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[Kid Twist]

I'm in the middle of a free trial of JR. So far, so good. Mostly. The other day, I was playing with the settings and customizing Theater View when I clicked on "Album Artist (Automatic)." At the time, I didn't know what this meant and after a little while, I unchecked it. Then I realized that JR had started re-writing the artist tags for some of my albums and discovered that this what "Album Artist (Automatic)."

At first, I freaked, because I had invested a lot of time over the years meticulously tagging 1,725 albums according to my own system and I did NOT want to have to do it again. I now realize that my original data is still on the albums (whew!) but JR is showing something different.

So (finally) ... here's my question: How do I undo this? Is there a setting to scan and show the original tags? Or do I have to delete my library and re-add it?

Thanks.

[blgentry]

The other day, I was playing with the settings and customizing Theater View when I clicked on "Album Artist (Automatic)." At the time, I didn't know what this meant and after a little while, I unchecked it. Then I realized that JR had started re-writing the artist tags for some of my albums and discovered that this what "Album Artist (Automatic)."

You're misunderstanding.  MC will never rewrite your tags automatically.  MC will only make the tag changes that you tell it to.  There is a field in MC's database called [Album Artist (auto)]  This field is generated automatically by MC based on your existing tags.  It does not write to your files.  It's just used as a helper field.  Here's how it works:

If [Album Artist] has a value in it already, MC takes that value and puts in into [Album Artist (auto)].  If not, MC takes the value from [Artist] and puts that into [Album Artist (auto)].  Again, none of your existing tags are changed at all.

If you look at your tags, they should all be the same.  You've just discovered a new auto generated tag that MC uses.  It's used mainly for compilation albums and multi-artist albums.  Sorting on [Album Artist (auto)] is usually the right thing to do.  That's what it was designed for.  A few more details here:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

Brian.

[Kid Twist]

You're misunderstanding.  MC will never rewrite your tags automatically.  MC will only make the tag changes that you tell it to.  There is a field in MC's database called [Album Artist (auto)]  This field is generated automatically by MC based on your existing tags.  It does not write to your files.  It's just used as a helper field.  Here's how it works:

If [Album Artist] has a value in it already, MC takes that value and puts in into [Album Artist (auto)].  If not, MC takes the value from [Artist] and puts that into [Album Artist (auto)].  Again, none of your existing tags are changed at all.

If you look at your tags, they should all be the same.  You've just discovered a new auto generated tag that MC uses.  It's used mainly for compilation albums and multi-artist albums.  Sorting on [Album Artist (auto)] is usually the right thing to do.  That's what it was designed for.  A few more details here:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

Brian.

OK, Thanks. I got that. I already realized that none of my original tags have been altered, thankfully. Now how do I get JRiver to once again display *my* tags instead of the ones it auto-generated? Is there an undo feature for Album Artist (Auto)?

[blgentry]

^ I guess you mean for sorting in Theater View?  I'm not totally sure what you did.  Maybe just resetting the Theater View views would work:

Tools > Options  > Theater View > (lower pane) > Reset! (button)

Brian.

[Kid Twist]

^ I guess you mean for sorting in Theater View?  I'm not totally sure what you did.  Maybe just resetting the Theater View views would work:

Tools > Options  > Theater View > (lower pane) > Reset! (button)

Brian.

It's showing it in Standard View, too. But not for all albums, so I must have stopped the process when I undid auto. Or something.

For instance, I have a disc of music by Ives where my album artist tag is "San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas." But for this disc, MC is displaying album artist in all views as "Charles Edward Ives."

I'll delete the library from MC and re-add it tonight to see what happens. Hoping it just picks up my original tags again and leaves them alone. Thanks. 

[Kid Twist]

OK, I've purchased a license and spent more time exploring MC and I have a better understanding of the library. Cool stuff.

I also figured out what's been happening with my stuff. In addition to all my CD rips, I have a bunch of albums that I purchased as FLAC downloads from different online stores. Back when I bought these, I immediately re-tagged them according to my preferences using MP3Tag. What seems to be happening is that MC's library is ignoring my tags and somehow reading the original metadata that came with these files.

Is there a way to get MC to display my tag information for these files without having to go in and type the information into the library fields?

[blgentry]

In addition to all my CD rips, I have a bunch of albums that I purchased as FLAC downloads from different online stores. Back when I bought these, I immediately re-tagged them according to my preferences using MP3Tag. What seems to be happening is that MC's library is ignoring my tags and somehow reading the original metadata that came with these files.

Tags and metadata should be the same thing with MP3Tag.  That is, MP3Tag writes metadata into tags.  What tags have you changed?  Can you verify that you see these tag values with MP3Tag and not with MC?

If your values are in the file name, then that's something else.  MC can help you with this too.  Figuring out where your data is stored is the first step.

Brian.

[Kid Twist]

I changed pretty much every tag. MC is reverting to old data for the artist tag. When I read the files with Mp3Tage, I see my changes. My file names are auto-generated in Mp3Tag based on tag info. (For classical, though, information from the artist field is not part of the file name.)

[blgentry]

I changed pretty much every tag. MC is reverting to old data for the artist tag. When I read the files with Mp3Tage, I see my changes.

MC should be using the [Artist] tag for Artist.  Though in some views [Album Artist (auto)] will be used.  The key to figuring out your problem is finding which tag or tags you have changed that you do not see in MC.

As a guess, maybe MP3Tag has written to [Album Artist] instead of [Artist]?  In MP3Tag, look at the field that you have changed.  What is the field name?

Now go look in MC and look at Artist, Album Artist, and Album Artist (auto).  Is your new tag there?  It should be in some field if MP3Tag has written it.

Or have you made changes with MP3Tag *after* importing files into MC?  MC normally should update when you change file tags, but you might have to do it manually.  Which is easy and fast.  But let's find which tags we are talking about and go from there.

Brian.

[Kid Twist]

I changed both artist and album artist on all the files in question using Mp3Tag long before I ever downloaded JRiver. I'll take a closer look at what's happening soon as I get a chance. Thanks very much for trying to help me sort this out.