centrifuge

Standardize and validate music file names, directory names, directory hierarchies and metadata

Centrifuge scans an input directory structure and reorganizes a music library into a standardized file/directory structure. Releases are deduplicated, and metadata is validated using last.fm.

Validated releases can be moved into a destination directory, making it easy to identify problematic data for manual replacement or deletion. Folders which contain incomplete releases, invalid/incomplete metadata, or were encoded with inconsistent settings are considered invalid. Where possible, automated fixes can be applied to the metadata and file/directory names.

Releases can be grouped in subdirectory by category (e.g. album, single, EP, compilation) and/or by artist. It is highly recommended to group by release category.

A validated directory structure looks like the following, at the top level:

Music
|- Album
|- Anthology
|- Bootleg
|- CDM
|- Compilation
|- Concert Recording
|- Demo
|- EP
|- Interview
|- Live Album
|- Mix
|- Mixtape
|- Remix
|- Single
|- Soundtrack
\- Video Game Music

Release directory names are typically in the form Artist - Year - Title [encoder setting]. Release directories with a category other than Album also contain the category in square brackets, in the form Artist - Year - Title [Category] [encoder setting].

The validation process involves querying last.fm for each artist and release. This is a time consuming process when a large collection is scanned for the first time. Results are cached, and subsequent scans are significantly faster.

Getting started

Centrifuge has three modes - validate, fix, and releases. fix is the most useful mode.

It can be useful to move validated releases to a different directory on the initial scan of your collection. The following example scans C:\Unsorted music and moves validated releases into C:\Music, grouping releases by category similar to the

centrifuge fix "C:\Unsorted music" --move-fixed-to "C:\Music" --group-by-category

After the first scan completes, you may have some releases in the wrong category subdirectory. Live albums, mixes, sound tracks, compilations and other release categories can be manually moved into a correct directory. The scanner can be rerun, in-place, and will correct the titles of the moved release directories:

centrifuge fix "C:\Unsorted music" --move-fixed-to "C:\Music" --group-by-category

Advanced usage

Print out a list of releases in a directory structure: centrifuge releases C:\Music

Validate only: centrifuge validate

Group by release category and by artist: centrifuge fix "C:\Music" --group-by-artist --group-by-category

Move duplicates to a separate directory: centrifuge fix "C:\Unsorted music" --group-by-category --move-duplicate-to "C:\duplicate music"

Move releases which fail a specific validation to a separate directory. This mode is useful when applying specific external fixes to a large set of invalid releases: centrifuge fix "C:\Unsorted music" --group-by-category --move-invalid codecs-inconsistent --move-invalid-to C:\broken

The full set of --move-invalid parameters:

artist-whitespace, release-artist-whitespace, date-whitespace, release-title-whitespace, track-title-whitespace, 
genre-whitespace, date-inconsistent, artist-blank, track-title-blank, release-artist-inconsistent, 
release-artist-spelling, release-artist-not-found, release-title-inconsistent, release-title-category, 
release-title-source, release-title-spelling, date-incorrect, bad-genres, incorrect-track-title, 
track-artist-spelling, missing-tracks, total-tracks, missing-discs, total-discs, tag-types, codecs-inconsistent, 
cbr-inconsistent, filename, folder-name, artist-lookup, unreadable, comment-substring

Other options

--show-violations: print validation failures.

---move-fixed is an alternative to --move-fixed-to. Fixed/validated releases are moved into the correct directory inside the source directory structure, based on the root.

--expunge-comments-with-substring searches for 'comment' tags which contain a given substring, and erases the entire comment if there is a match.

--full-codec-names adds full codec names to release directory titles (for example, [MP3 CBR320] instead of [CBR320]).