New bulk upload of records too limiting

[jowidi]

I understand the reasons that made you change the way records get uploaded but there is one specific change that makes batch uploads now more complicated than simplifying them. I talk about this: "If no existing file or matching parent record is found, the file will not be imported."

When your recording has a typo, it does not get imported any more. If you have MP3s with track names in front of the name (like '01 Love Song.mp3) they don't get imported. If you have no exact match (Parent song is 'Straighten up and fly right', record is 'straighten up.mp3') there is no import. If the parent song is 'Love Song' and the record is 'Love_Song.mp3' - again no import.

So you have to rename all these files before uploading them and when you miss an existing typo (or introduce a new one) you have to repeat the upload for these files. Not so funny if you have to rename dozens of files before you can upload them. If you are not sure how exactly you named your parent record you have to look it up before importing. And you see your mistakes only after the big ZIP-file that you have just created finishes its upload - which can take quite some time.

Couldn't this all be easily avoided if recordings without a match would be treated like before: import them anyway, let them show up in the 'recordings' list and let them be joined manually. The only change: after the join they are now no longer available to be joined to another parent.

[arlo]

Do you know that you can now upload and attach individual recordings on the song edit page in one step, in the popup window where you used to select an existing recording? That seems easier than the two-step process you're asking to bring back (uploading on the Recordings page, then going to the song edit page to select the recording you uploaded). If any of your batch-uploaded recordings didn't match, I would suggest just uploading those individual recordings from the desired song edit pages, since you would have to go to those pages to attach the recordings anyway.

[jowidi]

Yes, I am aware of this feature and I know I can use it to work around the problems I mentioned above. Still I think it takes now way more time to correct errors. Let's say I do a bulk upload of 50 songs, which consumes time and bandwidth. They are now already on the BandHelper server which can not find a match for five of them. These are then deleted from the server and I have to go back and upload exactly the same files individually via the parent pages, doubling the time and bandwidth needed to upload them.

I think the most probable assumption should be that a user who just uploaded  files did so intentionally and give him the possibility to correct any mistakes on the server side. Of cause this is strictly my view from the user side and I don't know how much programming would be necessary. I just wondered if it would not be beneficial to add the new feature (automatic attachment) without completely disabling the old method.

[arlo]

The problem with keeping both methods of attaching recordings on the song edit page (uploading from there, or selecting from among recordings uploaded from the Recordings page) is that the function would then become more complicated than it needs to be for the most common use case. Someone starting from the song edit page is likely to be confused by the option to select from among existing recordings ("why would I want to go to a different page to upload the recording, when I could just upload it right here?").

Giving you a chance to rename or manually attach the batch-uploaded recordings after they have been uploaded would be quite complicated, and I don't think would be a good value for most users (i.e., spending that time on other updates would be more useful).

I still think that if you don't want to take the approach of matching up your filenames on your computer before uploading, then you could just upload one at a time from the song edit pages, which is very similar to the old workflow, the difference being that you have to wait for each file to upload when saving. That doesn't take very long when you're just uploading a single file.

Anyway, I'm sorry you don't like the new setup. It is based on lots of feedback about the old setup, and so far most feedback about the new setup has been positive. But if more feedback warrants another change, I'll do that.

[jowidi]

I can see that keeping both methods of attaching songs might defy your original intention of simplifying the process. I was quite frustrated because I had to find out all the things I mentioned the hard way, which took a few hours and I think the documentation in the tutorial could be expanded a bit here.

"Recordings whose names don't exactly match any existing data will be ignored." does not really tell you that 'ignored' means 'deleted and does not show up at the recordings page any more'. It also does not explain that 'penny lane beatles.mp3' is an exact match for a song named 'Penny Lane' but '30 Penny Lane.mp3' is not.

I regard myself as a 'tech person' and still run into these problems so I imagine that some other users might do that as well.

[arlo]

I think the website release notes from January 1 explain all the changes:

http://www.bandhelper.com/support/release_notes.html

I'll update the tutorial to include the part about the base names and to replace "ignored" with "not imported."

[jowidi]

Thanks for listening, Arlo. I appreciate the effort you always take to respond to user input, even if you have a different point of view.

I run into another problem with the new bulk import: I renamed several MP3-Files to conform with the current naming rules and re-run the import. This time it finished without an error message but to my surprise some of the recordings again had not been attached to the corresponding song pages.

After some search I found that I had duplicate songs with the same names in another project and the songs had been attached there. That is strange because I had started the bulk import while project 'AAAA' was selected in the "Your Account" dropdown list and the recordings ended up being attached to songs in project 'BBBB'

[arlo]

All right, I didn't think about multiple copies of the same song in separate projects when I set that up. I just added a project matching step to the import code ... can you try that again?

[jowidi]

Yeah, works as expected now. Thanks for the quick fix.