How to find untagged audio files?


 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers How to find untagged audio files?
# 1  
Old 12-20-2010
How to find untagged audio files?

I've quite a collection audio files, mostly flac. In Rythmbox there are a files with no tags filled or filled with describing names as Track 01. I can look for properties to see which file it is and tag it with Easytag. But that quite time consuming.
Is there a command line or a simple set of commands to find all flacs with an empty tag(artist,title,tracknumber,album) and tags which contains one of the words 'track' or 'unknown' (case insensitive).

The following commmands show the tags of flac and mp3 for example:
Code:
metaflac --export-tags-to=- "$FLACFILE"
id3 -l -R "$MP3FILE"

The output is comparable but not the same. Could they two be combined in one line? Some like find ... | sed ... ?

Here are example outputs:

Code:
~$ metaflac --export-tags-to=- 01.\ The\ Florida\ Airport\ Tape.flac 
ARTIST=Frank Zappa
TITLE=The Florida Airport Tape
ALBUM=You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 1, Disc 1
DATE=1988
TRACKNUMBER=01
GENRE=Rock
COMMENT=Track 1

~$ id3 -l -R 01\ -\ Alex\ Roeka\ -\ Het\ schip\ genaamd\ \'de\ Nacht\'.mp3 
Filename: 01 - Alex Roeka - Het schip genaamd 'de Nacht'.mp3
Title: Het Schip Genaamd 'De Nacht'  
Artist: Alex Roeka                    
Album: Wildernis                     
Year:     
Genre: Other (12)
Track: 1
Comment: Het~Nachtdier


Maybe there is already a tool for this, but I like to know how to do this on the command line or in a script. It would be very helpful for other scripts I want to write. I just started to discover the possibilities of bash. And I have a long way to go. Smilie

Last edited by radoulov; 12-20-2010 at 07:11 AM.. Reason: Added example outputs; radoulov: added code tags
# 2  
Old 12-20-2010
Assuming GNU system:

Code:
find -regextype awk -iregex '.*\.(mp3|flac)$' -print0 |
  xargs -0 id3 -l -R |
    awk -F: 'END { if (f) print $2 }
      /^Filename:/ { fn = $2; if (f) print $2; f = x }
      /^(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):/ && $2 ~ /track|unknown/ {
        f++
        }' IGNORECASE=1

If the above pipe-line throws an error, let us know what system are you using.

Last edited by radoulov; 12-20-2010 at 07:53 AM..
# 3  
Old 12-20-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
Assuming GNU system:

Code:
find -regextype awk -iregex '.*\.(mp3|flac)$' -print0 |
  xargs -0 id3 -l -R |
    awk -F: 'END { if (f) print $2 }
      /^Filename:/ { fn = $2; if (f) print $2; f = x }
      /^(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):/ && $2 ~ /track|unknown/ {
        f++
        }' IGNORECASE=1

If the above pipe-line throws an error, let us know what system are you using.
Wow, that is an educating command for me. Smilie
I use Ubuntu 10.10 and this doesn't give an error, but it doesn't work properly either.

First it found nothing in my test directory, which contains one mp3 album and a flac album.
That was expected because all tags were filled. Well not really expected, because there is only tested on id3 tags and my Flac files don't have id3 tags. So with the command above I should expect to show all my flac files. metatag should be used for
But all mp3 tags were filled. So I changed that. I emptied a title from one track, renamed another track to 'track' and another one to 'unknown'.

I would expect to show these 3 files, but when I tried again, he found 2 files. None of those were changed. He found 1 allright mp3 track and 1 allright flac track.

Strange, isn't it?

Ah... I tested some more and it looks like there isn't tested on an empty tag so it's correct that only two tracks are found, but there seems something wrong with the order of the tracks in the stream so I get 2 random files as output.

So to be perfected the command should be extended with the following:
- mp3 files should be tested with id3, flac with metaflac
- empty tracks should be recognised as well, where only spaces count as empty
- if an mp3 file has no id3 tag or a flac has no FLAC Vorbis tag I think it can be counted empty as well. But that is probably to hard to include that restriction in just one commandline. It's a minor.
- and last but not least: the right files should be reported.

And now I'm going to try to understand what you did in that commandline. It looks very interesting. Smilie
Maybe I'll can figure it out now before you do. Who knows.

I like the dirty trick t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum) although it's 2 actually characters more than title|track|artist|album, it is a nice demonstration of the possibilities.

Last edited by MrZehl; 12-20-2010 at 10:38 AM.. Reason: typo
# 4  
Old 12-20-2010
I don't have flac files so I cannot test it:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3' -exec bash -c "
  id3 -Rl \"\$@\" | 
    awk -F: '
      /(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):[ \t]*((unknown|track)|[ \t]*)\012/{
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=        
  " {} + -o \
  -iname '*.flac' -exec bash -c "
    metaflac --export-tags-to=- \"\$@\" |
      awk -F= '
      /(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):[ \t]*\012/ {
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=     
  " {} +

Seem to work for me for mp3 files.

---------- Post updated at 04:55 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:40 PM ----------

Consider that if you want the file to be printed in case id3 or metaflac return no output at all, the entire flow should be modified to process one file at a time and that change will have dramatic performance impact (you should decide which one is more important: functionality or speed).
# 5  
Old 12-20-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
I don't have flac files so I cannot test it:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3' -exec bash -c "
  id3 -Rl \"\$@\" | 
    awk -F: '
      /(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):[ \t]*((unknown|track)|[ \t]*)\012/{
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=        
  " {} + -o \
  -iname '*.flac' -exec bash -c "
    metaflac --export-tags-to=- \"\$@\" |
      awk -F= '
      /(t(itle|rack)|a(rtist|lbum)):[ \t]*\012/ {
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=     
  " {} +

Seem to work for me for mp3 files.

---------- Post updated at 04:55 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:40 PM ----------

Consider that if you want the file to be printed in case id3 or metaflac return no output at all, the entire flow should be modified to process one file at a time and that change will have dramatic performance impact (you should decide which one is more important: functionality or speed).
Strange. I just copy-pasted your line into the terminal. No error message. No output at all.
The first line you send found the files with 'track' or 'unknown' in it but returned the wrong lines. This one returns nothing. I don't get any output for FLAC either.

BTW if there is no id3 tag at all it just shows the same as an empty tag. So there isn't need for checking for no output at all. But the need for checking for an empty tag is even more important then for 'track' or 'unknown', because there are more of them.
Code:
$ id3v2 --delete-all 07\ -\ Alex\ Roeka\ -\ Kermis\ in\ ravenstein.mp3 
Stripping id3 tag in "07 - Alex Roeka - Kermis in ravenstein.mp3"...id3v1 and v2 stripped.
$ id3 -Rl 07\ -\ Alex\ Roeka\ -\ Kermis\ in\ ravenstein.mp3 

Filename: 07 - Alex Roeka - Kermis in ravenstein.mp3
Title:                               
Artist:                               
Album:                               
Year:     
Genre: Unknown (255)
Track: 0
Comment:

Actually I just noticed an empty id3 tag returns spaces. Select the text above and you see it. So the check can be on "Title: ". That's "Title:" and two spaces. The first one is there always, the second one means there is nothing in the title tag (or it starts with a space what isn't good too).

But metaflac returns nothing at all if the tag is empty. And yes that is noteworthy. More important than performance. metaflac only return tags when they are filled. So if the word 'TITLE' isn't in the output, the title is empty. If only the artist is filled this is the output. If nothing is filled: no message, just nothing is returned.
Code:
$ metaflac --export-tags-to=- 01.\ The\ Florida\ Airport\ Tape.flac 
ARTIST=Frank Zappa

Is it possible to check on not 'TITLE' or not 'ARTIST' or not 'ALBUM' or not 'TRACKNUMBER'? Or isn't it possible to check that the fast way is nothing is returned?

Last edited by MrZehl; 12-20-2010 at 01:26 PM.. Reason: pasted the same text two times, removed one of them, randomly chosen.
# 6  
Old 12-20-2010
First we need to understand why it doesn't work as expected Smilie
We'll try with mp3 files first.

Try the following find command and see if it returns all the mp3 files that should be inspected:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3'

Then try the following command and check if it returns all the mp3 files with empty Title tag correctly:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3' -exec bash -c "
  id3 -Rl \"\$@\" | 
    awk -F: '
      /Title:[ \t]*\012/{
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=   
  " {} +


Last edited by radoulov; 12-20-2010 at 04:39 PM.. Reason: Corrected.
# 7  
Old 12-20-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
First we need to understand why it doesn't work as expected Smilie
We'll try with mp3 files first.

Try the following find command and see if it returns all the mp3 files that should be inspected:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3'

Then try the following command and check if it returns all the mp3 files with empty Title tag correctly:

Code:
find -iname '*.mp3' -exec bash -c "
  id3 -Rl \"\$@\" | 
    awk -F: '
      /Title:[ \t]*\012/{
        print \$2
        }' IGNORECASE=1 RS=

The first command finds the mp3 files. The second command(after adding
Code:
" {} +

of course) gives no result. There should be found 4 or 5 for different reasons.
 
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

7 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

Need a script for automation the convert a lot number audio files to another format

I have a lot number audio files in the MP3 proprietary format, I want to convert them to 'opus' the free and higher quality format, with keep metadata also. My selection command-line programs are SoX (Sound eXchange) for convert MP3 files to 'AIFF' format in order to keep quality and metadata*... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: temp-usr
1 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Remove untagged and junk data from an XML

Hi All , I have seen a lot of code samples which suggest how to remove the junk data from and XML , I need a code in unix which removes the junk characters as well as the valid characters those are not in XML tags , for example my XML is as follows : <?xml version="1.0"... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: IshuGupta
6 Replies

3. Slackware

Problems with audio recording in Audacity 2.0.5. Slackware64 14.1; Intel HD Audio.

I'm trying to record audio using Audacity 2.0.5 installed from SlackBuilds. My system is 64-bit Slackware 14.1 and a sound card is Intel HD Audio. I didn't change my sound system to OSS. (Default sound system in Slackware 14.1 is ALSA, isn't it?) First, I set Internal Microphone slider in KMix... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: qzxcvbnm
2 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Manipulating audio files server side

Hi All, I have next to zero knowledge on what I am about to ask so I will just ask it in plain English :) I am wondering how best to go about manipulating audio files server side. The manipulations required are join files one after the other, eg, audio1 + audio2 + audio3 + audio4 = audio5 ... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: linuxgoat
0 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to list files not present in audio.txt file

I am having following folder structure. /root/audios/pop /root/audios/jazz /root/audios/rock Inside those pop, jazz, rock folders there are following files, p1.ul, p2.ul, p3.ul, j1.ul, j2.ul, j3.ul, r1.ul, r2.ul, r3.ul And I have a file named as "audio.txt" in the path /root/audios,... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: gopikrish81
11 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Find Audio Files With Specific Bandwidth?

Hi, I would like to write a shell script that will: -search the files of a specific user to find any audio files with a bandwidth iqual or greater than 192 kps - on the results i should see the file name along with all the whole file route and each file's size So I guess i should be using... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: ubu-user
1 Replies

7. Programming

Playing Audio files in C

Hi All, Looking for an assistance on how to access the speakers of my machine and play audio files using C. Any tutorials will be of great help. Regards, Sayantan. (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Sayantan
1 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question