Picard 1.3 released

Version 1.3 of Picard has been released today, with some notable features and bug fixes.

This release has few visible changes, but overall performance and stability were much improved. A lot of minor annoying issues were fixed. Cover art code was reworked, and notably one can now enable fallback on release group cover art if no cover art exists for a specific release.

Logging was improved, user can now enable debug mode from About →View Error/Debug Log, it may help to see what is going on if needed, passwords and sensible information were hidden from the log, so user can now safely post his log to get help.

To report any issue concerning this release, please use our bug tracker. As usual you can also get help on forum or on IRC (freenode, #musicbrainz).

Special thanks to Sophist, Wieland Hoffmann, Michael Wiencek, Johannes Dewender, Lukáš Lalinský, Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, and the whole MusicBrainz Team.
Many thanks to all users, developers, bug reporters and translators. Code contributions since 1.2 are visible on Github Contributors graph.

Unfortunately the OAuth support patch (PICARD-305) didn’t make it in this release.

Picard 1.3 can be downloaded on the Picard’s website.

Be aware that downgrading from 1.3 to 1.2 may lead to configuration compatibility issues, better save your configuration before installing 1.3 if you intent to go back to 1.2.

Among changes since 1.2:

• The “About” window now displays the versions of libraries used by Picard
• Picard now correctly handles matching of MP3 files saved in ID3v2.3 tags (which is the version that Microsoft Windows and iTunes both use).
  Note: You may need to re-save your tags once to get them to match in future.
• A sort tags plugin is now provided as tag data is no longer displayed sorted by default.
• A new tag, musicbrainz_releasetrackid, containing the MusicBrainz Track MBID introduced in the May 2013 schema change release, is now written to files.
• Add %_recordingtitle% (PICARD-515)
• Fix plugin install bugs (PICARD-444)
• Fix Options → File naming examples to handle primary/secondary release types (PICARD-516)
• A new advanced option is available to permanently set the starting directory for the file browser and “Add files/folder” buttons.
• Requests to Musicbrainz against your own account e.g. for collections are now handled through SSL (PICARD-337)
• Refresh of Albums using Ctrl-R and selection of Other Releases are now more responsive during batch lookups.
• Main window is now emitting a “selection_updated” signal, plugin api version bumps to 1.3.0
• Append system information to user-agent string
• Compilation tag/variable functionality (for tagging & file naming) has been split into two:
  – %compilation% is now aligned with iTunes, and set only for Various Artists type compilations
  – %_multiartist% variable now indicates whether this release has tracks by multiple artists
  (in order to prepend the artist name to the filename as shown in the default file naming script)
• autodetect the CD drive on Mac OS X (PICARD-123)
• Ignore directories and files while indexing when show_hidden_files option is set to False (PICARD-528)
• Add ignore_regex option which allows one to ignore matching paths, can be set in Options → Advanced (PICARD-528)
• Added an “artists” multi-value tag to track metadata, based on the one in Jaikoz, which contains the individual artist names from the artist credit. Also useful in scripts (joining phrases like ‘feat:’ are omitted) and plugins.
• Added “_artists_sort“, “_albumartists“, “_albumartists_sort” variables for scripts and plugins.
• Made Picard use the country names also used on the MusicBrainz website (PICARD-205)
• New setup.py command `get_po_files` (Retrieve po files from transifex)
• New setup.py command `regen_pot_file` (Regenerate po/picard.pot)
• New Work tag (which for Classical music is often different from the track title) saved as ID3 TOAL tag.
• New Composer Sort Order tag (variable %composersort%).
• Improve the Other Releases list to prioritise and separate releases which match the correct number of tracks and your Options → Metadata → Prefered Releases settings for Country and Format.
• New %_absolutetracknumber% variable numbering tracks sequentially regardless of disc structure (so you can numbers tracks on multi-disc releases without a disc number)
• Support dropping image directly from Google image results to cover art box
• Add %_musicbrainz_tracknumber% to hold track # as shown on MusicBrainz release web-page e.g. vinyl/cassette style A1, A2, B1, B2
• Show the ID3 version of the file in the Info… dialog (Ctrl-I) (PICARD-218)
• Fixed a bug where Picard crashed if a MP3 file had malformed TRCK or TPOS tags (PICARD-112)
• Add –files option to setup.py build_ui, used to force .ui to .py regeneration (PICARD-566)
• New setup.py command `update_constants` (Regenerate countries.py and attributes.py)
• Made Picard use release groups, medium formats and cover art types also used on the MusicBrainz website
• Use MusicBrainz Server translations for release groups, medium formats and cover art types
• Add checkbox to toggle debug at runtime in log/debug view dialog
• Add a plugin to add Artist Official Homepage relationships to the website tag (ID3 WOAR tag)
• Add integrated functions $eq_any, $ne_all, $eq_all, $ne_any, $swapprefix and $delprefix.
• Add %_performance_attributes%, containing performance attributes for the work e.g. live, cover, medley etc.
• Use $inmulti in file naming scripts i.e. …$if($inmulti(%_performance_attributes%,medley), (Medley),)
• Add optional `priority` parameter to `register_album_metadata_processor()` and `register_track_metadata_processor()`
  Default priority is `PluginPriority.NORMAL`, plugins registered with `PluginPriority.HIGH` will be run first, plugins registered with `PluginPriority.LOW` will run last
• Add Standardise Performers plugin to convert e.g. Performer [piano and guitar] into
  Performer [piano] and Performer [guitar].
• Add support for release group cover art fallback (PICARD-418, PICARD-53)
• Add a clear button to search box
• Honour preferred release formats when matching AcoustIds (PICARD-631)
• Prevent ZeroDivisionError in some rare cases (PICARD-630)