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[dmitch77]

I'm trying to understand the Auto Album Artist mechanism (https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)). I can't see any mention of the boolean "Compilation" tag in the actual audio file. I only see discussion of Artist, Album Artist, and Album fields. Ditto for the "Multiple Artist Albums" page (https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Multiple_Artist_Albums). How exactly does MC use the Compilation tag?

I am trying to set things up some I can find songs on compilations both of these ways:

• Under each artist on the compilation, and
• Under something like "Various artists"

I want each song on a compilation to show up in both of those places. How would I go about that?

Thanks.

[dmitch77]

After some experimentation and studying I have concluded that

• The Compilation flag in the EXIF tags is ignored by MC.
• In a Panes view, there is currently no way for files with different values for "Artist" and "Album Artist" to appear under both fields - e.g. under both "Santana" and "Various Artists".

Both of these surprise me, if true. Are they both in fact true? If so, please consider this a feature request to optionally allow displaying by both "Artist" and "Album Artist" in a Panes view. Note that iTunes current does exactly this, in its browser view (which is like MC's Panes view).

[EnglishTiger]

dmitch - If the Album Artist for all your Compilations is set to "Various Artists" then try this..

In Standard View Right-Click on the word/heading "Audio" and add the "Panes (genre, artist, album)" Library View.

Once it's been loaded right-click on it and select "Customise View..." and change "Show Categories in this order" to this "Album Artist", "Artist" and "Album".

Every Time you open that View it will list every "Album Artist, Artist and Album.

Clicking on an "Album Artist" name, i.e. "Various Artists" will cause the view to redraw to show only the "Artists" that appear on that "Album Artists" Albums and in the Details List.

If you then select one of the "Artists" listed in Column 2 (Artist) only those "Albums" that artist appears on will be showing in Column 3 (Albums) and the Details List

Incidentally MC does have a Compilation Tag but, since EXIF Tags are not normally used for Audio Files it is not set up to recognize it, or inherit, it's value

[Matt]

Hi dmitch77.  Can you explain how you're using EXIF with audio files?

We have EXIF reading, but it's only used for images.

Audio files normally have their own native tags.

What format are you using?

Thanks.

[dmitch77]

Audio files normally have their own native tags.

Ah, you're right, my apologies. I was mixing up audio and image terminology.

The Compilation flag is displayed by MC as in the first attachment, and in Metadatics in the second attachment. Both programs know about it and can diaplay it, but AFAICT MC doesn't do anything with it when it comes to sorting or listing. I don't know where in the file it's stored.

[Matt]

For us, the field "Mix Album" is calculated automatically.

If your files have a different album artist and artist, which they do, it should get set to true.

[dmitch77]

So what I did is:

• Added a new library view called Compilations. Only files with "Mix Album" = True are displayed. It displays panes, showing Genre, then Album.
• Changed all other views and panes to display "Artist" instead of "Album Artist (Auto)".

So now I can look up compilation albums by their genre and album name, if I want to listen to a whole album. Or I can look up one artist's song which might happen to be on a compilation album, but I look it up under that artist's name. These two lookups happen in different views.

Problem solved! It would have been a bit easier if I could have filtered by the existing "compilation" flag that is in the files, but AFAICT, is not accessible in the MC data base. I had to modify a bunch of Album Artist fields to make sure the derived "Mix Album" was set correctly.

Thanks for the help, all, I knew this had to be doable somehow.

[lepa]

Problem solved! It would have been a bit easier if I could have filtered by the existing "compilation" flag that is in the files, but AFAICT, is not accessible in the MC data base.

Did you try to make new field called Compilation? MC should be able to then map it to compilation tag. You could then do "update library from tags" to few files to test it works