Double Tap - Batch Edit

Obvious, but I figure I would kick this off with this request... Loving the program but it is taking FOREVER to get through my collection (30,000+)

Anyway, keep up the great work. Anxious for 1.0!

30,000??? :-O

Wow, well, you are certainly testing more that I have. Hope it's going well.

Batch is a complicated thing, with respect to the GUI. I've been thinking about from the beginning, but still not sure of the best way to implement it.

It seems there are really two different things I want to do:

# A mechanism for setting the same field content across a bunch of files. For example, select a slew of files, and setting the "Genre" to "Horror" or the "Publisher" to "Marvel" This is already available with the CLI.

# Automatic online matching for a list of files. Also there for the CLI, but needs work. In either case of GUI or CLI , what I want to do is keep a log of the failures, and at the end of the batch go into an interactive mode. That way one can kick of the batch job, let it run overnight (or whatever), and then come back when the job is done, and manually select the ones couldn't be done automatically. Since everything is cached, the interactive mode should be fast.

Which one of the two are you the most interested in?

Automatic Online matching for a list of files.

See, for me, there are two apps that i use that do this already, one for my music and one for my videos (tagalicious and iflicks, respectively) so I have gotten spoiled (or seen the possibilities:) ).

It is super awesome to be able to grab a batch of say Xfiles season 1-9 and drop them in and - as long as they are named correctly - the app scrapes a predetermined database and pulls all of the available metadata. Even when there are some issues and incorrect info (there is bound to be) it fills in so much of the work that at that point it is just a matter of fixing individual files. CBL already allows you to grab a group of files and batch edit, but beyond the basics of series, issue #, genre, publisher (things that will all be the same for any one given series) it really can't help with the detailed specifics (titles, writer, artist, year, notes, etc). All of that really cool metadata must be entered individually and that - as I am sure you can guess - would take an ungodly amount of time, especially in a collection as big as mine.

By the way, it seems as though I am crazy about collecting - and I am - but I do buy comics, movies and music... I just love having digital copies so that I can lug around hard drives, macbook and ipad. Much easier to carry media digitally, which is important in my line of work. Once I discovered metadata it slowly became my hobby to get all of the stuff that I collected over the years organized and tagged. As I mentioned, apps are around for video and music, but as a mac guy I have been waiting for an app that can do this for my comics. This is why you have me so excited.

I agree completely, Phunetik. I live in Japan, so space is an issue with my massive DVD and comic collections. Since getting an Apple TV, I converted all my DVDs to iTunes and iFlicks has been invaluable in tagging them all. I've downloaded a whole bunch of comics, the majority of them stuff I have in boxes at my parents' home back in the states. Obviously, I'd have nowhere to store all those books, so digital comics is incredibly convenient and I'd love if ComicTagger could allow for multiple files to be tagged.

Right?! Totally changed the way I have thought about digital media. I feel like within a year comictagger will be that kind of "can't live without" app for guys like us.

ComicTagger wrote:Automatic online matching for a list of files. Also there for the CLI, but needs work. In either case of GUI or CLI , what I want to do is keep a log of the failures, and at the end of the batch go into an interactive mode. That way one can kick of the batch job, let it run overnight (or whatever), and then come back when the job is done, and manually select the ones couldn't be done automatically. Since everything is cached, the interactive mode should be fast.

Assuming I'm reading this right, you say this does exist for the CLI, although needs work? How would I go about doing this? Also, how would I enter into the CLI? I'm on OSX, do I run it from Terminal? And if so, how does it work?

[/quote]Assuming I'm reading this right, you say this does exist for the CLI, although needs work? How would I go about doing this? Also, how would I enter into the CLI? I'm on OSX, do I run it from Terminal? And if so, how does it work?[/quote]

You know... I would like to know this same thing. I am fairly computer literate, but I am not to experienced with terminal and using it for things like this. How about a how to guide from someone that is good at it?

Phunetik wrote:

Assuming I'm reading this right, you say this does exist for the CLI, although needs work? How would I go about doing this? Also, how would I enter into the CLI? I'm on OSX, do I run it from Terminal? And if so, how does it work?

You know... I would like to know this same thing. I am fairly computer literate, but I am not to experienced with terminal and using it for things like this. How about a how to guide from someone that is good at it?

The wiki page at

Code:

code.google.com/p/comictagger/wiki/UserGuide#CLI_User_Guide

has a really great explanation of things, as well as a how-to guide for many common functions.

Sorry, I can't put the "http" in there for the link, as this forum software doesn't allow hyperlinking in the first 10 days.

As manders2600 said, check out the docs here.

http://code.google.com/p/comictagger/wiki/UserGuide

A command-line interface can be a powerful thing, especially when you're plugging through a lot of files. In lieu of a GUI, this is something you probably want to play with, and anything you learn here will pay you back for years to come with UNIX skills.

Yes, on the Mac, launch terminal, and start typing! :-)

Remember, Mac OS and Linux are both UNIX systems, so much of the basics apply to both. If you need to, google around for things like "beginners guide to mac command-line" or "linux command-line tutorial".

I must be doing something wrong.

Here's an example of what I did in order to try a test searching for and naming Avengers v1 #181.

Open Terminal and enter the following command:

/Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o /Volumes/Portable/Comics/Avengers/Volume\ 1/Avengers\ v1\ 181.cbz


I then get the following output:

Save Complete.

Successful matches:
------------------
/Volumes/Portable/Comics/Avengers/Volume 1/Avengers v1 181.cbz


But when I open the issue in CBL, there are no tags. Same in the ComicTagger GUI. Am I missing something here?


EDIT: Nevermind, I tried it again with a different file and it worked just fine. For some reason, ComicTagger can't save any tags to Avengers #181, I even tried unzipping the archive and re-zipping, but still has the same problem saving tags. Very odd.

But holy crap, this CLI thing is absolutely amazing! Right now I'm batch-editing all my Avengers comics and it's just running in the background as I do other stuff! There will no doubt be some that aren't set to primary which I'll have to go back and manually do, but I can easily see which ones those are in CBL and just edit the tags through their GUI. Phunetik, you've got to try this, it's awesome!

Glad it's working out for you, DP812!

That one file that was failing is interesting.. I wonder if it's a permission thing?? Did you ever get that tagged?

With CLI, you can use -p to show the tags in the file
you can also add --terse to just show a summary of what kind of tags are there.

ComicTagger -p avengers_181.cbr

if you use --raw, it will show the XML or JSON text

Can you email the file if it doesn't work? I'm curious.

Ah, I see now, it's an encoding error with the credits. I will figure this out later...

That explains it then. So it's a problem on ComicVine's side, it seems.

No, problem is with ComicTagger. Character encoding has been my personal bugaboo with this app.

This sounds sweet. I just need to get my family to mellow out on wanting to hang all the damn time. Holidays... SMH.

You make me think of something I said earlier that I want to reiterate: At the end of the day, I just want a batch editor to get it mostly right. Even 80% is great because that is so much hard work already done. After that everything can be handled on a by example basis.

I am going to try a test run using what you posted earlier and see if I can get it to work without having to study up.

Ok, so I did a real quick test while I had a moment and this is what I got:


Last login: Sat Dec 15 15:56:15 on console
Christopher-Bacas-iMac:~ chrisbaca915$ /Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o /ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100 Bullets
Sorry, but /ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100 is not a comic archive!
Sorry, but Bullets is not a comic archive!

No good.

And then I tried again but this time actually added the first issue:

Christopher-Bacas-iMac:~ chrisbaca915$ /Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o /ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100 Bullets/100 Bullets 001
Sorry, but /ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100 is not a comic archive!
Sorry, but Bullets/100 is not a comic archive!
Sorry, but Bullets is not a comic archive!
Sorry, but 001 is not a comic archive!
Christopher-Bacas-iMac:~ chrisbaca915$

Fail.

any ideas just looking at what I did?

Is it a CBZ file? If it isn't, that's probably the issue. Other times, it could be that Terminal is reading it as a folder. Here are the steps I use for tagging a whole folder:

1) Open Terminal and paste the "/Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o" command.

2) Open a Finder window and locate the file with the issues you want to convert. Drag the entire folder into the Terminal window and the path will automatically be added. For me, I've got my comics stored on an external hard drive, so the path is /Volumes/Portable/Comics/Series/Volume

3) I then hit the backspace key and add /* or /*.cbz to the path, the asterisk acts as a wild card to find any files. You can also use it to batch-tag smaller groups, for example /Volumes/Portable/Comics/Avengers/Volume 1/Avengers v1 1*.cbz will only tag Avengers #100-199. You can also select a group of files and drop them all into Terminal and then hit Enter and it will try to tag all those files. Very useful.

4) Check the program periodically. If there are any issues that can't be found (which sometimes happens when talking about variant issues or with Annuals, which have bizarre naming conventions that can't really be accounted for), then I put them into the GUI.

5) If you get the message that it's not a comic archive, find the file in question, right-click and select Open With and whatever application you use to open file archives (for me it's StuffIt Expander). Then select the new folder, right-click and select Compress. Once the folder is compressed, change the extension to cbz, now try running it and it should work (if you have a string of issues that aren't archives, I posted an AppleScript in the musings board that allows you to compress multiple folders into multiple archives).

Ok, thanks for the help. I did it a few different times, but always the same result... no tags. Here is the info from the last time.

Christopher-Bacas-iMac:~ chrisbaca915$ /Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o/Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 001.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 002.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 003.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 004.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 005.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 006.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 007.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 008.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 009.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 010.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 011.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 012.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 013.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 014.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 015.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 016.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 017.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 018.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 019.cbz /Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 020.cbz/*
option -/ not recognized

Usage: ComicTagger [OPTION]... [FILE LIST]

A utility for reading and writing metadata to comic archives.

If no options are given, ComicTagger will run in windowed mode

-p, --print Print out tag info from file. Specify type
(via -t) to get only info of that tag type
--raw With -p, will print out the raw tag block(s)
from the file
-d, --delete Deletes the tag block of specified type (via -t)
-c, --copy=SOURCE Copy the specified source tag block to destination style
specified via via -t (potentially lossy operation)
-s, --save Save out tags as specified type (via -t)
Must specify also at least -o, -p, or -m
--nooverwrite Don't modify tag block if it already exists ( relevent for -s or -c )
-n, --dryrun Don't actually modify file (only relevent for -d, -s, or -r)
-t, --type=TYPE Specify TYPE as either "CR", "CBL", or "COMET" (as either
ComicRack, ComicBookLover, or CoMet style tags, respectivly)
-f, --parsefilename Parse the filename to get some info, specifically
series name, issue number, volume, and publication
year
-i, --interactive Interactively query the user when there are multiple matches for
an online search
--nosummary Suppress the default summary after a save operation
-o, --online Search online and attempt to identify file using
existing metadata and images in archive. May be used
in conjuntion with -f and -m
-m, --metadata=LIST Explicity define, as a list, some tags to be used
e.g. "series=Plastic Man , publisher=Quality Comics"
"series=Kickers^, Inc., issue=1, year=1986"
Name-Value pairs are comma separated. Use a "^" to
escape an "=" or a ",", as shown in the example above
Some names that can be used:
series, issue, issueCount, year, publisher, title
-r, --rename Rename the file based on specified tag style.
--noabort Don't abort save operation when online match is of low confidence
-v, --verbose Be noisy when doing what it does
--terse Don't say much (for print mode)
--version Display version
-h, --help Display this message

Any ideas why I get "option -/ not recognized" ?????

Phunetik , looks like you're almost there, just a few mistakes, I see.

I've been using UNIX command line for so long, I forget how non-intuitive it is for a beginner. Some basics before I get into the specifics:

• ComicTagger follows a traditional style CLI, where you run the command with a set of "switches" or options (sometimes paired with an extra bit of info, called a "parameter"), and then finally followed by one or more file names. The short one character switches that don't take parameters can often be grouped together. for example the "ls" command can take "-l", "-t", and "-r" options, but you can also type "ls -ltr"
  
• All of these switches, parameters, and file names are generally separated by spaces. If the file name or parameter has a space in it, you must either use double-qoutes around it, or "escape" the spaces with a backslash. Two equivalent examples:
  
  1. My\ Long\ Ass\ Filename.cbz
     
  2. "My Long Ass Filename.cbz"
  If you don't escape or quote the spaces, the command you are running will think you are sending multuple short filenames, like "My", "Long", etc.
  
  
• When you open Terminal on your Mac, the program that accepts your typing and actually runs whatever program you are running is called a shell. The default shell on most modern UNIX systems, like Linix and Mac OS X, is called "bash". Here are two key features of bash:
  
  
  1. Wild-card substitution: Instead of actually typing out each file name, you can use things like *.cbr (which will match all files in your current folder that end in ".cbr") and even *.cb? (which matches all files that end in ".cb" and more letter, so it would find all .cbz,.cbr, .cbd, etc) Whatever program you are running only knows that it's getting a list of files, since the bash replaces it for you
     
  2. Tab expansion: This is an awesome feature to avoid typing long file names or commands. For example, if your current directory has a 2 files, and one is "The Amazing Spider-Man 233.cbr" and the other is "Hulk 12.cbz", instead of typing out the whole name, you can hit the tab key after you typed "The A", and the shell will finish it for you, with the proper escaping of the spaces.
  
  

With that out of the way:

Error 1:

Code:

/Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o /ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100 Bullets

You weren't escaping the filename, or completing the filename with the extension. ComicTagger thought you were giving two files: "/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/100" and "Bullets"

It looks like you solved this problem, but I wanted to highlight for anyone else who might run into this.

Error 2:

Code:

/Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o/Volumes/ULTIMOMEDIA/COMICS/X-Men/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men/Volume\ 02/The\ Uncanny\ X-Men\ V2\ 001.cbz

You forgot to leave a space after the "-o" and ComicTagger thought you were grouping "-o/" but it doesn't accept "-/".


Suggestions:

run this: (You will need to type your admin) password

Code:

 sudo ln -s /Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger  /usr/local/bin

This will make it so you only have to type "ComicTagger" and not give the whole path each time. You can also type "Com" and tab, and bash should complete the name for you.

Once you get rolling, you might want to consider using:
"--nooverwrite" - This will keep from wasting time re-tagging comics you've already tagged. (Don't use if you want to correct them, though)
"-i" or "--interactive" - This will prompt you to select the correct choice, if ComicTagger can't decide. It waits until the end of the list, so you don't have to watch.

Hope this helps!

ComicTagger wrote:Suggestions:

run this: (You will need to type your admin) password

Code:

 sudo ln -s /Applications/ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger  /usr/local/bin

This will make it so you only have to type "ComicTagger" and not give the whole path each time. You can also type "Com" and tab, and bash should complete the name for you.

Once you get rolling, you might want to consider using:
"--nooverwrite" - This will keep from wasting time re-tagging comics you've already tagged. (Don't use if you want to correct them, though)
"-i" or "--interactive" - This will prompt you to select the correct choice, if ComicTagger can't decide. It waits until the end of the list, so you don't have to watch.

Hope this helps!

I tried the sudo command, and then typed in ComicTagger and I got "ComicTagger: command not found." I'd like to have just one, simple command I could type in that could replace the lengthy /Applications.ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o.

I tried the sudo command, and then typed in ComicTagger and I got "ComicTagger: command not found." I'd like to have just one, simple command I could type in that could replace the lengthy /Applications.ComicTagger.app/Contents/MacOS/ComicTagger -s -t cbl -f -o.

I guess /usr/local/bin isn't in your path? No time for a detailed post, but here are some google searches that might help:

• unix symbolic link ln
  
• bash path variable
  
• bash user profile mac
  
• bash alias
  
• bash script tutorial

Thank you guys for the help! I am excited to try this out when I get a chance!

How's the batch scrapping coming along? This utility works great but it's annoying to use for single files at a time especially when someone has a large comic collection. I saw in the earlier posts, it was said a GUI would be hard to implement. If the scrapper searches by image cover how is it hard to implement? (Not trying to sound like a jerk)

You could tell the scrapper to to match the comics, the the scrapper can verify the match. For example scanning Avengers issues 1-50 of volume 1. A quick list can then appear saying "Matches found..." and then it lists each issues it found a match for. You can glance over the list to check to see if it does indeed match correctly and then just press continue or something to "OK" the matches. If a particular issue didn't match correctly, you can click on that particular issue within the list and manually select the comic the same way you can manually select a comic right now if you so choose. This method might be ideal for a file simply named Avengers 01.cbz for example. By scanning by the cover image, Comic Tagger can figure out I'm matching Avengers V1 issue 1 and not issue 1 of any subsequent volume.

Another way is to implement a naming convention for the file. Plex is a really great media center app with a built in data scrapper. For example with plex you tell it which folders to look at and it can that folder whenever something new is placed in it or you can tell it so scan manually. So for example I have a folder called TV Shows (The folder Plex looks at) > Dexter > Season 1 > Dexter S01E01 (naming convention for episode 1 of season 1). Now the folder hierarchy is something I do personally just to keep things organized. Plex doesn't care how you organise your media, it will find and scrape the data for Dexter S01E01 regardless. In the off chance Plex mismatches something, you can click "Fix Incorrect Match" and select the correct item from a list of suggestions. The only time this would happen if for example Plex searches for Total Recall and it matches the one that recently came out, when you wanted it to match the one that came out in he 80's.

Now having both of these scanning methods would be ideal. For someone with a large collection it would probably easier to just scan the comics they have in whatever naming convention they are using. For new comics, if one so chooses, they can start using the naming convention which would be faster in the long run since it's purely automated.

So that's my 2 cents lol. Does this make sense? Let me know what you think.

I was following you perfectly... we are so on the same page. I use plex at home, but unfortunately it doest tag the files. What I use to tag them before I ask plex to search for new stuff is an app called iflicks which actually tags the files themselves. It uses the same file naming convention as plex, so it goes hand in hand. This way, my files are tagged on my ipad or iphone if I choose to export them out onto those devices... but it does not affect plex's metadata when I decide to just stream. Its really pretty wonderful and I am quite proud of it. When I show people what I have, though, they dont understand how cool all of that actually is.

Sorry if I babbled that with bad grammar and punctuation. I just got out of Surgery and am on Percocet with one arm in a sling. Typing with one hand sucks.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but that's because I don't really know any of the technical stuff. However, using the CLI method, I was able to tag my entire collection in the span of about a week (and my collection is also very massive).

The naming convention that seems to work best for me with ComicTagger is Series Title Series Volume Issue Number, so for example Avengers v1 001. There are some misses, but this has more to do with ComicVine, such as annuals being a total mess over there and Marvel's annoying habit of randomly changing the numbering (this is issue #12 but next issue is #500 because we want to boost sales!).