#musicbrainz

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      • hawke
        It’s not that it’s particularly difficult though (though tracking down AcoustIDs/cover art/performers is sometimes rough) — it’s that it’s very hard to actually see what the result of your work is going to look like.
      • e.g. if I wanted to try to normalize all the Kochel abbreviations on recordings to 'K.' instead of 'KV' — they just show up orange, I can’t really be sure if I’ve gotten them all.
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      • (Aside from there being 42000 recordings making that a big project)
      • CallerNo6
        Even for that, it would help to write out a best-practice workflow for all those steps.
      • How do I compare fingerprints? Once I do, how close is close enough?
      • etc
      • hawke
        Heh.
      • I’m not quite sure what such a thing would look like.
      • CallerNo6
        e.g. I've spend probably two man-days trying to come up with a workable cover art work flow and failed. I have kepstin's system bookmarked somewhere, I think.
      • person-days
      • hawke
        mouse-days?
      • Anyway, I feel like there are too many different approaches to have any kind of single document.
      • CallerNo6
        That's exactly what discourages people like me from editing in the first place.
      • hawke
        like, IIRC a fair amount of our documentation takes the approach of adding a new release for a pop artist.
      • (or for a classical artist, even)
      • but that doesn't really help with cleanup.
      • CallerNo6
        no, agreed
      • hawke
        And once you're thinking towards cleanup: you could approach from 'find a release and add all the relevant information'
      • or 'go through the recordings and make sure they're right'
      • or 'go through the works and make sure they're right'
      • and probably some others.
      • CallerNo6
        too overwhelming (for me)
      • kepstin-laptop should maybe write up his cover art stuff as a blog post or something.
      • CallerNo6 thought about emailing the IA and asking if they have suggestions. specifically, for doing vinyl covers.
      • (other than "buy a bigger scanner, loser")
      • kepstin-laptop
        yeah, there's two ways to go about that, you can either scan it piecewise and recombine, or carefully set up lighting and take a photo.
      • kepstin-laptop doesn't have any vinyl, but he's done a lot of recombining of stuff for digipaks
      • those generally have seams or bends where you can hide the artifacts, though.
      • CallerNo6
        helpful
      • kepstin-laptop
        I have a small pile of cds beside my scanner now, been putting them off :/
      • should just document them when I do them.
      • CallerNo6
        meticulous photoshop/gimp work is great, but too much work for the casual contributor I'd think
      • hawke
        You don’t actually need to set up the lighting that carefully.
      • I did some adequate vinyl covers…just photograph, correct for the lens, and scale appropriately.
      • kepstin-laptop
        it's mostly just a matter of avoiding glare and having a neutral-color thing in the photo to correct white-balance.
      • hawke
        nod.
      • CallerNo6: doesn’t require much gimp/photoshop unless you’re scanning.
      • Interestingly: a friend of mine is getting me a large-format scanner.
      • kepstin-laptop
      • CallerNo6
        yeah, that's what I meant. stitching scans is too much work.
      • (for me)
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: yeah, I wouldn’t try to scan vinyl
      • kepstin-laptop
        I should borrow some of my parents' vinyl
      • if they haven't gotten rid of it yet
      • hawke
        And any scanner can do CD (unless it’s a foldout poster, maybe
      • kepstin-laptop hates foldout posters :(
      • That reminds me, I need to pull the gimp descreening script off my old laptop.
      • kepstin-laptop
      • fold out posters, man...
      • hawke
        before I forget about it and wipe the drive
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      • At least those end up with nice seams for relatively effortless stitching by hand.
      • kepstin-laptop
        I think that needed 4 scans per side
      • and yeah, I didn't even try to clean the seams.
      • hawke
        (as opposed to vinyl, where you’re just fucked)
      • kepstin-laptop
        main thing with doing multiple scans and combining is that you need to make sure your scanner software doesn't do any automatic color correction
      • most of the windows software does, unless you can find a pro mode in it somewhere :/
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: so, which approach should I document?
      • which approach/workflow, that is.
      • CallerNo6
        in general?
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      • hawke
        CallerNo6: Well, I mean, you’re right that it would be useful to have some documentation of *a* workflow.
      • CallerNo6
        I'd go from the other direction. Come up with a cleanup project that is easily workflowable.
      • (and sprintable)
      • Or, document whatever workflow you've come up with that most people aren't so good at? (iirc you already wrote up acoustids)
      • hawke
        I did.
      • That’s why I’m asking, though: which one do you think is the best cleanup workflow approach?
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      • CallerNo6
        arrgg. totally stupid. the powerbook was working fine.
      • pure, blank openbox goodness.
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: the 'sprintable' aspect is quite difficult too.
      • like, 'all of mozart' is not at all sprintable.
      • CallerNo6
        agreed
      • is "link all recordings to relevant works"?
      • hawke
        No.
      • CallerNo6
        by "sprintable" I don't mean "completable in a short time frame" exactly
      • hawke
        By my estimation, that’s about 200 person-hours of work.
      • CallerNo6
        more like, can somebody jump in and be up-to-speed quickly without a lot of prior knowledge
      • hawke
        Oh. Then, probably.
      • CallerNo6
        which is where a documented workflow helps
      • hawke
        But, that suggests taking a recording-based approach.
      • CallerNo6
        It was just an example.
      • Limit the scope so that you lower the barrier to entry.
      • Make it seem "doable".
      • hawke
        Nod.
      • Very reasonable, and fits with the overall workflow anyway.
      • CallerNo6
        a possible side-effect is that people maybe learn a better workflow that helps in other areas.
      • (or even contribute to it)
      • hawke
        bitmap: Is your 'batch add performance of' userscript available somewhere now that userscripts.org is dead?
      • kepstin-laptop
        lol @ world cup news
      • CallerNo6 has been picking away at http://reports.mbsandbox.org/report/175/view
      • CallerNo6
        why? easy-to-grok workflow. easy to do one quick edit when I have a minute. easy to see progress being made.
      • derwin
        pls no world cup spoilers :/
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: is it easy to see progress being made?
      • CallerNo6
        yeah, there's a count at the top of the page
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: yeah, but the usual wait-a-week thing…
      • CallerNo6
        well, yeah, like I said. I'm picking away at it. Slowly.
      • hawke
      • That just seems so almost pointlessly obvious though. :-)
      • CallerNo6
        some of it is pretty obvious. i wouldn't have thought to install the script.
      • hawke
        You don’t strictly need the script, it just makes things easier
      • CallerNo6
        links to catalog pages or whatever might help
      • hawke
        ?
      • CallerNo6
        well, if people need resources to help identify works?
      • "makes it easier" is the only goal
      • I dunno, maybe it's a puny plan.
      • CallerNo6 must acquire http://www.cafepress.com/mf/39874014/humungusskuffd_mugs?productId=1021036537
      • oh, my "catalog" comment assumes that the workflow is being set up for mozart specifically.
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: I was just figuring on documenting some general workflows.
      • CallerNo6
        oh. well, ignore me :-)
      • hawke
        Not at all. :-)
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      • CallerNo6
        for myself, I like to get an orderly system going. so, like, make a separate tab-group with this, this and this pages open.
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      • hawke
        CallerNo6: OK, so…does that workflow seem reasonable? anything missing?
      • CallerNo6
        that's a good start
      • CallerNo6 doesn't actually know what the final product should look like
      • The real trick is making it findable.
      • hawke
        The guide? That can be dealt with.
      • CallerNo6
        on a wiki? ha!
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: once we have documentation we can make it findable. Without documentation there’s nothing to find in the first place. :-)
      • CallerNo6
        word
      • hawke
      • (and some additions on how to find a work
      • CallerNo6 will hella follow that
      • CallerNo6
      • oh, should have added an end time
      • derwin
        (youtube supports endtimes now?)
      • hawke
        The end times are near!
      • CallerNo6
        I /think/ they do.
      • and I /think/ they are!
      • If the end time are coming, I certainly hope they are well supported.
      • hawke
        CallerNo6: Are there any obvious signs of the end times?
      • CallerNo6
      • hawke
        “Using "major" or "minor" is the preferred style for generic Works titles in English” — does that mean that we *should* add major/minor to works titles, but not track titles (“Do not add "major" or "minor" if these words are omitted in the source”)?
      • Or does that just mean not to use the 'C' for major and 'c' for minor method?
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      • CallerNo6
        That predates the key attribute of course
      • hawke
        It does, but it’s still relevant
      • I think there’s some consensus that we can’t simply omit the key from the title
      • Otherwise half the works would just be called 'Sonata'
      • or maybe 'Piano Sonata'
      • I think that covers my entire recording workflow, in rough order.
      • Oh, not quite. 'normalize recording titles' is last.
      • CallerNo6
        I'm in favor of long, packed-to-the-gills work titles until there's a way to assemble titles from attributes.