Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > I can accept that there is no harm in having an option to turn off auto > compilation detection.
then thats the main thing. regardless of anything else, we agree on that, and so we agree it should not be a forced necessity on users, like me, who would rather not have it. all i'm after, is the *option* to turn it off. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > > >i really think the current VA logic is silly (from a design POV), > altho i > >admit it works good for some people (in their estimations). > > > It's not silly. It works well, and will work correctly for the vast > majority of the mass-market. An album is tagged as a various artist > (compilation) album if it has different artists performing songs on the > album. > > The rules are quite clear, and the user has to do nothing to configure > how it works. its the rules that are the problem. the reason it is silly, is b/c it assumes that any album with a single TPE1 mismatch is a VA / comp album. that is ludicrous. it further assumes all users will have "album artist" tags or "comp" tags, which is another ludicrous assumption, since neither is called for in the id3v1 or v2 spec, (and since thats not the reality in the marketplace). the software simply should NOT assume by design all customers will have such tags, esp user defined tags. additionally, afaik, TPE2 tags (when treated as ALBUMARTIST by SC) are not enough to defeat the comp classification. [sorting is one thing, but simply designating a comp classification is another. i am assuming my albums are still being classified as comps to the SC DB, even though they now sort properly] yes, thx to bug 8001 the TPE2 tags are now enough to correct the sorting, but neither TPE2 nor bug 8001 have any impact on whether an album is considered a comp by SC, (right?) (i admit, i am assuming that last paragraph to be true. am i wrong about that? if TPE2 is treated as ALBUMARTIST internally by SC, does that in someway impact if an album is considered a comp or not by SC? if it does defeat the comp classification to SC, why does my SC still go thru a "merge VA" process at scan time?) btw, with "treat TPE2 as album artist" enabled, how can i tell if SC thinks a given album is a comp or not? i don't see how to do that. (i should also add i don't know if SC has any other VA detection logic. afaik, it only looks for artist / TPE1 mismatches. but does it have any other logic? does it look at any strings? folder names or locations? i don't know). in any case... you and i disagree on how many users would be affected, but is that even the point? majority or not, its still bound to be hundreds of thousands in the marketplace. i happen to think the majority of audio users have mp3s, and don't have any user defined fields. and for identifying comps, afaik, TPE2 is irrelevant. (afterall, i see that people with explicit album artist tags still have to use comp tags quite a bit as well) please correct me if i made any erroneous assumptions or conclusions. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > I believe it only "goes wrong" (it's doing the right thing) when an > album has guest artists without an album artist defined. Such an album > is classified as a various artist compilation because there are various > artists on the album. Such a problem can be fixed by: again, i disagree. its not doing the right thing in any context other than its doing what its poor design told it to do, which is make the blanket assumption that ANY mismatch in TPE1 means its a comp. thats just a bad assumption, period. you might not see that as bad design, but i do. the idea that the marketplace is going to have by default album artist tags and comp tags is not a good one... and IF the marketplace DID have such tags in place, then whats the point of this auto detection logic in the first place? we'll just have to agree to disagree. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > 1. Ensuring all artists on all songs are the same. > 2. Adding an album artist tag. > 3. Adding a compilation=0 tag. > > I'm not sure if there are any side-effects of (3) - this is essentially > what you are doing by turning off the auto compilation detection > feature. That may lead to other problems in the library browsing. > > If you are aware of other times SC gets compilation detection "wrong", > please tell. its hard for me to answer this question b/c i don't know what effect the "treat TPE2 as album artist option" when enabled has on the VA auto detecting logic. since i can't turn it off yet, i am assuming that SC is still marking some of my albums as comps. but i also don't know how to check if that is true. do you know how i can tell? btw, do you agree with what these guys say here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48591 b/c if you do, it seems its important to identify if something is a comp even if ALBUMARTIST sorts it properly. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > > >what if a user could define certain strings found in certain tag > fields > >as being indicative of being a compilation? > > > No way. > > That would be less "foolproof" than the current auto-detection, and for > more work for the majority of users. I have 118 compilation albums in > my library; I would not want to add 118 album names into a list in one > app. I cannot see any particular words that appear in the album names > that should instantly flag the album as a compilation. eg. I have a > few compilations that contain the words "Another Late Night" - but I > cannot confirm instantly that all albums containing "Another Late > Night" should be compilations. i think you misunderstand me. in my case, if i turned VA auto detection off, i would then have SC treat the string "Various Artists" as a string to definitely consider a comp. that would be 100% foolproof, (meaning a comp would only be called a comp due to the users direct actions), unlike the current method which i have proven is far from foolproof and in many cases beyond the users direct control, (without having to get into user defined tags). my system would work with existing, by spec, tags, as is. when i say foolproof, what i mean is whatever string you use is what it will call a comp. for a lot of users (with no user defined tags) "Various Artists" would appear in their TPE2 tags, and that would be all they needed. that kind of "auto-detection" would be head and shoulders above what we have now. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > There used to be a similar feature in SlimServer to avoid two albums > with the same name being considered part of the same album. This was > the "greatest hits" problem. There was a configurable list of album > names that SlimServer would not join together into one compilation > album. It didn't work well, and was removed. well, this is different. totally. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: > Why don't you write a program that scans your library, searching for > albums that have your strings, and sets a compilation tag in them. > Then you scan your songs back into SC, with auto-compilation detection > turned off. very interesting idea. i'll admit that the best course of action for me that i can see at this point is to treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST, turn the current VA detection off (which i'll hopefully be able to do soon), and then mark positively those albums i feel it necessary to mark with a comp tag. but what i am trying to do is suggest a better way for SC to implement VA auto detection. in other words, allow someone the option to enable or disable the current VA auto detection. but even if they disable it, allow them ANOTHER DIFFERING METHODOLOGY for VA auto-detection. and that is to set however many strings they want for SC to use to say "ah, so if i find that string, its a comp, got it." it would be very similar to the "guess tags format" structure option in advanced -> formatting. and it would be foolproof. (and please, don't quibble with that term. of course stupid user error is not encompassed in what i mean when i say foolproof. it would be foolproof in that its not guessing). thx. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
