter (?? probably), memorize them, delete them and put the first one found at the beginning of the track's comment
if thisTrack's comment contains rating_delimiter then


set current_comment to thisTrack's comment as string
get current_comment
set old_delimiter to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to rating_delimiter
set rating_text_list_index to ((get thisTrack's rating) / 20 + 1)

if item 1 of current_comment is real then
set new_comments to (item rating_text_list_index of rating_text_list & text item 2 of current_comment) as string
else
try
set new_comments to (item rating_text_list_index of rating_text_list & text item 1 of current_comment & text item 3 of current_comment) as string
on error
set new_comments to (item rating_text_list_index of rating_text_list & text item 1 of current_comment) as string
end try
end if
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to old_delimiter
set thisTrack's comment to new_comments
end if

-- if there is no rating in the comment and the track is rated, let's update the comment
if (thisTrack's comment) does not contain rating_delimiter and (thisTrack's rating) is not equal to 0 then
set rating_text_list_index to ((get thisTrack's rating) / 20 + 1)
set thisTrack's comment to (item rating_text_list_index of rating_text_list & " " & (get thisTrack's comment))
end if


end repeat

display dialog "Done!" buttons {"Thanks"} default button 1 with icon 1 giving up after 300
end tell

Thank you so much! The scripts seem to be working just fine. Until or unless I run across a more foolproof or robust solution, this will keep me from stressing out about my iTunes libraries (which seem to become corrupted far too easily).

Have you worked on restoring the ratings by pulling them out of the comments?

Thanks again,
Andrew Elliston