[slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
(please, if i mis-state the facts below, just correct me. this is just a question with a POV, if i'm wrong i'm more than happy to see it. no pyrotechnics) the relevant option under music library is: List compilation albums under each artist or Group compilation albums together you have to pick one or the other. now, if you DON'T use comp tags: if you pick the first one, your one album is listed multiple times under every artist on the one album. so choosing this means VA logic is moot at least insofar as sorting the album, b/c the album is listed all over the place. if you pick the second one, any one album with differing ARTIST fields on even one track, gets called a VA album. so while it often does correctly identify a VA album, it seemingly just as often mis-identifies a VA album. many users then as a result also set a compilation tag as 0 or 1 ...sometimes just to over-ride the VA logic. so the option isn't really in question, its the VA logic thats in question, or rather, its usefulness. furthermore: most users use their tags in their files to group/sort/organize/arrange/order/list their collections. currently, if you have a tag that populates the internal SC7 ALBUMARTIST field, it will override the VA logic. (that is correct, yes?) there are also other tags that one can use to sort. SO... what i want to know is who is using the VA logic, and why? the VA logic is described here on the wiki in a somewhat dated article: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/VariousArtistsLogic as far as i can tell, the VA logic is only useful if your files don't have tags to populate the internal ALBUMARTIST field, or other sorting fields in SC7. and most users then use the comp tag to say if an album is comp or not, since the VA logic is so unreliable as to it accurately reflecting a VA album or not. what am i missing? when is the VA logic useful? wouldn't it be better to retire this function by turning it off by default, and only having users turn it on by opt in if they feel they need it? ps. my personal situation is such that i have neither comp tags, nor tags that specifically are designed to populate ALBUMARTIST, (nor any sort type tags). what happens for me, (mp3s) is that my TPE1 tags, or "artist" tags are used to populate the internal ARTIST field for SC7, and these then in turn fill in the ALBUMARTIST field for SC7, unless the VA logic steps in and tells SC7 a given album should be a VA album, in which case SC7 then puts "Various Artists" in the internal ALBUMARTIST field. the thing is, this is not useful, b/c any differing TPE1 info on an album results in the VA designation. so some are correctly classified, but most others are not. its basically a useless function. now granted, i am trying to optionally get TPE2 to be recognized by SC7 to over-ride all this, much as 'Txxx album artist' tags do now. but i still don't see where the logic would be useful for me or anyone. there is a question as to how SC7 would distinguish compilation albums at all in my case, if it didn't have VA logic or comp tags, but i think that should be done by recognizing certain terms in my tags. for instance, if i had the words "Various Artists" in my TPE tags, SC7 could annotate that internally as a compilation album, b/c it knows thats what that term means. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I have not been able to read all your post as I don't have time (helpful hint: you might find that more concise and considered posts get a better quality of reply). However, I think the way Various Artists is implemented in SC is odd, even eccentric especially in relation to the List compilation albums under each artist or Group compilation albums together setting. Neither option works for me. To compound this there seems to be some problem with the Varuious Artists database query that needlessly searches through millions of records and completely destabilises my computer. I've been active on various bugs to do with VA but AFAIK none of them have been resolved (or if they have, the result was unsatisfactory). When I have more time, I'll describe exactly what I find wrong with VA as it stands now and point to the relevant bugs. MC -- ModelCitizen Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. SB+ > Bryston 4BSST > PMC OB1s. http://www.last.fm/user/ModelCitizen ModelCitizen's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=446 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
yep, i'm not shakespeare. ;) here it is concisely: i think the VA logic is totally useless. i think it is useful for SC7 to be able to tell what albums are "compilation" albums. therefore, i think the VA logic should be abolished, b/c it will never work properly, and compilations should be identified to SC7 in an altogether different manner. either by "compilation tags" (which i don't use), or by a tag recognition system that allows SC7 to know that if a users tags say eg. "Various Artists" in them, its a compilation album. i would have this work in a way such that SC7 users could add and edit the complete list of terms SC7 utilized to annotate an album as a compilation. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> I have not been able to read all your post as I don't have time (helpful > hint: you might find that more concise and considered posts get a better > quality of reply). Thanks :-). > Neither option works for me. To compound this there seems to be some > problem with the Varuious Artists database query that needlessly > searches through millions of records and completely destabilises my > computer. Hmm... didn't you report this bug and it has been fixed since? > I've been active on various bugs to do with VA but AFAIK none > of them have been resolved (or if they have, the result was > unsatisfactory). I hope you reported this back in the appropriate bugs. Michael ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> yep, i'm not shakespeare. ;) But even Mr. Sinatra was known for well composed lyrics. Michael ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
known for SINGING them. ;) gosh, its still english people, i mean ok, its long but it is legible. by MCs request, i have since put in a concise second post mherger, what do you think of it? (if you want my rationale i'm afraid you'll have to slog thru the first post. not all ideas can be conveyed in soundbites) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> what am i missing? when is the VA logic useful? wouldn't it be better to > retire this function by turning it off by default, and only having users > turn it on by opt in if they feel they need it? Many tagging systems have no way to both positively and negatively assert when an album is a compilation. ITunes, for instance, only sets its id3v2 TCMP frame to 1 when an album is a compilation, but it deletes the frame when not. This isn't the same as saying it's _not_ a compilation. Other music formats may not even have a recognizable compilation tag, so that's why the VA logic is necessary. Does it have some bugs? Probably. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;299230 Wrote: > Many tagging systems have no way to both positively and negatively > assert when an album is a compilation. ITunes, for instance, only sets > its id3v2 TCMP frame to 1 when an album is a compilation, but it deletes > the frame when not. This isn't the same as saying it's _not_ a > compilation. Other music formats may not even have a recognizable > compilation tag, so that's why the VA logic is necessary. Does it have > some bugs? Probably. To my way of thinking I'd prefer to have to explicitly tag an album as being a compilation, with the inference being that if there is no compilation=1 tag, don't list the damned thing under VA. -- egd Internet forums: conclusive proof depth of gene pool is indeed variable, monkeys can be taught to cut code, and world peace is utterly unrealistic... egd's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3425 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
egd;299237 Wrote: > To my way of thinking I'd prefer to have to explicitly tag an album as > being a compilation, with the inference being that if there is no > compilation=1 tag, don't list the damned thing under VA. It sounds like this shouldn't be so tricky... With another option under settings and some code for it, like: [ ] Automagically sort compilations under Various Artists [ ] Use the Compilation tag to determine if an album is a compilation. Keep it simple... right? /sss -- simply simply's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2216 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> [ ] Automagically sort compilations under Various Artists > > Keep it simple... right? Define "Automagically" and you'll think twice about the simplicity of this "solution". -- Michael ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I think SlimServer/SqueezeCenter makes a good job of guessing when albums are compilations. Or at least it used to; just recently a change was made in SC 7.1 that affected the logic, which for me at least seemed to make things worse. I had to set COMPILATION=1 for all songs on all compilation albums in SC7.1 to get my library to work the same as 7.0.1. I'm not sure what was changed to cause that. Michael Herger I think did the change, so perhaps he can explain more. I think the scanner generally does something like the following: 1. if there is a compilation tag (I think there's several different tags it looks for, eg. I think iTunes uses it's own custom tag, something like Txxx ITUNESCOMPILATION), SqueezeCenter reads this and doesn't use it's own guessing logic. 2. If an album has songs by different main performing artists, and an album artist tag is not set, SqueezeCenter will guess that the album is a compilation album. This seems quite logical to me. The key to success is to set album artist tags such that guest performers don't cause an album to become a compilation album. I don't have a problem either with the need to set compilation tags to either 1 or 0 to get the album detected correctly. I find I have to do this anyway in iTunes, as iTunes doesn't guess at all. One improvement to the guessing logic would be to say that if an artist always appears on all songs on an album, then that is the album artist (if an overriding album artist tag has not already been set). i.e. if a song has an additional guest artist, that shouldn't cause it to be a compilation album. I think there were complications due to the ways that people set up their folder structure that stores the source music files. To overcome the "Greatest Hits" problem, it used to assume songs in the same source folder with the same album name are part of that album, whereas songs in the different folder with the same name are another album with the same name. iTunes however by default stores songs under a strict artist/album/song heirarchy, including for compilation albums. I think this is why some people pre 7.1 had to specifically set a COMPILATION=1 tag, to force the songs to be considered part of the same compilation album, otherwise there would be lots of albums with the same album name containing one song. I could be wrong; as I don't use iTunes in that mode. I think an issue now is that even if an album artist exists for an album, SqueezeCenter still tries to set compilation to either true or false. I think that if an album artist is set, SqueezeCenter should assume that it's not a compilation. I believe I had to set COMPILATION=0 for some albums that had an album artist, otherwise it lists all track artists instead of the album artist when browsing albums. -- Philip Meyer Philip Meyer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=95 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
i think we've gotten off track here... YES, it IS worthwhile for SC7 to know what is, and what is not a compilation. i think everyone agrees with that. NO, it IS NOT working to use the "Various Artists Logic" to do so. THE PROBLEM IS THE VA LOGIC DOES NOT IDENTIFY VA ALBUMS. ALL IT DOES IS IDENTIFY ALBUMS THAT HAPPEN TO HAVE DIS-AGREEMENT ON THEIR ARTIST TAGS. ...but only some of those are actually VA albums. i have tons of albums that are misidentified, probably almost as many as those that truly are VA albums. this means if even one track has disagreement, its called VA. that methodology for determining a VA album is broken and useless. (i'm not sure of what, if any, other method it uses) given the above as fact, would it not be better to scrap the VA logic altogether and replace it with a different system? if not, why not? would it not be better for the user to either: 1. set an explicit comp tag, (with no tag meaning its isn't a comp) or 2. be able to set the terms in ones own tags that SC7 would know indicated a compilation so it could annotate it as such upon scanning? (such as having "Various Artists" in your tags) i have yet to hear how the VA logic is useful, given that it is so unreliable to be correct, and so often demands users add a tag to override it. i don't think the point of SC7 is to force users into tagging to overcome its "logic." -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> Philip Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I had to set COMPILATION=1 for all songs on all compilation albums in > SC7.1 to get my library to work the same as 7.0.1. I'm not sure what > was changed to cause that. Michael Herger I think did the change, so > perhaps he can explain more. That's bad news - do you know was this intentional? Is a bug opened? I'm starting to think I will just scrap all the VA detection in SC and instead tag my VA albums with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists". I already tagged a bunch of Christmas compilations using ALBUMARTIST="Various Christmas" to get them out of the way. And I really dislike how SC is always moving "Various Artists" to the top of lists, and showing it on every page. Just sort it under "V". I think this actually causes some problems with using the number keys on the remote to jump within the artist list - binary search doesn't work so well when the list is not sorted. Plus if I can avoid the VA stage of the scan process that should save a lot of time. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Finally, a bit of this debate that I can comment on! Have been reading the many (many) threads on this subject with some interest. Various Artist/Compilation behaviour is pretty important to me in one sense, because approx 80% of my music are compilation albums (electronic music). However, in another sense (and as a direct result of the type of music I tend to listen to) it's not so relevant, because I don't browse by artist very much at all. Electronic artists often use different names for each release and often list more than one artist, so I think I have about 9,000 tracks and over 11,000 individual artists. So, what is important to me is the ability to remove those artists from my browse by artist list proper, and the current VA logic works well for that for my personal situation. If the logic were to be changed I would very much want the COMPILATION tag to work as it does now, by overriding the VA logic and forcing an album to be listed under "various artists" (which in my set up is renamed "Compilations"). At a more general level, I think this is a good debate to be having - although I remain to be convinced that major changes are needed to the current logic. What strikes me from the last few posts is that it is reasonably clear that people have different ways of managing and sorting their music. Mr Sinatra in particular thinks that his/her way is closer to the default behaviour that the average user will expect (and may well be right about that). Classical music is a completely different issue which doesn't even come into play in some of the proposals, and has very different requirements. Whilst I welcome the suggestion to clarify and fix default behaviour, the thing that Slim does very well is keep the option for users to customise their experience by adding tagging/sorting options. To that extent, I don't quite follow the "why should I have to add a specific tag to get the behaviour I am asking for?" (this is very much paraphrasing, and not aimed at anyone in particular). Surely there are three questions here: *1) what is the right behaviour for SC to have as default behaviour?* As I said above, I think the artist logic works quite well, but that may well be because I have lots of albums with many different artists on them, and only one or two albums with a main artist but some guest artists (which I resolved by setting an explicit "Compilation=0" tag. I can see the issues which others have raised with their particular music collections and think it's a valid discussion whose libraries are closer to the "average" - I suspect it's not me. *2) is is possible to achieve the sorting options the various posters on this thread have requested by amending the tagging or sorting options?* If so, can these operations be done simply and easily or do they require very time intensive work? If not, is this an option that SC should really be looking to support either as default or via an option for the users who want it? *3) If the requested sort cannot be achieved, what changes would be required to meet this concern and how easy are they to implement?* My experience of floating around these boards for a while suggests that, where VA logic is concerned, small changes can have massive, unexpected impact on a whole section of users who don't post on these boards often and who aren't vocal about their needs until something gets "broken" from their perspective. There was a massive issue in the move from 6.4 to 6.5 where something changed in the VA logic (possibly having to put your VA artist tracks in a single folder) - and there were many many posts complaining about a small change (to some) which turned into a big issue for others. [Happy to be corrected on which version change this was]. An I very much like having Compilations at the top of the list, because it is such a distinct section of my music - again that is very probably unique to me or people with libraries like me. -- Siduhe Siduhe's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=723 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I must admit I'm having trouble following this. I've always had any albums I wanted treated as "Various Artists" in sub folders of a folder called "Various Artists" and this has always worked superbly for me. I don't use all these fancy tags (album artist etc...) maybe I'm just weird? The VA albums show up under Various Artists in the Artist browser and the individual track artists on each track show up under the Artist Browser too...am I missing something? -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal...SB3+Stontronics PSU - Altmann JISCO/UPCI - TACT RCS 2.2X with Good Vibrations S/W - MF X-DAC V3/X-PSU/X-10 buffer (Audiocomm full mods)- Linn 5103 - Linn Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Kimber & Chord cables Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Phil Leigh;299371 Wrote: > I must admit I'm having trouble following this. I've always had any > albums I wanted treated as "Various Artists" in sub folders of a folder > called "Various Artists" and this has always worked superbly for me. > I don't use all these fancy tags (album artist etc...) maybe I'm just > weird? > The VA albums show up under Various Artists in the Artist browser and > the individual track artists on each track show up under the Artist > Browser too...am I missing something? Don't think so. Mine show up the same way, and I haven't had any problems with it. -- grrman Daily Gearhead grrman's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=16052 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Phil Leigh;299371 Wrote: > I must admit I'm having trouble following this. I've always had any > albums I wanted treated as "Various Artists" in sub folders of a folder > called "Various Artists" and this has always worked superbly for me. > I don't use all these fancy tags (album artist etc...) maybe I'm just > weird? > The VA albums show up under Various Artists in the Artist browser and > the individual track artists on each track show up under the Artist > Browser too...am I missing something? as far as i know, what folder its in or what the folder is called doesn't matter at all. i don't think SC7 uses folder names in any way to decide if an album is VA or not. i could very well be 100% wrong on this, (not the first time) but as i write this, i don't think i am. i think it is your tags, in one way or another, that gets those albums classified as VA albums. if you have any disagreement in your artist tags, and no other comp related tags, your album will show up as a VA album. are you saying btw, that you don't have even one album misidentified? what kind of music do you have? in what format? if you did have an album that had one guest artist on one track, that album would get called a VA album. try it to see what i mean. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299391 Wrote: > as far as i know, what folder its in or what the folder is called > doesn't matter at all. i don't think SC7 uses folder names in any way > to decide if an album is VA or not. i could very well be 100% wrong on > this, (not the first time) but as i write this, i don't think i am. > > i think it is your tags, in one way or another, that gets those albums > classified as VA albums. if you have any disagreement in your artist > tags, and no other comp related tags, your album will show up as a VA > album. > > are you saying btw, that you don't have even one album misidentified? > what kind of music do you have? in what format? > > if you did have an album that had one guest artist on one track, that > album would get called a VA album. try it to see what i mean. I was under the impression that in the absence of tags, SC would guess the artist etc based on the file name...? I don't have any albums misidentified. The music is an eclectic mix of all genres (not much classical though...maybe 100 discs?) I'll try it... -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal...SB3+Stontronics PSU - Altmann JISCO/UPCI - TACT RCS 2.2X with Good Vibrations S/W - MF X-DAC V3/X-PSU/X-10 buffer (Audiocomm full mods)- Linn 5103 - Linn Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Kimber & Chord cables Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > Finally, a bit of this debate that I can comment on! Have been reading > the many (many) threads on this subject with some interest. Various > Artist/Compilation behaviour is pretty important to me in one sense, > because approx 80% of my music are compilation albums (electronic > music). However, in another sense (and as a direct result of the type > of music I tend to listen to) it's not so relevant, because I don't > browse by artist very much at all. Electronic artists often use > different names for each release and often list more than one artist, > so I think I have about 9,000 tracks and over 11,000 individual > artists. this is a salient fact, the issue would not be apparent to you, but as you said, that doesn't mean the issue doesn't exist. to put it another way, the VA logic was not designed and implemented to handle your situation [only]. thats the rub. Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > So, what is important to me is the ability to remove those artists from > my browse by artist list proper, and the current VA logic works well > for that for my personal situation. If the logic were to be changed I > would very much want the COMPILATION tag to work as it does now, by > overriding the VA logic and forcing an album to be listed under > "various artists" (which in my set up is renamed "Compilations"). right. all i would suggest is that the logic be optional, and off by default. you should have the option to turn it on, and you should also have the option to over-ride / manipulate both it, and the db in general, with comp tags. Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > At a more general level, I think this is a good debate to be having - > although I remain to be convinced that major changes are needed to the > current logic. What strikes me from the last few posts is that it is > reasonably clear that people have different ways of managing and > sorting their music. Mr Sinatra in particular thinks that his/her way > is closer to the default behaviour that the average user will expect > (and may well be right about that). thanks for saying that, but please allow me to clarify, (not specifically at you but in general). i think the first kind of library slim should have been designed to work with, is the most common kind. right? anyone disagree with that? mp3 using 2.3 tags WITHOUT ANY user defined tags is the most common kind of audio file out there. thats so obvious i shouldn't have to say it. at that point, you can then use popular and classical music, (as mp3 using 2.3tags) to see how the library works. once you have that down, THEN you go on to user defined tags, other formats, etc... i also believe slim should have multiple libraries of the same music just with different formats and tags, to see how their product handles all these various situations. not EVERY mutation mind you, but a good representative of different styles. the VA logic and the album sorting has never ever worked properly for me. i think its b/c slim got ahead of themselves, and didn't follow the above. its not a major sin and i'm not upset over it, i just think its truthful to point it out. i also think its important that slim does get this "sorted" out. ;) i am not alone as being one of the great unwashed masses, and any user like me who tries slim freely as a DL will ditch it most of the time b/c of its rather unexpected behavior. i would think that is also obvious. Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > Classical music is a completely different issue which doesn't even come > into play in some of the proposals, and has very different > requirements. Whilst I welcome the suggestion to clarify and fix > default behaviour, the thing that Slim does very well is keep the > option for users to customise their experience by adding > tagging/sorting options. agreed, it should remain as an option. Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > To that extent, I don't quite follow the "why should I have to add a > specific tag to get the behaviour I am asking for?" (this is very much > paraphrasing, and not aimed at anyone in particular). Surely there are > three questions here: that really isn't the question. the question is "why should i have to add a tag to undo the ridiculous things SC7 does?" i'm not trying to GET a behavior, i am trying to UNDO a behavior. in such a situation, if we are looking at this from a design standpoint, the onus is on slim to undo an errant behavior that is illogical and unreliable, esp as it does not work as its intended to. Siduhe;299367 Wrote: > *1) what is the right behaviour for SC to have as default behaviour?* > As I said above, I think the artist logic works quite well, but that > may well be because I have lots of albums with many different artists > on them, and only one or two albums with a main artist but some guest > artists (which I resolved by setting an explicit "Compilation=0" tag. > I can see the issues which others have raised with their particular > music collections and thi
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
There are two kinds of "VA logic" at play: 1) The logic that determines whether or not an album is a compilation, and 2) The logic that determines how compilations should be displayed in the interface. In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. If you're willing to do some minor housekeeping with explicit COMPILATION tags, you have the flexibility to do anything you want, without breaking compatibility with other music management software. Considering how many organizational styles there are out there, this is pretty much the only way I can imagine accommodating them all. Excellent work, SlimDevices! The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. For example, I'm one of those dinosaurs who pretty much exclusively plays albums straight through. But what happens when you have an artist with a full album, but they are also featured on a compilation? Right now, no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with that artist. If I'm interested in playing the compilation at all, I'd want to play the whole thing, because that's my style. So for me, the compilations should either not be listed at all under the artists, or they should be listed as complete albums. Ideally if they are listed under the artist, they would all be sorted after the artist's proper albums. But then that's just for album-playing dinosaurs like me--others would argue vehemently that this is exactly the wrong way to do things, and they'd be right--for them. #2 is the path to insanity for software developers though. Getting a "YES" or "NO" answer to the question "Is this a compilation?" is well-suited to automation and SD deals with the problem admirably. How to display that data is an open-ended question with nearly infinite answers, and that's NOT quite so well-suited for automation. -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299426 Wrote: > There are two kinds of "VA logic" at play: 1) The logic that determines > whether or not an album is a compilation, and 2) The logic that > determines how compilations should be displayed in the interface. > > In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word > lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. If > you're willing to do some minor housekeeping with explicit COMPILATION > tags, you have the flexibility to do anything you want, without > breaking compatibility with other music management software. > Considering how many organizational styles there are out there, this is > pretty much the only way I can imagine accommodating them all. > Excellent work, SlimDevices! that may be true for users who use comp tags. but a lot of users don't use comp tags, and further, SC7 should not force you to use comp tags to get it to behave properly. CatBus;299426 Wrote: > The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. For > example, I'm one of those dinosaurs who pretty much exclusively plays > albums straight through. But what happens when you have an artist with > a full album, but they are also featured on a compilation? Right now, > no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by > artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that > only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with > that artist. If I'm interested in playing the compilation at all, I'd > want to play the whole thing, because that's my style. So for me, the > compilations should either not be listed at all under the artists, or > they should be listed as complete albums. Ideally if they are listed > under the artist, they would all be sorted after the artist's proper > albums. But then that's just for album-playing dinosaurs like > me--others would argue vehemently that this is exactly the wrong way to > do things, and they'd be right--for them. i have no problem with how SC7 does this currently, but i def think you have an interesting request to try to follow thru on and get implemented, (as an optional function). CatBus;299426 Wrote: > #2 is the path to insanity for software developers though. Getting a > "YES" or "NO" answer to the question "Is this a compilation?" is > well-suited to automation and SD deals with the problem admirably. How > to display that data is an open-ended question with nearly infinite > answers, and that's NOT quite so well-suited for automation. i can live with any albums identified as a compilation under the VA section. my issue mainly is with how that comp annotation gets made in the db, (ie. the VA logic) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299426 Wrote: > There are two kinds of "VA logic" at play: 1) The logic that determines > whether or not an album is a compilation, and 2) The logic that > determines how compilations should be displayed in the interface. > > In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word > lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. If > you're willing to do some minor housekeeping with explicit COMPILATION > tags, you have the flexibility to do anything you want, without > breaking compatibility with other music management software. > Considering how many organizational styles there are out there, this is > pretty much the only way I can imagine accommodating them all. > Excellent work, SlimDevices! > > The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. For > example, I'm one of those dinosaurs who pretty much exclusively plays > albums straight through. But what happens when you have an artist with > a full album, but they are also featured on a compilation? Right now, > no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by > artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that > only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with > that artist. If I'm interested in playing the compilation at all, I'd > want to play the whole thing, because that's my style. So for me, the > compilations should either not be listed at all under the artists, or > they should be listed as complete albums. Ideally if they are listed > under the artist, they would all be sorted after the artist's proper > albums. But then that's just for album-playing dinosaurs like > me--others would argue vehemently that this is exactly the wrong way to > do things, and they'd be right--for them. > > #2 is the path to insanity for software developers though. Getting a > "YES" or "NO" answer to the question "Is this a compilation?" is > well-suited to automation and SD deals with the problem admirably. How > to display that data is an open-ended question with nearly infinite > answers, and that's NOT quite so well-suited for automation. aha - this I totally agree with. maybe an option: "display Whole album containing compiled tracks by artist" vs. "display only tracks by selected artist" (or something like that?) -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal...SB3+Stontronics PSU - Altmann JISCO/UPCI - TACT RCS 2.2X with Good Vibrations S/W - MF X-DAC V3/X-PSU/X-10 buffer (Audiocomm full mods)- Linn 5103 - Linn Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Kimber & Chord cables Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299426 Wrote: > There are two kinds of "VA logic" at play: 1) The logic that determines > whether or not an album is a compilation, and 2) The logic that > determines how compilations should be displayed in the interface. Yes! > In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word > lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. If > you're willing to do some minor housekeeping with explicit COMPILATION > tags, you have the flexibility to do anything you want, without > breaking compatibility with other music management software. > Considering how many organizational styles there are out there, this is > pretty much the only way I can imagine accommodating them all. > Excellent work, SlimDevices! Explicit COMPILATION tags shouldn't be necessary in most cases. It's easy when working with certain types of files - Flac, Ogg, Ape, even Mp3. Not so easy with others. There must be some type of compilation logic beyond this, and I don't think it's perfect. The logic is dead easy when everything is marked explicitly. > The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. For > example, I'm one of those dinosaurs who pretty much exclusively plays > albums straight through. But what happens when you have an artist with > a full album, but they are also featured on a compilation? Right now, > no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by > artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that > only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with > that artist. If I'm interested in playing the compilation at all, I'd > want to play the whole thing, because that's my style. So for me, the > compilations should either not be listed at all under the artists, or > they should be listed as complete albums. Ideally if they are listed > under the artist, they would all be sorted after the artist's proper > albums. But then that's just for album-playing dinosaurs like > me--others would argue vehemently that this is exactly the wrong way to > do things, and they'd be right--for them. In the web interface it's easy enough to get to the "full" album. But if you don't want the partial, filtered albums, maybe all that is needed is another filtering option similar to the Genre>Artist>Album option that now exists. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
mherger;299279 Wrote: > > [ ] Automagically sort compilations under Various Artists > > > > Keep it simple... right? > > Define "Automagically" and you'll think twice about the simplicity of > this "solution". > > -- > > Michael For the Album Catalog Creator tool I created I determine who is the actual Album artist and if he/she is singing more than half (or 2/3) of the album songs, I consider it the Album artist. It works really well. Albums which appear on my controller under Various Artists display OK in ACC using this algorithm. I admit this is by no means 100% proof (probably has problems with Classical albums) but does the job a whole lot better than SC (at least for me) and it is a simple automatic solution. Frank -- SilverRS8 Author of -'AlbumCatalogCreator' (http://www.vanholt.nl/acc/acc.htm)- for SqueezeCenter & SlimServer SilverRS8's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12818 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299435 Wrote: > that may be true for users who use comp tags. but a lot of users don't > use comp tags, and further, SC7 should not force you to use comp tags > to get it to behave properly. As far as I know, you only have to use comp tags when your tagging is otherwise ambiguous. I only needed comp tags on about 6 of my 300 or so albums, and those 6 were definitely ambiguous. Maybe an example of where comp tags are needed but shouldn't be? I've actually perused the Perl code and I can't figure out how it could possibly be fooled by unambiguous data. Maybe you have a more unique tagging situation than you think? -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299426 Wrote: > There are two kinds of "VA logic" at play: 1) The logic that determines > whether or not an album is a compilation, and 2) The logic that > determines how compilations should be displayed in the interface. > > In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word > lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. If > you're willing to do some minor housekeeping with explicit COMPILATION > tags, you have the flexibility to do anything you want, without > breaking compatibility with other music management software. > Considering how many organizational styles there are out there, this is > pretty much the only way I can imagine accommodating them all. > Excellent work, SlimDevices! > > The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. For > example, I'm one of those dinosaurs who pretty much exclusively plays > albums straight through. But what happens when you have an artist with > a full album, but they are also featured on a compilation? Right now, > no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by > artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that > only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with > that artist. If I'm interested in playing the compilation at all, I'd > want to play the whole thing, because that's my style. So for me, the > compilations should either not be listed at all under the artists, or > they should be listed as complete albums. Ideally if they are listed > under the artist, they would all be sorted after the artist's proper > albums. But then that's just for album-playing dinosaurs like > me--others would argue vehemently that this is exactly the wrong way to > do things, and they'd be right--for them. > > #2 is the path to insanity for software developers though. Getting a > "YES" or "NO" answer to the question "Is this a compilation?" is > well-suited to automation and SD deals with the problem admirably. How > to display that data is an open-ended question with nearly infinite > answers, and that's NOT quite so well-suited for automation. I would also agree with this, much more succinctly expressed than my own post. -- Siduhe Siduhe's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=723 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299485 Wrote: > As far as I know, you only have to use comp tags when your tagging is > otherwise ambiguous. I only needed comp tags on about 6 of my 300 or > so albums, and those 6 were definitely ambiguous. Maybe an example of > where comp tags are needed but shouldn't be? I've actually perused the > Perl code and I can't figure out how it could possibly be fooled by > unambiguous data. Maybe you have a more unique tagging situation than > you think? what you are saying doesn't make any sense. my tags aren't ambiguous, SC7's interpretation of my tags however is. simply assuming that any album with TPE1 disagreement is a VA comp in lieu of other tags is not a good system, and i would say useful only to people who don't care if it works how it was intended or supposed to work, but are happy with the output nonetheless, (like Sidhue). (thus why i say it should be left in as an opt-in option) i agree with you that using comp tags probably works fine. i say this b/c i haven't seen anyone complain about how SC7 uses comp tags. i also agree SC7 needs to know what is a comp, and what isn't. what i am saying is that the VA logic does not do this properly. it can not be counted on to discern which albums are truly compilations as currently implemented for most generic users and generic libraries. if you were a mp3 user using only 2.3tags, you'd see the problem. since you use comp tags, (which aren't part of the 2.3 spec) you don't. the easy answer is to just tell me to use userdefined tags, like comp, as a workaround. but that doesn't solve the issue for others like me, nor is it something i want to start doing as an additional step. its the VA logic i am calling to task, not the need for annotating comps or how SC7 uses comp tags. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
SilverRS8;299437 Wrote: > For the Album Catalog Creator tool I created I determine who is the > actual Album artist and if he/she is singing more than half (or 2/3) of > the album songs, I consider it the Album artist. It works really well. > Albums which appear on my controller under Various Artists display OK > in ACC using this algorithm. > > I admit this is by no means 100% proof (probably has problems with > Classical albums) but does the job a whole lot better than SC (at least > for me) and it is a simple automatic solution. > > Frank i definitely thought of this, but the answer to this riddle can't be solved by an arbitrary line in the sand mathematically. for users without comp tags, i think SC7 needs some kind of webUI option that lets users say "look for these terms in the tags, if they are in there, its a compilation." such a system would be fullproof, and compliant with the 2.3 tags that aren't Txxx user defined ones. (i look forward to trying out your plugin btw!) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299505 Wrote: > my tags aren't ambiguous, SC7's interpretation of my tags however is. > simply assuming that any album with TPE1 disagreement is a VA comp in > lieu of other tags is not a good system I think what we have here is a disagreement over what "ambiguous" means. If you've got TPE1 disagreement within an album, I'd say the most logical assumption is that it's a compilation, unless explicitly marked otherwise. MrSinatra;299505 Wrote: > if you were a mp3 user using only 2.3tags, you'd see the problem. since > you use comp tags, (which aren't part of the 2.3 spec) you don't. Sounds to me like your real beef is with the inadequacies of the 2.3 spec. If a file doesn't have any means of unambiguously telling a music manager whether it's a compilation or not, you should use a better file. -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus wrote: >> (which aren't part of the 2.3 spec) > > Sounds to me like your real beef is with the inadequacies of the 2.3 > spec. If a file doesn't have any means of unambiguously telling a > music manager whether it's a compilation or not, you should use a > better file. This whole thread is tedious to read, but this part struck me. The MP3 tag "spec" is a farce. It is not maintained by any recognized party (IETF, ISO, etc.) and as far as I can tell, no one implements all of any part of it. Mostly because its a bad spec. Considering the MP3 tags as more than suggestions is not very useful. IMHO, YMMV. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299528 Wrote: > I think what we have here is a disagreement over what "ambiguous" means. > If you've got TPE1 disagreement within an album, I'd say the most > logical assumption is that it's a compilation, unless explicitly marked > otherwise. well, as i've made clear, SC7 gets this wrong half the time (for me). it is not a logical assumption to make, and i could show you dozens of my own examples and there are literally tens of thousands of more potentially out there. tell me, why should a billy joel box set CD that has ray charles guest on one track (and thus is marked as such on TPE1) be called a VA album by SC7? CatBus;299528 Wrote: > Sounds to me like your real beef is with the inadequacies of the 2.3 > spec. If a file doesn't have any means of unambiguously telling a > music manager whether it's a compilation or not, you should use a > better file. thats a fine opinion for you to have, and its certainly reasonable for you to have it. it however is not reasonable for slim to have it. i am not the only person in this position. its also interesting to note that you aren't defending the Various Artists logic, which is what i am criticizing. rather, you are defneding how SC7 deals with comp tags, which i have no beef with. the problem is the VA logic, and it could be replaced by something much more accurate and fullproof, that i described in my previous post. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
pfarrell;299534 Wrote: > CatBus wrote: > >> (which aren't part of the 2.3 spec) > > > > Sounds to me like your real beef is with the inadequacies of the 2.3 > > spec. If a file doesn't have any means of unambiguously telling a > > music manager whether it's a compilation or not, you should use a > > better file. > > This whole thread is tedious to read, but this part struck me. > The MP3 tag "spec" is a farce. It is not maintained by any recognized > party (IETF, ISO, etc.) and as far as I can tell, no one implements all > > of any part of it. Mostly because its a bad spec. > > Considering the MP3 tags as more than suggestions is not very useful. > IMHO, YMMV. i agree. however, it is a universal baseline most apps have basic compatibility with. the main thing i am trying to point out is that most users in the marketplace do not have user defined tags. all of these issues are separate from the main question of the thread, which is: is the VA logic necessary? i would say that so far, the only answer i have gotten on the VA logic itself, is that it is not necessary, and does not work properly or as intended, BUT that for some people it is useful. therefore i think it should only be included as an opt-in option. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299535 Wrote: > tell me, why should a billy joel box set CD that has ray charles guest > on one track (and thus is marked as such on TPE1) be called a VA album > by SC7? That's a great example of our difference of opinion on the matter. I believe the boxed set you describe is ambiguously (but not incorrectly) tagged (I have two or three albums in my collection with the exact same scenario which needed to be explicitly tagged as non-compilations). Lacking any other information, the most logical guess any automated system could make is that it's a compilation. In most cases this would be a correct guess, and in this case it's wrong. All "guessing" algorithms you could ever devise will be wrong some of the time, because guessing is what you're is forced to do when you don't have enough data to make a clear choice. The ONLY way to get 100% accurate results is to provide enough data to the interpreter. -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
i'm just repeating myself now but for me and many others its wrong 50% of the time AT LEAST. (meaning, half of what it IDs it IDs incorrectly) the whole methodology is totally ridiculous. its unnecessary, it should not be in effect by default. it should be REPLACED with an effective methodology that does not ask users to alter their tags. from a design POV, thats the holy grail, and i've suggested a way in which it could be done. you certainly don't benefit from the VA logic. in fact, you have to set a tag to defeat it. so why would you want it? remember, its not comp tags i have a beef with, its the VA logic. your premise is that "guessing" is the only way it could be done. i reject that outright, and have an alternative that doesn't require guessing. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>i definitely thought of this, but the answer to this riddle can't be >solved by an arbitrary line in the sand mathematically. > I agree, such arbitrary math decisions like that would not work for everyone. >for users without comp tags, i think SC7 needs some kind of webUI >option that lets users say "look for these terms in the tags, if they >are in there, its a compilation." such a system would be fullproof, >and compliant with the 2.3 tags that aren't Txxx user defined ones. > The only way to be sure is to set compilation tags. I can't see what the problem is with setting COMPILATION=1. I'm not aware of any software that does it any other way. eg. iTunes requires you to pick all songs and set Compilation=Yes to group them under a single album. The only possible debate I think is perhaps whether SC should guess at all if an album is a compilation (might be broken in SC7.1 anyway), or assume COMPILATION=0 if there is no compilation tag. Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;299547 Wrote: > >i definitely thought of this, but the answer to this riddle can't be > >solved by an arbitrary line in the sand mathematically. > > > I agree, such arbitrary math decisions like that would not work for > everyone. cool. Philip Meyer;299547 Wrote: > > >for users without comp tags, i think SC7 needs some kind of webUI > >option that lets users say "look for these terms in the tags, if they > >are in there, its a compilation." such a system would be fullproof, > >and compliant with the 2.3 tags that aren't Txxx user defined ones. > > > The only way to be sure is to set compilation tags. I can't see what > the problem is with setting COMPILATION=1. I'm not aware of any > software that does it any other way. eg. iTunes requires you to pick > all songs and set Compilation=Yes to group them under a single album. > > The only possible debate I think is perhaps whether SC should guess at > all if an album is a compilation (might be broken in SC7.1 anyway), or > assume COMPILATION=0 if there is no compilation tag. > > Phil i agree the only as it currently exists is to set comp tags. i am not saying there is anything wrong with using them, i am only saying you should NOT HAVE TO USE THEM, if you don't want to. the reason is most of the marketplace will not understand this, and SC7 will act very unexpectedly. also, i don't want the extra step of setting a tag i do not otherwise need. i don't use itunes btw, and its the only mainstream app i know of that uses comp tags. what i am suggesting is what you allude to. it should not guess at all by default. its just too crappy at it. instead of assuming comp tags, which i see no need for, (and would create its own issues since there are three discrete comp tags according to slimkid, of 0, 1, and none at all, which in turn have 3 separate effects) i think the VA "math based" detection logic should instead be replaced by a system where the user can specify terms. that would be fullproof. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299544 Wrote: > i'm just repeating myself now but for me and many others its wrong 50% > of the time AT LEAST. (meaning, half of what it IDs it IDs > incorrectly) Within your sample data, perhaps. It's right almost all of the time for me. Go figure. MrSinatra;299544 Wrote: > it should be REPLACED with an effective methodology that does not ask > users to alter their tags. from a design POV, thats the holy grail, > and i've suggested a way in which it could be done. I've re-read this thread just to make sure I didn't skip something and failed to find this more effective methodology. You mentioned scanning for any tag containing the string "various artists", but this would also require retagging and doesn't seem any more effective at disambiguating data than the compilation tag. MrSinatra;299544 Wrote: > you certainly don't benefit from the VA logic. in fact, you have to set > a tag to defeat it. I said I used the explicit compilation tag for about 6 albums out of 300. That means the VA guessing algorithm has a 98% success rate. It saved me the work of explicitly tagging nearly 300 albums as either compilations or non-compilations, so I feel I've benefitted quite a bit. MrSinatra;299544 Wrote: > your premise is that "guessing" is the only way it could be done. i > reject that outright, and have an alternative that doesn't require > guessing. Any algorithm that makes a decision based on inadequate information is a guessing algorithm. Any method that uses "extra" data to figure it out is just a variation on the current behavior. -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299548 Wrote: > > instead of assuming comp tags, which i see no need for, (and would > create its own issues since there are three discrete comp tags > according to slimkid, of 0, 1, and none at all, which in turn have 3 > separate effects) i think the VA "math based" detection logic should > instead be replaced by a system where the user can specify terms. that > would be fullproof. I think one thing that is missing in this discussion is a major SqueezeCenter design decision that has been made a long time ago and still exists as far as I know. The SqueezeCenter database is just a temporary storage, it's a design decision that it should be possible to discard at any time. This means that you can't store anything in it which you like to survive over a longer time. This is a BIG difference compared to other music library manager applications such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, Media Monkey. SqueezeCenter shouldn't be considered to be the application where you manage your music library, this is something that you do should in some other application. To not limit the user to a single music manager application the decision has been made that ALL information that needs to survive a longer time needs to be transferred into SqueezeCenter through explicit tags or by automatic detection logic in SqueezeCenter based on tags. I'm not saying that this is a good design decision, but it exists at the moment and it is a lot bigger to change this than just changing the handling of the compilation state. As I understand it you are suggesting that SqueezeCenter shouldn't read the "compilation" state from the files at all, instead it should be possible for the user to enter the "compilation" state directly in SqueezeCenter and store it somewhere outside the music files. I'm afraid that a changed like this unfortunately would be a conflict with the above mentioned design decision. There IS a way for the user to enter the "compilation" state already today, it's done by adding a compilation tag to the files. It is not possible for the user to do this directly in SqueezeCenter, because Logitech has choosen to delegate that functionality to the tagging programs since it's already supported in these. Why spend time implementing things in SqueezeCenter that is already supported in other programs which the user needs to use anyway. SqueezeCenter needs to rely on custom tags (COMPILATION) for the compilation state, because I don't think there is a standard way in the different music format specifications to indicate that an album is a compilation album. I'm not saying that the above mentioned design decision is a good one, because I personally have doubts regarding it when we talk about statistic data such as ratings, last played time and play counts. I believe this kind of information needs to survive a longer period of time to get good support for smart playlists. Statistic data isn't and shouldn't be written to tags in the music files. As long as I can force SqueezeCenter to handle a specific album as a compilation album or not, I am happy. This is something I can do already today by adding a compilation tag to the file. If SqueezeCenter besides this tries to help my figure out the compilation state for the rest of my albums, where I haven't any compilation tags in the files, that is a good thing. This saves me some work since I don't have to add compilation tags to ALL my music files, just those where the SqueezeCenter logic fails. This automatic logic works better for some people and worse for other people, depending on how your music library looks like. In your case it unfortunately works pretty bad but for other people it works pretty good. So forcing all the people where the automatic logic works good to manually enter the compilation state in SqueezeCenter would just result in these people getting upset instead. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299549 Wrote: > Within your sample data, perhaps. It's right almost all of the time for > me. Go figure. yes, exactly. the point is its made for both of us, and others, not just you, (or me). its not surprising it works right for you b/c you use comp tags, and i couldn't be happier for you. (truly, but it doesn't end with just those for whom it works well) CatBus;299549 Wrote: > I've re-read this thread just to make sure I didn't skip something and > failed to find this more effective methodology. You mentioned scanning > for any tag containing the string "various artists", but this would also > require retagging and doesn't seem any more effective at disambiguating > data than the compilation tag. the difference is twofold. first, it would work with standard (read: universal) tags, and thats what most users have. thats an important point. why? b/c it means new users will have an expected experience out of the box and not have to go to slimserver university for a tagging degree. secondly, most users with standard tags would already have certain recurring strings like "various artists" in their TPE2 field, (or other fields). its very typical. if retagging would be required, it would be no different in that sense from having to give it a comp tag, except of course, that a comp tag would be added from scratch, and would be a new, user defined tag to a users file, that in most cases they didn't need until SC7 forced it. (and not all apps support it) and i can assure you my suggestion would be totally accurate [reflecting whats in the tags] as opposed to simply assuming all albums with TPE1 differentiation of even only one track are VA albums. thats a totally ridiculous method, b/c you know from the get go it has flaws in the design. CatBus;299549 Wrote: > I said I used the explicit compilation tag for about 6 albums out of > 300. That means the VA guessing algorithm has a 98% success rate. It > saved me the work of explicitly tagging nearly 300 albums as either > compilations or non-compilations, so I feel I've benefitted quite a > bit. and this is germane b/c why? the point of a design is to work as often and for as many people as possible. i am glad it works for you, but you are not the only concern. please don't read anything into that, i am just trying to give you my perspective, but it does seem that b/c u don't see it as a big problem based on your personal exp, you then reject a problem exists. (i have told you, and i am not the only one, that SC7 got dozens and dozens of my albums wrong). its your right to do so, but its not necessarily true. CatBus;299549 Wrote: > Any algorithm that makes a decision based on inadequate information is a > guessing algorithm. Any method that uses "extra" data to figure it out > is just a variation on the current behavior. i think you're just being argumentative here. i agree its guessing, and thats the problem. i want to replace the broken guessing game with a full proof methodology that is defined by the user. (and yes, if anyone still wants the current VA logic, by all means, leave it in, but don't make it a requirement and don't make it by default) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
erland;299565 Wrote: > I think one thing that is missing in this discussion is a major > SqueezeCenter design decision that has been made a long time ago and > still exists as far as I know. The SqueezeCenter database is just a > temporary storage, it's a design decision that it should be possible to > discard at any time. This means that you can't store anything in it > which you like to survive over a longer time. This is a BIG difference > compared to other music library manager applications such as iTunes, > Windows Media Player, Media Monkey. SqueezeCenter shouldn't be > considered to be the application where you manage your music library, > this is something that you do should in some other application. To not > limit the user to a single music manager application the decision has > been made that ALL information that needs to survive a longer time > needs to be transferred into SqueezeCenter through explicit tags or by > automatic detection logic in SqueezeCenter based on tags. i am not trying to rewrite the SC7 philosophy. i am not saying SC7 should manage or edit my tags. i absolutely don't want that. i am saying that this is now a logitech product, and its being aimed at the masses, and it will continue to be, and over time i expect it will get cheaper and cheaper. all i am suggesting is that normal mp3 users with tags but WITHOUT user defined tags, (since they are by far the marketplace majority), should be accommodated. i've pointed out a clear flaw in the VA logic. everyone knows its there. but no one wants to fix it b/c it either works for their situation, (in a clearly unintended manner), or they are fine with their workaround, (comp tags, other user defined tags). if i were slim, i would want users who can freely DL and try SC7, to have a reasonable expected behavior out of the box. they won't. and it will hurt sales. now, maybe they don't care about that, (although i think they do) but i know logitech would. you say that automatic detection logic is needed. i agree. where i disagree is how that automatic detection is implemented. there is no need for it to guess, or for guessing to be a function you can't turn off. better methods exist. erland;299565 Wrote: > I'm not saying that this is a good design decision, but it exists at the > moment and it is a lot bigger to change this than just changing the > handling of the compilation state. > > As I understand it you are suggesting that SqueezeCenter shouldn't read > the "compilation" state from the files at all, instead it should be > possible for the user to enter the "compilation" state directly in > SqueezeCenter and store it somewhere outside the music files. no, i am not suggesting that. SC7 should absolutely use comp tags, i have said that the whole time. but if there are no comp tags, it should not use the current VA logic, (looking for TPE1 differentiation) to mark an album as Various Artists / Compilation. rather, that logic should be turned off by default, and instead replaced with terms the user can set in SC7 that if the scanner finds in the files, it then knows its a compilation. do you follow me now? erland;299565 Wrote: > I'm afraid that a changed like this unfortunately would be a conflict > with the above mentioned design decision. There IS a way for the user > to enter the "compilation" state already today, it's done by adding a > compilation tag to the files. It is not possible for the user to do > this directly in SqueezeCenter, because Logitech has choosen to > delegate that functionality to the tagging programs since it's already > supported in these. Why spend time implementing things in SqueezeCenter > that is already supported in other programs which the user needs to use > anyway. please see my previous paragraphs. erland;299565 Wrote: > SqueezeCenter needs to rely on custom tags (COMPILATION) for the > compilation state, because I don't think there is a standard way in the > different music format specifications to indicate that an album is a > compilation album. right, most mainstream music managing software doesn't support the comp tag. so the alternative (instead of VA logic guessing) is to teach SC7 to be smart enough to look for certain user defined terms (in the webUI settings) in a users tags, like "Various Artists" or whatever they use. the added benefit is that this would be compatible with virtually all tag editing software, from WMP and winamp to mp3tag. and it would work for the unwashed masses like me, (barbarians that we are), who don't get fancy with their tags. erland;299565 Wrote: > I'm not saying that the above mentioned design decision is a good one, > because I personally have doubts regarding it when we talk about > statistic data such as ratings, last played time and play counts. I > believe this kind of information needs to survive a longer period of > time to get good support for smart playlists. Statistic data isn't and > shouldn't be written to tags in t
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299575 Wrote: > > i am saying that this is now a logitech product, and its being aimed at > the masses, and it will continue to be, and over time i expect it will > get cheaper and cheaper. > The current cost of SqueezeCenter is zero as far as I know, so it can't get much cheaper, but I suppose you are talking about the whole system including the SqueezeBox hardware. MrSinatra;299575 Wrote: > you say that automatic detection logic is needed. i agree. where i > disagree is how that automatic detection is implemented. there is no > need for it to guess, or for guessing to be a function you can't turn > off. better methods exist. > > ... > > rather, that logic should be turned off by default, and instead > replaced with terms the user can set in SC7 that if the scanner finds > in the files, it then knows its a compilation. > I think the problem is that it will result in extra options and more configuration parameters which gets the whole system even more complicated to use than today. More options also results in a support nightmare for Logitech since it makes the handling of end users problem a lot more complex when there are a lot of variations. So even though correct default values could make it simple for end users it causes problem for the Logitech support team that needs to handle the users that actually use the advanced configuration of the automatic detection logic. I'm not against more options myself, which I think all the configuration options in my plugins shows, but I can understand why Logitech has tried to limit the number of configurable options available. However, it should be fairly simple if we limit the options to a single checkbox that enabled/disabled the current automatic logic. If disabled it would only detect albums with COMPILATION tags as compilations and the rest would be considered to be non compilation albums. If enabled it would use the current automatic logic that works for some people and doesn't work for other people. The default value after installation could be that this option is disabled, so the user explicit have to select to use the current automatic logic. A solution like this would be fairly simple to implement is doesn't result in a lot of extra complex configuration parameters that needs to be handled in the code and in the user interface. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
i want to thank you again for your other post in the other thread. erland;299582 Wrote: > The current cost of SqueezeCenter is zero as far as I know, so it can't > get much cheaper, but I suppose you are talking about the whole system > including the SqueezeBox hardware. actually, that works against them! :) the "free" part is the part that needs fixed and is the only part they can try ahead of time. i assert that if they get a bad "out of box" experience, (meaning, it acts unexpectedly), they will ditch it there and then. thats what i really don't want to see happen. erland;299574 Wrote: > I think the problem is that it will result in extra options and more > configuration parameters which gets the whole system even more > complicated to use than today. More options also results in a support > nightmare for Logitech since it makes the handling of end users problem > a lot more complex when there are a lot of variations. So even though > correct default values could make it simple for end users it causes > problem for the Logitech support team that needs to handle the users > that actually use the advanced configuration of the automatic detection > logic. there's a difference between needed options and un-necessary options. i would contend this is in fact, needed. but setting aside that argument for a moment, what about the support problems and threads the current broken system generates? and more importantly, what about the abortions, rather than adoptions, the current broken system causes? b/c thats how i see it. forcing joe average user to go to the slimserver university of tagging to figure out how to overcome its broken VA logic is not a good design. i think its possible to give a sensible out of box solution that keeps them out of the options altogether. turn TPE1 differentiation logic off. let SC7 search for terms in the tags to indicate comps. have "Various Artists" filled in already. allow them to edit it and add or remove more via webUI. erland;299574 Wrote: > I'm not against more options myself, which I think all the configuration > options in my plugins shows, but I can understand why Logitech has tried > to limit the number of configurable options available. absolutely, but some are necessary. erland;299574 Wrote: > However, it should be fairly simple if we limit the options to a single > checkbox that enabled/disabled the current automatic logic. If disabled > it would only detect albums with COMPILATION tags as compilations and > the rest would be considered to be non compilation albums. If enabled > it would use the current automatic logic that works for some people and > doesn't work for other people. right, thats an important first step. allow users to turn it off, (and i would say, have off by default) but you need a second step. you need to have something to replace it thats better (although also optional). specifically, my "VA terms" suggestion. the reason you need it is for users that won't have comp tags, and won't want to add them or learn anything about it. and i can't blame them, b/c their exp up to that point of other apps will be their music was handled properly. so they will need a method, thats fullproof, to allow them to get their comps annotated as comps in the db. erland;299574 Wrote: > The default value after installation could be that this option is > disabled, so the user explicit have to select to use the current > automatic logic. we are singing the same tune. :) erland;299574 Wrote: > A solution like this would be fairly simple to implement is doesn't > result in a lot of extra complex configuration parameters that needs to > be handled in the code and in the user interface. right, and it is needed, but it is only HALF the solution. (although for now i'll take what i can get). -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I really can't see what everyone's problems are with compilation tags. It's quite simple. SqueezeCenter applies good sensible logic for determining compilation albums, if the user hasn't set up their own compilation tags. This is better than all other apps, that don't auto-calculate, and require tags to be set. It really is no hassle at all to set COMPILATION=1 on all various artist albums. People using other apps have probably done this already, to get the other apps working correctly. I expect the vast majority of users don't set differing artist information. Most tagging apps that read information from internet resources, such as freedb, will set all songs to have the same artist (and thus SC will not decide it to be a compilation album), or will set the album to be a compilation. So, if a user is messing about in a tag editor setting a guest artist for a song on an album, it's surely not too much to expect the user to set an Album Artist tag to define and/or set Compilation=0. The argument is that SqueezeCenter could *perhaps* be more intelligent and guess that one song with a different artist out of 10 songs on the whole album should not denote the album as a compilation, but instead denote it as being by the artist that performs the most on the album. However, that is not easy logic to guess in a consistent way. What if there's only two songs on an album? What if the album is intended to be a compilation album? No logic can ever be right all of the time in this case - it needs the user to define the tags. SqueezeCenter's general rule is quite simple and logical to understand: if there are different artists on songs on an album, the album is a compilation album. SqueezeCenter VA logic also handles the "Greatest Hits" problem, for libraries that are organised in different ways. There may be many artists in a collection that have a "Greatest Hits" album; great lengths were made to correctly NOT merge them into one "Greatest Hits" compilation album. Any change in guessing compilation albums needs to remember all of the fixes in the logic that have been applied that solve many REAL support problems that have happened over the years. -- Philip Meyer Philip Meyer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=95 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299573 Wrote: > you certainly don't benefit from the VA logic. in fact, you have to set > a tag to defeat it. > > so why would you want it? > I said I used the explicit compilation tag for about 6 albums out of > 300. That means the VA guessing algorithm has a 98% success rate. It > saved me the work of explicitly tagging nearly 300 albums as either > compilations or non-compilations, so I feel I've benefitted quite a > bit. MrSinatra;299573 Wrote: > and this is germane b/c why? Let's see...you ask me a direct question. I answer that question in a direct manner. You then ask how my direct answer to your direct question is germane. Interesting debate tactic. MrSinatra;299573 Wrote: > i think you're just being argumentative here. Oh I really think otherwise. I'm not the one throwing around the phrase "standard tags" as if it meant something and refusing to use ID3 2.4 because it's only been around for a decade. You asked questions. I answered them. I'm sorry you didn't like the answers. -- CatBus CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > I really can't see what everyone's problems are with compilation tags. > It's quite simple. SqueezeCenter applies good sensible logic for > determining compilation albums, if the user hasn't set up their own > compilation tags. This is better than all other apps, that don't > auto-calculate, and require tags to be set. > > It really is no hassle at all to set COMPILATION=1 on all various > artist albums. People using other apps have probably done this > already, to get the other apps working correctly. > > I expect the vast majority of users don't set differing artist > information. Most tagging apps that read information from internet > resources, such as freedb, will set all songs to have the same artist > (and thus SC will not decide it to be a compilation album), or will set > the album to be a compilation. > > SqueezeCenter VA logic also handles the "Greatest Hits" problem, for > libraries that are organised in different ways. There may be many > artists in a collection that have a "Greatest Hits" album; great > lengths were made to correctly NOT merge them into one "Greatest Hits" > compilation album. Any change in guessing compilation albums needs to > remember all of the fixes in the logic that have been applied that > solve many REAL support problems that have happened over the years. With you 100% on this Phil. After reading this thread I went back and checked my tags, because my VA works and I couldn't remember whether or not I had set compilation tags. Turns out I hadn't. And it all Just Works(tm). So to get back to the question in the OP, I'd have to answer yes. Does the OP need something else? Maybe. But please don't break what already works out of the box. -- aubuti aubuti's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2074 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299585 Wrote: > > but you need a second step. you need to have something to replace it > thats better (although also optional). specifically, my "VA terms" > suggestion. > I'm sure the "VA terms" suggestion is described somewhere, but unfortunately I don't have the time to find it at the moment, so if anyone that knows in which post/bug it is described could refer me to it I would appreciate it. MrSinatra, unless this is already described in the "VA terms" suggestion, could you describe how you would configure the "VA terms" in your own library to get the desired behaviour ? If I understand you correctly, you don't have COMPILATION tags and if I've understood it correctly there is no standard compilation indication in the different music format specificatiosn, so I suppose you have some other custom tag or some smart other smart detection logic you would use ? It would be great if you could take the time to describe this so we can get the feeling how complex your solution would be. If this is described somewhere already, just refer me to the correct place. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > I really can't see what everyone's problems are with compilation tags. Neither do I and I don't think "everyone" really is that many users. I still suspects the current automatic VA logic or setting the compilation tags works good enough for most users. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > > It really is no hassle at all to set COMPILATION=1 on all various > artist albums. People using other apps have probably done this > already, to get the other apps working correctly. > I think the issue MrSinatra and some other users are seeing, is that COMPILATION needs to be set to 0, not 1. I've set the COMPILATION tag to 1 for all my VA albums, but I haven't set it to 0 for all the rest. Still, it's really simple to set it to 0 for all the other albums, in any of the tagging programs available, if SqueezeCenter would require this in some future release. So neither I can see the big problem with this. Making it possible to turn of the automatic VA logic which isn't based on the COMPILATION tags makes some sense to me, at least if it would result in a few more happy users and Logitech is willing to handle support issues for this extra checkbox in the setting pages. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
aubuti;299780 Wrote: > With you 100% on this Phil. After reading this thread I went back and > checked my tags, because my VA works and I couldn't remember whether or > not I had set compilation tags. Turns out I hadn't. And it all Just > Works(tm). > > So to get back to the question in the OP, I'd have to answer yes. Does > the OP need something else? Maybe. But please don't break what already > works out of the box. Aubuti, out of curiousity, please answer the following: what format are your files? and do you have the ALBUMARTIST field populated in SC7? b/c if so, it would over-ride the VA logic, and therefore the VA logic would NOT be necessary for you. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>as far as i know, what folder its in or what the folder is called >doesn't matter at all. i don't think SC7 uses folder names in any way >to decide if an album is VA or not. i could very well be 100% wrong on >this, (not the first time) but as i write this, i don't think i am. > I believe there are some circumstances (certainly used to be, but may have changed?) where the source folder does matter. I think songs are only considered to be on the same album if they are in the same source folder. The reason for this is to avoid albums with the same name being merged together (the "Greatest Hits" problem). If for example all songs in your collection were located in the same source folder, all songs would appear in one single compilation album. If each song were in its own individual source folder, I believe they would appear as a separate album entry for each song. Also, if there are no tags, SC can guess the tags based on folder heirarchy rules. Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
its interesting to me that phil, cat, and erland (and otehrs) all don't really see the point of this, while at the same time they all use comp tags, (or ALBUMARTIST tags). i think it explains a lot. i don't expect people who use comp tags to be advocating for what i am advocating, but by the same token, i don't expect them to advocate against it either. there is a great unwashed mass of users out there, of which i am one, who won't get the best experience they COULD get, if only the elites would listen. i'm baffled by the resistence. truly. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > I really can't see what everyone's problems are with compilation tags. neither can i. i have no beef whatsoever with comp tags. my beef is with the VA logic. separate and distinct. my only comment about comp tags is most people don't use them. so SC7 should accommodate these users as well. thats all i'm saying. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > It's quite simple. SqueezeCenter applies good sensible logic for > determining compilation albums, if the user hasn't set up their own > compilation tags. This is better than all other apps, that don't > auto-calculate, and require tags to be set. i don't see how you can say that when i tell you that it gets at least as many wrong for me as it gets right. thats means if i have say 100 VA albums that are in fact VA albums, it then says another 100 are VA albums that are NOT VA albums. sensible? no. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > It really is no hassle at all to set COMPILATION=1 on all various artist > albums. People using other apps have probably done this already, to get > the other apps working correctly. the only mainstream app i know of that uses it is itunes, and i think its transparent to most itunes users. i agree that it isn't a big deal for people here at the forum, i disagree that it isn't a big deal for most people. most people don't want to learn what they would need to learn to figure out whats wrong, and how to fix it. not to mention, people like me don't want the extra step, and it would require instlling an extra app just for this purpose of this one tag. (in my case, but i'd hardly be alone, i'm just using myself to illustrate the example) Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > I expect the vast majority of users don't set differing artist > information. Most tagging apps that read information from internet > resources, such as freedb, will set all songs to have the same artist > (and thus SC will not decide it to be a compilation album), or will set > the album to be a compilation. i have a lot of exp with mainstream apps, and most of them now at the very least, give the option to the user to do this easily. its a good point you raise, but the fact is a lot of people would have TPE1 differentiation of all kinds of albums, (not just comp albums). Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > So, if a user is messing about in a tag editor setting a guest artist > for a song on an album, it's surely not too much to expect the user to > set an Album Artist tag to define and/or set Compilation=0. other than itunes, i don't know any mainstream app that uses comp tags. as to album artist tags, i'm not as sure what apps do... i know winamp doesn't however, (they use TPE2 for that, like a lot of mainstream apps). Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > The argument is that SqueezeCenter could *perhaps* be more intelligent > and guess that one song with a different artist out of 10 songs on the > whole album should not denote the album as a compilation, but instead > denote it as being by the artist that performs the most on the album. > However, that is not easy logic to guess in a consistent way. What if > there's only two songs on an album? What if the album is intended to > be a compilation album? No logic can ever be right all of the time in > this case - it needs the user to define the tags. thats why we agreed earlier the math way is arbitrary and guessing. i then made the leap it should be replaced with a better method. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > SqueezeCenter's general rule is quite simple and logical to understand: > if there are different artists on songs on an album, the album is a > compilation album. doesn't mean its a good rule. certainly isn't for me. Philip Meyer;299687 Wrote: > SqueezeCenter VA logic also handles the "Greatest Hits" problem, for > libraries that are organised in different ways. There may be many > artists in a collection that have a "Greatest Hits" album; great > lengths were made to correctly NOT merge them into one "Greatest Hits" > compilation album. Any change in guessing compilation albums needs to > remember all of the fixes in the logic that have been applied that > solve many REAL support problems that have happened over the years. thx for suggesting this isn't a REAL support problem. whats so scary about having an option to turn it off? and i don't see where anything i am talking about threatens greatest hits fixes or any of the res
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>1) The logic that determines whether or not an album is a compilation, and >2) The logic that determines how compilations should be displayed in the >interface. >In my opinion, the logic for #1 is PERFECT...and I don't use that word >lightly because I'm very particular about how I tag my collection. >Excellent work, SlimDevices! > >The logic for #2 on the other hand...could use some cleaning up. >Right now, no matter which compilation options you choose, when you browse by >artist, you get the full albums, plus little compilation "stubs" that >only show the one or two songs from that compilation associated with >that artist. >How to display that data is an open-ended question with nearly infinite >answers, and that's NOT quite so well-suited for automation. Great post - this is pretty much how I feel about the current state of compilation albums too. I too mainly play full albums (otherwise random music). Albums where an artist is only a guest performer are also listed under browse albums. Eg. When I browse artist Thom Yorke, I see: The Eraser (by Thom Yorke) No Album (by loads of artists, including Thom Yorke) - because I have a song that isnot associated with any album - "No Album" is considered a compilation containing many hundreds of such songs by different artists. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (by PJ Harvey) - because Thom Yorke makes a guest appearance on "This Mess We're In" (great song!). However, I find it useful to be reminded that an artist performed an otherwise unavailable track on a compilation album, and it also makes the songs playable via Play All by artist. I agree that it would be nice to sub-categorise the list of albums when browsing an artist, such that you can clearly see main albums by the artist, compilation albums that the artist appears on, and albums where the artist makes a guest appearance. This could be taken this further and categorise albums where the artist is a composer, conductor, band, remixer, original artist of a cover song, etc. And like you said, that is the main problem - everyone wants their library presented in different ways. Classical music buffs may only want to list orchestras, etc. The important bit I feel to get right is #1, to ensure the library data is maintained in a logical way. Then it is always possible for third-party plugins or skins to present the information as desired. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299825 Wrote: > Aubuti, > > out of curiousity, please answer the following: > > what format are your files? > > and do you have the ALBUMARTIST field populated in SC7? > > b/c if so, it would over-ride the VA logic, and therefore the VA logic > would NOT be necessary for you. They're about 95% FLAC and 5% MP3, and I don't have any ALBUMARTIST tags. I have yet to see much use (for me) in the ALBUMARTIST tag, although I do have ARTISTSORT (lastname, firstname where relevant) and have recently added ALBUMSORT. Btw, I added ALBUMSORT so that when browsing by album on my SBC it will sort them by artist/year/album just like the web ui, which I know is a feature you've been looking for. Also, as Phil notes, the source folder *is* relevant. Certainly for dealing with VA and probably for dealing with common titles issues (eg, Greatest Hits). Some people have their tracks from compilation albums spread around under directories for the specific artist, and SC does not see them as coming from the same album. -- aubuti aubuti's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2074 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
CatBus;299758 Wrote: > Let's see...you ask me a direct question. I answer that question in a > direct manner. You then ask how my direct answer to your direct > question is germane. Interesting debate tactic. i'm gonna try again... first, you had to defeat the choices it made 6 times. now, i don't know how many it got right, so maybe that, for you, did save you some time. but would you not rather have a system that got NONE wrong? secondly, as i was trying to say b4, you are but one case. you are lucky it only got 6 wrong. perhaps your tags don't list guest artists as often as mine do, who knows? but you can't extrapolate from your case that if its good for you its great for everyone else. my point isn't that its broken for everyone. my point is that its broken for a lot of people, and thats a reasonable extrapolation. thats why i said what you were saying about your case wasn't germane, b/c it doesn't extrapolate as meaning nothing should be done to address the issue. CatBus;299758 Wrote: > Oh I really think otherwise. I'm not the one throwing around the phrase > "standard tags" as if it meant something and refusing to use ID3 2.4 > because it's only been around for a decade. You asked questions. I > answered them. I'm sorry you didn't like the answers. it does mean something. like it or not, 2.3 tags are the universal baseline defacto standard that apps from every corner have the most overlapping compatibility with. thats just the way it is, don't get mad at me for pointing it out. a lot of users will come to SC7 with no user defined tags. thats just the truth. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
thx for taking the time to answer my Q. aubuti;299850 Wrote: > They're about 95% FLAC and 5% MP3, and I don't have any ALBUMARTIST > tags. I have yet to see much use (for me) in the ALBUMARTIST tag, > although I do have ARTISTSORT (lastname, firstname where relevant) and > have recently added ALBUMSORT. Btw, I added ALBUMSORT so that when > browsing by album on my SBC it will sort them by artist/year/album just > like the web ui, which I know is a feature you've been looking for. ok, but its the same thing. SORT tags will override the VA logic just like ALBUMARTIST will. (so VA logic is not necessary for you) thats very cool about the SBC, i didn't think you could over-ride how the SBC does it, (via tags). personally, i'd like to see a SC7 global setting for these different UI's. so what i see in the webUI is what i see in the SBC. but great to know you found a workaround. aubuti;299850 Wrote: > Also, as Phil notes, the source folder *is* relevant. Certainly for > dealing with VA and probably for dealing with common titles issues (eg, > Greatest Hits). Some people have their tracks from compilation albums > spread around under directories for the specific artist, and SC does > not see them as coming from the same album. yes, i'll comment more later, but this is a bit of a strawman... i never said differing foldering locations wasn't important for discerning albums from each other, (like greatest hits) i just said i didn't think that SC7 uses folder names to say that a CD in that folder is a VA album. *if i am wrong on that, np, happy to admit it.* (i would like to know if a CD gets called VA and a comp just for being in such a folder, and what exactly the folder needs to be called to make that happen) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.0.1beta - Win XP Pro SP2 - 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>tell me, why should a billy joel box set CD that has ray charles guest >on one track (and thus is marked as such on TPE1) be called a VA album >by SC7? And exactly how do you enter guest performers in your TPE1 tag? There is no defined allowance for having guest performers in TPE1, due to the lack of any standard. The official declared spec says: 4.2.1 TPE1[#TPE1 Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)] So you should only put lead performers in the tag. Is a guest performer considered a lead performer? Most internet sources for automatically setting tags will typically not include guest performers. Guest performers are typically not tagged, unless YOU added them, in your own defined format. Do you use a separator character? Do you enter several ARTIST tags? Or do you enter a single artist tag with something like "Billy Joel and Frank Sinatra"? The official spec says that lead performers should be separated with "/". I think it says somewhere that there should be one single TPE1 tag, but several apps actually understand having several tags, or using a 0x00 byte to separate multiple artists (which is handy because iTunes only allows one TPE1 artist, but reads up to the 0x00, so it looks like there is only one artist and thus doesn't think an album is a compilation). Some apps may read your additional guest artists, other will not. Some will see it as a compilation, others will not. I'm just trying to demonstrate that it is very hard for an application to decide how to handle id3 v2.3 tags because there's lots of different interpretations made by applications. You seem fixated on never needing to edit tags, but it's likely that you are adding guest performer tags, not adding album artist tags and not adding compilation tags. And then you complain that it's not doing the right thing, etc. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;299855 Wrote: > ok, but its the same thing. SORT tags will override the VA logic just > like ALBUMARTIST will. (so VA logic is not necessary for you) I don't think so. VA worked fine before I added the ALBUMSORT tags, and I don't see how ARTISTSORT would override VA logic. MrSinatra;299855 Wrote: > thats very cool about the SBC, i didn't think you could over-ride how > the SBC does it, (via tags). You're not really overriding it, you're just giving it different data to sort. The default data appears to be the ALBUM tag. For non-VA discs I populate the ALBUMSORT tag with ARTISTSORT+YEAR+ALBUM, and for VA discs I use ALBUM+YEAR. MrSinatra;299855 Wrote: > i just said i didn't think that SC7 uses folder names to say that a CD > in that folder is a VA album. *if i am wrong on that, np, happy to > admit it.* > > (i would like to know if a CD gets called VA and a comp just for being > in such a folder, and what exactly the folder needs to be called to > make that happen) There's no special name required for the folder. I'm not an expert on this, but as I understand the typical case, if the tracks in a folder have (a) the same ALBUM tag and (b) the different ARTIST tags, it's treated as a VA album. If those same tracks are scattered around multiple directories, they are considered as separate albums, with the same name. -- aubuti aubuti's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2074 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>I think the issue MrSinatra and some other users are seeing, is that >COMPILATION needs to be set to 0, not 1. I've set the COMPILATION tag >to 1 for all my VA albums, but I haven't set it to 0 for all the rest. >Still, it's really simple to set it to 0 for all the other albums, in >any of the tagging programs available, if SqueezeCenter would require >this in some future release. So neither I can see the big problem with >this. But it shouldn't be necessary to set COMPILATION=0 in most cases. I think that's because there are guest performers and no album artist has been set. So setting an album artist (or allowing an option for TPE2 to be regarded as Album Artist), would fix that problem. What is the effect of setting COMPILATION=0 when there are different artists on tracks? I'm not sure what that would achieve - probably just cause other "issues" for people. I'm guessing it would cause groups of songs to be split into several albums with the same name. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;299869... Wrote: > > > But it shouldn't be necessary to set COMPILATION=0 in most cases. I > think that's because there are guest performers and no album artist has > been set. So setting an album artist (or allowing an option for TPE2 to > be regarded as Album Artist), would fix that problem. > > What is the effect of setting COMPILATION=0 when there are different > artists on tracks? I'm not sure what that would achieve - probably > just cause other "issues" for people. I'm guessing it would cause > groups of songs to be split into several albums with the same name. Actually, that is where SC is buggy. Two issues if COMPILATION=0 is not set: - in artist view, album still goes under Various Artists, only listed by ALBUMARTIST. In album view, sort by Artist, album, it's sorted where V.. artists are. - guest artists from such album don't see themselves on albums where they are main performers. I have already mention an example where Diana Krall performing on Ray Charles' album (as ARTIST) doesn't link to Diana Krall as sole artist on her album. K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;299869 Wrote:
>
> But it shouldn't be necessary to set COMPILATION=0 in most cases. I
> think that's because there are guest performers and no album artist has
> been set. So setting an album artist (or allowing an option for TPE2 to
> be regarded as Album Artist), would fix that problem.
>
It was required with MrSinatra's mp3 files which was attached with bug
8001.
Philip Meyer;299869 Wrote:
>
> What is the effect of setting COMPILATION=0 when there are different
> artists on tracks? I'm not sure what that would achieve - probably
> just cause other "issues" for people. I'm guessing it would cause
> groups of songs to be split into several albums with the same name.
It didn't split the albums with MrSinatras files, but I can't guarantee
that this won't happen in other cases.
I'm posting this here even though this is actually more developer
related, but it feels good to have the discussion in a single thread
since there already are some developers listening here.
I think the key code regarding all this can be found in two places:
1.
Slim::Schema::_postCheckAttributes:
- This is executed after each track has been read and created and its
purpose is for example to split albums separated by directory (the
Greatest Hit problem)
- This method also takes both the COMPILATION tag and ALBUMARTIST into
account. The compilation flag ha three states (0, 1, not set) that is
handled differently in some part of this code. In some places 0 and
"not set" is handled the same way, in some places it isn't.
- The code acts on a created track object and creates or updates the
related album and contributor(artist) objects, this also means that it
stores albums with COMPILATION tags into the database as compilation or
not compilation albums.
2.
Slim::Schema::mergeVariousArtistsAlbums:
- This is executed at the end of the scanning and as I understand its
purpose is to change earlier created albums into compilation albums if
they consists of more than one artist
- The mergeVariousArtistsAlbums code ONLY looks at albums where
compilation is not set
By looking at this code, my opinion is that we have following things to
take into account:
1.
If we want a checkbox to disable the "smart" detection logic which
isn't based on the COMILATION tag, it should be enough to just select
if Slim::Schema::mergeVariousArtistsAlbums should be executed or not.
The mergeVariousArtistsAlbums is fairly simple, so I don't think this
will have any side effect, but I haven't verified it.
2.
Any change in Slim::Schema::_postCheckAttributes will require A LOT of
testing. This part of the code is IMHO really complex and it is also
used whenever a track is written to the database, which will obviously
happen during scanning but also when you access a music file that isn't
in the database for example through Music Folder menu.
Due to all this, I would suggest that we try to stay away from changes
that affects this part of the code, the risk of causing other side
effects if just to large IMHO.
3.
The assigning of TPE2 to BAND happens in Slim::Formats::MP3, this is
defined by the code line:
Code:
$MP3::Info::v2_to_v1_names{'TPE2'} = 'BAND';
This assignment can't easily be changed to map it to both BAND and
ALBUMARTIST, so if we like to assign it to both I think we need to do
the modification in Slim::Formats::MP3 in the getTag function. Should
be fairly simple to do, but it might cause side effects in the
Slim::Schema::_postCheckAttributes method mentioned above since it
takes ALBUMARTIST into account in its logic. But since we don't
introduce a new tag, just a tag that already is handled by
SqueezeCenter for other formats, I don't think there is a big risk for
side effects. The advantage of this solution (assuming it solves the
problem), is that it will only affect MP3 files and there is no risk of
causing side effects for other formats.
So, providing a patch for 1 or 3, would probably be pretty easy for
someone that knows some perl programming. Implementing new advanced
configurable detection logic for compilations is a lot bigger work than
providing these two patches, so I think that kind of functionality can
be postponed a bit if we find a solution to the "urgent" problem.
Finally, the easiest solution would of course be to just let users use
the already existing logic with COMPILATION tags to override the
automatic logic in the cases where it doesn't work correct. I think
most users will have pretty few tags and no guest artists what so ever.
So I suspect this issue is mostly seen by people that feel it is
important that the tags contains as much information as possible and
also completely correct information. Most users don't care about tags
at all and will, as already mentioned earlier, probably just download
tags from freedb or similar services where all artists on an album in
98% of the cases is assigned to a single artist.
I can provide a patch for 1 and/or 3 if no on
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>> But it shouldn't be necessary to set COMPILATION=0 in most cases. I >> think that's because there are guest performers and no album artist has >> been set. So setting an album artist (or allowing an option for TPE2 to >> be regarded as Album Artist), would fix that problem. >> >It was required with MrSinatra's mp3 files which was attached with bug >8001. > But his files don't have album artists. I was saying it shouldn't be required if there is an album artist or all songs are by the same artist. >> What is the effect of setting COMPILATION=0 when there are different >> artists on tracks? I'm not sure what that would achieve - probably >> just cause other "issues" for people. I'm guessing it would cause >> groups of songs to be split into several albums with the same name. >It didn't split the albums with MrSinatras files, but I can't guarantee >that this won't happen in other cases. > For such a case, the album is ambiguous. There's multiple artists on an album, without a compilation tag or album artist tag. SqueezeCenter library stores an artist id with each album record (ie. a single artist needs to be associated with the album), so I wonder what it has stored in this case? I thought it may make several albums, such that it had a single artist associated with each album record. It sounds like it has instead chosen an arbitrary artist and used that instead. A possible issue in this state is that browsing by artist may not work as expected. eg. if the scanner records the first artist on the first song for that album as the album artist, Browse Artists would probably show the album as being by that artist. I don't think it's the right thing to do to try to avoid setting compilation tags; it introduces another possible state for an album that needs to be handled 's which is likely to affect other things that use the data in the music library database. I right thing to do is to make the album unambiguous by doing one one: 1. Set all artists on all songs to be the same. 2. Set the album as a compilation. 3. Set an album artist. Another thing to consider with any changes to the scanner is whether it will cause a performance penalty in the scanning process. I think the suggestion to add an option to avoid guessing compilation tags would be okay in this regard, but any logic to determine complex rules (eg. something like "if more than 50% of songs are by one artist, make this artist the album artist and don't set the album as a compilation") would surely hurt scanning performance, which would annoy more people than it satisfy. Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> CatBus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm not the one throwing around the phrase "standard tags" as if it > meant something and refusing to use ID3 2.4 because it's only been > around for a decade. It's hard to keep track given the extreme volume and tedium of this (and related) threads, but which tag are you referring to here? For better or worse I have to defend MrSinatra here.. the TCMP tag (aka COMPILATION) is in no id3 "standard" that I know of; it's an iTunes invention AFAICT. But contrary to MrSinatra's experience, I have never had to use it on my library of ~18,000 tracks and ~1,400 albums. I have used ALBUMARTIST for a few tens of albums. I'm running a locally patched version of the server that treats TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST, and would like to see SC support that interpretation as an option, however I do plan to transition to TXXX ALBUMARTIST tags soon. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> MrSinatra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > ok, but its the same thing. SORT tags will override the VA logic just > like ALBUMARTIST will. (so VA logic is not necessary for you) incorrect. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> Phil Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > SqueezeCenter library stores an artist id with each album record > (ie. a single artist needs to be associated with the album), so I > wonder what it has stored in this case? I thought it may make > several albums, such that it had a single artist associated with > each album record. It sounds like it has instead chosen an > arbitrary artist and used that instead. > A possible issue in this state is that browsing by artist may not > work as expected. eg. if the scanner records the first artist on > the first song for that album as the album artist, Browse Artists > would probably show the album as being by that artist. I do understand that there is a single artist associated with each album, however I haven't had any problems using multiple ALBUMARTIST tags per album, and these albums appear under all of those artists from "Browse Artists". I don't remember exactly, but I think the row you refer to (album.contributor) is only used to decide whether an artist is included in the "Browse Artists" list, not to decide which albums to list under that artist. Please nobody break the ability to use multiple ALBUMARTIST tags! greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>Please nobody break the ability to use multiple ALBUMARTIST tags! Interesting. I've never thought of adding multiple album artists. What ends up in artist column of the album table for such an album? I don't think I can see the need for multiple album artists, as I generally make a single album artist out of two names. Eg. for "Page & Plant" - "No Quarter: Unledded" I have a single album artist "Page & Plant", with two artists "Jimmy Page" and "Robert Plant". I can see the album under "Jimmy Page", "Robert Plant" and "Page & Plant". But you are saying that SC works if I were to create ALBUMARTIST="Jimmy Page;Robert Plant"? Do you use a separator character in one ALBUMARTIST tag, or several ALBUMARTIST tags? ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
not only that multiple ALBUMARTIST work on album. One can actually mix and match various ALBUMARTISTS across the tracks of an album: track1 - ALBUMARTIST = a; b track2 - ALBUMARTIST = a; c track3 - ALBUMARTIST = b; c album is listed by a, b, c very good feature that definitely shouldn't be discontinued. Philip Meyer;300177 Wrote: > ... > I don't think I can see the need for multiple album artists, as I > generally make a single album artist out of two names... > I'm not getting what you are saying - you don't see a need for it in your library or you don't see why somebody else would need it? K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;300185 Wrote: > not only that multiple ALBUMARTIST work on album. One can actually mix > and match various ALBUMARTISTS across the tracks of an album: > > track1 - ALBUMARTIST = a; b > track2 - ALBUMARTIST = a; c > track3 - ALBUMARTIST = b; c > > album is listed by a, b, c > > very good feature that definitely shouldn't be discontinued. Huh Of course you can put any damned thing you want in the tags. But ALBUMARTIST is an _album_ tag. Album tags should be consistent across all tracks in an album. The example you give would be like tagging different tracks in the same album with different album_replay_gain values. It's inconsistent and makes no logical sense. IMO, what you end up with should be not be well-defined by SqueezeCenter. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;300194 Wrote: > Huh > > Of course you can put any damned thing you want in the tags. But > ALBUMARTIST is an _album_ tag. Album tags should be consistent across > all tracks in an album. The example you give would be like tagging > different tracks in the same album with different album_replay_gain > values. It's inconsistent and makes no logical sense. IMO, what you > end up with should be not be well-defined by SqueezeCenter. Huh the fact that you THINK it makes no logical sense, says only about your limited experience. I also fail to see the relevance of the analogy to album reply gain tag. Good think is that above mentioned scenario works just fine and no further action us required (other than living it in place). K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;300211 Wrote: > Because something works for the oddball way that you've decided to tag > your files doesn't make it right. If it broke tomorrow you'd probably > be the only one complaining and nobody else would notice or care. > ALBUMARTIST is an _album_ tag. How can two tracks from the same ALBUM > logically have two different ALBUMARTISTs? You're describing a > property of the album, not the track. > > You can easily accomplish the same thing by using multiple ARTISTs. so, in your opinion, it is not possible that album has 3 main artists where not all 3 participate on each track? But to stop beating around the bush, I'm talking about the classical music, and I work hard to make the most of what SC has to offer. This one with multiple alubartists actually works fine. ARTIST tag is reserved for the composer, since COMPOSER tag does not have all the functionality. If it happens one day that this doesn't work anymore, I'd like to think that it wold be because they came out with something better, and I'd adjust. K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> slimkid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Huh > the fact that you THINK it makes no logical sense, says only about your > limited experience. I also fail to see the relevance of the analogy to > album reply gain tag. > Good think is that above mentioned scenario works just fine and no > further action us required (other than living it in place). Gotta agree with JJZolx on this one - ALBUMARTIST is by definition a property of the album. It is nonsensical to have different values for different tracks. The fact that SC uses the union of the ALBUMARTIST tags from the album's tracks is one reasonable behavior (if I can infer that is what it does from your example). But I would not necessarily expect that. Why is this important to you anyway? Seems like you can get the same behavior by tagging all tracks as "ALBUMARTIST=A;B;C". greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> slimkid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > so, in your opinion, it is not possible that album has 3 main artists > where not all 3 participate on each track? In this case, ARTIST should reflect the actual artists on each track, and might differ by track. ALBUMARTIST should be set to the list of artists under which you want the album to appear in "Browse Artists" and should be the same for all tracks on the album. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
gregklanderman;300223 Wrote: > > Gotta agree with JJZolx on this one - ALBUMARTIST is by definition a > property of the album. It is nonsensical to have different values for > different tracks. > And, what definition would that be? Nonsensical in what way? gregklanderman;300223 Wrote: > > Why is this important to you anyway? Seems like you can get the same > behavior by tagging all tracks as "ALBUMARTIST=A;B;C". > greg To be able to browse by artist (noted in ALBUMARTIST). If artist b doesn't participate on the track, I wouldn't want that track to be included in selection. K P.S. Arent't you the guy on this page who is advocating the use of multiple albumartists? :) -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> Phil Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Interesting. I've never thought of adding multiple album artists. > What ends up in artist column of the album table for such an album? Hi Phil, You mean album.contributor? Haven't looked at it in a few months, but I believe it's set to the first ALBUMARTIST. > I don't think I can see the need for multiple album artists, as I > generally make a single album artist out of two names. Right, I never do that, and in fact that's what I'm trying to avoid :-) > Eg. for "Page & Plant" - "No Quarter: Unledded" I have a single > album artist "Page & Plant", with two artists "Jimmy Page" and > "Robert Plant". I can see the album under "Jimmy Page", "Robert > Plant" and "Page & Plant". But you are saying that SC works if I > were to create ALBUMARTIST="Jimmy Page;Robert Plant"? Right. I would have ARTIST="Jimmy Page and Robert Plant" (or however it actually appears on the album), and then add ALBUMARTIST="Jimmy Page;Robert Plant" to all tracks. Perhaps a few more examples: I have albums by "Neil Young", "Neil Young and Crazy Horse", "Neil Young & Crazy Horse", "Neil Young with Crazy Horse", and "Neil Young & The Bluenotes". Adding ALBUMARTIST="Neil Young" to all of them collapses the "Browse Artists" display into a single "Neil Young" entry, so I don't have to remember which way the artist appears on the album in order to find it. But once I click through to a specific album, the artist appears correctly as on the album. For some artist collaborations, especially ones that only generated a single album this is also useful. Examples are: Redbird: ALBUMARTIST="Redbird;Kris Delmhorst;Peter Mulvey;Jeffrey Foucault" Waz!: ALBUMARTIST="Waz!;Steve Tilston;Maartin Allcock;Pete Zorn" So now I can find those albums both under the actual collaboration name as well as the individuals and I don't have to remember the names of all the one-off collaborations. > Do you use a separator character in one ALBUMARTIST tag, or several > ALBUMARTIST tags? Currently I'm using a single TPE2 tag with ";" as a separator, and have patched the server to treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST rather than as BAND. But I plan to switch to "TXXX ALBUMARTIST" soon. cheers, greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> slimkid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And, what definition would that be? Nonsensical in what way? "ALBUMARTIST" by definition pertains to the "ALBUM" - in fact, notice how those are the first 5 letters. "TRACKARTIST" (aka "ARTIST") pertains to the "TRACK". greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>not only that multiple ALBUMARTIST work on album. One can actually mix >and match various ALBUMARTISTS across the tracks of an album: > >very good feature that definitely shouldn't be discontinued. > I doubt that was an intended feature. Sounds really wrong. ALBUMARTIST is for grouping all songs on an album to be by the same artist. You have declared different album artists on songs on the same album. I think you have a time-bomb waiting to happen. Unless you don't actually have ALBUMARTIST tags because you've used some external tagging program that reports "Album Artist" but actually uses TPE2 BAND tag instead? >I'm not getting what you are saying - you don't see a need for it in >your library or you don't see why somebody else would need it? > I personally would expect ALBUMARTIST to reference exactly one artist name. I use ARTIST tags to denote who performs on the songs on the album, and occasionally add BAND tags to add additional information about performers on the album. I use ALBUMARTIST to ensure that the album is seen as a regular album and appears under one artist when browsing by artist. I don't have a problem with people using ALBUMARTIST to contain multiple artist names; seems a valid thing to do as long as the same info is on each song. I may find a case when I will use that feature; I haven't yet, and not sure if I will. My only concern was that SqueezeCenter also stores a contributor (artist foreign key) within the album record. This can only be one artist, so what happens if I have two album artists? Note that I have seen strange effects on an album where I only set ALBUMARTIST on one song, rather than all songs. I thought that it would only be needed on songs with guest performers, but my recommendation is to set ALBUMARTIST on all songs. Otherwise you seem to get the set of artists and track artists reported inconsistently (can't remember what the specific issues were, just remembered not to do it again!). Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> Phil Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My only concern was that SqueezeCenter also stores a contributor > (artist foreign key) within the album record. This can only be one > artist, so what happens if I have two album artists? As I said above, I was expecting multiple ALBUMARTIST tags not to work knowing there is a single contributor on the album, however, it turns out this field is only used for the fix to bug 3255, something about getting the alphabar anchors at the top of the browse page correct. I've noticed no problems. I still can't imagine why anyone would want combinations of artists to appear under "Browse Artists" but that of course is your choice. :-) If you're interested in the history of this usage, see these bugs: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=616 http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4509 My thanks to Keith Briscoe for figuring out that ALBUMARTIST would solve the problem; I was envisioning a much more complicated solution. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
just FYI, attached is slimserver database model. I'd like to turn your attention to contributor_album table. @greg, no serious discussion can be based on the premisse "I don't use it and I don't see why anybody else would". If you want to participate in the real world excercise, I can give you an example album and reasonable user expectations, so you could offer the alternative solution. @philip, if this is ever broken, world won't come to an end. I can choose to: - not upgrade any further - keep old scanner (if possible) or customize it. - customize the new scannner - change my tagging scheme using newly introduced features BTW, there's an issue with the VA that nobody is mentioning - even if there is unique ALBUMARTISTS and different ARTISTs for tracks, album will be considered a compilation and placed under Various Artists in artists view. In album view, it will be sorted among other 'V' artists. In both cases it will show 'by albumartist' correctly after the album name. cheers K +---+ |Filename: slimserver.pdf | |Download: http://forums.slimdevices.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=5052| +---+ -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
The way I use ALBUMARTIST and the way I believe it was intended is as a means of designating the artist(s) to which the album should be attributed. As an _override_ mechanism to the normal/original behavior of attributing the album to all of the artists that appear on the album. I don't think I've used multiple ALBUMARTIST tags to date, but I could certainly see it and see that it would be perfectly valid. Using different sets of ALBUMARTISTs on different tracks of an album, however, I still see as inconsistent and meaningless. The album.contributor column is used for sorting albums by artist (and, consequently, organizing the alpha pagebar). Its use in SquezeCenter is one of the reasons that sorting albums by band or composer isn't possible. There is only _one_ contributor by which albums can be sorted under the current implementation. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;300504 Wrote: > BTW, there's an issue with the VA that nobody is mentioning - even if > there is unique ALBUMARTISTS and different ARTISTs for tracks, album > will be considered a compilation and placed under Various Artists in > artists view. In album view, it will be sorted among other 'V' artists. > In both cases it will show 'by albumartist' correctly after the album > name. You're right. IMO, designating an ALBUMARTIST should immediately override the normal VA determination and make the album a non-compilation. You can do this yourself with an explicity COMPILATION=0 tag in some file types, but it shouldn't be necessary. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;300511 Wrote: > You're right. > > IMO, designating an ALBUMARTIST should immediately override the normal > VA determination and make the album a non-compilation. You can do this > yourself with an explicity COMPILATION=0 tag in some file types, but it > shouldn't be necessary. Setting COMPILATION=0 works, but with the side effect that all artists for the album are listed in artist list. I tried changing album.compilation to 0 in database after the full scan and it appears to do the trick, so it might be just a matter of changing the scanner code. K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;300515 Wrote: > Setting COMPILATION=0 works, but with the side effect that all artists > for the album are listed in artist list. That, IMO, is a bug. I think those artists should be suppressed whether or not the album is a compilation. I think the problem is more historical than anything else - at one time any album that had more than one artist was considered a compilation no matter what. It was never foreseen that you could have non-compilations by using explicit COMPILATION tags or ALBUMARTIST. http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5108 The example I always use is the Sinatra album called 'Duets', where Sinatra records each track with a different artist. This is obviously a non-compilation. It's a Sinatra album and you want it grouped with Sinatra, so the ALBUMARTIST is Sinatra. Currently for SqueezeCenter you must mark it explicitly with COMPILATION=0. Unfortunately, as you point out, all those guest artists will be listed in the artist list. This is a bug that I really wish would get fixed. I think it would simplify a lot of things greatly. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;300522 Wrote: > That, IMO, is a bug. I think those artists should be suppressed whether > or not the album is a compilation. I think the problem is more > historical than anything else - at one time any album that had more > than one artist was considered a compilation no matter what. It was > never foreseen that you could have non-compilations by using explicit > COMPILATION tags or ALBUMARTIST. > > http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5108 > > The example I always use is the Sinatra album called 'Duets', where > Sinatra records each track with a different artist. This is obviously > a non-compilation. It's a Sinatra album and you want it grouped with > Sinatra, so the ALBUMARTIST is Sinatra. Currently for SqueezeCenter > you must mark it explicitly with COMPILATION=0. Unfortunately, as you > point out, all those guest artists will be listed in the artist list. > > This is a bug that I really wish would get fixed. I think it would > simplify a lot of things greatly. You know, that is a tough call. In your Sinatra example, without COMPILATION tag set, all those other guys might be not significant enough to deserve a place in artist list. But problem is if some of them are, then even if there is a guest artist there who also has a separate album in your library, you won't be able to flow between those two albums based on that artist. Solution I found is to tag only those tracks with COMPILATION=0. Then, what if, in classical music case there's an album where star soprano sings stuff from 5 famous composers. Soprano becomes ALBUMARTIST, composers become ARTIST, but I do want them to show in artist list and I want to be able to browse by that artist for other albums where they might participate. Setting COMPILATION=0 (for all tracks) solves is. So, in this case,it is desired behavior. I almost see a need for ALBUMCOMPILATION tag :) :) :) K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;300527 Wrote: > Solution I found is to tag only those tracks with COMPILATION=0. Again, this is an album property, not a property of the track. If, for some reason it affects how SqueezeCenter treats the artists on the track then you're really just exploiting a side effect that could go away overnight. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> slimkid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > @greg, no serious discussion can be based on the premisse "I don't use > it and I don't see why anybody else would". SlimKid, you have misinterpreted (or misrepresented) what I wrote. I counter that no serious discussion can be had with someone such as yourself who is either incapable of reading simple English or unwilling to make the effort to understand what has been written. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> JJZolx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5108 > The example I always use is the Sinatra album called 'Duets', where > Sinatra records each track with a different artist. This is obviously > a non-compilation. It's a Sinatra album and you want it grouped with > Sinatra, so the ALBUMARTIST is Sinatra. Currently for SqueezeCenter > you must mark it explicitly with COMPILATION=0. Unfortunately, as you > point out, all those guest artists will be listed in the artist list. I wonder why I don't see this problem.. I do this sort of thing all the time. I have the different ARTIST tags on each track, then a single ALBUMARTIST across all tracks, and no COMPILATION tags anywhere in my entire library. And I do not see those auxiliary track artists in the "Browse Artists" menu. Running 7.0 out of svn from late February (r17707), will likely update within the 7.0 branch this weekend. How do you have your server compilation parameters set? greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
JJZolx;300530 Wrote: > Again, this is an album property, not a property of the track. If, for > some reason it affects how SqueezeCenter treats the artists on the > track then you're really just exploiting a side effect that could go > away overnight. Oh, I'm well avare of that. It just works, just as different artists in albumartist work for what I want to achieve. And, if it at some point stops ... well, I'll have to find some other way. K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>I still can't imagine why anyone would want combinations of artists to >appear under "Browse Artists" but that of course is your choice. :-) I don't do that for all artists, in fact not frequently at all. I do it when I want to put the full names of artists in the ARTIST tags, but the album is known by the combination of the names. "Unleaded by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page" looks a bit messy, "Unleaded by Page and Plant" looks better. I can then click "Page and Plant" to only show albums by "Page and Plant", whereas if I clicked "Robert Plant", I get any solo and joint albums, etc. Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>I wonder why I don't see this problem.. I do this sort of thing all >the time. I have the different ARTIST tags on each track, then a >single ALBUMARTIST across all tracks, and no COMPILATION tags anywhere >in my entire library. And I do not see those auxiliary track artists >in the "Browse Artists" menu. I imagine this is another case of someone thinking they have ALBUMARTIST tags, but actually they have used TPE2 BAND. That would explain everything above. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
gregklanderman;300537 Wrote: > I wonder why I don't see this problem.. I do this sort of thing all > the time. I have the different ARTIST tags on each track, then a > single ALBUMARTIST across all tracks, and no COMPILATION tags anywhere > in my entire library. And I do not see those auxiliary track artists > in the "Browse Artists" menu. Albums tagged like this would be marked compilations, wouldn't they? Do they get grouped under the VA artist when you browse albums sorted by artist, or do they get grouped with the ALBUMARTIST? Single-track artists from compilations are correctly suppressed, but the same from non-compilations are not. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> JJZolx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Albums tagged like this would be marked compilations, wouldn't they? > Do they get grouped under the VA artist when you browse albums sorted > by artist, or do they get grouped with the ALBUMARTIST? These albums get grouped under the ALBUMARTIST. See Phil's post re: ALBUMARTIST vs. TPE2. How have you set the top 5 options on the settings tab which includes the compilation settings as the 4th and 5th items? Sorry, I'm at work and don't have it in front of me.. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
gregklanderman;300632 Wrote: > > JJZolx forums.slimdevices.com> writes: > > > Albums tagged like this would be marked compilations, wouldn't they? > > > Do they get grouped under the VA artist when you browse albums > sorted > > by artist, or do they get grouped with the ALBUMARTIST? > > These albums get grouped under the ALBUMARTIST. > > See Phil's post re: ALBUMARTIST vs. TPE2. > > How have you set the top 5 options on the settings tab which includes > the compilation settings as the 4th and 5th items? Well, I've figured out the difference, but the logic completely escapes me. These are all Flac files, no BAND tags, so the only option that's relevant is 'group compilations', which I have set. If I take two such duet/guest-artist albums, each with an ALBUMARTIST, and mark one explicilty COMPILATION=0 and the other with no COMPILATION tag, then the former has the compilation column in the database set to 0, the latter set to NULL. Screwed up in its own right, but SC goes out of its way to then treat them the same when listing albums, so both get grouped correctly under the ALBUMARTIST when browsing albums. The difference, and the apparent reason that the artists from the album marked COMPILATION=0 are being listed under browse artists, is that 'guest' artists from that album are given the role of ARTIST (1) while those from the compilation NULL album are given the role of TRACKARTIST (6). This must be how they're surpressed - simply by not retrieving TRACKARTISTs. Does this make any bloody sense to anyone? -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
On 9-May-08, at 10:09 PM, JJZolx wrote: > > Does this make any bloody sense to anyone? I'm thinking that anyone who had even ONE braincell willing to think about this issue and actually make something happen.. lost that braincell in the three threads going on incessantly about the same thing with the same points over and over. if anyone comes out of this with a point, please do us all a favour and make it...then kill anyone who keeps muttering on about the same points. -k ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
kdf;300675 Wrote: > On 9-May-08, at 10:09 PM, JJZolx wrote: > > > > Does this make any bloody sense to anyone? > > I'm thinking that anyone who had even ONE braincell willing to think > about this issue and actually make something happen.. > lost that braincell in the three threads going on incessantly about > the same thing with the same points over and over. > > if anyone comes out of this with a point, please do us all a favour > and make it...then kill anyone who keeps muttering on about the same > points. Kevin, hitting the bottle a little hard tonight? ;-) Have fun... -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
On 9-May-08, at 11:37 PM, JJZolx wrote: > > kdf;300675 Wrote: >> On 9-May-08, at 10:09 PM, JJZolx wrote: >>> >>> Does this make any bloody sense to anyone? >> >> I'm thinking that anyone who had even ONE braincell willing to think >> about this issue and actually make something happen.. >> lost that braincell in the three threads going on incessantly about >> the same thing with the same points over and over. >> >> if anyone comes out of this with a point, please do us all a favour >> and make it...then kill anyone who keeps muttering on about the same >> points. > > Kevin, hitting the bottle a little hard tonight? ;-) Have fun... Just fed up Jim. I mean really. I got used to your kind of venom, but this kind of trolling is another league altogether. No one taking part is actually capable of DOING anything. gotta make you wonder. surely it's a sad thing that the effect anyone might want is wholly lost. Even worse that other threads suffer as well. others like me, who might be capable of actually making changes, have had to simply delete entire DAYS of emails just because it's not worth filtering individually. But, if you'd like to write it off as something so banal as drink...well, Jim...feel free to cough up code of your own to compensate for those you've caused to walk away. Frankly, I'm starting to value sleep far more than reading this crap, or even filtering it out from the rest. The free gear isn't worth it. Those who actually monitor the forum and actually CARE about the the productivity of volunteer coders, take note. Some things go too far. cheers, -k ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
kdf;300681 Wrote: > No one taking part is actually capable of DOING anything. gotta make > you wonder. This isn't a developer list. That no developers take part in this type of a discussion is fairly standard. I don't think that anybody expects them to. I just learned something because of what someone else said and that's worth something to me. I think that's where the value lies - in figuring out the quirks, the bugs, and the general weirdness of how SqueezeCenter tries to deal with library cataloging. -- JJZolx Jim JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
forums.slimdevices.com> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2) On 10-May-08, at 12:07 AM, JJZolx wrote: > > kdf;300681 Wrote: >> No one taking part is actually capable of DOING anything. gotta make >> you wonder. > > This isn't a developer list. right...list police, good call. > That no developers take part in this type > of a discussion is fairly standard. I don't think that anybody > expects > them to. > This is one thread of many that is all on the same subject. Claiming that no one expects a solution is just avoiding accountability on your part. > I just learned something because of what someone else said and that's > worth something to me. I think that's where the value lies - in > figuring out the quirks, the bugs, and the general weirdness of how > SqueezeCenter tries to deal with library cataloging. ok, then keep it to one thread. thanks, -kdf ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>No one taking part is actually capable of DOING anything. gotta make >you wonder. I am capable of doing patches, but there's little incentive - things are generally working for me (apart from a few minor issues that I've lived with for a long time), so I'd be trying to change something in a way that I don't use. >From exploring this thread, I was hoping to come up with a list of things that >were not quite right that everyone agrees should be changed. However, we >always seem to go round in circles, and all of the various threads and bugs >are now discussing the same issues. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
kdf;300681 Wrote: > > No one taking part is actually capable of DOING anything. gotta make > > you wonder. > I'm not sure I agree if you really meant "no one", but if you change it to "most of the the people" I can agree... But I do agree that this discussion back and forth where the same arguments is repeated all over again isn't really moving this any closer to a solution. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
kdf;300675 Wrote: > > if anyone comes out of this with a point, please do us all a favour > and make it...then kill anyone who keeps muttering on about the same > points. > > -k For the sake of efficiency, I'll skip over your insulting rant and get to two points I believe everybody here agrees: - Artist View (Home->Artists): when ALBUMARTIST tag is present in file, then regardless of whether the album is compilation or not, it should not go into Various Artist area. It should be listed as by and be listed under ALBUMARTISTS in artist list (Home->Artists->ALBUMARTIST). Right now compilation albums, even though they are displayed as by , are grouped under Home->Artists->Various Artists. - Album View (Home->Albims): When album is listed like by , regardless of what is that SOMETHING is, sorting should follow the general sorting rule of the list. If it is just by , then everything is OK, if it is by , than should be treated as artist and sort should effectively become . Right now, compilations with albumartist are listed as by but sorted (ina case of sort) among albums whose artist start with 'V' or are 'Various Artists'. I really hope these two chapters are right to the point. @kdf, I believe you are listening to these discussions through eMail and are under wrong impression that this is coming from the developers forum. Actually, this is coming form the General forum, and I find your assumptions about capabilities of the discussion participants rather inappropriate and beside the point since there's no requirement to be able to code in order to engage into discussion. K -- slimkid The sound stage will open up, bass will tighten and the imaging will improve. DVD performance will also increase substantially. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAj2aPdQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMNuuFSvN0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRhRv4q_SI http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlrpe8Ig5m8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=dC9tGlwPln8 slimkid's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8881 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
>- Artist View (Home->Artists): when ALBUMARTIST tag is present in file, >then regardless of whether the album is compilation or not, it should >not go into Various Artist area. It should be listed as by > and be listed under ALBUMARTISTS in artist list >(Home->Artists->ALBUMARTIST). Right now compilation albums, even though >they are displayed as by , are grouped under >Home->Artists->Various Artists. > Yes, I'd agree with that, although I think it's a bit clearer to think of the rule as follows: "When the scanner finds and album with an album artist tag, set Compilation=No". i.e. the fault is in the scanner that builds the library from scanning source files. >- Album View (Home->Albims): When album is listed like by >, regardless of what is that SOMETHING is, sorting should >follow the general sorting rule of the list. If it is just by , >then everything is OK, if it is by , than >should be treated as artist and sort should effectively become >. Right now, compilations with albumartist are listed >as by but sorted (ina case of sort) >among albums whose artist start with 'V' or are 'Various Artists'. > I found this para harder to interpret. I think it's generally covered by the first point though - if there is an album artist, the album should not be considered a compilation. This would fix the second problem (above)? i.e. there should never be an album with an album artist and a Compilation flag - they are mutually exclusive. I think it's important to: 1. Work out what SC currently does. Perhaps document these rules in the wiki. This willl benefit everyone, esp. when yet another thread on the same problems comes along in the future! 2. Document any actual clear problems/bugs with these rules. 3. Keep additional enhancement requests separate from (2). Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
> JJZolx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Well, I've figured out the difference Jim, glad you figured out the issue - you should open a very specific bug for this. Btw, I didn't find this post offensive at all especially in relation to some of the other posts by others in these threads. Also unlike most of the rest of these threads we actually figured something out. And I'm perfectly capable of making code changes, but like Phil, things are mostly working for me, and I choose to focus the limited time I have for SC on things I want. I do try to help out on the forums a bit to clarify confusion over things I understand. I agree it has been long and tedious, circular, and with several vocal posters unwilling to actually listen to what others write. But seriously Kevin, if you don't like these threads, just skip them. Most mail readers should let you just delete the whole thread. Posting your own venom doesn't really help. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
