Correcting metadata - it takes really way too long

It’s not just you. You really have to think hard to understand the objective of that puzzle and every time I do it I start off confused, figure it out, then lose it again. I just don’t use it anymore.

As above, I’d like it to have a little fuzzy logic and a “make your best guess” type of option until the user gets to manually confirm it. And that should be on a batch basis.

Exactly. It’s like Roon makes no effort to guess the correct track alignment based on the track titles. It just throws up it’s hands and says “Tracks don’t match up, you’re SOL”. And then it’s slide puzzle time. So frustrating! The program should be smart enough to throw some computing power at this issue and at least attempt to solve it for you, instead of forcing us to do all this “manual labor”.

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I’m pretty sure if Roon would be less strict when matching albums / tracks it would lead to complaints as well: "Roon says it’s the 1987 Gold Edition but actually it is the 2001 Platinum Remaster … " :sunglasses:

More metadata (knowledge of the various versions around) to make better educated guesses would help, but how to get it? Not from Rovi/TiVo, I’d guess.

I’ve found that if you are able to identify your exact album version (by UPC code or date released), the answers can usually be found at https://www.discogs.com/.

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Yes, discogs is quite good when you want to identify a certain version of a record. Unluckily it’s not a Roon source (yet) and isn’t really that helpful when it comes to artist and work related information. musicbrainz has more to offer in this regard - if the release exists there.

Per this thread (Discogs as metadata source) Roon won’t be implementing Discogs as a source and have not identified any other databases they will add in the near future.

Make of that what you will, but I’ve been thinking about asking for a refund for a long time. I’ve been using Roon for about 3 years and I’ve seen no development in these glaring problems which is just unacceptable in a “premium” product.

I’ve been struggling with the same problem and wondering if identification is worth the effort if I have to put up with such a poorly designed process. I’m glad at least that I’m not alone in this. I hope Roon will spend some time improving this process.

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I feel the pain of using the “Identify Album” tool to modify the track order and naming. I bought many of the Jethro Tull 40th anniversary book releases. Trying to get these collections setup was frustrating especially when the DVD-A discs could contain 40-50 tracks and up to 5 discs.

After wearing out a mouse clicking the tracks into the correct location on the correct disc, I realized that there was a better workflow. I started to use the “Fix Track Grouping” tool. This tool allows a direct entry of the disc and track location for the files. By working on one disc at a time with this tool and then using the “Merge Albums” button, I have been able to develop a workflow that keeps me from going insane. I understand that this is not an optimal solution but there is a somewhat more convenient workflow to accomplish correcting the metadata. YMMV

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John,

Those are exactly the discs I was referring to when I said it took me 2 hours to fix 5 discs! I think “Heavy Horses - New Shoes Edition” was the one that nearly caused me to have a mental breakdown. It has three CDs and 2 DVDs with audio material. I selectively ripped tracks from the DVDs because I didn’t want the 5.1 DTS or AC3 Dolby Digital or video content - I just pulled out the hi-res two channel content. Roon couldn’t deal with the fact that I had “holes” in the content that I’d ripped, hence the two hour slide puzzle nightmare.

I’ll have to look into the “Fix Track Grouping” tool that you described. It had occurred to me at the time that I could have typed in all the track information for these discs from scratch in less time than it took to do the slide puzzle work.

If I hadn’t figured out a better way I would have no hair left :rofl:

I rip the disc individually and use the “Identify Album” tool on each disc individually at first. Then I edit the tracks and disc number using the “Fix Track Grouping” tool. Once I get each disc setup correctly with the correct disc number, I use the “Merge Albums” button the create the multi disc album. The good news is that most of the Tull 40th anniversary collection are recognized in the data base but the automatic metadata association can’t figure out the difference in tracks with the same or nearly the same names. By working with one disc at a time and then merging the Roon tools were better able to handle the collection.

Good to know that there are fellow Tull fans out there :+1:

LOL, we have very similar tastes:

Very Nice :+1:

I have 2,674 CDs and SACDs in my collection and those few Jethro Tull albums in that photo were by far the hardest of all to properly arrange after importing into Roon. They were so stressful that I could only manage to do one album per day.

I’ve gone through similar pain-barrier with the Panegyric King Crimson DVD-A / Gentle Giant and Yes Blu-ray Audio re-releases. It was a real PITA, if I’m honest.

It seems to me that one way out of this struggle would be for Roon to offer two methods for sorting tracks. One could be the existing slide puzzle. The second option could be an empty column on the left and a column on the right with all your imported tracks. Then you could simple drag and drop tracks from the right column over to the left column to form the correct track listing. For multi-disc albums, a row of numbers at the top (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) would allow you to select which disc you are arranging in the left column.

This proposed scheme assumes that you already know the correct track listing (since Roon isn’t showing it to you), but I think between album covers, Allmusic.com, discogs.com, and even Amazon.com we can come up with the correct track listings. What do you guys think?

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Gave it another try this evening and recorded some statistics.
I was trying to correct one album. All what was wrong is that this album was part of a recognized box set. The box set contains 5 albums. The album I was trying to correct was album 5 from the box set. It was tagged as album 1, so all that had to be done was to move the song titles from album one to album five.

This took me:
27 minutes in time, highly concentrating
547 mouse clicks
173 times scrolling up and down
47 mistakes because if you make one mistake you have automatically made 12 mistakes and you have to start clicking around to view the titles that don’t fit the box.

I will hold my comment, remember this is for only one (1) album.

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Unfortunately, I recognize this all too well.

I fail to see the issue :rofl:

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What issue?

Well, next time, just use “Fix Track Grouping”, select all tracks, and move them to disc 5…

But i’m agree that sometimes, it’s not so simple and easy to fix.