Metadata is the bane of the digital music collector’s life. As I said, most rippers can be made to go off to a metadata database, such as freedb, and will get the metadata. But it’s often wrong, or simply not found. I started ripping before I was online, and used track details I’d entered manually over a period of twenty years, and persisted with manual entry, using a format I’d developed. I could type in the data into a simple text file in the time it took to rip a CD, and ran a scripting system that automatically renames the ripped files from a simple text file. I then used MediaMonkey to create metadata from the path and track names.
Finding incorrect metadata in a library is very hard.
If the filenames are correct, some tools will allow you to infer metadata from the file names and path (MediaMonkey is what I use for my library, running on a PC; it has very good filename parsing facilities: ‘Auto-Tag from Filename’).
If the filenames are incorrect, some tools will allow you to rename/move files based on the metadata. MediaMonkey does this with the ‘Auto-Organise from Tag’ tool. It uses the same versatile parsing tags to construct the new path.
The problem is finding the mismatch; ideally, you want something that will compare the tags with the path, and check that they are consistent. I’m not sure if MediaMonkey has this facility, though I’ve never looked… maybe I should… What I could do is ask MediaMonkey to do either Auto-Generate from Filename, or Auto-Organise from Tag, and it will highlight the changes it proposes. This should identify discrepancies in an otherwise consistent library.
But yes, I agree that running a tool on the entire library is a scary prospect; the preview that MM provides at least allows you to check that what it is going to do is sane. I’d assume that most media library tools, or tagging tools would behave similarly. The library tools also allow you to view all the available tags, and sort by tag, so you can find missing tags, or where the files came from (e.g. I instruct my ripping tool (Exact Audio Copy) to insert a comment tag, identifying EAC as the source, and the FLAC compression details).
You should be able to modify files directly on the MyCloud, provided you have mapped it into the Mac’s file system; then you can use it just like any locally-attached disk drive.
