[RainDawg]

I was asked to give some information on how I tag and setup my files with foobar2000, so here goes. This is, by no means, a definitive tutorial, but just some samples to get people stepping in the right direction. It would take several days to put together a really foolproof guide for all of these, but I wanted to get this out to some people, so I made it quick and chockfull of pictures. It might take some time to get used to all of this, but I just spent two hours making this guide, so I fully expect everyone to devote equal time to figuring out this program....once you do, it will be worth it, I promise.

First, put a list of files that you want tagged into the foobar2000 playlist window. Right click on them, select masstagger, and then "edit tags"



The script that I have made, shown in the screencap below, shows all of the necessary tags to get my album list window to work properly. You can, of course, add or remove any of them as you see fit.

Artist = The main artist for this album
Albumartist = The artists you'd like this to show up under in the albumlist. You cannot add multiple artists in this dialog, we'll cover that in a minute (a weakness of masstagger here...)
Album = album
Date = YYYY-MM-DD...my album list sciprt sorts by this, so you'll want to set this properly
Genre
Input Data = I use this to add the song titles. Each track will get one line, sequentially. I copy/paste the setlist data into this window, and then edit the string above it to tell masstagger how to interpret each line.
Format "TITLE" using "$caps($trim(%title%))" = This will capitalize the first letter from each word in the title, and trick leading and trailing spaces. Makes editing the text in each line easier
Auto Track Number = self-explanatory for multidisc sets, I number them sequentially from 1-xx...technically you could wrestly with giving each track a disc# and a track#, but that's more shit than it's worth. Just number them in order from start to finish....
Legality = Bootleg or Official



Now press "Run" to apply all the tags. When you're satisfied, close masstagger, and you have nicely tagged files.



If you want to add multiple instances of the albumartist tags, required for the album to show up under multiple names in the album list, you'll need to head back to the main playlist window, select all of the files, right click, and select "properites". It will list all of the tags currently on the file. Double-click the "albumartist" field and add whatever extra artists you wish to, separated by a "\" character.



Now to setup the database. In the preferences dialog, select "database" from the list of options. Tell it what folder is the master for your audio files. You can also tell it what filetypes to add if you want. When you're done, you will need to shutdown and restart foobar2000. Then, re-enter the database dialog and press "scan". Depending on how many files you have, this will take several minutes to gather the metadata for every file.



Now to setup the album list. Again, go into the preferences dialog, and select album list. In this screencap, you'll see all of my formatting scripts. The one I am going to be displaying later on this page is here:

albumartist|'('$if3(%date%,%year%,'no date')')'     $if($greater($meta_num(albumartist),3),'Various Artists',$if(%band%,%artist%' & '%band%,$meta_sep(artist,'; ')))    '"'%album%'"       ['%legality% $upper($ext(%_path%))']'|$num(%tracknumber%,2)'. '$if($greater($meta_num(albumartist),3),$if(%band%,%artist%' & '%band%,$meta_sep(artist,'; '))' - ',)%title%'   ['%__bitrate%'Kbps]'

Save that script, then head to the album list.



Mine looks like this:



And then a glance at what a nicely organized artist entry is. Notice how they say what the "main artist" is at the beginning of each entry. There is one in there called "Rock of Ages" that is actually an album by The Band. Since Dylan appears on it, I added him has an "albumartist" previously, and now it shows up under both artists in the Album List.