Freesound Forums

I might be in the minority but when I upload large amounts of similar files, such as percussive hits, I find it rather tedious to fill out all the details, even when they're kind of the same. Especially the tags.

I even resorted to writing my own JS function I inject via the console which helps with this task, so I was wondering if there could be a better way to do this in some "official" way.

It would be great if you could for example name your files with the same general description and then add a numbering somewhere at the end automatically, such as "Percussion, Hit, Axe 1", "Percussion, Hit, Axe 2" etc.

I know there is a feature to use a CSV or other file to describe the sounds, but as far as I'm concerned that will add the same data to each file, so I will have to add numbering myself anyways.

One more thing which does seem like an artificial limitation is that you can only describe 10 sounds at the time. Is there any reason for it? Does the website crash if it has to render too many input boxes? I'm being sarcastic, of course, but I don't understand the decision.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I don't come across as too negative.

This isn't the official way. But my works arounds have been .txt templates for tags and description.
So for a sound type id write a description, copy paste that template between sounds and a .txt document
Write tags, copy paste those.

Scroll down copying description, scroll back up copying tags. To to the next page and repeat.

Perhaps leaving a blank "subject" to fill that as I go on a per sound basis, if needed.
I wish there was a "Copy to all sounds pending description" for tags and description.

As for Title, I find mac os to be rather good at that. Replacing parts of a file name, or adding to the end or start etc... OFC windows can do the job for numbering if renaming a batch of files; it would add "(1), (2)" at the end of each. I'm sure there's some very good 3rd party softwares for batch renaming files. If the file name isn't the same on the computer than on Freesound. I make a temporary folder copy and rename locally, upload, delete it locally.

Hope that somewhat helps.

Hi!

The limitation of 10 sounds per description round is simply because the interface is not optimised for more, and probably for legacy reasons as well. We have plans to add buttons to "copy this value to other sounds" in the description forms to facilitate a bit bulk description, but still this would not be ideal for many sounds. I think your best choice is the CSV option (https://freesound.org/help/faq/#i-have-many-sounds-to-upload-is-there-a-way-to-describe-many-sounds-in-bulk). You upload a CSV file with the descriptions for all the sounds (which of course can be different) and you can use any Excel/spreadsheet software tricks to generate the contents of the CSV, or even write a script to automatically create a CSV based on filenames, etc... I hope this is useful for you. Thanks!!

[incorrect]I only just found out that the bulk/csv uploader is request-only.[/incorrect][note]see post below for correction[/note]

The upload form is very cluttered for uploading large numbers, that's for sure. I tried making it compact (not pretty, I'm afraid) via CSS userstyle: https://gist.github.com/qubodup/42ce34072fe772e3147df759f3bf30be

Bulk upload is automatically available after uploading 40 sounds, but permission can also be granted upon request. Send me a message. Thanks!