search all tags/fields

[ralpharoo]

Hi,

I would like to see the search bar in the media library search all the fields in the iD3 tags.

At the moment, it doesn't seem to search on even obvious things, such as the "Year" field - eg typing "2008" i would expect to see all tracks with 2008 in the year field, or of course the title, album, artist, etc...

(strangely, if I use winamp to play back the content of my iPod, searching the year field does work, but not with local media)

Such a search would become most powerful when fields such as comments/grouping etc are searchable... In grouping, I have added tags such as "single" or "myfave" or "number1hit" etc.

so, to just get my fave tracks of 2003, i could search for "myfave 2003"...

How good would that be?! Or is there already a way to make it happen?!

Cheers!
Ralph

[homes32]

Originally posted by ralpharoo
Hi,

I would like to see the search bar in the media library search all the fields in the iD3 tags.

At the moment, it doesn't seem to search on even obvious things, such as the "Year" field - eg typing "2008" i would expect to see all tracks with 2008 in the year field, or of course the title, album, artist, etc...

(strangely, if I use winamp to play back the content of my iPod, searching the year field does work, but not with local media)

Such a search would become most powerful when fields such as comments/grouping etc are searchable... In grouping, I have added tags such as "single" or "myfave" or "number1hit" etc.

so, to just get my fave tracks of 2003, i could search for "myfave 2003"...

How good would that be?! Or is there already a way to make it happen?!

Cheers!
Ralph

create a smart view

[ralpharoo]

Originally posted by homes32
create a smart view

that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.

Smart views are great if you want a permanent view, but I want to be able to quickly create narrow views of my library, without having a forever expanding collection of smartviews.

Actually - an alternative solution might be to make the content of the search bar available as a parameter in smart view filtering, so i could create a view that is:

(title HAS <search>) OR (album has <search>) OR (year has <search>) OR (comment has <search>) OR (artist has <search>)

if you see what I mean.

[Sawg]

You can, jut put a question mark in the search bar and then follow it by a query.

?title has "pants"

[homes32]

I was thinking more along the lines of having a smart view for example the year ="2003", then you could use the search bar in the smart view to search ?comment has "number1hit" ... you can type your whole query in the search bar (just start with a ?), but supplementing that with smart views will save you some typing.

[ralpharoo]

Originally posted by homes32
I was thinking more along the lines of having a smart view for example the year ="2003", then you could use the search bar in the smart view to search ?comment has "number1hit" ... you can type your whole query in the search bar (just start with a ?), but supplementing that with smart views will save you some typing.

yeah, thanks for this suggestion - in fact I do have a "one year" smart view, just as you suggest.

i'll try the ?search when I get a chance (at work i use my iPod connected to my PC as I'm not supposed to have mp3s on my work PC, and it seems that winAmp's behaviour is different as a result).

[magnum80]

Originally Posted by Sawg

You can, jut put a question mark in the search bar and then follow it by a query.

?title has "pants"

Great tip! I was looking for that many times.

Two more questions:
1) Can I use multiple search keywords?
?comment has "fifa" "football"
I didn't manage to use two keywords, yet. I tried , ; "" etc. Any ideas?

2) When I let Winamp scan the watch folder, Winamp doesn't seem to recognize that some files have updated tags e.g. a new comment tag. For instance some files show up if I search for "football" and some don't, although the comment tag of all files has "football" in it. I use mp3tag. If I use the built-in Winamp tag editor (alt+3) and just hit ok, Winamp's ML gets the tag update. Any ideas how I can force Winamp to rescan all files' tags without deleting my ML first?

Thanks!

Cheers
magnum80

[ralpharoo]

Hi,

you can search multiple terms, but I think each has to be a separate search with a boolean (OR, AND etc), for example:

?comment has "fifa" OR comment has "football"
?comment has "fifa" AND comment has "football"

As for updating metadata, in WinAmp, you can select a bunch of files in the library, right-click and "Read Metada on selected items". This should do what you want.


Does anyone know if there is a way to add or remove words/tags to the comment field without affecting the rest of the comment? Does mp3tag allow this? Although I would prefer to be able to do it without leaving WinAmp.

[magnum80]

Originally Posted by ralpharoo

Hi,

you can search multiple terms, but I think each has to be a separate search with a boolean (OR, AND etc), for example:

?comment has "fifa" OR comment has "football"
?comment has "fifa" AND comment has "football"

As for updating metadata, in WinAmp, you can select a bunch of files in the library, right-click and "Read Metada on selected items". This should do what you want.


Does anyone know if there is a way to add or remove words/tags to the comment field without affecting the rest of the comment? Does mp3tag allow this? Although I would prefer to be able to do it without leaving WinAmp.

@ralpharoo: Thanks for your quick reply. Both your tips were spot on! Thanks a lot man!!!

Cheers