Picard 2.8 Release Candidate

The Picard team is happy to announce the availability of the first release candidate for the upcoming Picard 2.8. This is a pre-release we put out for wider testing and to gather feedback on the changes before the final 2.8 release.

Please report any issue through our bug tracker and give us feedback on this beta release on the Community Forums.

Thanks a lot to everybody who contributed to this release with code, translations, bug reports and general feedback. This release contains code contributions by Philipp Wolfer, Bob Swift, Laurent Monin, jesus2099, Adam James, cybersphinx and Aerozol.

Download

Picard 2.8 Release Candidate can be downloaded from the Picard website Downloads section.

Linux users might want to install the beta version using Snap. If your Linux distribution supports Snap you can install Picard from the beta channel using:

snap install --candidate picard

What’s new?

Noteworthy changes in this release contain:

• Support for file paths with more than 259 characters on Windows. Please note that not all Windows software is compatible with this, hence there is an option to disable long path support. See the documentation for details.
• Ability to query disc IDs from EAC, XLD or Whipper log files, see the documentation.
• Advanced relationships can now be loaded for releases with more than 500 tracks. Note that this requires additional requests to the MusicBrainz server (one per 100 tracks) and is hence slower than loading smaller releases.
• AcousticBrainz support has been dropped. This follows the announcement of AcousticBrainz being discontinued.
• Various improvements to “Submit cluster as release”

The Picard documentation has also been updated to reflect the changes in this release.

Below is a complete list of changes since Picard 2.7.3.

Bugfixes

• [PICARD-1570] – Windows: Files with path length > 259 char fail to load
• [PICARD-2292] – When a recording is a performance of multiple works, any instrumental performance attribute erases all other lyrics languages
• [PICARD-2368] – Matching files compares “totaltracks” to the total no. of tracks across all mediums on the release
• [PICARD-2398] – “Use track relationships” doesn’t work on large releases
• [PICARD-2399] – Crash on login if options get closed before login requests finished
• [PICARD-2417] – macOS: Expand/Collapse tracklist should use Left cursor to collapse
• [PICARD-2420] – Adding a file with existing AcoustID fingerprint and recording MBID in the tags activates submission
• [PICARD-2423] – Dragging album with multiple files matched to a track back to unmatched moves only half of the files
• [PICARD-2425] – Picard crashes when accessing WinFSP / SSHFS-Win share
• [PICARD-2430] – “Submit cluster as release” drops text after quotation marks
• [PICARD-2435] – File naming examples crash if selected target directory exceeds Windows path limit
• [PICARD-2440] – FLAC cover art does not preserve ID3 image type
• [PICARD-2453] – “Submit cluster as release” won’t submit catalog number if there is no label tag
• [PICARD-2454] – UI blocks when loading releases with a huge amount of tracks
• [PICARD-2457] – “Search for similar albums” loads cover art into wrong rows
• [PICARD-2459] – Crash if temporary cover art files are removed from disk
• [PICARD-2461] – File does not show error icon after saving
• [PICARD-2463] – Cover art box does not handle different screen scalings on multi-screen setups
• [PICARD-2464] – Cover art stack on HiDPI displays rendered too small

New Features

• [PICARD-1455] – Use EAC / XLD log files for disc ID lookup
• [PICARD-2410] – Use Whipper log files for disc ID lookup
• [PICARD-2411] – Add option to remove broken seektable from FLAC files

Tasks

• [PICARD-2332] – Convert code to use scoped PyQt enums
• [PICARD-2422] – Remove AcousticBrainz analysis and submission features

Improvements

• [PICARD-993] – Better error icons for file loading / saving errors
• [PICARD-2076] – Respect Windows 10 > 1607 removal of 260 limit on filenames
• [PICARD-2282] – Provide ability to import and export Picard config
• [PICARD-2349] – Use consistent terminology for “standalone recordings”
• [PICARD-2369] – Renamed “Preferred release formats” to “Preferred medium formats”
• [PICARD-2379] – Script options: Clarify what activating / deactivating scripts means
• [PICARD-2380] – Update to fpcalc 1.5.1 for Windows / macOS packages
• [PICARD-2382] – Make it easier to create a multi-value field value containing duplicate values
• [PICARD-2392] – Allow multi-value variables to contain empty strings
• [PICARD-2396] – Do not submit AcoustID fingerprints on significant track length mismatch
• [PICARD-2402] – Make ‘end’ argument optional for $substr() function
• [PICARD-2405] – Support CAA cover art type “Matrix/Runout”
• [PICARD-2407] – Set browser integration port in add cluster as release functionality
• [PICARD-2409] – Allow searching and dropping MusicBrainz disc ID URLs
• [PICARD-2415] – Make “Other versions” easier to access as a separate dialog
• [PICARD-2419] – Improve track number from filename detection to not treat e.g. UB40 at end of filename as track number
• [PICARD-2421] – Consider track MBID when matching files to tracks
• [PICARD-2437] – Tag editor dialog box should say “OK” instead of “Save”

Helping out

The easiest way to help us getting a great Picard 2.8 release is using and testing this beta release. Please report bugs on the Picard issue tracker and provide feedback in the community forums.

Please also help translate Picard. There have been many changes to the user interface existing translations need to be updated for the final 2.8 release. Translating is easy and can be done online: Head over to MusicBrainz’s translation page on Transifex and click on “Help Translate MusicBrainz”.
Once you have registered an account on Transifex you can start translating. For Picard the primary resource to translate is “picard“, but there is also the “picard_appstream” resource, which is used for providing descriptions for various Linux software-center applications, and “picard_installer”, which contains the translations for Picard’s Windows installer.

If you are a software developer you are very welcomed to provide fixes and features. Picard is free software and the source code is available on GitHub. See Developing on the Picard website to get started.