Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zootsuit]

Library search produces inconsistent results. I've noticed this in prior builds. (I'm running 27.0.85, 64 bit) The files seem to be over-aggressive in filtering out logical alternatives.

Case in point: I'm doing an artist search (artist=bill o'connell). The search result omits several albums tagged as (artist=o'connell, bill) Everything else in the search terms besides the comma is identical. I'm not even getting fuzzy results, with that greyed drop down suggesting alternatives.

If I reconfigure the search to 'bill o'connell', omitting the comma, the search returns all files tagged that way. But there are many cases where modest modifications in the tags screen out the results.

I realize that identifying all variants and accommodating them in the algorithm would be 10 lifetimes work. However, the insertion of a comma in the name shouldn't throw the library search function off, should it? Or am I missing something in how to use the library search function more effectively? (Entirely possible, so I'm open to correction.)

Thanks/ALR

[blgentry]

You probably don't want to hear this, but the correct solution here is to canonicalize your library:  I.E. make all of your records consistent. 

I've built a variety of views that help me do tasks like this, using Panes up top to show Artists, Albums, etc.  Doing searches without any qualifiers (like artist=) will product more broad results.  Generally speaking MC will return results with any kind of search string.  Using the word "bill" and the word "connell" should get you everything that has those two sub-string words in the Artist field.  (Or any other common field actually).

Since "O'Connell" has a single quote embedded in it, that might be causing you issues.  It's possible that some of your "O'Connell" entries are actually using a unicode character for the single quote, as opposed to the good old normal single quote you are used to.  That's why I suggested searching for "connell" instead.

Trying to make your entire library consistent and "regular" can be kind of hard.  But in the end I think it's worth it.  I am my own digital librarian.  As such I want my collection as organized as I can make it.  I would suggest you start by finding all artist names that use commas and "fix" them.  Having two different forms for names seems confusing and is certainly inconsistent.

Good luck to you.
Brian.

[Zootsuit]

Thanks Brian. Fortunately, the Find and Replace functionality permits aggregation of identical entries that have been tagged differently, e.g., Volume for Vol or Vol. That doesn't address tagging variations resulting from simple typos or discographical variations, such as Junior and Jr, or in the case of JR Monterose vs J.R. Monterose. (You can spend a lifetime arguing with purists over that.) I guess the answer is to keep adjusting the breadth of the search till you've nailed all variations, then doing a mass edit.

 

[dtc]

When using the Search wizard or in setting up a Smartlist if you click to the left of a rule, you can add a ( or [ to add and/or logical. Then do the same on the right to close up the logic. Right clicking gives you help on the process. So, you can use 2 rules to get jr or junior, for example. 

e.g.  Artist contains jr or artist contains junior.

If you use a smartlist you can build the logic as you go and them keep it easily if you want to come back to it.  Probably easier than using import/export with the search wizard.

[blgentry]

Thanks Brian. Fortunately, the Find and Replace functionality permits aggregation of identical entries that have been tagged differently, e.g., Volume for Vol or Vol. That doesn't address tagging variations resulting from simple typos or discographical variations, such as Junior and Jr, or in the case of JR Monterose vs J.R. Monterose. (You can spend a lifetime arguing with purists over that.) I guess the answer is to keep adjusting the breadth of the search till you've nailed all variations, then doing a mass edit.

I use a Tagging view that I built from Panes.  See attached screen shot for reference.  As I find artists that might need consolidation, I do a search to try to find most or all of the variations.  In this case I'm looking for Miles Davis variants.  The search returns a number of artists up in the Artists Pane at the top.  I then highlight the ones that I want to work with using control or shift keys to highlight more than one entry.  Next, I highlight the albums.  Clicking in that album area and doing "control-a" will select them all.  Next I go to the tagging window on the left and click on the down arrow next to artist, which gives me a choice of which artist to assign.  I can then just select one and they all become that artist.

Writing this in words makes it seem like there's a lot to it.  It's actually very fast.  I've consolidated dozens of artists and their variants this way.  I actually had to make up a contrived example (Miles Davis vs. Miles Davis Quintet), because I really don't have any artist variants left in my collection that I'm aware of. 

This kind of technique might help you do some consolidating of your own.

Brian.

[Zootsuit]

Thanks BLJ. I haven’t been exploring Panel and can see how that’s a more effective way of displaying what I want. Next step would be to try to create a specific child display.