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Last post Author Topic: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting  (Read 63135 times)

Hirudin

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The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« on: November 12, 2005, 03:53 AM »
Just in case any of you are looking for an audio file manager I thought I'd bring " The GodFather " to your attention.

I wont get into it now, but TGF can do practically anything audio-file related. One of the most powerful features is it's script support (using delphi). Another very cool thing about TFG is it's author (jtclipper) is very active in the forum, if there's something you need to ask about or have a suggestion to offer; you'll probably get a responce within a day or so.

Innuendo

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I have to agree. I've looked at every audio file organizer/tagger there is & while The Godfather may have a silly name, not be as pretty to look at as some of the others, and may not have the best-laid out user interface, it is a very powerful.

It's so powerful, in fact, that it puts a lot of those $30-40 programs to shame. Did I mention The Godfather is freeware?  :)

moerl

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I've tried it a long time ago and thought it was pretty good. I have since settled with Mp3Tag, however. It's amazingly powerful and I'm extremely efficient with it. I also use MusicBrainz Picard release.. which is still in early development, however, but is based on a very interesting concept.

I'll check Godfather out but I'm pretty happy with just Mp3Tag :)

Hirudin

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A little bit of warning, the UI isn't the easiest to use.

Possibly the best testiment to the power of the prog is the Forum. Tons of people go on there to ask for a new feature, only to be told it's already been implemented.

[edit]I guess I should mention that I'm a moderator of the GodFather forum, other than that, I have no official affilieation with The GodFather[/edit]
« Last Edit: November 16, 2005, 05:19 AM by Hirudin »

Nighted

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Mp3tag all the way.  8)
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moerl

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Mp3tag all the way.  8)

Ditto.. it doesn't get any better IMHO :). Not in that category.

Hirudin

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Personally I've never used MP3Tag, so I don't know it's full potential, but I can say that TGF can do everything listed on MP3Tag's homepage as "Main features." Does MP3Tag have scripting capibilities? That's the part of TGF I use the most, you can make it run your mp3s through command line apps (I made a script to put all my mp3s through mp3gain for instance). Another couple of people have made a script that lets you get your tag info from AMG, which is probably the most accurate, complete online music databases. (AMG also has reviews, cover art, and "styles" that defign the music much more accurately than mere genres.) For those of you who might use one, TGF aparrently has a very good library (though I haven't used it).

Nighted

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Nah, Mp3tag is just for tagging and you can use regular ,which makes it uber-powerful. Plus it tags everything; APE, WavPack, FLAC, MPC, OGG......

Once audio files are properly tagged, I just load them up in Winamp's library which instantly orders everything using your tag info.
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brotherS

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Mp3tag is VERY powerful and has a nice coder and forum too  :Thmbsup:

I'd like to hear from someone who has really used both programs to see how they compare, i.e. for which tasks The GodFather might be better.

Not that I have to tag many mp3 files, but I still want to know :D

Innuendo

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I've used both and The Godfather is more powerful, but...it's harder to learn. It's not as intuitive as Mp3tag.

NewKreation

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RE...
« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2005, 03:01 PM »
I downloaded and checked it out. However, I still think Media Tagger is better, IMHO.  :Thmbsup:

http://www.viktorin.cz/media_tagger/eng/index.html
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« Last Edit: December 02, 2005, 04:00 PM by NewKreation »

moerl

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Re: The GodFather - Probably the best audio file organizer/tagger there is
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2005, 01:43 PM »
I tried Tag&Rename and was shocked at how much easier/faster it is to do the job with Mp3Tag! Maybe it's just because I'm used to Mp3Tag.. but I'm confident in saying that if anyone were to race me in doing a specific tagging job on a specified number of files, there is NO WAY IN HELL I wouldn't win using Mp3Tag versus someone using Tag&Rename. Mp3Tag is extremely intuitive in direct comparison. The Tag&Rename interface sucks in comparison.. but that's just me.

Media Tagger? Never heard. Will check it out :)

Aside from tagging, what's Godfather useful for? Could you use it as a media library? Like MediaMonkey?

Hirudin

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Re: The GodFather - Probably the best audio file organizer/tagger there is
« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2005, 03:01 AM »
It does have a pretty powerful medial library, so I've heard. I don't use it though, so I can't say for certain. The only library I've used is Winamp's...


The GodFather can grab tag info from www.allmusic.com, not only are their tags more accurate (spellings and what not) they also have reviews (which many people like to copy to the comment portion of their tags) and "styles." The styles seperate the music into categories that may work better than generic genres. And thanks to a script made by a few TGF users, all the info on www.allmusic.com can be parsed into your music files. BTW, the music download service "emusic.com" uses reviews from allmusic.com all the time.

TGF also has scripting, something I'd expect the people on this site would jump on. You can do pretty much anything the program can do (and more) in a script. You can even make the script run DOS programs on your music. I made a script that runs mp3gain (in "album" mode) on all your songs at once (something that would have to be done album by album manually). Another script I made finds artist tags where the word "The" is after their name (like "Doors, The") and corrects them ("Doors, The" becomes "The Doors").

TGF has powerful case and replacement settings. The case options has 3 areas "always lower," "always upper," and "exceptions." Exceptions is where you put words like: LeAnn, MacGyver, MxPx, and OutKast (names that don't fit normal capitalization conventions).

I made a script that applies the replacement and case settings, makes sure the album tag is uniform, moves the word "The" back to the beginning of artist names, and makes sure all brackets have a left and a right (I made the brackets it checks user configureable too). The script does all that, plus it logs everything it changes in the program and in a text file. (I hated not knowing what was being changed when I "fixed" my tags.) By the way, TGF has it's own script editor, with highlighting and whatnot (not the best in the world, but beets notepad).

It also has organization capibilities (with scripting too). I haven't used this much (because I want more than what the program will do by default, but am too lazy to write the script myself). But if you have a directory full of random songs, it'll go through and sort them all into folders, you can make it do multiple subfolders if you want. So if you want it to be something like this:
<First letter of artist's name>
  ->Artist Name
    ->Year
      ->Album Name
        ->Songs
it's easily done with TGF...

Here's another thing, that's very useful, that I bet you can't do with other programs: say you have a playlist of all your favorite songs, you can open that playlist in TGF and have it copy all the songs to another folder. Then you could move those songs onto your portable player, or create a mix CD, or whatever, much more easily.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2005, 07:09 AM by Hirudin »

mouser

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Re: The GodFather - Probably the best audio file organizer/tagger there is
« Reply #13 on: December 04, 2005, 03:44 AM »
fantastic description of what is good about the godfather - that is very cool about the scripting..

ps. i'm going to move this to the user mini review section where people will get more chance to see it.
maybe you could add a screenshot on your next post hirudin.

Hirudin

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Re: The GodFather - Probably the best audio file organizer/tagger there is
« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2005, 07:05 AM »
Thanks!

Alright, you talked me into it... I was thinking of doing one for a while now, so now I will...

Hirudin

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The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #15 on: December 04, 2005, 09:59 AM »
The GodFather is more than your standard audio file tagger. Sure, it can tag your files, but so can 50 other programs, and I bet you already have one that you like. Without making a brag list, TGF will probably handle any file format / tag format combo you can throw at it (except APE tags in MP3 files, the author is against APEs in MP3s). Read on to find out why you should give The GodFather (TGF) a try.

tgf.png

What sets TGF apart from the crowd is that it can use scripts. A basic script could truncate all your tags down to 8 characters. An advanced script could take your tags, correct the case, run 'find and replace' on them, check if they are the same bitrate, output a playlist, and run them all through an external application. Other scripts can be written to parse info from webpages (track names, album art, etc.) into your audio files, or re-organize your whole music collection in one step.

script.png

The GodFather has it's own script editor, I'm sure it's not as good as UltraEdit or SciTE, but it's certainly better than Notepad, it does highlight important words and lets you compile and run the script without saving it or having to switch programs.

colors.png

The GodFather has tons of options, and in the latest betas (currently v 0.71 beta 2) they're finially organized into a nice, neat, central location.

case.png

In the screenshot above you can see the various case options. Worth noting is the 3 lists of words/phrases "Always lowercase," "Always UPPERCASE," and "Exceptions." Always lowercase is all the words that shouldn't ever be capitalized (you may notice that "is" isn't in my list, as contrary to popular beleif "is" is usually capitalized in titles). Always UPPERCASE is the same (but opposite). Exceptions is where you really gain control of your tagging, this list is where you put the words that various recording artists like to mess the case up on. Words like "ATLiens," (which is from an OutKast album I think) "B00MER," and "GooRoo."

replace.png

I think the Replacement Matrix is also worth mentioning. With these you can correct many common annoyances (like using "ft." instead of the word "featuring" or "rmx" instead of "remix"). The replacement matrix and the case rules can be called up in a script by doing something like the following:
tg_setField('Artist',sys_ApplyCase(tg_getField('Artist'),0));
(which applies the case rules to the "Artist" field).

An interesting quirk of TGF is it doesn't apply the changes you make until you hit the "Update" button. The idea is, you can make all the changes you want to the grid, then when you're satisfied with the changes you update the actual files. Some people don't like this, they say "where's the undo?" The answer is: there isn't one. You don't need an Undo with TGF, just don't update 'til you're ready.

log.png

TGF has a built in logger, though it's seldom used. The good thing is: is that you can make your script place stuff into the log. Above is a pic of the log generated by my "Everything" script that lets me know that (based on my case settings) the word "to" has been changed. Now if this was a change I didn't want, I would have caught it simply by reviewing the log. Since the files haven't been updated yet, I can fix the problem in my script or settings that caused the incorrect change, rescan the files (to reset the grid) and run the script again.

library.png

Another feature of The GodFather that needs to be mentioned is that it has a powerful library. Some people use the program only for the library functions. I, on the other hand, haven't ever used the library. But I figured the pic might tell people enough to help them choose to try it or not...
One thing that I'm pretty sure you can do with TGF's library is add files from CDs/DVDs that aren't always going to be in your drives. From some posts on the TGF Forum I get the impression that this isn't a feature of other library programs...
« Last Edit: March 30, 2006, 03:58 AM by Hirudin »

mouser

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #16 on: December 04, 2005, 10:43 AM »
fantastic mini review!!!!!

superboyac

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #17 on: December 20, 2005, 05:17 PM »
Well, I am a long time devoted user to Tag & Rename.  I will say that TGF looks very powerful, but I still think Tag&Rename is better overall.  I just tried messing around with TGF just now, and I will admit that the script editor is pretty nice.  The only problem is that I'm not a programmer and I probably don't have the time to learn Delphi just to rename my audio files.  Tag & Rename is just as powerful (minus the script editing, and a couple of other features I was able to see right off the bat, like some case editing stuff) and from what I can tell, it's much easier to use.  Mp3tag, to me, seems like a less useful version of Tag & Rename. 

The only thing I can't do easily with Tag&Rename is renaming files to fit the Joliet standards of cd's and dvd's for burning.  So, when I have to burn mp3', I always have to go back and check the files to see if they go over the 64 characters (or whatever is the max).  Tag&Rename shows you with a highlighted color all the files that are over the maximum.  Then I have to find a way to shorten the file...usually I'll just turn the album name into an acrynym (ie "Ropin the Wind" becomes "RTW").  From looking at TGF, it looks like it would be able to do this automatically, especially if I were to write a script for it.  But, like I said, I'm not a programmer.

GHammer

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #18 on: December 20, 2005, 08:15 PM »
The only thing I can't do easily with Tag&Rename is renaming files to fit the Joliet standards of cd's and dvd's for burning.  So, when I have to burn mp3', I always have to go back and check the files to see if they go over the 64 characters (or whatever is the max).  Tag&Rename shows you with a highlighted color all the files that are over the maximum.  Then I have to find a way to shorten the file...usually I'll just turn the album name into an acrynym (ie "Ropin the Wind" becomes "RTW").  From looking at TGF, it looks like it would be able to do this automatically, especially if I were to write a script for it.  But, like I said, I'm not a programmer.
You don't have to be a programmer.

Go to the 'Organize' section. Choose 'Physically Restructure'.
You now have the ability to move or copy files and to rename them, create directories, etc.
Without programming.

I've tried all the tools mentioned here and The GodFather is hands down the best, most powerful tool for tagging any audio files.

Hirudin has done a great review, but I can sum it up easily.

"Yes, it'll do that" To whatever the audio file related question is. And 99% of the things are done with no scripting, the scripting is a huge bonus for those who do complex tasks on a regular basis.

Hirudin

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #19 on: December 21, 2005, 01:57 AM »
Thanks GHammer!

In the rename panel of TGF there are options to truncate the filename down to a few different standards: ISO level 2, Joliet, or Xbox. Or you can choose the length manually; say cut off everything after the 38th character.

superboyac

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #20 on: December 21, 2005, 03:14 AM »
Argh!  I was trying my best to justify my devotion to Tag & Rename...
OK, I'm going to have to give this program a more in depth try.  Do you think it can do what I'm asking for automatically?  That is, whenever an album has filenames longer than the cd/dvd standard (whatever that is) then it will shorten the album name in the filename to it's acronym ("Ropin the Wind" becomes "RTW").  If it can do that, then I will probably have to reconsider my audio renaming procedure...thanks for the reviews.

mouser

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #21 on: December 21, 2005, 03:39 AM »
let's not forget that elsewhere on this forum there have been extremely rave reviews for another freeware mp3 tag tool, mp3tag:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1009.0

rail

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #22 on: December 21, 2005, 08:59 AM »
I've been using TGF for a while now and I have to say, after somewhat of a steep learning curve and some adjustments as to how the program connects to Allmusic, I really like this program. I was able to convert all my music files to mp3's and place them into one location on my hard drive alphabetized by artist name. So that if if want to view info on Bob Dylan I can go to the folder named "B" open it and view all artists with first names starting with "B" followed by the album name. Now as I add music to the library I have MMJB and Winamp set up to synchronize with the library in TGF to keep my music updated for play. Another feature that I really like is being able to connect to Allmusic, copy all the necessary tag info and then update the files. I can then use the actual album cover art to later create a  professional looking CD case label.
This is a very nice program. I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about really organizing their music files.

Hirudin

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #23 on: December 22, 2005, 12:35 AM »
Do you think it can do what I'm asking for automatically?  That is, whenever an album has filenames longer than the cd/dvd standard (whatever that is) then it will shorten the album name in the filename to it's acronym ("Ropin the Wind" becomes "RTW").  If it can do that, then I will probably have to reconsider my audio renaming procedure...thanks for the reviews.
As far as I know it doesn't have that feature built in, but it is something you could do with a script. You could have it check the length of the album tag, if it's over 30 characters you could have it search for spaces and only keep the letters imediately following them.

If you don't want to make a script yourself, jtclipper (the author of The GodFather), or maybe someone else, will usually write scripts if they're easy/short enough and if people ask for them nicely.

superboyac

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Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting
« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2005, 10:24 AM »
So, I keep going back to TGF and checking it out.  Here are some of my comments...and I am comapring it to Tag&Rename since that is my favorite right now:

--There isn't a good preview screen to see the previews of your changes that you are making.  HOWEVER, I will admit that TGF gets around that by having this unique update system where the changes don't actually get applied until you hit the update button.

--Selecting which files you want to work with doesn't seem to be easy.  T&R has these 4 buttons, select all, select none, select highlighed, deselect all.  These come in very handy when working in a large jumbled directory with a bunch of albums just dumped in there.

--Using allmusic or amazon to download album information seems to be a bit involved.

TGF is definitely more powerful than T&R, but I feel like it is more complicated than it has to be and/or it's user interface is not as polished (I'm not exactly sure which applies).  Another thing I'm not sure of is if I'm understanding who TGF is designed for.  Is it for people who just want to rename their audio files, or is it for something more?  Like I said, my audio files are all dumped into one common directory, one big mess, and I use T&R to rename the albums one by one, and then I move them to their appropriate place.  I guess I can use TGF to save me a step and automatically move my files once I'm done renaming, but T&R can do that also, and I actually don't want to move it right away anyway.  Anyway, I guess I'm just struggling with the fact that I know that TGF is a very powerful program, but I just see how it makes anything any easier for me.