Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;314225 Wrote: Hi Erland, sorry to abuse your time and patience, but could you just confirm what I think I understand (or assume) from all this: I just did some tests based on MP3 files with TPE2 tags and no custom tags. slimkid;314225 Wrote: If there is a unique ALBUMARTIST tag set for an album (mp3 and/or flac) and if there are different artists set in ARTIST tags, then: - that album will not be a compilation. Correct! If you have TPE2 tags in your MP3 files that you like to be considered as ALBUMARTIST, you will have to set the Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist option in SqueezeCenter Settings/Behaviour slimkid;314225 Wrote: - it will be listed and sorted by albumartist in 'album' view Correct! For MP3 files, the setting List albums by all artists for that album no longer seems to have any effect if you have set the Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist option. I suppose the reason is that TPE2 is considered to be Album Artist instead of Band when this options is active. slimkid;314225 Wrote: - it will be listed by albumartist in 'artist' view Correct! slimkid;314225 Wrote: - other artists (from ARTIST tags) will not show in the artist list, unless there is already some other album by that particular artist Correct! The other artists aren't even shown if you have enabled the List compilation albums under each artist option. The only place the other artists are shown is when you lists the tracks on an album or views the track details. slimkid;314225 Wrote: - if there are other albums or tracks by the artist participating in some of ARTIST tags, then it is possible to drill down by artist between other albums and tracks and this album (and vice versa) Correct! You will see both the non compilation albums and the compilation albums belonging to the artist. The compilation albums will be listed as ... by Various Artists, albums with TPE2 or ALBUMARTIST tags will be listed as ... by Album Artist or TPE2 artist. slimkid;314225 Wrote: - if there are other albums by the artist participating in some of ARTIST tags in 'our' album, then in 'artist' view, under that artist, our album is also listed and following the link, it will lead to only tracks performed by that artist. Correct! Although, I don't really understand the difference compared to the previous question. I've verified all this from the web interface, but I'm pretty sure it behaves the same way in the player and controller interfaces. -- 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?
What's wrong with putting Various Artists in the Album Artist tag if you are saying that you want this as the Album Artists name. Nothing really wrong with doing that. It's just a name after all. However, I don't consider Various Artists to be an artist name; it's another miss-use of the tag. I'd never need to set the album artist to Various Artists because SqueezeCenter does that automatically when the album is a compilation album. Setting the album artist to Various Artists may also lead to inconsistencies in SqueezeCenter, because it displays compilation albums as belonging to an artist called Various Artists automatically. Most applications have a mechanism for indicating that an album is a compilation album. Even iTunes/iPod have a Compilation tag, and you can browse compilations. This doesn't involve having an album artist. I'm not sure what else you would put there if you sort by that. Don't know what you mean exactly. I wouldn't put anything in an album artist tag if there's not meant to be anything there. If all songs are by the same performing artist, there's no need to have an album artist. For a compilation album, songs will have different performing artists, and an album artist is not necessary, because it's a compilation; the software knows there are various artists, and the album is not owned by a single artist name. As I said before, it would be better if there were a Browse Compilations, rather than Browse Artists Various Artists (or whatever name has been entered in the Music Library setting When compilation albums are grouped together, they appear under Various Artists by default. You can change that name below.). When browsing albums, compilation albums should be displayed by Various Artists (or the configered alternative name). If sort by album artist is selected, it should sort by that name too. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Folks - could someone please explain to me why we need this TPE logic at all. Over the last 2 years I have been following the guidelines for ripping my music collection using EAC into flac files. These are stored in the recommended ARTIST\ALBUM or VARIOS ARTIST\GENRE\ALBUM structure. Until SC7.01 (I was fine with 7.0) multiple disc albums under the VARIOUS ARTIST directory would group together no problem. However, since 7.01 it seems this no longer happens: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7869 From reading 'some' of this thread it seems that this is all due to some new tag data being used for album artist?? What are we really trying to achieve with this. What was wrong with the logic in SC7.0. I'm really not trying to slow you all down but a simple explination would be nice (if anyone is feeling generous... I realise you guys all seem to be the experts shaping the future). For the humble (read simple) end user it feels like we are going backwards here. Thanks for reading me :-) -- BBear BBear's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11612 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;314375 Wrote: What's wrong with putting Various Artists in the Album Artist tag if you are saying that you want this as the Album Artists name. Nothing really wrong with doing that. It's just a name after all. However, I don't consider Various Artists to be an artist name; it's another miss-use of the tag. I'd never need to set the album artist to Various Artists because SqueezeCenter does that automatically when the album is a compilation album. Setting the album artist to Various Artists may also lead to inconsistencies in SqueezeCenter, because it displays compilation albums as belonging to an artist called Various Artists automatically. Most applications have a mechanism for indicating that an album is a compilation album. Even iTunes/iPod have a Compilation tag, and you can browse compilations. This doesn't involve having an album artist. but there is more to the universe than just SC. shocking, but true. SC does set ALBUMARTIST in the DB as Various Artists automatically (assuming conditions are met), thats true, and it marks it as a comp too. but if you use other apps too, this might not work for you. Philip Meyer;314375 Wrote: I'm not sure what else you would put there if you sort by that. Don't know what you mean exactly. I wouldn't put anything in an album artist tag if there's not meant to be anything there. If all songs are by the same performing artist, there's no need to have an album artist. For a compilation album, songs will have different performing artists, and an album artist is not necessary, because it's a compilation; the software knows there are various artists, and the album is not owned by a single artist name. see above. Philip Meyer;314375 Wrote: As I said before, it would be better if there were a Browse Compilations, rather than Browse Artists Various Artists (or whatever name has been entered in the Music Library setting When compilation albums are grouped together, they appear under Various Artists by default. You can change that name below.). totally agree and excellent idea. why does SC conflate an albums property, with how that album is named (named via album artist?) what i would do, is if something seems like a comp to SC, and there is no album artist or TPE2 tag for it to use, it should then use the ALBUM name, and set the COMP field in the positive. i know you wouldn't like that phil, BUT what i am getting at here is i think similar to what you are saying. browse the property, not the name. Philip Meyer;314375 Wrote: When browsing albums, compilation albums should be displayed by Various Artists (or the configered alternative name). If sort by album artist is selected, it should sort by that name too. i think there is a bug when doing Home-Artists-Various Artists. and what do you mean 'if sort by album artist is selected?' -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I used to have my library and Slimserver set up just how I like it - Compilations were correctly listed under Various Artists and contributing artists did not appear in the main list of Artists. This seems to have changed, now that I've moved to SC 7 The problem occurs when an album with a main artist has some tracks where other artists contribute eg Santana's Supernatural with contributing artists Eric Clapton, Eagle Eye Cherry, Lauryn Hill etc. SC appears to treat this as a compilation, and lists the album under Various Artists, though it does show the Artist as Santana (probably because the Album Artist tag is set to Santana) If I explicitly set the Compilation tag to 0, then SC stops treating it as a compilation. However, it insists on including each contributing artist in the artist list despite the setting of the option List albums by band = Yes (and List Albums by All Artists for that Album = No) and also Group compilation albums together = Yes I'm running SC 7.0.1 19705, on Windows Vista Home Premium. All my music is in FLAC ripped using dbPoweramp (various versions over the last few years) I have just re-ripped Supernatural using the latest dBPoweramp (V13 Reference) and this automatically sets Compilation=0 which is helpful. It also sets Album Artist = Santana But SC still lists all of the contributing artists, which is not what I want. So, how can I achieve the result I want (and used to have)? and Is this a bug or is it the intended behaviour (for some weird reason)? (I know I could delete the contributing artist tags but that would be extra work and defeats the great metadata lookup in dBpoweramp) (I did look at the WIKI page on tags, where it states that SC looks at the BAND tag rather than ALBUM ARTIST in Flac files. Could someone in the know confirm whether this is the case. I did try deleting the Album Artist Tag and setting a Band tag but it made no difference to my problem.) Regards Nigel -- NigelC NigelC's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2101 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?
BBear;314411 Wrote: Folks - could someone please explain to me why we need this TPE logic at all. not sure what you mean by that. one thing is treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST which is fairly straight forward. the other thing is a function SC has of VA detection logic. i contend we don't need the second thing except as an option. BBear;314411 Wrote: Over the last 2 years I have been following the guidelines for ripping my music collection using EAC into flac files. These are stored in the recommended ARTIST\ALBUM or VARIOS ARTIST\GENRE\ALBUM structure. Until SC7.01 (I was fine with 7.0) multiple disc albums under the VARIOUS ARTIST directory would group together no problem. However, since 7.01 it seems this no longer happens: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7869 ok... BBear;314411 Wrote: From reading 'some' of this thread it seems that this is all due to some new tag data being used for album artist?? i don't follow you here. the only thing new is in using a MP3's TPE2 field to work as ALBUMARTIST, and thats totally optional, (and off by default). BBear;314411 Wrote: What are we really trying to achieve with this. What was wrong with the logic in SC7.0. I'm really not trying to slow you all down but a simple explination would be nice (if anyone is feeling generous... I realise you guys all seem to be the experts shaping the future). For the humble (read simple) end user it feels like we are going backwards here. Thanks for reading me :-) i think your issue has little to nothing to do with any of this, but i could be wrong. but what we are trying to do is figure out the best way for SC to handle scanning of albums that have no album artist data and that appear to be compilations. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
why does SC conflate an albums property, with how that album is named (named via album artist?) what i would do, is if something seems like a comp to SC, and there is no album artist or TPE2 tag for it to use, it should then use the ALBUM name, and set the COMP field in the positive. i know you wouldn't like that phil I don't know, it seems like what you are suggesting is exactly how it works now? If an album seems like a compilation (i.e. songs by different artists), and there is no album artist, then it is a compilation. When browsing albums, compilation albums should be displayed by Various Artists (or the configered alternative name). If sort by album artist is selected, it should sort by that name too. i think there is a bug when doing Home-Artists-Various Artists. I don't think so - works fine for me. and what do you mean 'if sort by album artist is selected?' Isn't this how you usually browse your music in the webUI? Browse Albums, with Sort By set to artist, album. That artist is the album artist. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I have just re-ripped Supernatural using the latest dBPoweramp (V13 Reference) and this automatically sets Compilation=0 which is helpful. It also sets Album Artist = Santana I think you'll find that dbPowerAmp stores Album Artist in a band tag. I have dbPowerAmp (don't use the ripper, only use it for converting FLAC to mp3 for transfer to portable music player). I just tried ripping a couple of tracks in dbPowerAmp, and set the Album Artist to Test. I then loaded the songs into Foobar music player, and looked at the tag properties. It says it has stored the tags in id3v2 format. It reports the following: Artist Name : Pink Floyd Track Title : Careful With That Axe, Eugene Album Title : Ummagumma Date : 1969 Genre : Progressive Rock Composer : Performer : Album Artist : Track Number : 2 Total Tracks : 4 Disc Number : 1 Total Discs : 2 Comment : BAND : Test Note that Album Artist is blank, and a custom tag BAND has been used to store the value Test. FLAC tag format can support proper Album Artist tags, but id3v2 was written by dbPowerAmp. The tags were not readable in my usual tagging app Mp3Tag. It said the tag format was id3v2, but couldn't read the tags. Maybe the tag format and mapping of fields to tags is configurable in dbPowerAmp - I don't know, this was using the default settings, as I've never used it before and haven't changed any configuration options. I tried ripping to mp3 format too, and it stored id3v2 format tags. The Album Artist was stored in TPE2 (BAND). You could confirm that SqueezeCenter is reading your tag as Band instead of Album Artist by browsing to a song in the webUI. It should list the tag information it has read. It will be saying Band: xxx instead of Album Artist: xxx. But SC still lists all of the contributing artists, which is not what I want. You need to set an Album Artist tag that SqueezeCenter understands, or if you have SqueezeCenter v7.1 there is now a new option to treat TPE2 as Album Artist, instead of Band. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I really don't understand the reason to start this discussion again, but I guess I've probably missed something. No, I'm not trying to silence anyone, I just don't understand why you guys keeps spending energy on something that's already solved instead of doing something useful with your time. 1. Bug '#8001' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8001) makes MP3 files work as FLAC files, with the new option you can instruct SqueezeCenter to treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST. The result is that MP3 albums with a TPE2 tag will not be treated as compilations and will thanks to this be sorted under the TPE2 value instead of under Various Artists. The change of 8001 is part of the 7.1 nightly release, so you can try it already now. 2. The patch provided for bug '#8324' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324) makes it possible to turn off the automatic logic that makes tracks with multiple TPE1 artists and to be treated as compilations. If the automatic logic is turned off, I believe an album will ONLY be treated as a compilation if it has a COMPILATION or TCMP tag. I believe TCMP(iTunes specific tag) is treated the same way as a COMPILATION tag. I also believe that most people really doesn't need this patch, because the change in bug 8001 will solve everything. 3. If none of the above doesn't solve the issue you can still override the compilation status by setting COMPILATION or TCMP tag to 1. *MrSinatra*: I would really appreciate if you would try the 7.1 nightly release unless you have already done so, this way we get to know if it solves your problems or not. The latest 7.1 nightly is found here: http://www.slimdevices.com/downloads/nightly/latest/7.1/ For some reason there isn't one available at the moment, so unless the above link works you can use yesterdays build found here instead: http://www.slimdevices.com/downloads/nightly/SqueezeCenter_7.1_trunk_v2008-06-21/ As a side note, I really can't understand why it would be acceptable to set TCMP but unacceptable to set COMPILATION. TCMP is not a standard tag, it's not even a standard MP3 frame, so in my world this makes it even less standard than a COMPILATION tag. Unless you consider everything Apple do as the standard of course. See here (row 6 in table) for more information: http://www.id3.org/Compliance_Issues -- 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 really don't understand the reason to start this discussion again, but I guess I've probably missed something. No, I'm not trying to silence anyone, I just don't understand why you guys keeps spending energy on something that's already solved instead of doing something useful with your time. I am trying to defend the rest of the world and avoid unnecessary alternative compilation detection mechanisms, as I can't see any problem with the current logic. The patch provided for bug '#8324' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324) makes it possible to turn off the automatic logic And it should be clear that by turning it off, there is no alternative to using a non-standard id3 tag to identify compilation albums. I also believe that most people really doesn't need this patch, because the change in bug 8001 will solve everything. Yes. If none of the above doesn't solve the issue you can still override the compilation status by setting COMPILATION or TCMP tag to 1. Yes, and it should never be necessary to set COMPILATION=0. TCMP is not a standard tag, it's not even a standard MP3 frame, so in my world this makes it even less standard than a COMPILATION tag. Yes, I agree. iTunes was so wrong in doing that. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
in other words, if it finds a string like Various Artist in TPE2 or an album artist tag, to then go ahead and classify it as a comp? doesn't that make sense? Absolutely not. A compilation album is when there are multiple artists on an album. If you have guest performers on an album and thus the album isn't really a compilation, then adding an album artist means the album is by a single artist, and thus the album is not considered a compilation. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
erland;314024 Wrote: I really don't understand the reason to start this discussion again, but I guess I've probably missed something. No, I'm not trying to silence anyone, I just don't understand why you guys keeps spending energy on something that's already solved instead of doing something useful with your time. bug 8324, with your patch, is about to be reviewed. so i revisited the thread. erland;314024 Wrote: 1. Bug '#8001' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8001) makes MP3 files work as FLAC files, with the new option you can instruct SqueezeCenter to treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST. The result is that MP3 albums with a TPE2 tag will not be treated as compilations and will thanks to this be sorted under the TPE2 value instead of under Various Artists. The change of 8001 is part of the 7.1 nightly release, so you can try it already now. right, i've been using it since the day it came out, i reported it worked well in the bug 8001 report. however... b/c of the exchange between Phil and I in the last few posts, we may have discovered a bug with it that also relates to this 8324 issue, in that i can't find my 'TPE2=Various Artists' albums under the 'Home-Artists' list. erland;314024 Wrote: 2. The patch provided for bug '#8324' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324) makes it possible to turn off the automatic logic that makes tracks with multiple TPE1 artists and to be treated as compilations. If the automatic logic is turned off, I believe an album will ONLY be treated as a compilation if it has a COMPILATION or TCMP tag. I believe TCMP(iTunes specific tag) is treated the same way as a COMPILATION tag. I also believe that most people really doesn't need this patch, because the change in bug 8001 will solve everything. i am not sure that 8001 does solve everything. aside from whatever bug i may have found, (that the auto detection might have a hand in causing), i think it does make sense to [optionally] turn off a feature you don't need. (remember infrant users!) something else to consider is a situation where someone does not have TPE2 tags or album artist tags. they may want to turn the VA logic off, avoid the misidentifications, and then decide how to proceed based on what they see. and lets not forget that mp3 is not the only file format affected by VA logic detection. as to how other formats are affected, i can't say, but i've seen people comment about that. and if u look in 8324, i put a link where a user says the VA detection hampers him. erland;314024 Wrote: 3. If none of the above doesn't solve the issue you can still override the compilation status by setting COMPILATION or TCMP tag to 1. TPE2 as album artist does sort things right for me, and i could then add a comp tag if i wanted SC to know its a comp. (although i don't know if setting such a tag would then cause another re-sort to VA, since i have no comp tags. i need to experiment on that, but i am hoping assuming it won't). also, i could just remove TPE2 tags on any TPE1 mismatch albums i want SC to ID as VA/comp albums. but is that really elegant? removing TPE2 tags that say Various Artists for example, to let SC do the VA logic on them? SC isn't the only app i use afterall. i think there may be other ramifcations as well, i can't see em all yet though. erland;314024 Wrote: *MrSinatra*: I would really appreciate if you would try the 7.1 nightly release unless you have already done so, this way we get to know if it solves your problems or not. The latest 7.1 nightly is found here: http://www.slimdevices.com/downloads/nightly/latest/7.1/ For some reason there isn't one available at the moment, so unless the above link works you can use yesterdays build found here instead: http://www.slimdevices.com/downloads/nightly/SqueezeCenter_7.1_trunk_v2008-06-21/ already on it. besides noting it in 8001, its in my signature. :) it did go a LONG way to solving a lot of my issues. now i'm left with a new, more minor bug, and a question of how to best identify comps to SC. yes, explicit comp tags are probably the best way. but i think having SC recognize the string Various Artists in the SC ALBUMARTIST field would be a good addition to the logic. (somewhat surprisingly, they already do this for the ARTIST field) erland;314024 Wrote: As a side note, I really can't understand why it would be acceptable to set TCMP but unacceptable to set COMPILATION. TCMP is not a standard tag, it's not even a standard MP3 frame, so in my world this makes it even less standard than a COMPILATION tag. Unless you consider everything Apple do as the standard of course. See here (row 6 in table) for more information: http://www.id3.org/Compliance_Issues i think you are making assumptions about my feelings on the matter that don't exist. i don't use comp tags at all. i know very little about them. i don't really understand the difference between TCMP and COMPILATION.
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
in such a case, if there is a mismatch, it WILL call that a VA album. i know this b/c that was the case with one of the 2 albums that was ID'd i mentioned in my previous post. the code andy quotes shows this. one mismatch on one track (out of two or more) is enough to get the classification. It was a rhetorical question - I know that the logic would treat an album with two songs by different artists as a compilation. I was setting that as an example to show that you can't easily create a rule along the lines of if only one track artist on an album doesn't match the other track artists, then it's not a compilation. I believe that when there are different track artists on songs on an album, the album should either have an Album Artist or be a compilation. Unless told otherwise, SC disambiguates the album by making it a compilation. Some other rule could be attempted, I guess, like if there are more than 4 songs, and 75% or more songs have the same track artist, then make that artist the Album Artist, and thus the album would not be a compilation. However, the logic is not as easy to explain to users; it's best to keep it as it is. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
we may have discovered a bug with it that also relates to this 8324 issue, in that i can't find my 'TPE2=Various Artists' albums under the 'Home-Artists' list. I find this a strange thing to do. An album artist of Various Artists seems contradictory. Any artist name being Various Artists would be wrong in my opinion. Is it a compilation, or is it an album with guest performers? As SC by default displays compilation albums under Various Artists, and the compilation detection code apparently looks for strings containing Various Artists, I suggest you try changing your TPE2=Various Artists to something else to see if there is only a problem because of that specific artist 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;314027 Wrote: I really don't understand the reason to start this discussion again, but I guess I've probably missed something. No, I'm not trying to silence anyone, I just don't understand why you guys keeps spending energy on something that's already solved instead of doing something useful with your time. I am trying to defend the rest of the world and avoid unnecessary alternative compilation detection mechanisms, as I can't see any problem with the current logic. thats why we're talking about the issue in this thread. :) Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: The patch provided for bug '#8324' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324) makes it possible to turn off the automatic logic And it should be clear that by turning it off, there is no alternative to using a non-standard id3 tag to identify compilation albums. not exactly. if u turn it off, and use TPE2 as album artist, you will get things sorted right. then what i've been proposing is a new user defined function VERY similar to whats in the VA auto detection already. essentially a user could define to SC what strings in their tags SC should recognize to mean COMP so, if i put in the string Various Artists to such a hypothetical proposed SC function in settings, and SC found that string in say, my files TPE2 tag, it would know to simply classify that album as a COMP in the SC database. SC wouldn't be guessing it would be doing exactly what the user specified. and it would only affect the COMP field in the DB, it wouldn't have any role in populating the SC ALBUMARTIST field in the DB. this would work with standard tags, and its very similar to how SC already looks for Various Artists string in a files Artist field. Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: I also believe that most people really doesn't need this patch, because the change in bug 8001 will solve everything. Yes. i'm not convinced yet. Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: If none of the above doesn't solve the issue you can still override the compilation status by setting COMPILATION or TCMP tag to 1. Yes, and it should never be necessary to set COMPILATION=0. and this is one reason why i'm not convinced yet... based on things i've read, a lot of people do set COMP=0 to undo what VA logic did b/c they would rather do that than use album artist tags to reverse it. Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: TCMP is not a standard tag, it's not even a standard MP3 frame, so in my world this makes it even less standard than a COMPILATION tag. Yes, I agree. iTunes was so wrong in doing that. i guess i'm lost here. whats the beef? is it with non-standard tags, or just differences between differing comp tags? is it possible for my id3v2.3 tags to start with more than 4 characters? ie. TPE1, TPE2, TCMP? -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;314030 Wrote: in other words, if it finds a string like Various Artist in TPE2 or an album artist tag, to then go ahead and classify it as a comp? doesn't that make sense? Absolutely not. A compilation album is when there are multiple artists on an album. If you have guest performers on an album and thus the album isn't really a compilation, then adding an album artist means the album is by a single artist, and thus the album is not considered a compilation. i need to see what happens when i set a comp tag (re: where it then sorts). but that issue aside, i basically agree with what you just said, i would personally do it that way probably. BUT you and i are not the only users. what about people who do NOT want to set an album artist for an album like duets, and who don't want it called a comp, (b/c it isn't). they might have track: 1. Frank Sinatra / Bono 2. Frank Sinatra / Willie Nelson and so on... and they simply don't want to suppress those results from the artist list. iow's, someone might not want duets to appear as if its by a single artist. and i am not anticipating other scenarios, but i'm sure you can see there probably are other scenarios even if we can't see them, and other personal preferences that we might not share, right? -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;314035 Wrote: we may have discovered a bug with it that also relates to this 8324 issue, in that i can't find my 'TPE2=Various Artists' albums under the 'Home-Artists' list. I find this a strange thing to do. An album artist of Various Artists seems contradictory. why is it contradictory? first of all, gracenote and [some] other taggers use this convention. secondly, i use other apps besides SC. i need to group things with them as well. using TPE2 to say Various Artists or Soundtracks or whatever for albums that actually are compilations seems to make a lot of sense to me, and apparently Gracenote and others as well. surely you don't think thats something i alone do? Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: Any artist name being Various Artists would be wrong in my opinion. Is it a compilation, or is it an album with guest performers? would you prefer i had TPE2 say Compilation? why would you be against it anyway? Philip Meyer;314027 Wrote: As SC by default displays compilation albums under Various Artists, and the compilation detection code apparently looks for strings containing Various Artists, I suggest you try changing your TPE2=Various Artists to something else to see if there is only a problem because of that specific artist name. now you've confused me. just in case i was unclear, i have no albums of any kind by some esoteric avant garde type band who cleverly named themselves Various Artists. (not a bad idea for a new band name though :) for the purposes of SC, i could just delete the TPE2 tags of Various Artists but like i said, SC isn't the only app i use. the SC code only looks for Various Artists btw in the tags artist field, TPE1, not in TPE2. the issue remains that even though my TPE2=VA albums are not identified as comps to SC, they can't be found anywhere in the Home-Artists list. is it your contention i should not be able to find them there? shouldn't they be under the SC ALBUMARTIST value? in this case, Various Artists? -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;314029 Wrote: i don't use comp tags at all. i know very little about them. i don't really understand the difference between TCMP and COMPILATION. maybe you can explain it to me? i also don't use itunes, and while my wife has a ac, i really don't do much with it. all i know is my tags are four characters, like TPE1 and TPE2. so i would use TCMP as long as SC was cool with that. maybe not the best reason, but it just felt familiar. nothing more to it then that. (and i have yet to assign TCMP=1 to any albums yet, i have to find an app that will do it that doesn't irritate me to use) TCMP isn't really a tag, it's a frame as I've understand it. I suspect the only application that is able to set it is iTunes. So unless you are using iTunes I think you would be better of just setting the COMPILATION tag which can be set in any tagging software. -- 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 guess i'm lost here. whats the beef? is it with non-standard tags, or just differences between differing comp tags? is it possible for my id3v2.3 tags to start with more than 4 characters? ie. TPE1, TPE2, TCMP? id3v2.3 tags are held in frames. A frame is named with four characters, like TPE1, etc. The frame names are defined in the id3 standard. There is no frame designed specifically for compilation. SqueezeCenter understands TXXX COMPILATION. TXXX is a frame that allows any user-defined tag to be stored. COMPILATION is the name of the user defined tag. iTunes made up their own four-character frame name TCMP. It isn't part of the standard; and could potentially cause some apps to have problems. Many apps can't read/write this tag. Mp3Tag does read TCMP - it calls it ITUNESCOMPILATION. Phil ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
would you prefer i had TPE2 say Compilation? why would you be against it anyway? By setting anything in an album artist tag, you are stating that an album isn't a compilation album, so to call the album artist Compilation or Various Artists seems odd. Entering Not a compilation as the album artist tag would be more correct ;-) I don't personally like fudging any data in tags. Artist tags should be proper artist names. I don't personally like Various Artists appearing as an artist in the Browse Artist list. It's actually a bit of a pain for the SqueezeCenter code maintenance to support the special Various Artists menu too. I'd prefer it if there were a Browse Compilations mode. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;314180 Wrote: would you prefer i had TPE2 say Compilation? why would you be against it anyway? By setting anything in an album artist tag, you are stating that an album isn't a compilation album, so to call the album artist Compilation or Various Artists seems odd. Entering Not a compilation as the album artist tag would be more correct ;-) I don't personally like fudging any data in tags. Artist tags should be proper artist names. I don't personally like Various Artists appearing as an artist in the Browse Artist list. It's actually a bit of a pain for the SqueezeCenter code maintenance to support the special Various Artists menu too. I'd prefer it if there were a Browse Compilations mode.What's wrong with putting Various Artists in the Album Artist tag if you are saying that you want this as the Album Artists name. I only use it for albums that are true Various Artists type albums. Ones that don't have any general artist theme to them. That was the way I could keep them together before SC, in Itunes and other programs. I'm not sure what else you would put there if you sort by that. -- Nonreality -IF THE RULE YOU FOLLOWED BROUGHT YOU TO THIS, OF WHAT USE IS THE RULE.- HTTP://www.last.fm/user/nonreality Nonreality's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15723 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;314024 Wrote: 1. Bug '#8001' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8001) makes MP3 files work as FLAC files, with the new option you can instruct SqueezeCenter to treat TPE2 as ALBUMARTIST. The result is that MP3 albums with a TPE2 tag will not be treated as compilations and will thanks to this be sorted under the TPE2 value instead of under Various Artists. The change of 8001 is part of the 7.1 nightly release, so you can try it already now. Hi Erland, sorry to abuse your time and patience, but could you just confirm what I think I understand (or assume) from all this: If there is a unique ALBUMARTIST tag set for an album (mp3 and/or flac) and if there are different artists set in ARTIST tags, then: - that album will not be a compilation. - it will be listed and sorted by albumartist in 'album' view - it will be listed by albumartist in 'artist' view - other artists (from ARTIST tags) will not show in the artist list, unless there is already some other album by that particular artist - if there are other albums or tracks by the artist participating in some of ARTIST tags, then it is possible to drill down by artist between other albums and tracks and this album (and vice versa) - if there are other albums by the artist participating in some of ARTIST tags in 'our' album, then in 'artist' view, under that artist, our album is also listed and following the link, it will lead to only tracks performed by that artist. Sorry for asking you all this, I know that I should have tried it, but it took me a couple of attempts to set 7.1 right in my system , so I just don't feel like going through that exercise again and failing and being without the music. thks a bunch, K -- slimkid Where does the light go when you turn the switch off? 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 can accept that there is no harm in having an option to turn off auto compilation detection. i really think the current VA logic is silly (from a design POV), altho i admit it works good for some people (in their estimations). It's not silly. It works well, and will work correctly for the vast majority of the mass-market. An album is tagged as a various artist (compilation) album if it has different artists performing songs on the album. The rules are quite clear, and the user has to do nothing to configure how it works. I believe it only goes wrong (it's doing the right thing) when an album has guest artists without an album artist defined. Such an album is classified as a various artist compilation because there are various artists on the album. Such a problem can be fixed by: 1. Ensuring all artists on all songs are the same. 2. Adding an album artist tag. 3. Adding a compilation=0 tag. I'm not sure if there are any side-effects of (3) - this is essentially what you are doing by turning off the auto compilation detection feature. That may lead to other problems in the library browsing. If you are aware of other times SC gets compilation detection wrong, please tell. what if a user could define certain strings found in certain tag fields as being indicative of being a compilation? No way. That would be less foolproof than the current auto-detection, and for more work for the majority of users. I have 118 compilation albums in my library; I would not want to add 118 album names into a list in one app. I cannot see any particular words that appear in the album names that should instantly flag the album as a compilation. eg. I have a few compilations that contain the words Another Late Night - but I cannot confirm instantly that all albums containing Another Late Night should be compilations. There used to be a similar feature in SlimServer to avoid two albums with the same name being considered part of the same album. This was the greatest hits problem. There was a configurable list of album names that SlimServer would not join together into one compilation album. It didn't work well, and was removed. Why don't you write a program that scans your library, searching for albums that have your strings, and sets a compilation tag in them. Then you scan your songs back into SC, with auto-compilation detection turned off. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: I can accept that there is no harm in having an option to turn off auto compilation detection. then thats the main thing. regardless of anything else, we agree on that, and so we agree it should not be a forced necessity on users, like me, who would rather not have it. all i'm after, is the *option* to turn it off. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: i really think the current VA logic is silly (from a design POV), altho i admit it works good for some people (in their estimations). It's not silly. It works well, and will work correctly for the vast majority of the mass-market. An album is tagged as a various artist (compilation) album if it has different artists performing songs on the album. The rules are quite clear, and the user has to do nothing to configure how it works. its the rules that are the problem. the reason it is silly, is b/c it assumes that any album with a single TPE1 mismatch is a VA / comp album. that is ludicrous. it further assumes all users will have album artist tags or comp tags, which is another ludicrous assumption, since neither is called for in the id3v1 or v2 spec, (and since thats not the reality in the marketplace). the software simply should NOT assume by design all customers will have such tags, esp user defined tags. additionally, afaik, TPE2 tags (when treated as ALBUMARTIST by SC) are not enough to defeat the comp classification. [sorting is one thing, but simply designating a comp classification is another. i am assuming my albums are still being classified as comps to the SC DB, even though they now sort properly] yes, thx to bug 8001 the TPE2 tags are now enough to correct the sorting, but neither TPE2 nor bug 8001 have any impact on whether an album is considered a comp by SC, (right?) (i admit, i am assuming that last paragraph to be true. am i wrong about that? if TPE2 is treated as ALBUMARTIST internally by SC, does that in someway impact if an album is considered a comp or not by SC? if it does defeat the comp classification to SC, why does my SC still go thru a merge VA process at scan time?) btw, with treat TPE2 as album artist enabled, how can i tell if SC thinks a given album is a comp or not? i don't see how to do that. (i should also add i don't know if SC has any other VA detection logic. afaik, it only looks for artist / TPE1 mismatches. but does it have any other logic? does it look at any strings? folder names or locations? i don't know). in any case... you and i disagree on how many users would be affected, but is that even the point? majority or not, its still bound to be hundreds of thousands in the marketplace. i happen to think the majority of audio users have mp3s, and don't have any user defined fields. and for identifying comps, afaik, TPE2 is irrelevant. (afterall, i see that people with explicit album artist tags still have to use comp tags quite a bit as well) please correct me if i made any erroneous assumptions or conclusions. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: I believe it only goes wrong (it's doing the right thing) when an album has guest artists without an album artist defined. Such an album is classified as a various artist compilation because there are various artists on the album. Such a problem can be fixed by: again, i disagree. its not doing the right thing in any context other than its doing what its poor design told it to do, which is make the blanket assumption that ANY mismatch in TPE1 means its a comp. thats just a bad assumption, period. you might not see that as bad design, but i do. the idea that the marketplace is going to have by default album artist tags and comp tags is not a good one... and IF the marketplace DID have such tags in place, then whats the point of this auto detection logic in the first place? we'll just have to agree to disagree. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: 1. Ensuring all artists on all songs are the same. 2. Adding an album artist tag. 3. Adding a compilation=0 tag. I'm not sure if there are any side-effects of (3) - this is essentially what you are doing by turning off the auto compilation detection feature. That may lead to other problems in the library browsing. If you are aware of other times SC gets compilation detection wrong, please tell. its hard for me to answer this question b/c i don't know what effect the treat TPE2 as album artist option when enabled has on the VA auto detecting logic. since i can't turn it off yet, i am assuming that SC is still marking some of my albums as comps. but i also don't know how to check if that is true. do you know how i can tell? btw, do you agree with what these guys say here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48591 b/c if you do, it seems its important to identify if something is a comp even if ALBUMARTIST sorts it properly. Philip Meyer;313874 Wrote: what if a user could define certain strings found in certain tag fields as being
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I scanned this thread and decided it was really long enough without me adding to it. But, here I am anyway MrSinatra;313887 Wrote: its the rules that are the problem. the reason it is silly, is b/c it assumes that any album with a single TPE1 mismatch is a VA / comp album. that is ludicrous. You've made that statement several times in this thread. I assume the logic behind your statement is obvious to you, but it leaves me quite puzzled. Could you give some background please? What tags do you have? How did you get those tags? Why do those tags seem sensible to you? Why do you find the current logic ludicrous? The current behaviour seems quite logical to me. In views which are broken down first by artist then by album I can choose to have these albums (albums with tracks with different artists) listed multiple times (under each artist) or once (under the Various Artists umbrella). (The guest artists scenario described by Philip Meyer allows me to have it listed once, under the primary artist. Thats even better for those who can be bothered to set the funny tags.) I believe these are synonymous: 1. any album with a TPE1 mismatch 2. an album with tracks with different artists 3. an album with various artists -- htrd Toby Dickenson Search eBay for music matching your last.fm profile; www.exitahead.co.uk htrd's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3710 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?
htrd;313894 Wrote: I scanned this thread and decided it was really long enough without me adding to it. But, here I am anyway You've made that statement several times in this thread. I assume the logic behind your statement is obvious to you, but it leaves me quite puzzled. Could you give some background please? What tags do you have? How did you get those tags? Why do those tags seem sensible to you? Why do you find the current logic ludicrous? mp3s. no user defined tags. basically ANY TPE1 (artist) mismatch on an album was enough for SC to call an album a VA / comp. at least HALF of what it identified it identified incorrectly. b4 bug 8001 was enacted, this meant all such albums of mine that weren't comps were sorted improperly. as you can see in my last post, i am assuming that even though i have things sorting right currently, SC's still misidentifying some albums as comps that aren't comps (in the SC DB). i am waiting for someone who knows to confirm or deny if thats the case. all my tags came from mainstream sources. i used EAC to rip, but WMP and winamp had roles in setting my tags as well. regardless of how i got my tags, it isn't uncommon in the marketplace to find mismatches in artists for albums that aren't comps. thats just a fact. like i said to phil, majority or not, the numbers are significant. htrd;313894 Wrote: The current behaviour seems quite logical to me. In views which are broken down first by artist then by album I can choose to have these albums (albums with tracks with different artists) listed multiple times (under each artist) or once (under the Various Artists umbrella). (The guest artists scenario described by Philip Meyer allows me to have it listed once, under the primary artist. Thats even better for those who can be bothered to set the funny tags.) i am not talking about those options or views. all i am talking about is how SC determines, (its logic), at the time an album is scanned, if it is, or is not, a VA/comp album. this is an attribute in the SC DB. i am assuming it still gets set even if i treat TPE2 tags as album artist. htrd;313894 Wrote: I believe these are synonymous: 1. any album with a TPE1 mismatch 2. an album with tracks with different artists 3. an album with various artists they are not. you can have an album with TPE1 mismatches that is not a various artists album. it is not a compilation just b/c one track has a mismatch. for bug 8001, i posted 4 billy joel files to reproduce the issue. one track on his box set had him and ray charles on it. that was enough to have SC call it a comp, AND sort it under VA. since bug 8001 is now resolved, it sorts properly, (by enabling the new option). but as to whther or not it gets classiified as a comp, well, afaik it does and this classification is mistaken. (i think jjzolx like to give sinatra's duets as a similar example. clearly its got a lot of various artists on every track, but its a sinatra album and NOT a compilation) -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Here's what the 'merge various artists' step of the scanner is doing: Code: Find all albums not currently marked as a compilation. For each of those albums: Get all tracks on the album with role = ARTIST (note: tracks with ALBUMARTIST don't have an ARTIST role, only a TRACKARTIST role) Count the number of different artists on those tracks. If count 1: Album is marked as a compilation OR if the artist is 'Various Artists': Album is marked as a compilation -- andyg andyg's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3292 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?
its the rules that are the problem. the reason it is silly, is b/c it assumes that any album with a single TPE1 mismatch is a VA / comp album. that is ludicrous. No, it's not ludicrous. The vast majority of albums that have the same artist on every song are not various artist/compilation albums, and the vast majority of albums that have different artists on each track are various artist/compilation albums. I don't think there's any disputing that. There may be a small number of albums where there are guest performers on some songs. For most people, these extra guest performers do not end up as artist tags, because tools that set the tags when ripping from disk usually don't have that information (just the main album artist as the artist for each track). If you go to the trouble of adding additional guest artist names in the songs, then why not go the extra distance to set a compilation=0 or albumartist tag? (i admit, i am assuming that last paragraph to be true. am i wrong about that? if TPE2 is treated as ALBUMARTIST internally by SC, does that in someway impact if an album is considered a comp or not by SC? if it does defeat the comp classification to SC, why does my SC still go thru a merge VA process at scan time?) In my opinion, album artist should prevent an album being classified as a compilation. I can't remember what the SC scanner does; if it is tagging an album as a compilation and there is an album artist defined, then I would raise a bug on that. how can i tell if SC thinks a given album is a comp or not? Compilation albums are listed under Browse Artists Various Artists. Alternatively, navigate to the album in the default skin, and it will say Compilation: Yes (i should also add i don't know if SC has any other VA detection logic. afaik, it only looks for artist / TPE1 mismatches. but does it have any other logic? does it look at any strings? folder names or locations? i don't know). Not that I'm aware, other than Artist tag mismatches, or TXXX COMPILATION=1 or TXXX ITUNESCOMPILATION=1. i happen to think the majority of audio users have mp3s, and don't have any user defined fields. and for identifying comps, afaik, TPE2 is irrelevant. (afterall, i see that people with explicit album artist tags still have to use comp tags quite a bit as well) And I disagree. The majority of popular music albums that exist in the world do not have guest artists, and thus should not have differing primary artist tags on their songs. TPE2, if set, should really prevent an album being a compilation (need to check that). btw, do you agree with what these guys say here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48591 b/c if you do, it seems its important to identify if something is a comp even if ALBUMARTIST sorts it properly. Yes, if an album is a compilation album, then if I were to print a list of album by artist, I'd expect the artist to be the album artist. For an album where all songs are by the same artist, the album artist is obviously the same. For an album where songs have different performing artists, but an album artist tag has been set, the album artist is obviously the album artist. For a compilation album (where songs on an album have different performing artists and no album artist tag is set), the album artist should be Various Artists (name is configurable via the SC Music Library settings page). in my case, if i turned VA auto detection off, i would then have SC treat the string Various Artists as a string to definitely consider a comp. What tag would you put Various Artists into. Do you think it would make sense to have a single song with an artist name of Various Artists? If you are going to go to the bother of changing your artist tags to say Various artists instead of the actual performing artist, then why not instead just add a compilation tag instead? that kind of auto-detection would be head and shoulders above what we have now. So instead of looking for COMPILATION=1, it would look for ARTIST=Various Artists? You really think that's better? ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;313911 Wrote: that kind of auto-detection would be head and shoulders above what we have now. So instead of looking for COMPILATION=1, it would look for ARTIST=Various Artists? You really think that's better? TPE2, not TPE1. and Andy says SC already looks for that string, i just need him to clarify where it looks for it. (i am guessing the DB, i just want him to say so) anyway, some interesting things to consider here... -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;313911 Wrote: its the rules that are the problem. the reason it is silly, is b/c it assumes that any album with a single TPE1 mismatch is a VA / comp album. that is ludicrous. No, it's not ludicrous. The vast majority of albums that have the same artist on every song are not various artist/compilation albums, and the vast majority of albums that have different artists on each track are various artist/compilation albums. I don't think there's any disputing that. well, i dispute it. as i've said many times, *half* of what it identified it got wrong. its simply a bad design assumption. u say and the vast majority of albums that have different artists on each track are various artist/compilation albums. the first problem is SC says its a comp even if its only ONE track, (as opposed to every track as you put it). the second problem is that for some albums, like sinatra duets, it IS every track, but its definitely NOT a comp. my main point is that from a design perspective, this was bound to have problems with some people. now, people may not see it as a big deal, (and i'm not saying its a big deal), but what they can't do is deny that its far from being 100% reliable and they certainly can't assert its necessary. Philip Meyer;313911 Wrote: There may be a small number of albums where there are guest performers on some songs. For most people, these extra guest performers do not end up as artist tags, because tools that set the tags when ripping from disk usually don't have that information (just the main album artist as the artist for each track). If you go to the trouble of adding additional guest artist names in the songs, then why not go the extra distance to set a compilation=0 or albumartist tag? i admit i do not know how i got so many TPE1 mismatches on non-comps. i don't recall editing them all manually, but maybe i did. or maybe i did some, and winamp, WMP, etc... got the rest. (or maybe EAC said some of these were VA albums at the time of ripping, and the single mismatches were in place then, but this doesn't mean they are comps - eg. sinatra / duets). but regardless of how my tags got that way, its not that unusual for someone to have their tags that way, whether they did it manually or not. people put artists and guest artists in TPE1, and then use TPE2 for the main album artist. pretty common. what i don't want to have to do though, is FIND and UNDO what classifications SC does. if i am going to add comp tags to those albums i want to add it to, i want to only have to add the tags as a positive ID and have that be a pro-active decision on my part. and since i have TPE2 tags and bug 8001, there's no way i'm going to add separate and unnecessary explicit 'album artist' tags. remember i will still be adding music, i want the simplest, easiest system going forward, as well as dealing with what i already have. Philip Meyer;313911 Wrote: (i admit, i am assuming that last paragraph to be true. am i wrong about that? if TPE2 is treated as ALBUMARTIST internally by SC, does that in someway impact if an album is considered a comp or not by SC? if it does defeat the comp classification to SC, why does my SC still go thru a merge VA process at scan time?) In my opinion, album artist should prevent an album being classified as a compilation. I can't remember what the SC scanner does; if it is tagging an album as a compilation and there is an album artist defined, then I would raise a bug on that. yeah, i can't say for sure either, but based on my results, TPE2 treated as Album Artist DOES seem to defeat the VA logic IF TPE2 is present, and even if the TPE2 field says Various Artists. in my case, i am only populating the SC ALBUMARTIST field by using the treat TPE2 as album artist option. however, none of those albums with something in TPE2 got classified as a comp, raising the question of why would you need VA auto-detection as a stage at scan time then? and is it supposed to be defeated? Philip Meyer;313911 Wrote: how can i tell if SC thinks a given album is a comp or not? Compilation albums are listed under Browse Artists Various Artists. Alternatively, navigate to the album in the default skin, and it will say Compilation: Yes well, i don't have any comp tags, so my albums sort based on their TPE2 tag. and when i go to artists-various artists it only shows TWO! albums as VA albums, even though i have a bunch that really are VA albums and that have Various Artists in the TPE2 field. so that confuses me big time. as per Andys post, shouldn't at least the ones that are actually VA albums and that say Various Artists in TPE2 be identified as comps to SC? why isn't it any longer identifying the TPE1 mismatches as comps? or the VA in TPE2 as comps? why is VA logic defeated just b/c it has data that populates SC's ALBUMARTIST field? (the two albums that DID get identified did NOT have anything in their TPE2 fields,
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Andy, thx for this info, but can you please clarify: andyg;313908 Wrote: Here's what the 'merge various artists' step of the scanner is doing: Code: Find all albums not currently marked as a compilation. For each of those albums: Get all tracks on the album with role = ARTIST (note: tracks with ALBUMARTIST don't have an ARTIST role, only a TRACKARTIST role) Count the number of different artists on those tracks. If count 1: Album is marked as a compilation OR if the artist is 'Various Artists': Album is marked as a compilation is the above what i've been calling the VA logic detection? is it true then it is only looking at whats populated in the DB by the files, not the actual tag data in the files itself, when it looks for tracks with the ARTIST role? (i am pretty sure the answer to both of those is yes) but here's where i am confused... are you saying that SC does look for a string (Various Artists) in the DB, but the field it looks for it in is the ARTIST field? in any case... i don't see why this function should be mandatory? i can see where it could be useful, but i don't see why it shouldn't be optional. btw, is it a bug that my TPE2 = Various Artists albums aren't showing up in my Home - Artists list? -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
well, i dispute it. as i've said many times, *half* of what it identified it got wrong. its simply a bad design assumption. Half of what it identified for *you* may have been wrong. But even then, what do you mean by half? Half of your music collection, or of all compilation albums, or of all albums with album artists? I guess you are talking about half of the latter, which is probably less than 1% of your library. u say and the vast majority of albums that have different artists on each track are various artist/compilation albums. the first problem is SC says its a comp even if its only ONE track, (as opposed to every track as you put it). What about an album with only two songs, with different artists for each? the second problem is that for some albums, like sinatra duets, it IS every track, but its definitely NOT a comp. This is one case where the right thing to do is to add an album artist. There is no alternative if you want the duet artists to also be tagged on the tracks. my main point is that from a design perspective, this was bound to have problems with some people. now, people may not see it as a big deal, (and i'm not saying its a big deal), but what they can't do is deny that its far from being 100% reliable and they certainly can't assert its necessary. It is 100% reliable - it does everything it intends to do, based on the content of the tags. but regardless of how my tags got that way, its not that unusual for someone to have their tags that way, whether they did it manually or not. people put artists and guest artists in TPE1, and then use TPE2 for the main album artist. pretty common. Then with the option to consider TPE2 as album artist, the album won't be considered a compilation, so there won't be a problem? what i don't want to have to do though, is FIND and UNDO what classifications SC does. if i am going to add comp tags to those albums i want to add it to, i want to only have to add the tags as a positive ID and have that be a pro-active decision on my part. It is easier to find compilation albums that should not be, rather than albums that should be compilations. however, none of those albums with something in TPE2 got classified as a comp... That's correct - an album with an album artist should not be a compilation. ...raising the question of why would you need VA auto-detection as a stage at scan time then? For albums that have songs with different performing artists without a compilation tag and without a various artist tag. SC would have to decide to do something to determine what artist to display the album under. What should it do? Guess one of the artists as being the album artist? Guess the album is a compilation? SC decides using simple clear-cut logic because there is no tag to tell it otherwise, that it should be a compilation. Albums that are displayed in SC as compilations that you don't want to be compilations should have an ALBUMARTIST defined instead. There should never be a need for COMPILATION=0 tags. I don't think that COMPILATION=1 should ever be required in tags either. and when i go to artists-various artists it only shows TWO! albums as VA albums, even though i have a bunch that really are VA albums and that have Various Artists in the TPE2 field. so that confuses me big time. as per Andys post, shouldn't at least the ones that are actually VA albums and that say Various Artists in TPE2 be identified as comps to SC? No, Andy said where ARTIST=Various Artists. That sounds crazy to me, but I guess someone asked for it to do that. i.e. someone deosn't want to put in different performing artists for each song, so puts the name of every artist on a compilation to be Various Artists so that it appears as an album by Various Artists and appears as a compilation. I guess that if your TPE2 is being read as an Album Artist contributor role, that your compilation albums have an album artist string of Various Artists, and would be found by Browsing to Artists Various Artists (listed under the alphabar page link for V only - not the special Various Artists group at the top of the Browse Artists list. why isn't it any longer identifying the TPE1 mismatches as comps? Because you have an album artist tag set. Your wishes have come true - that's what you wanted it to do by getting TPE2 to be interpreted as album artist. If you have TPE2 tags present on albums with differing track artists, they won't be detected as compilations, and will instead be listed under the album artist. the VA in TPE2 as comps? why is VA logic defeated just b/c it has data that populates SC's ALBUMARTIST field? (the two albums that DID get identified did NOT have anything in their TPE2 fields, but did have TPE1 mismatches). Sounds like it is working fine. is TCMP=1 a valid tag? No. It's non-standard. This is what iTunes writes when Part of a compilation is ticked in iTunes. I said in my last mail ITUNESCOMPILATION -
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Forgot to mention that www.id3.org has some information on non-compliant tags set by apps: http://www.id3.org/Compliance_Issues Plenty of iTunes, WinAmp and WMP non-compliancy issues listed which you may find useful. 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;313990 Wrote: well, i dispute it. as i've said many times, *half* of what it identified it got wrong. its simply a bad design assumption. Half of what it identified for *you* may have been wrong. But even then, what do you mean by half? Half of your music collection, or of all compilation albums, or of all albums with album artists? I guess you are talking about half of the latter, which is probably less than 1% of your library. i don't mean to be rude, (sincerely), but i said exactly what i meant. ie. HALF of what it [SC] identified [as a comp] it got wrong. the stuff in brackets was clear i thought from the context. in other words, half of what it was calling a comp/VA album was incorrect. Philip Meyer;313990 Wrote: u say and the vast majority of albums that have different artists on each track are various artist/compilation albums. the first problem is SC says its a comp even if its only ONE track, (as opposed to every track as you put it). What about an album with only two songs, with different artists for each? in such a case, if there is a mismatch, it WILL call that a VA album. i know this b/c that was the case with one of the 2 albums that was ID'd i mentioned in my previous post. the code andy quotes shows this. one mismatch on one track (out of two or more) is enough to get the classification. Philip Meyer;313990 Wrote: the second problem is that for some albums, like sinatra duets, it IS every track, but its definitely NOT a comp. This is one case where the right thing to do is to add an album artist. There is no alternative if you want the duet artists to also be tagged on the tracks. ok. Philip Meyer;313990 Wrote: my main point is that from a design perspective, this was bound to have problems with some people. now, people may not see it as a big deal, (and i'm not saying its a big deal), but what they can't do is deny that its far from being 100% reliable and they certainly can't assert its necessary. It is 100% reliable - it does everything it intends to do, based on the content of the tags. and as i said, i agree it does everything its POOR DESIGN intends it to do. and so what? it is NOT RELIABLE in fufilling the objective of the goal of the function it is designed to do. i mean if i want to design a car, and i make a blueprint, and the car is made EXACTLY to the spec of the blueprint, but breaks down every other time i use it, its hardly a successful design, regardless of how accurately it follows my blueprint! how such a function should be ultimately judged, is in how well it accomplishes its goal, (or reason for existing in the first place). thats how i am judging it. (you are judging it based on if its doing what its code tells it to do, as if thats the ultimate goal, and it isn't). yes, thx to bug 8001 i can now totally defeat it by setting TPE2, (something i now know, and thats as you know only very recently). but i shouldn't be forced to set TPE2 to do that, and i shouldn't have to have any and all comps just get generically sorted into one mass area called Various Artists (if i don't set TPE2). i understand that turning it off and not setting album artist is problematic too however. Philip Meyer;313990 Wrote: but regardless of how my tags got that way, its not that unusual for someone to have their tags that way, whether they did it manually or not. people put artists and guest artists in TPE1, and then use TPE2 for the main album artist. pretty common. Then with the option to consider TPE2 as album artist, the album won't be considered a compilation, so there won't be a problem? well, yes and no. and i haven't worked out all the ramifications yet, so this concept is till a work in progress... basically, i now MUST use TPE2 to have it sort properly, AND defeat the VA detection logic. we now know (barring Andy saying different) that setting TPE2 will defeat the VA logic. however, there seem to be issues with how my albums are being listed in Home-Artists as a result, and i don't know if setting comp tags will fix all this or not. i'm also not sure what related suppression issues there might be. also what if i want comps in mor ethan just one massive comps area? i can see wanting to put some comps under VA, some under Soundtracks, etc... Philip Meyer;313990 Wrote: what i don't want to have to do though, is FIND and UNDO what classifications SC does. if i am going to add comp tags to those albums i want to add it to, i want to only have to add the tags as a positive ID and have that be a pro-active decision on my part. It is easier to find compilation albums that should not be, rather than albums that should be compilations. well, now that i know TPE2 will defeat the VA auto logic, this isn't as much of an issue at this point, or i should say that it isn't pending the outcome of other possible ramifications mentioned above. at this point, i have to figure out
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
hi all... reviving another old thread b/c the bug its about is due to be discussed at the next bug meeting. http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324 first, lets get back on track. the question posed by this thread is: Is the VA detection logic necessary? i don't see how anyone could argue that it is NECESSARY. at best, its a convienence, at worst, a non-optional pita; but there is no reason to force it as a necessity on everyone. everyone does NOT need it, want it, or benefit from it. i certainly don't. there is no question that it is also imperfect and not fullproof. and its also important to note that its an unexpected feature ...as i know of no other apps that have anything similar. erland has submitted a patch to allow users to turn this off. i see no reason not to put it in (assuming the code is solid, and erland knows code). the world didn't end when bug 8001 got implemented, and it solved a lot of issues for me and many other barbarians like me who have tags not by user design, but by mainstream app design. the issue is not a spec issue per se, but rather an issue of recognizing realities in the marketplace. this option would further do that. if it were available to me, i would turn it off right now. at that point i could: 1. live with the consequences of SC not knowing such and such was a comp. discussed here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48591 2. use some app or another to tag whatever albums i want as comps. (i would do this if i thought there was reason i wanted the album identified as a comp to SC) whats good about this, is i'd only have to tag those few albums i'd want tagged. also, as i added new ripped albums, i'd only need to worry about this for those few new ones i thought needed it. all that is definitely better than trying to figure out and undo what SC got wrong. 3. suggest a new way for SC to auto-detect VA / comp albums. i really think the current VA logic is silly (from a design POV), altho i admit it works good for some people (in their estimations). however, what if we used new or different logic for the feature? what if a user could define certain strings found in certain tag fields as being indicative of being a compilation? for instance, what if upon scan SC found Various Artists in a tag, and the user had identified that string to indicate its a comp? the benefit of such a system is it would be foolproof. the user could define the string and the string would ID the comp. --- anyway, if we can enact bug 8001, i see no reason not to enact this bug as well. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;309981 Wrote: I could understand the effect you are seeing if you are trying to browse albums ordered by year, because what year would an album be sorted under? When I browse to an album that has different years in the tracks, it shows up as multiple albums regardless of whether I'm browsing through the Squeezebox or Moose. An example is the Cinema of Serge Gainsbourg, some loving soul tagged each song with the year it was released. So the first 3 tracks have the year listed as 1959, the next two are from 1960, and so on. In Moose this shows up under the artist but as multiple albums with the same name so there are a dozen Cinema of Serge Gainsbourg albums each clumped by year. I tried to find the conversation which I was having in the tagging forums, but the archive is very small there. People there told me this was expected behavior as SqueezeCenter interprets the year tag as Album year, not Song year. If this is a problem in my tagging or there is someway to get around this, like it sounds you have, I'd like to follow up in another thread. If you could help. TIA -- sander sander's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10737 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?
If this is a problem in my tagging or there is someway to get around this, like it sounds you have, I'd like to follow up in another thread. If you could help. I haven't got anything special in my tags, just standard YEAR tags for each song. Point me at another thread or send me a PM, if you want to continue elsewhere. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
erland;309543 Wrote: I completely agree with you regarding this, I'm just not sure that the VA logic is an important part for average users. I do understand that it is an important part in libraries that looks like your, but I suspect your library has a lot more artists tagged on your albums than the library of an average user. I've been following this thread with interest, since it was resurrected at least, and I'd like to chime in on what Mr. Sinatra's been saying as this has been a big gripe of mine for a while. In general I would say SqueezeCenter is WAY too conservative on what an album is. The various artists behavior is compounded by variances in date being treated as separate albums. To me this conservative approach probably does effect more users than you think, because there are so many tagging errors and inconsistencies from places like freedb.org. Erland, I would like to complement you on your constructive comments in this thread. I hope in the future Squeezecenter makes this change. -- sander sander's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10737 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?
In general I would say SqueezeCenter is WAY too conservative on what an album is. The various artists behavior is compounded by variances in date being treated as separate albums. Do you mean YEAR tag? Are you sure? I haven't seen any strange effects with YEAR or DATE tags. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Philip Meyer;309931 Wrote: Do you mean YEAR tag? Are you sure? I haven't seen any strange effects with YEAR or DATE tags. Yes, I'm still running 6.5.2, I don't think things have changed since, but if you have an album with different year dates on the tracks it will appear as multiple albums one for each year. Apparently this is to accommodate the 0.001% of artists who release multiple albums with the same title and the users who can distinguish between these multiple albums solely by the repeating title when browsing. :) To me the year tag refers to year of the track, whereas the prevailing thinking in tagging forum is that the year tag refers to the year of the album. I think ignoring the year of the tracks when grouping albums would accommodate both types of users, but I'm pretty sure this behavior endures in Squeezecenter. -- sander sander's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10737 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?
but if you have an album with different year dates on the tracks it will appear as multiple albums one for each year. That definitely doesn't happen for me; I've never seen that effect before (currently on 7.2). I'm sure I've entered different years for songs on some greatest hits albums. Of course, I mainly browse by Artist sorted by Artist, or Album sorted by Album, whereas perhaps you are trying to use some other browsing method. I could understand the effect you are seeing if you are trying to browse albums ordered by year, because what year would an album be sorted under? I just tried browsing Syd Barrett - Beyond Rhyme Nor Reason: Browse to artist = Syd Barrett, and sort the list of albums by year, album. I see one album (says 1974 as the year - so it has taken an arbitrary song year as the year for the album). All songs are listed on that album; they have different years on each song. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
erland;309251 Wrote: You don't have to check folder names, the only things that might need testing is how it reacts if album artist is set to Various Artists or if a track has a single artist tag set to Various Artists. my tags don't have an album artist tag at all. thats a user defined tag and my files don't have user defined tags. they do have TPE2 tags, aka band tags. a lot of software hijacks TPE2 to use AS the album artist tag, but they do so erroneously, and currently, SC7 gives no option to respect this defacto (if albeit erroneous) standard. in any case, without being able to turn off the VA detection logic, and without getting SC7 to populate ALBUMARTIST with TPE2 tags, i can't really test what happens when the value is Various Artists erland;309251 Wrote: To be able to run SqueezeCenter on Windows without perl, it needs to be compiled to binary exe file. Unfortunately I don't have access to the commercial tools needed to compile it, so unless you can install and use ActiveState perl I think you will have to wait. If you are using Linux or Mac it would be easier since these use the non binary version already by default. i guess i have to wait, b/c i just don't have the time to get into this aspect of it. i've never been good at programming. also, does it cost money? i do have a mac, but its the wifes and for now i'd rather keep SC off of it, (and i'm not mac savvy yet anyway). erland;309251 Wrote: I was thinking of the handling of when album artists is set to Various Artists. see first response. if i've missed the point or didn't understand, let me know. erland;309251 Wrote: I'm pretty sure the majority of the new SqueezeCenter users has tagged their music albums with a single artist. Most people doesn't spend a lot of time tagging, they just use the information provided by sources such as freedb.org which typical have a single artist per album. the main reason i can't get people i know into SC7 and slim, is b/c of the limitations it has in handling average users, especially those users without user defined tags. a lot of users get their mp3s from multiple apps, meaning multiple rippers, p2p, friends, etc... there is no SOP for tags, but my suggestions re: these bugs at least allow average users the chance to get sensible management of their files with the least amount of tinkering, and using apps they already use. i can't stress enough how important i think that is. if slim wants people to buy into their way of doing things, imo, they need to meet the average user more than halfway. erland;309251 Wrote: Doesn't the provided patch also solve the problems in 8001 ? without being able to test it, and see what it does in practice, i can't answer this. it might, and it might not. but i tend to think, guessing now, that it only helps, doesn't fully solve the issues. erland;309251 Wrote: When the new option is disabled, albums with several artists will never be considered a compilation album unless you have manually set the COMPILATION tags. As I see it this should also make sure the album is sorted according to the TPE2 tag since it's no longer a Various Artists album. but i don't think it sorts via TPE2. i could be wrong, but i think it sorts via TPE1, (i am fairly sure of this), and when there is a TPE1 mismatch, that then gets it classified as a comp and VA album, but TPE2 has nothing to do with any of that at any point. remember, TPE2 populates the internal to SC7 field of BAND, not ALBUMARTIST. thats what 8001 is meant to address. b/c SC7 uses ALBUMARTIST to sort. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;309428 Wrote: i guess i have to wait, b/c i just don't have the time to get into this aspect of it. i've never been good at programming. also, does it cost money? i do have a mac, but its the wifes and for now i'd rather keep SC off of it, (and i'm not mac savvy yet anyway). It's not as mysterious as you seem to think. ActiveState perl comes with an installer for Windows -- it's no more difficult than installing any other Windows program. It is free. After you install it, you need to run SC by invoking slimserver.pl (or squeezecenter.pl, I'm not sure which it is at present) through the perl interpreter via the command prompt. This is also very simple, and described in http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/StartingWindowsDev You don't need to know programming. kdf and Erland have already figured out what needs to be done. There are easy ways for you to apply the patch Erland wrote. I don't remember how to do that, so I would just use the brute force method and open the relevant files in a text editor (notepad, wordpad, etc.) and make the changes shown in the 'diff' view of Erland's post to the bug report (see http://bugs.slimdevices.com/attachment.cgi?id=3402action=diff). Then save the files with changes and try it out. It might look like programming, but at this stage it's really just typing. Very careful typing. Actually, you can make most of the edits via copypaste. -- 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;309428 Wrote: i guess i have to wait, b/c i just don't have the time to get into this aspect of it. i've never been good at programming. also, does it cost money? i do have a mac, but its the wifes and for now i'd rather keep SC off of it, (and i'm not mac savvy yet anyway). As already mentioned, it's free and it has an installer, so it's really not that complicated. When you have installed ActiveState perl and got it to run the slimserver.pl in your unpatched copy, I'll provide you with some files updated with the patch which you just can unzip in your SqueezeCenter installation. The other alternative is just to wait until someone at Logitech has the time to verify it. MrSinatra;309428 Wrote: i can't stress enough how important i think that is. if slim wants people to buy into their way of doing things, imo, they need to meet the average user more than halfway. I completely agree with you regarding this, I'm just not sure that the VA logic is an important part for average users. I do understand that it is an important part in libraries that looks like your, but I suspect your library has a lot more artists tagged on your albums than the library of an average user. -- 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?
erland, thats awesome! so my question to you is what happens on the slim developer side, or what is needed, to get this option incorporated into the nightly betas? i really do believe some users will find this option very useful, especially infrant users but not limited only to them. here's my next question... does SC 'know' that an album is a compilation based on the internal ALBUMARTIST field? meaning, lets say VA detection was turned off, and you had no comp tags at all of any kind, if the ALBUMARTIST field was populated by the string Various Artists then sure, it would sort the album there, BUT would it know the album was a compilation album, (based on the string data)? and if it did not know this, what would be the drawback? (meaning, what is the drawback of SC not knowing a given album is a comp if it is in fact a comp?) thanks again! -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;309158 Wrote: so my question to you is what happens on the slim developer side, or what is needed, to get this option incorporated into the nightly betas? Logitech regularly looks through bug/enhancement reports with provided patches and checks if the patch is good enough. If there is an enhancement, they also decide if they like to add it to SqueezeCenter and thus also manage the potential support issues later related to it. If they decide it's worth adding the decide which release they like to add it to. Usually critical bug corrections is added to the next fix release (7.0.x in this case), small enhancement is added to the next major release (7.1 in this case) and larger enhancements is added to a future release after the next major release (7.2 or later in this case). I suspect this is something that might be added to 7.1 or 7.2 if they decide they like to manage the support issues for this new option. The only good way that end users can affect this decision is to vote on the registered enhancement request at http://bugs.slimdevices.com MrSinatra;309158 Wrote: here's my next question... does SC 'know' that an album is a compilation based on the internal ALBUMARTIST field? meaning, lets say VA detection was turned off, and you had no comp tags at all of any kind, if the ALBUMARTIST field was populated by the string Various Artists then sure, it would sort the album there, BUT would it know the album was a compilation album, (based on the string data)? and if it did not know this, what would be the drawback? (meaning, what is the drawback of SC not knowing a given album is a comp if it is in fact a comp?) I have no idea, but I'm sure someone has already mention how it works in a post earlier in this thread (or in one of the related threads). If I'm reading the code correctly, I think the only albums that will be considered compilation with the new option disabled is those with a COMPILATION tag. I'm not sure what will happen with albums with an album artist named Various Artists. If you like to help, you can verify how it works with and without the patch. If you are using Windows, you will need to install ActiveState perl and run slimserver.pl manually to be able to use the patch after you have applied it. If you feel this is to complicated, it would also help if you could just verify how this work today (without the patch). -- 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?
erland;309207 Wrote:
Logitech regularly looks through bug/enhancement reports with provided
patches and checks if the patch is good enough. If there is an
enhancement, they also decide if they like to add it to SqueezeCenter
and thus also manage the potential support issues later related to it.
If they decide it's worth adding the decide which release they like to
add it to. Usually critical bug corrections is added to the next fix
release (7.0.x in this case), small enhancement is added to the next
major release (7.1 in this case) and larger enhancements is added to a
future release after the next major release (7.2 or later in this
case). I suspect this is something that might be added to 7.1 or 7.2 if
they decide they like to manage the support issues for this new option.
The only good way that end users can affect this decision is to vote on
the registered enhancement request at http://bugs.slimdevices.com
right on. i can't imagine the support burden of an on/off option is
too much. and more to the point, SC is the only app i have ever seen
with such functionality as VA logic detection.
in other words, this kind of feature would be new to new users, and so
for new users, it should probably be off by default. otherwise they
may be confused, as i was, as to what the hell was going on at first.
if anything, i think having it off for new users by default will
lighten the support burden.
erland;309207 Wrote:
I have no idea, but I'm sure someone has already mention how it works in
a post earlier in this thread (or in one of the related threads).
i'm guessing it does matter, but i can't remember why. i am hoping
someone will explain why it matters if SC knows whether something is a
compilation or not. i'm not saying it doesn't matter, i just couldn't
explain why it does if someone asked me.
erland;309207 Wrote:
If I'm reading the code correctly, I think the only albums that will be
considered compilation with the new option disabled is those with a
COMPILATION tag. I'm not sure what will happen with albums with an
album artist named Various Artists.
right... it'll take some experimenting to see if certain strings in
tags or folder names cause one to be considered a comp by SC. my guess
is that SC won't look at strings or folder names with the VA logic
turned off, but its just a guess.
erland;309207 Wrote:
If you like to help, you can verify how it works with and without the
patch.
If you are using Windows, you will need to install ActiveState perl and
run slimserver.pl manually to be able to use the patch after you have
applied it. If you feel this is to complicated, it would also help if
you could just verify how this work today (without the patch).
unfortunately i don't have the skills (or recently, the time) to figure
out how to do perl and patch SC and so on... is it possible for you to
send me the files that i could just copy over my existing files in my
SC install to make this work? or am i just revealing how little i
know?
as to how it works now, i will happily answer any questions on that
score, but i don't know what you want me to say? i'll take a stab at
it and if i am missing the point of your question just please ask for
clarifications:
i have mp3s, and they don't use user defined tags. so, no album artist
tags, no comp tags, no tags other than the ones in the 2.3 spec. (i
posted a grouping of four such files to bug 8001)
therefore the problem is that whenever any album i have has a TPE1
mismatch on even one track, it gets classified as a compilation (or so
i think) and it then sorts under Various Artists. (artwork {gallery}
view, home - albums - artist, year, album)
in my case, about half of what the VA logic detects it detects
correctly, and the other half is incorrect. it is my opinion that the
marketplace of mp3 users, (especially potential customers to slim) are
in the same boat. and therefore they will be turned off greatly by
this unexpected behavior.
this all relates to bug 8001 as well, which i think is more important
than this issue. would you be willing to provide a patch for that
issue as well?
essentially, the most popular proposed solution to that is to simply
provide another on/off option, and it would work thusly:
off: no changes to current scanner behavior
on: TPE2 will now populate the internal to SC7 field of ALBUMARTIST
instead of BAND.
http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8001
this fix would defintely require testing to see if it works as
anticipated, but it isn't the only suggestion as to a possible fix, its
just the one seemingly most popular at this time b4 anything has been
actually tried yet.
thanks again for your efforts and please let me know what i can do, or
clarify. thx!
--
MrSinatra
www.LION-Radio.org
Using:
Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP
Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: right... it'll take some experimenting to see if certain strings in tags or folder names cause one to be considered a comp by SC. my guess is that SC won't look at strings or folder names with the VA logic turned off, but its just a guess. You don't have to check folder names, the only things that might need testing is how it reacts if album artist is set to Various Artists or if a track has a single artist tag set to Various Artists. MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: unfortunately i don't have the skills (or recently, the time) to figure out how to do perl and patch SC and so on... is it possible for you to send me the files that i could just copy over my existing files in my SC install to make this work? To be able to run SqueezeCenter on Windows without perl, it needs to be compiled to binary exe file. Unfortunately I don't have access to the commercial tools needed to compile it, so unless you can install and use ActiveState perl I think you will have to wait. If you are using Linux or Mac it would be easier since these use the non binary version already by default. MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: as to how it works now, i will happily answer any questions on that score, but i don't know what you want me to say? I was thinking of the handling of when album artists is set to Various Artists. MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: it is my opinion that the marketplace majority of mp3 users, (especially potential customers to slim) are in the same boat. and therefore they will be turned off greatly by this unexpected behavior. I'm pretty sure the majority of the new SqueezeCenter users has tagged their music albums with a single artist. Most people doesn't spend a lot of time tagging, they just use the information provided by sources such as freedb.org which typical have a single artist per album. MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: this all relates to bug 8001 as well, which i think is more important than this issue. would you be willing to provide a patch for that issue as well? Doesn't the provided patch also solve the problems in 8001 ? When the new option is disabled, albums with several artists will never be considered a compilation album unless you have manually set the COMPILATION tags. As I see it this should also make sure the album is sorted according to the TPE2 tag since it's no longer a Various Artists album. MrSinatra;309211 Wrote: please let me know what i can do, or clarify. thx! Learn how to install ActiveState perl (if you are using Windows) and help us test the patch provided. See here for more information: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/StartingWindowsDev Let us know when you have installed and successfully run your standard installation with ActiveState perl and someone can provide a modified version of SqueezeCenter which includes the patch for you to test. In this case we also need to know exactly which version you are using, the nightly release date or the official release number in case you are using an official release. The preferable situation would be if we could provide you with a modified version based on the latest nightly for 7.0.x or 7.1 or 7.2. -- 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?
guys... first, i've been away. i got married. but now i would like to revisit these issues. so i am sorry i started these threads / topics and disappeared, but the wife, well, she wouldn't like me posting during our time. ;) in any case... i think we have gotten somewhat off track here. the original point of me posting this thread was to address whether the VA logic SC uses is actually a necessity. i think its obvious it is not necessary. most people seem to use tags of some kind or another to get things sorted and classified the way they want them to be. now that isn't to say some people don't use the VA logic. some do, and it works perfectly or near perfectly for them, (and they use it in a way that may or may not be how it was intended, but regardless, they like it). some even don't mind having to make tags that undo what the VA logic does incorrectly on a portion of their music. so, getting back to the whole point of this thread: I PROPOSE SC ADDS AN OPTION THAT ALLOWS USERS TO DISABLE OR TURN OFF THE VA LOGIC DETECTION i am adding the bug report here: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8324 even if you think VA detection logic necessary, i don't think you can argue against such an option. for many of us, it is in fact, not necessary, it leads to albums being classified as comps and put in the wrong place, and most importantly to the strength of the request, it adds unnecessary scanning time to library scans. consider: many people would have their libraries totally correctly sorted and labelled via their tags alone! the VA logic makes a scan take longer for no reason, its totally superfluous. others, like me, suffer at the hands of the VA logic. but we can't turn it off. surely an on / off option where VA logic is concerned is then justified? if only for the purposes of decreasing scan times? (although i would argue, it would help people like me as well). thx. -- 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;308712 Wrote: first, i've been away. i got married. but now i would like to revisit these issues. This thread is dead. Dead. Dead, I tell you. :-) It's very clear by recent activity in bugzilla that there are very large changes planned for the database structure and how it will be used in future versions of SqueezeCenter. Targeted for 7.3, I'd guess we're looking at early next year at the very soonest. When _that_ design change goes into beta then it will be time to dig up this dead horse again. -- 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?
MrSinatra;308712 Wrote: first, i've been away. i got married.As I say to all who succumb to this fate, myself included...Commiserations, you can't be happy all your life. ;) -- 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?
Jim i appreciate the reply, but i don't see why this should have to wait
for 7.3! ...or a whole new database schema.
my hope is that erland or phil or kdf or greg (or someone) will
consider the worthiness of my bug report, and hopefully find it worthy,
and implement the option.
but just waiting around in a vague hope that whatever the new schema is
will happen to address this issue is not to me, acceptable or
practical.
i have waited a long time [years] for slim to address how it handles
files without user defined tags. waiting what could be months to years
more is not something i want to do. granted, this issue (bug 8324) is
not as important to me as bug 8001, but nevertheless, i would like to
see both addressed sooner rather than later, and i don't see why either
should wait for a whole new paradigm.
(and actually, while not as important to me, this bug 8324 should have
a lot more support here {compared to 8001} b/c i would bet a lot of
people here would appreciate shorter scan times)
--
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
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Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Jim i appreciate the reply, but i don't see why this should have to wait for 7.3! ...or a whole new database schema. Because we rather concentrate on doing 7.3 right than wasting time fixing and breaking again the current logic. -- Michael ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
MrSinatra;308732 Wrote:
Jim i appreciate the reply, but i don't see why this should have to wait
for 7.3! ...or a whole new database schema.
my hope is that erland or phil or kdf or greg (or someone) will
consider the worthiness of my bug report, and hopefully find it worthy,
and implement the option.
but just waiting around in a vague hope that whatever the new schema is
will happen to address this issue is not to me, acceptable or
practical.
i have waited a long time [years] for slim to address how it handles
files without user defined tags. waiting what could be months to years
more is not something i want to do. granted, this issue (bug 8324) is
not as important to me as bug 8001, but nevertheless, i would like to
see both addressed sooner rather than later, and i don't see why either
should wait for a whole new paradigm.
(and actually, while not as important to me, this bug 8324 should have
a lot more support here {compared to 8001} b/c i would bet a lot of
people here would appreciate shorter scan times)
To be pedantic, you have effectively filed an enhancement request to
add a new user-configurable option. Nothing wrong with that, but it
ISN'T a bug...
In the meantime you might want to focus your energy on:
1) being married - it's very time-consuming!
2) tagging your files in a suitably creative way so that your bug is
less of a problem for you personally
3) recognise that apparently very very few users have the same issues
that you have - or, at least, they don't attach the same importance to
them that you do
4) preparing to be a beta-tester for 7.3. If JJ is correct and a whole
new database schema is planned (and with all due respect to the
designers, there is something really badly optimised about the current
one - and I say this as someone who has implemented a commercial
database which does 30 million updates a day and has over a billion
rows of data in a single table) then it is going to need a good bit of
in-field user testing...
PS Congratulations!
--
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
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Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
mherger;308740 Wrote: Jim i appreciate the reply, but i don't see why this should have to wait for 7.3! ...or a whole new database schema. Because we rather concentrate on doing 7.3 right than wasting time fixing and breaking again the current logic. Michael i am asking this b/c i want to know, so please understand it is not to be argumentative... but the VA detection logic seems to be its own separate process from the [or within the?] rest of the scanning process. is this not the case? if it is, why is it such a burden or risk to simply allow people the option to turn it off if they don't want to use it? -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.1beta - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
Short answer is that it would need to be supported, and that's a lot easier to say (or request) than do. It's rather obvious with 7.0 - 7.3 all in the targets, that there is a lot on the go. However, as unsupported goes, SC is, as always open source. Download the tar.gz version, install activePerl and remove this line from Slim\Music\Import.pm Slim::Schema-mergeVariousArtistsAlbums; It's around line 350 or so (plus remove the two lines before it). You'll probably find it isn't really shaving a whole lot off the total scan time (unless you have the majority of your collection falling into the VA category). No guarantees on the results, mind you, but at least you'll get a clear demonstration of just what you get by simply turning off the VA postscan. -kdf -- kdf kdf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7 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;308767 Wrote: However, as unsupported goes, SC is, as always open source. Download the tar.gz version, install activePerl and remove this line from Slim\Music\Import.pm Slim::Schema-mergeVariousArtistsAlbums; It's around line 350 or so (plus remove the two lines before it). You'll probably find it isn't really shaving a whole lot off the total scan time (unless you have the majority of your collection falling into the VA category). No guarantees on the results, mind you, but at least you'll get a clear demonstration of just what you get by simply turning off the VA postscan. I've added a patch to the bug report based on this description, based on some simple tests it seems to work as expected. The default settings is the current behaviour where various artists albums are automatically detected. If automatic detection is disabled with the new option, the result is that various artists albums are only detected based on COMPILATION tags. -- 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?
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 ALBUM by ALBUMARTIST and be listed under ALBUMARTISTS in artist list (Home-Artists-ALBUMARTIST). Right now compilation albums, even though they are displayed as ALBUM by ALBUMARTIST, are grouped under Home-Artists-Various Artists. - Album View (Home-Albims): When album is listed like ALBUM by SOMETHING, regardless of what is that SOMETHING is, sorting should follow the general sorting rule of the list. If it is just by Album, then everything is OK, if it is by Artist, Album, than SOMETHING should be treated as artist and sort should effectively become Something, Album. Right now, compilations with albumartist are listed as ALBUMbyALBUMARTIST but sorted (ina case of Artist, Album 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 ALBUM by ALBUMARTIST and be listed under ALBUMARTISTS in artist list (Home-Artists-ALBUMARTIST). Right now compilation albums, even though they are displayed as ALBUM by ALBUMARTIST, 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 ALBUM by SOMETHING, regardless of what is that SOMETHING is, sorting should follow the general sorting rule of the list. If it is just by Album, then everything is OK, if it is by Artist, Album, than SOMETHING should be treated as artist and sort should effectively become Something, Album. Right now, compilations with albumartist are listed as ALBUMbyALBUMARTIST but sorted (ina case of Artist, Album 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
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
slimkid;300768 Wrote: @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 I'm well aware of where it is coming from (I'm sure your point is much easier to write when you ignore certain bits of my post where I mention three threads). Given the core nature of this particular bit of logic, my statement that no one involved can do anything, stands. Even with the ability to merge code, it could not be done without full buy in from the people who actually make the decisions as to how it should work. If you wish to keep it to one thread, then at least that's a small mercy for the rest of us. I think you misinterpret the desires of the OP. It is not a discussion for the sake of it. The whole idea revolves around trying to get a group together to lobby for changes to the VA logic. Be grateful for the participation of Erland and Phil. Even if you disagree with their points, it's your best chance of seeing a patch, thus the only chance of effecting change. I'll now join the majority and go back to quietly ignoring this thread and it's sibling, hoping that it will all come to a reasonable conclusion soon. -- kdf kdf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7 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: 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. I don't think that's quite right; if I understood JJZolx having ALBUMARTIST set and COMPILATION=0 is when things break. I have *no* COMPILATION tags set, and it works for me. greg ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Various Artists Logic... is it necessary?
I don't think that's quite right; if I understood JJZolx having ALBUMARTIST set and COMPILATION=0 is when things break. I have *no* COMPILATION tags set, and it works for me. I was trying to say that if there is an album artist, then compilation tags should be ignored. i.e if there is an album artist and compilation=1, it shouldn't be considered a compilation album. Here's another go at explaining things a bit further: Guest artists on a compilation album have track artist role and thus are suppressed if Group compilation albums together is selected. Should guest artists on an album that has an album artist be suppressed in the same way? I'm not sure there's a clear-cut answer to that question. If so, the album wouldn't be a compilation, so the label text should read something more generic like Suppress guest artists from artist list. If an album has guest artists and SC guesses that an album is a compilation and the user wants to override this, we think they should do so by setting an album artist. That would by result in Compilation=NULL, and track artist roles would be set for all artists. Thus the Group compilation albums together option would suppress guest artists. However, some users have already overridden the logic by setting compilation=0 rather than setting an album artist, and as a result all artists have lead performer (1) contributor roles. If the scanner were changed such that compilation=0 were to always cause track artist roles, then what artist would you expect to find the album listed under? It wouldn't be a compilation, so wouldn't appear under various artists, and track artists could be suppressed and there wouldn't be any lead artists. I think that is why compilation=0 always causes artist (1) roles. The album would be listed under each individual artist (they are not regarded as guest performers). This isn't so bad for Browse Artists, but confusing for Browse Albums by Artist as the album is listed under one arbitrary artist. It appears that at the moment the user has a choice: 1. Set an album artist and no compilation tag - guest artists can be suppressed from browse artists. 2. Set an album artist and compilation=0 - guest artists are never suppressed from browse artists. I think we are agreeing that ARTIST tags should always be stored as track artist roles when there is an album artist. ___ 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?
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 JJZolx.395wrz1210368601 (AT) no-mx (DOT) 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?
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?
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?
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?
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
