Picard 2.8 released

The Picard team is happy to announce that the final version 2.8 of MusicBrainz Picard is now available for download. MusicBrainz Picard is the official tag editor for the MusicBrainz database and helps you get your music collection sorted and cleaned up with the latest data from MusicBrainz.

This release brings many changes, including long requested features like Windows long path support and advanced relationships for huge box sets. See below for the highlights.

What’s new?

Support for long path names on Windows

Picard is now able to read and save files with path names longer than 259 characters on Windows. The traditional Windows API limits the length of file paths to 259 characters, and Picard had to take care to shorten paths accordingly.

With this release Picard can now load files with a long path on all supported Windows versions. By default Picard will still enforce a 259 character limit when saving, but you can enable support for longer paths in the File Naming Options.

Be aware that some Windows software might not be able to properly access those files. In particular Windows Explorer, even on current Windows 10 or 11, cannot rename files with long path names or create new files inside folders if the resulting path length would exceed the length limit.

Loading advanced relationships on large releases

For releases containing more than 500 tracks, e.g. large box sets, the MusicBrainz web service does exclude the detailed per-track relationships from the web service response for performance reasons. That meant even if you had “Use track relationships” enabled in Picard, you would miss per-track information about e.g. performers or conductors on those releases.

Picard 2.8 now supports loading the relationships for those releases as well. Loading such a release takes a bit longer, because additional requests (one per 100 tracks) need to be made to fetch the data.

Lookup and submit disc IDs from CD ripper log files

Picard can now lookup and submit IDs from CD ripping log files created by EAC, XLD or Whipper. The documentation provides a detailed tutorial for this feature.

Please note the known limitation that for EAC or XLD logs from discs with trailing data tracks the disc ID calculation will not be correct. Whipper logs are not affected by this. UPDATE: This has been addressed in Picard 2.8.2.

Drop disc ID URLs

If you drag and drop the URL to a MusicBrainz disc ID page or paste such a URL into Picard’s search field the disc ID lookup dialog for this disc ID will open, allowing you to quickly load one of the linked releases.

Better error icons for file loading / saving errors

Picard now uses more descriptive error icons when loading or saving a file failed. Permissions errors are indicated by a lock icon, if a file or directory was not found this is indicated by a question mark and all other errors will have an exclamation mark.

AcousticBrainz integration has been removed

The AcousticBrainz integration has been removed. This follows the announcement from earlier this year that the AcousticBrainz project as it currently exists will be discontinued, see the blog post AcousticBrainz: Making a hard decision to end the project for details.

And more…

There have been many more improvements and bug fixes. Please see below for a complete list of changes.

Download

Picard 2.8 is available for download from the download page. For Windows 10 users installing from the Windows Store an update will come automatically as soon as the new release has been approved by Microsoft.

Picard is free software and the source code is available on Github.

Acknowledgements

This release contains code contributions by Philipp Wolfer, Bob Swift, Laurent Monin, jesus2099, Adam James, cybersphinx and Aerozol.

Many thanks also to all the translators and everyone who tested the beta releases and provided feedback on the community forums, IRC and the issue tracker.

Get in touch

Please use the MetaBrainz community forums and the ticket system to give feedback, suggest new features or report bugs.

Changelog

Below is the complete list of changes since Picard 2.7.3:

Bug fixes

• [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-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
• [PICARD-2465] – RecursionError after dragging folder from file browser
• [PICARD-2470] – CD Lookup error: utf-8 codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte
• [PICARD-2472] – Cluster action applies to already matched albums
• [PICARD-2475] – If search dialog query contains an MBID “Lookup in browser” will not open in browser

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”