Home → Problems →

Reset album ratings in iTunes plugin

• Edit

jjhrucker

05 Nov, 2015 10:30 AM

Hi

iTunes has an annoying function that automatically rates albums and tracks with grey star ratings based on the black star ratings you have manually given tracks within the same album. The annoying thing about it is A) you can't control it and B) programs such as Traktor Pro treat the manually added black star ratings for individual tracks the same as the automatically added ratings - it is impossible to distinguish between them. I wrote to iTunes feedback about this, but in the meantime I discovered a plugin script on the beaTunes website that claims to be able to circumvent the problem by automating the manual rating of an album as 0 stars. The script is available here- http://blog.beatunes.com/2015/09/resetting-itunes-album-ratings.html

However it doesn't work (at least for me). I am using iTunes 12.3.1, OSX 10.11.1 and beaTunes 4.5.5. When I try to upload my logs to beaTunes it fails with error (413).

The script does appear to complete, and within beaTunes the albums do appear to have had their album ratings reset to 0. However this change is not translated into iTunes, and when you click the 'synchronise' function within beaTunes the album ratings are all repopulated back from iTunes.

iTunes allows me to manually rate an album's automatic rating by sliding the album star rating left or right. The album then has a black star rating of 1 to 5 stars. So I know the function is working within iTunes. Of note, however, is that it will *not* allow me to unrate the album (give it zero stars), because as soon as I try to allocate a rating of 0 stars, it simply re-rates it using its automatic algorithm.

So therefore, it would seem, the plugin fails either because it is not making iTunes understand what it is trying to do or because if it has, iTunes simply ignores it and re-writes the album ratings after it has finished.

Anyone able to help with this? I expect the script just needs a little tweak. But perhaps I am doing something wrong too.

Cheers

Jim

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 10:45 AM

   

   Thanks, Jim, for taking the discussion over here. Makes it much easier for me!

   Can you please send your logs? 413 means that it is too large for the regular mechanism. Which makes me suspicious. That shouldn't happen.

   However, you can:

   1. Start the application Terminal (it's in /Applications/Utilities)
      
   2. Type in zip -rj Desktop/beaTunesLogs.zip Library/Logs/beaTunes/
      
   3. Hit the Enter key
      
   4. The logs are now in the file beaTunesLogs.zip on your desktop.

   Please attach the logs to this discussion.

   Cheers,

   -hendrik

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 10:50 AM

   

   Here you are. I re-analysed my entire collection last night (~9,000 tracks) which may account for the size in part.

   • beaTunesLogs.zip 3.07 MB
   • Edit

3. Support Staff 3 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 11:02 AM

   

   Thanks for the logs. Weren't that big. Odd.

   Anyhow.

   The logs show that the plugin attempted to reset the album rating for "Anjunabeats Vol. 2 Mixed by Above and Beyond".

   What does that album look like for you now? Does it still have a grey album rating?

   Other examples are "Lull", "Universal Frequencies Vol. 2.0", "Orientation Vol. 3", and "Growing Damage".

   Cheers,

   -hendrik

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 11:04 AM

   

   They all still have the same grey album ratings they had before.
   Thanks
   James

   • Edit

5. Support Staff 5 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 11:06 AM

   

   Are any of the files in "Anjunabeats Vol. 2 Mixed by Above and Beyond" read-only?
   Are they perhaps stored on a NAS?

   -hendrik

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 11:13 AM

   

   Hmm, possibly. I have some terminal experience, so I have done ls -l for the relevant file. I hope that helps
   J

   headroom:Anjunabeats Vol. 2 Mixed by Above and Beyond jamesrucker$ ls -l 01\ Forever\ \(Aspekt\ Remix\).mp3
   -rwx------@ 1 jamesrucker staff 16261045 26 Jul 12:24 01 Forever (Aspekt Remix).mp3
   headroom:Anjunabeats Vol. 2 Mixed by Above and Beyond jamesrucker$

   • Edit

7. 7 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 11:13 AM

   

   They are not stored on a NAS. However I do have a NAS. It’s possible they were once on there.
   J

   • Edit

8. Support Staff 8 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 11:23 AM

   

   When the plugin resets the album rating, it calls a little AppleScript to do this. If a file is read-only, iTunes is usually not able to execute the command.

   Let's test whether we can change the title of that song via AppleScript, to verify whether we can change anything at all.

   Can you please execute the following script in Apple Script Editor (you can find it via Spotlight):

   tell application "/Applications/iTunes.app"
       set fixed indexing to true
       set name of first track of item 1 of library playlists of (first source where kind is library) where persistent ID is "11BD7D72C5D8C891" to "Forever (Aspekt Remix) -- Edit"
   end tell
   

   This should change the title of the song in iTunes from Forever (Aspekt Remix) to Forever (Aspekt Remix) -- Edit.

   Does this work?

   -hendrik

   • Edit

9. 9 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 11:27 AM

   

   This executed successfully (sshot enclosed)
   J

   • PastedGraphic-1.tiff 1.31 MB
   • Edit

10. Support Staff 10 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 12:00 PM

    

    Thanks. Please revert it to the old name.

    I have updated the script on the website. Can you please download, install it and run the tool again? Here's the URL: http://www.beatunes.com/download/ResetAlbumRatings.groovy

    After the download and installation, open the groovy file with Text Edit and make sure it contains the line:

    boolean computed = song.isAlbumRatingComputed()
    

    (just to make sure your browser didn't cache the old version).

    Hopefully this fixes the issue.

    • Edit

11. 11 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 02:38 PM

    

    Quite strange. This only partially fixes the issue. It works for some tracks but not others.

    For example, see the log for the track “It Ain’t Necessarily So”

    headroom:beaTunes jamesrucker$ cat * | grep "It Ain't Necessarily So" | head
    2015-11-05 14:00:53,704 [305584] [INFO ][LibraryBatchActionThread-ResetAlbumRatings] ResetAlbumRatings.groovy: No rating set in ITunesAudioSong{song=Song@-4799375860732206841[name='It Ain't Necessarily So',album='The Singles Collection 1984-1990',artist='Bronski Beat',genre='Synth Pop']}

    The script seems to indicate that no album rating is set for this track.

    However if you see the enclosed screen shot, iTunes clearly displays one, and so does beaTunes library.

    However, for the album we were talking about before - Anjuna vol 2 - the problem has been fixed

    headroom:beaTunes jamesrucker$ cat * | grep "Forever (Aspekt Remix)" | head
    2015-11-05 14:03:56,892 [488772] [INFO ][LibraryBatchActionThread-ResetAlbumRatings] ResetAlbumRatings.groovy: Reset album rating for ITunesAudioSong{song=Song@-7945056235712624495[name='Forever (Aspekt Remix)',album='Anjunabeats Vol. 2 Mixed by Above and Beyond',artist='Smith & Pledger feat. Carrie Skipper',genre='Trance']}

    Very odd. I have checked that the files are all read and write.

    I have enclosed the latest logs for you too.

    Jim

    • PastedGraphic-3.tiff 267 KB
    • PastedGraphic-2.tiff 801 KB
    • beaTunesLogs.zip 2.78 MB
    • Edit

12. Support Staff 12 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 02:58 PM

    

    When you run File -> Synchronize and then run the plugin again... does the problem persist?

    • Edit

13. 13 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 04:09 PM

    

    Yes. BeaTunes thinks it has modified the album ratings. iTunes doesn’t always agree.

    In the iTunes folder there is a new file called iTunes Library.xml.mod. This seems to contain a list of files that have been successfully modified but files that have not been successfully modified are absent from it.

    • Edit

14. Support Staff 14 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 05:35 PM

    

    For some reason the database says that the album ratings for that Jimmy Somerville collection are either already 0 or not computed.

    I modified the script a little to tell me what is the case. Can you please install the attached script and run it? It will show up as "Reset Album Ratings (Debug)" in the Tools menu.

    But before you do this, please run "Repair Database" from the Tools menu. I noticed that at some point there was a memory shortage and that can sometimes mess up the database... Just trying to make sure that that is not the issue. Repairing the the database requires a beaTunes restart.

    After you ran the script, can you please send me your logs again?

    Thank you,

    -hendrik

    • ResetAlbumRatingsDebug.groovy 2.91 KB
    • Edit

15. 15 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 06:00 PM

    

    Enclosed

    • beaTunesLogs.zip 4.03 MB
    • Edit

16. Support Staff 16 Posted by hendrik on 05 Nov, 2015 06:16 PM

    

    Thanks for the logs.

    When beaTunes runs the plugin, it may report it's done, when actually it is still working on communicating with iTunes. So there is a lag between when beaTunes says it's done and it's actually done. With that in mind, is it possible that the Jimmy Sommerville album is now reset?

    • Edit

17. 17 Posted by jjhrucker on 05 Nov, 2015 06:51 PM

    

    Yes, I think that was it. iTunes took a while to update its display. It has worked now <mops brow>
    Thanks for all your help
    Jim

    • Edit

18. Support Staff 18 Posted by hendrik on 06 Nov, 2015 07:08 AM

    

    You're very welcome.
    Thank you for testing this and sending me logs.
    Much appreciated.

    -hendrik

    • Edit

19. hendrik closed this discussion on 06 Nov, 2015 07:08 AM.