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[rungabic]

Is there any way either during the ripping/YADB lookup or later on in a batch process to move "A's," "An's," "The's," etc. to the end (like in the title of this post)?

This is something I have always liked to do for the Artist, Album, and Track Name fields.

Maybe the answer is buried somewhere in the docs or in this forum, but I couldn't find it...

Thanks,
Brent

[JaWe]

KingSparta has plugin that does it, "The" master

http://www.spartasoft.com

[rungabic]

Thank you!  That sounds great, *EXCEPT* it looks like his plugin only handles "The" (and not "A," "An," etc.).

Also, it appears to only deal with the Artist Name (and not the Album and Track Name fields).

I'd assume it wouldn't be too hard for him to modify this plugin to take care of everything?  But maybe I'm the only one who's ever asked?  

Brent

[KingSparta]

I'd assume it wouldn't be too hard for him to modify this plugin to take care of everything?

1. no it would be easy but then i could not call it "the" master

2. and "The", "A", "An" Master just does not sound right.

3. I have no intrest in changing it

[rungabic]

Dear King,

Guess I'll just have to do this manually for 3,300 CDs worth of tracks () or else drum up support for this functionality to be built into MC in a future release.

How about "The Prefix Master"?

Thanks very much for responding though!

Brent

[Matt]

Next build of MC 9.1 will also have this ability.

History item:

NEW: Added clean file properties option "Move articles to end (i.e. 'The Beatles' to 'Beatles, The')."

[fex]

Only "the" or others too?

[Quisp]

Next build of MC 9.1 will also have this ability.

History item:

NEW: Added clean file properties option "Move articles to end (i.e. 'The Beatles' to 'Beatles, The')."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any chance that we could do something about sorting on the first name? Like lastname, firstname? Hmmm?

[KingSparta]

How about "The Prefix Master"?

sounds like a very good name.

if matt does not do it right   (Let me know)

I may look at it then.

[rungabic]

Thanks, Matt!  And yes -- Quisp -- I completely forgot about that -- I also sort my artists by lastname, firstname.  Thanks for reminding me.

So Matt -- will the next build (1) take care of all articles [not just "the"] and (2) take care of artist lastname, firstname?  The two really go together -- I can't imagine that anyone obsessive enough to want to alphabetize without articles wouldn't also want to alphabetize by an artist's last name.  Of course, there would need to be a way to prevent "Dream Academy" from becoming "Academy, Dream"....

[Quisp]

Of course, there would need to be a way to prevent "Dream Academy" from becoming "Academy, Dream"....

If it means getting the basic functionality of moving everything from the first charater up to a space to the end of a field with a comma space in front of it, I would be happy to decide what records it makes sense to manipulate. Otherwise if there is some magical way of intuiting naming context, I'm all for that too!

Seems lkie an editible list of first names wouldn't work very well since it would rename "Henry Cow" "Cow, Henry". Then again, I'd rather get 90-95% there then 0%.

[Steef_V.]

Next build of MC 9.1 will also have this ability.

Ability.... I surely hope it will be a selectable OPTION?
Because personally I don't like it this way at all....
I always remove "The", and leave everything else alone.

[TimB]

I found an easy solution:

Beatles
Monkees
Rolling Stones
Who

MC9 makes it easy and it works for A and An as well.

-=Tim=-

[knickelfarz]

I found an easy solution...

I'm missing the guy who is afraid of loosing his "The The" tracks...

[Quisp]

Next build of MC 9.1 will also have this ability.

History item:

NEW: Added clean file properties option "Move articles to end (i.e. 'The Beatles' to 'Beatles, The')."

Seems to be missing, unless i'm looking for the feature in the wrong place....

[KingSparta]

I'm missing the guy who is afraid of loosing his "The The" tracks...

"The" Master Protects "The The"


'Let's Groove' Charted At 03 In 1981

Listening to: 'Let's Groove' from 'Sounds Of The Eighties (1981)' by 'Earth, Wind And Fire' on Media Center Pro (Gold Version) 9.1

[Bob007]

Someone (apologies, I can't remember who) suggested the following solution which I use and think works pretty well (although it's not the tidiest) :

• Create a custom field called, for example, 'ArtistSort'.
  
  
• Use the 'Copy/Move Field' functionality from 'Library Tools' to copy all 'Artist' information to this new field.
  
  
• Then (and this is the catch) edit the new field information for your prefered sort option e.g. 'The Clash' to 'Clash, The' ; 'Tom Waits'; to 'Waits, Tom'  etc
  
  
• Then re-edit your views etc to use 'ArtistSort' instead of 'Artist' -- all your artists will be grouped as you desire.
  

You just have to remember to set the 'ArtistSort' field everytime you rip a new CD/import new MP3s.

I like this solution as 'My Playing Now' continues to display e.g. 'Let Love In (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)' as opposed to less aesthetically pleasing 'Let Love In (Cave, Nick & The Bad Seeds'....small things, I know.

Like I said, not the tidiest solution but it may be of use to someone. I was fortunate when I decided to use this method as I was new to Media Center and only had about three dozen or so artists ripped from CD i.e. not much editing....I appreciate this isn't likely to be the case for seasoned users.

[rungabic]

Bob,

I like that idea a lot.  And I think it would be very cool to be able to sort things properly, yet still see the now playing info displayed "normally."  The only issue would still be a batch process to automatically handle all that editing in the new ArtistSort field.

Brent

[TimB]

I probably shouldn't mention that I have Neil Young filed under "N".

Simplicity in filing.

-=Tim=-

[jleerigby]

Someone (apologies, I can't remember who) suggested the following solution which I use and think works pretty well (although it's not the tidiest) :

Sounds like a Nila solution.

[Bob007]

rungabic:
The only issue would still be a batch process to automatically handle all that editing in the new ArtistSort field.

Can't imagine it would be too hard to create a plugin that would reverse an 'ArtistSort' field from a format of "First Second" to "Second, First" (which would cover "The Beatles" and "Leonard Cohen" etc)....

...but how it would deal with e.g. "Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds", "Happy Mondays", "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club" etc would require some thought...

[rungabic]

Exactly.  But I have a feeling there are people listening who could come up with some great ideas to automate the process as much as possible.  For those difficult ones, even the ability to just click "yes" or "no" one by one would be far faster than editing them by hand.

Of course, you still might have to manually do "Cave, Nick & The Bad Seeds"...but those are relatively rare compared to the other types I think.  Anyway, I'm sure someone could come up with a scheme where when you made such a "difficult" change once, it could then automatically apply that to any other/future albums with the same original artist name...  There are a lot of contingencies, but it seems very do-able & would be a huge time-saver.

Brent

[Quisp]

Sounds like a Nila solution.

Actually it was me.   Kind of long winded, yes but it allows for the artist field to remain pristine for other software or YADB lookups, etc. Also, you could sort by anything, like I still don't know if I want to sort Captain Beefheart by C or B...seems like B.

Regarding the plug-in, King Sparta had one that did most, if not all of this but something happened between MJ8 and MC9 that stopped him from updating it.

I think that whatever is created, the user should control what fields are effected. I may decide at a later date that remembering to change the sort field is too hard...

[Valissystem]

Can I suggest that what is really needed is a "Artist (sortname)" specifal field that is used for sorting, but that doesn't affect display.  Therefore one could have "The Beatles" sorted as "Beatles, The" but always displayed for printing etc. as "The Beatles".

This should be stored per Artist so that if you adjust "The Beatles" to be sorted as "Beatles, The" all files with artist="The Beatles" get sorted correctly (including future added files).

To complement this one needs a few predefined automatic recipes for generating the "sortname" version from the Artist.

[NanjingGuy]

This display sorting is one weak point in MJ.

Even WMP 9 does artists the way you'd expect. The Beatles comes before Cowboy Junkies in the lists.

And we all know, if MS can do it, anyone can.

There shouldn't have to be additional fields for the user, it should just be a selectable option to sort/display either way.

[Valissystem]

This display sorting is one weak point in MJ.

Even WMP 9 does artists the way you'd expect. The Beatles comes before Cowboy Junkies in the lists.

And we all know, if MS can do it, anyone can.

There shouldn't have to be additional fields for the user, it should just be a selectable option to sort/display either way.

Well personally I have never run WMP 9 so I can't comment.

I would like a feature like this selectable by artist, so that I could get "Mike Oldfield" to sort as "Oldfield, Mike" but "Pink Floyd" to still sort as "Pink Floyd".

One piece of software for example, that allows this is Mp3 Collector from collectorz.com. It allows you to edit the list of Artists and select how they display versus how they sort. It of course is not a player and is mp3 specific so MC beats it in lots of other ways.

[zevele10]

YES ,but what about my "The The " riped cds?

Would they become 'The The ' instead of 'The The'..
Or just 'The' .
And where i would find them in the tree ,at 'T' ,or at  'T' ?.

Cannot find out the answer

[JimH]

This reminds me of what Gertrude Stein is supposed to have said when asked about her visit to Oakland (California).

"When you get there, there is no there there."

[Quisp]

One piece of software for example, that allows this is Mp3 Collector from collectorz.com. It allows you to edit the list of Artists and select how they display versus how they sort. It of course is not a player and is mp3 specific so MC beats it in lots of other ways.

Valissystem, does Mp3 Collector actually let you change the MP3 tag? This sorting issue is driving me nuts, if I scroll down to Z to find Zappa where he belongs and then have to scroll up to F where he doesn't belong one more time, I'm going to go nuts!

[KingSparta]

I'm going to go nuts!

did you look under weard?

because he was

'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' Charted At 86 In 1974

Listening to: 'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' from 'Strictly Commercial' by 'Frank Zappa' on Media Center 9.1

[ashawley]

Not to throw a wrench in this whole headache, but I prefer not to have displayed name changed.

So, "The Beatles" would appear under B's.  Basically, just ignoring leading articles.

Looks like we need some customizable options...

Leading Article Options
1. Sort including (i.e. "The Beatles" appears under T's)
2. Ignore
3. Move to end
4. What's a leading article?
etc...

But if you start getting into foreign leading articles you run into trouble.

Some guy on the iPodlounge could not figure out why the band "Die Young" was showing up under the Y's.

"Die" being a German leading article.

Can't please 'em all I guess..

Adam(S)

[spksmom]

Here's one that happened to me that I'm still at a loss to understand. I manually deleted all the "The"s to keep The Beatles, The Byrds, the Chiffons, etc. from being listed under T. Then I ripped a CD by a group from Quebec called Le Vent du Nord. *They* are listed under "V." Go figure.

Anyway, I'd love to have the options Adam listed - like having The Beatles called The Beatles, but listed under B. On the other hand, it's not a huge priority. I find Neil Young under "N" just fine:)

[Valissystem]

Valissystem, does Mp3 Collector actually let you change the MP3 tag? This sorting issue is driving me nuts, if I scroll down to Z to find Zappa where he belongs and then have to scroll up to F where he doesn't belong one more time, I'm going to go nuts!

Hi there,

No it keeps the actual tag as the "Display Name" but allows you to generate a "Sort Name" for each Artist. (It appears that Mp3 Collector is using a relational database format for it's DB. I'm not sure how MC does it but given the extensibility of field names etc. I think it may be different.

[Quisp]

Hi there,

No it keeps the actual tag as the "Display Name" but allows you to generate a "Sort Name" for each Artist. (It appears that Mp3 Collector is using a relational database format for it's DB. I'm not sure how MC does it but given the extensibility of field names etc. I think it may be different.

Thanks! I checked it out and the way it works is pretty sweet. I've read a lot of comments here about the way this should work and I have a feeling this is why this feature hasn't been added. It  is a simple problem being made into a complex solution. All that *I* need anyway is a way to take a field from a selection of records, any field, and select everything up to the last space...go to the end of the field and paste a comma, space and then the copyied info. This is what I have to do by hand and it is lame, lame, lame.

MC9 allows us to create just about any field one may want which is great! The first field I wanted was a sort field. MC lets you copy almost any field to any other field, great, I copied artist to the newly created sort field. On hundreds of thousands of records this took less than 10 seconds...next step, manipulating the sort field.

I'm willing to select the records I want to change and I'm willing to create the sort field and copy contents into it, this solves all problems mentioned above, yes it requires brain matter on my part and a bit of time, but it is the copy and paste process above which could easily be programmed and which takes a ridiculous amount of time. I could even create a playlist called "songs to sort" for batch processing. Now that I think about it, since this is a sort field, I don't even need for the utility to do anything other than delete all text up to and including the last space or underline charactor. (Is this currently possible?)

If anyone knows how to get this done with an external utility that could perform the function on a custom, MC field please let me know. Even if I could copy the artist field to another "standard", unused field this would be great since I could then copy the result to the sort field in MC. Whatever the utility, it would have to save anything it does to the file, not its internal database, that is the problem with collectorz.

If there is a way to export to and import from an Access or SQL Server database that would be great as I could do something in Cold Fusion or ASP to manipulate the field. Unfortunately I'm not a VB or C programmer, otherwise this seems like a very easy plug-in.

Thanks for any help with this!

[Quisp]

did you look under weard?

because he was

'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' Charted At 86 In 1974

Listening to: 'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' from 'Strictly Commercial' by 'Frank Zappa' on Media Center 9.1

Ha! What is weird is that a song with about six time changes in the first 30 seconds could chart in the U.S. at all. Ahh...the 70's...wish I could remember them!

[NanjingGuy]

YES ,but what about my "The The " riped cds?

Would they become 'The The ' instead of 'The The'..
Or just 'The' .
And where i would find them in the tree ,at 'T' ,or at  'T' ?.

Cannot find out the answer

Under the new system, this artist will be replaced by Lawrence Welk polkas. Under 'B' for bubble music.

[HeavyPet@Work]

I seem to recall that I was able to have MJ8 build some or all of the tags based on the physical filesystem layout.

I had it do this after having changed the directory names to my pleasure (Beatles, The) (Zappa, Frank).