Some users may not have a consistent need for pytagsfs, for one reason or another. However, they may make use of tools for naming, tagging, and sorting their media collections. What follows is an outline of how pytagsfs can be useful for performing these kinds of tasks.
The pytags Utility
The pytags utility that is distributed with pytagsfs provides a quick and easy way to alter file tags from the command line. In addition to quick access to tag values, it also offers the ability to tag files based on their filenames. See PytagsUtility for more information.
Mount-Copy Renaming of Source Files
It is not uncommon to have badly named media files that are actually tagged somewhat reasonably. Often, renaming the files based on the content of their tags is a desirable goal.
pytagsfs makes this easy to achieve, since the files can be copied from the mount tree back to disk. Put simply, the files are mounted such that the mount tree looks like the files ought to look after the rename. Then, copy the mount tree back to disk.
For instance, suppose we have badly named files that have reasonable tags, and we'd like to rename them like "/Artist/Album/Number TrackName.Extension". We can do this like this:
pytagsfs -o format='/%a/%l/%N %t.%e' source mnt cp -R mnt renamed fusermount -u mnt
Leveraging Tag Grouping
One of the most helpful aspects of using pytagsfs when retagging files is that files are automatically grouped by tag value. This makes retagging files that are badly tagged in a systematic way very quick.
For instance, suppose you have many scattered audio files with the same misspelled genre tag "Bluse". This, of course, is completely unacceptable, so you set out to address the problem.
With pytagsfs, you simply do:
pytagsfs -o format='/%g/%a - %l - %N - %t.%e' source mnt pytags --set genre=Blues mnt/Bluse/* fusermount -u mnt
This sets the genre of all files whose genre is currently set to "Bluse".