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Author Topic: questions/comments from new MC9.1 user  (Read 2305 times)

GreggP

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questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« on: January 29, 2004, 05:58:22 pm »

I'm a new Media Center user. In fact, I am still within the 30 day trial of MC 9.1. I am considering switching

from Windows Media Player 9, but there are a few questions I have before I spend the money.

1. When transferring tracks to an audio player, MC9.1 won't transcode to the target bitrate if the source file was encoded with the same filetype. For example, most of my tracks were ripped to lossless WMA and when transferring tracks to my portable player (Nex II - the compact flash card shows up as an external drive on my system and both MC9.1 and WMP9 recognize it as such) I'd like it to transcode them to 128Kbps WMA. The WMA files don't get transcoded, only the MP3s. WMP9 handles this just fine. However, I'd really like to have all tracks over 128 Kbps transcoded to 128 Kbps WMA and all tracks 128 Kbps or under (both MP3 and WMA) left untouched. WMP9 will transcode all files, even my 128 Kbps MP3s and 64 Kbps WMAs.

2. Album art - many times MC9.1 gets the wrong cover. I seem to have a higher percentage of correct matches with WMP9.

3. MC9.1 isn't as stable as WMP9. It crashes much more frequently. Come to think of it, WMP9 hasn't crashed on my system ever since I installed the final release. The MC9.1 crashes are not that frequent, so I can live with it.
Many of the crashes occurred while MC9.1 was left to "analyze audio" on my large collection (over 20,000 tracks). It still crashes during other tasks, but I wasn't in QA mode and paying attention to what was going on at the
time. Next time I'll try to pay better attention and report back. BTW, I've noticed a few odd dialogs with asian character strings in the message boxes. Are your string tables messed up? Or is this coded overseas and translated to english (and some of the strings were missed).

4. MC9.1 doesn't handle tracks with multiple artists. Instead, you either get only one of the artists listed or you get multiple names separated with a '/' character, but still recorded in the library as a single artist entry.
WMP9 handles multiple artists pretty well. A track can have multiple artists listed if each name is separated with a semi-colon ';'. The Santana albums "Supernatural" and "Shaman" have several tracks credited to multiple artists, however, MC9.1 lists only Santana. So if I try to do a search for 'Dido' (she is given co-credit for track 12 of "Shaman"), she will only appear with her own albums, not Santana's.

5. MC9.1 can't handle 'OR' boolean relationships when creating auto smartlists. For example, I'd like to create an auto smartlist using the genre "electronica and dance" sorted randomly. However, I'd like to add a few artists whose albums have been classified as "rock". A good example is Brian Eno. If you use AMG, Gracenote/CDDB, freeDB, etc. to automatically get the track info, most of them assign Brian Eno album's genre as "rock" and I generally don't like to override them. Anyhow, I'd like to create an auto smartlist that includes the genre "electronica and dance" OR (also includes) artists "Brian Eno", "Robert Fripp", "Brand X", Stereolab, etc. It makes a nice electronic rock mix. There are other examples of OR relationships that would also be useful. For an example of this check out SIREN Jukebox (I was the project manager for that now-discontinued app). Other than this, MC9.1's auto smartlists are very good -- much better than WMP9's.

6. MC9.1 does not display album information like I get with WMP9. It does display artist information from AMG within the 'Playing Now' tree. I can surf to the album information from there. I would like it if these links were available from the Media Library, so I wouldn't have to play the tracks to access this information.

7. The auto size columns now feature sets the width to the widest record. WMP9 does some sort of averaging so a couple extra long strings don't set the column width so wide. It would be nice if MC9.1 would do this kind of averaging also.

That's it for now. If I don't get any responses to the questions and comments above, I will try breaking them into separate messages so they can spawn there own threads. However, since it is my first message, I thought it best to start out with a list. One more thing - if I do decide to purchase Media Center, should I wait until 10.0 ships? I only have about 12 days left on my trial and I've put a lot of time into transitioning the library from WMP9 to MC9.1 (even though they seem to co-exist pretty well). If I purchase MC9.1, will I have to pay for an upgrade to 10.0 when it is available?

Thanks,
Gregg Plummer
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Bill S

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2004, 09:09:33 pm »


Hi Greg,

Regarding #4, actually MC9 does handle multiple artists, and in a powerful way.  There is are fields called Artist, Album Artist and Album Artist (auto).

- If there is a value in 'Album Artist', then 'Album Artist (auto) takes on this value.
- If there is no value in 'Album Artist' and all the songs in an album have the same value for 'Artist', then 'Album Artist (auto) takes on the value of 'Artist'.
- If there is no value in 'Album Artist' and there is more than 1 value for 'Artist' for the songs in the album, then 'Album Artist (auto) takes on the value of '(multiple artists)'

Using the above, you can setup some custom schemas or views based on Artist, Album Artist (auto) or whatever you want.


Let's look at some examples...

Example 1 - Single Artist album - Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan)
All the tracks have 'Bob Dylan' for the 'Artist' field.
Nothing needed in the 'Album Artist' field
Album Arist (auto) is autopopulated with 'Bob Dylan'.


Example 2 - Multiple Artist album, but with Single Artist emphasis - Shaman (Santana)
The tracks that are just Santana have 'Santana' for the Artist field
The tracks that are collabrations have both artist in the Artist field, i.e., for track 12 enter Santana & Dido
At this point Album Artist (auto) is autopopulated with the value (multiple artists)
Enter Santana for the album artist field for all the songs.
Now you have the Artist field containing the correct value for artist or artists, yet if your scheme uses Auto Artist (auto) field, the album will appear under Santana

Example 3 - Multiple Artist album, no emphasis on an album artist - say uh... The Grunge of Disco
For each track, enter the track's artist
Leave the Album Artist field blank
Now the Artist Album (auto) field is autopopulated with the value (multiple artist).
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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2004, 11:09:13 pm »

Example 2 - Multiple Artist album, but with Single Artist emphasis - Shaman (Santana)
The tracks that are just Santana have 'Santana' for the Artist field
The tracks that are collabrations have both artist in the Artist field, i.e., for track 12 enter Santana & Dido
At this point Album Artist (auto) is autopopulated with the value (multiple artists)
Enter Santana for the album artist field for all the songs.
Now you have the Artist field containing the correct value for artist or artists, yet if your scheme uses Auto Artist (auto) field, the album will appear under Santana

I must be missing something. With WMP9, you can have multiple artists for a single track by separating the artists' names with a semicolon ';'. What do you use in MC9.1 to show multiple artists for a single track? It doesn't look possible. I can't see a way to do it without setting the 'Artist' to one artist and 'Album Artist' to the other artist. That isn't as elegant as the WMP9 method. Are you saying MC9.1 uses the ampersand '&' as it's delimiter?

Note: I just tried setting the Artist for track 12 of Shaman to 'Dido & Santana'. This did not work as I was hoping. I now have another artist called "Dido & Santana". So there are three artists here - 1. Dido 2. Santana and 3. Dido & Santana.

Again, on track 12 of Santana's Shaman, WMP9 will show "Santana;Dido". If I search my WMP9 media library for Dido, I see 2 albums - "No Angel" and "Shaman". The list window displays 12 tracks for "No Angel" and 1 track for Shaman. When I click on the album names I see all tracks for each album. This is the way I like it. With MC9.1, when I try this with Artist = Dido, I also see the album 'Shaman' in the Album column (but not the Album Artist column - that is set to Santana), except the only track listed for the Shaman album is the track credited to Dido - track 12.

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jleerigby

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2004, 03:01:11 am »

MC does support semi colon delimeted fields that will do exactly what you want.  You can add and amend field characteristics via Tools>Options>Tree and View.  I don't have access to MC at the moment so I can't check this but I'm not sure whether the field 'Artist' (being a standard field) can be customised.  If it can't you can create a new field and use this instead.

Check out this thread from Doof for information about tagging mode and semi colon delimited fields.

Re point 2 - Try King Sparta's cover art finder plug in at www.spartasoft.com.

Point 3 - I find MC to be very stable except when doing audio analysis.  If doing a large batch of audio analysis I would close and reopen MC first just to make sure that all DB changes are saved.

Point 5 - I've seen a thread on this recently.  Try a search.

Point 6 - That would be a nice touch especially if it could be accessed when in full screen mode using a command from a remote.  So 1 minute you are looking at a visualisation, press a button on your remote and you get artist and/or album information.

I would urge you to purchase v10 straight away as the developers are not doing any work on 9.1 unless something catastrophic turns up (and that isn't going to happen now).  v10 is stable now and includes some nice new features (search for the thread by Marko called 'Been away' for a list).

Good luck.
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rocketsauce

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2004, 03:19:21 am »

#5 - works in MC 10.

Rob
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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2004, 08:30:31 am »

MC does support semi colon delimeted fields that will do exactly what you want.  You can add and amend field characteristics via Tools>Options>Tree and View.  I don't have access to MC at the moment so I can't check this but I'm not sure whether the field 'Artist' (being a standard field) can be customised.  If it can't you can create a new field and use this instead.

Check out this thread from Doof for information about tagging mode and semi colon delimited fields.

Thanks for the tip. I think you are referring to fields that use the Data Type 'list'. These fields support multiple items (lists) and do delimit with a semicolon. Unfortunately, the Artist field's Data Type is 'string'. I think you can only have one item with a string. Can you explain how I could create a custom 'Artist' field with the Data Type set to 'list'? How would this custom Artist field get it's tag after searching the online YADB database? Does YADB even support multiple artists per track?

Why does MC only use YADB? Why not freeDB or even better - AMG? AMG provided my WMP9 library with multiple artists per track and now many of these are screwed up after trying to transition from WMP9 to MC9.1.

BTW, I couldn't find any information about semicolon delimited fields in the thread you linked to.
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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2004, 09:06:16 am »

Point 5 - I've seen a thread on this recently.  Try a search.

No luck. Tried searching on 'boolean OR', 'boolean', 'auto smartlists' and couldn't find anything.
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Matt

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2004, 09:54:57 am »

For #5, just type "or" / use the insert menu and pick "or".

MC supports parenthesis in searches if you need them.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2004, 11:21:30 am »

For #5, just type "or" / use the insert menu and pick "or".

MC supports parenthesis in searches if you need them.

Thanks, that was what I was looking for -- I should have looked a little closer at the modifiers.
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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2004, 11:25:07 am »

Does anybody know why transcoding to a portable player using the same filetype (issue #1) doesn't work?
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Quisp

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2004, 02:04:47 pm »


Why does MC only use YADB? Why not freeDB or even better - AMG?


Hey jriver folks... Maybe a sticky FAQ answering this question is in order. Seems like it is asked pretty much every week multiple times, seems frequent, and maybe pre-answering it in a locked FAQ could nip some of the arguments in the bud. Just a thought.
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JimH

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2004, 02:07:09 pm »

A lot of things that are asked weekly are already in the FAQ.

YADB.com also has some info.

We have far fewer problems (including questions) with YADB than we did with CDDB.

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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2004, 11:28:10 am »

Does anybody know why transcoding to a portable player using the same filetype (issue #1) doesn't work?

No ideas on this one??? bummer...

Has it been fixed in v10?
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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2004, 09:40:27 am »

I would urge you to purchase v10 straight away as the developers are not doing any work on 9.1 unless something catastrophic turns up (and that isn't going to happen now).  v10 is stable now and includes some nice new features (search for the thread by Marko called 'Been away' for a list).

How do you purchase v10? The latest version available for purchase on this website is v9. Does it cost more to purchase v9 now and then upgrade to v10 later?
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JimH

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2004, 09:44:29 am »

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GreggP

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2004, 09:51:21 am »

Thanks for the link, but it still doesn't answer all of my questions.

If I purchase v9 now, will there be an upgrade fee for v10 when it is released?

If I purchase v10 beta now, will there be a fee for v10 when the final version is released?
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Matt

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2004, 09:53:23 am »

Quote
If I purchase v9 now, will there be an upgrade fee for v10 when it is released?

Yes.

Quote
If I purchase v10 beta now, will there be a fee for v10 when the final version is released?

No.

Thanks Gregg.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

KingSparta

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Re:questions/comments from new MC9.1 user
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2004, 11:06:31 am »

Does anybody know why transcoding to a portable player using the same filetype (issue #1) doesn't work?

No ideas on this one??? bummer...

Has it been fixed in v10?

I think this was fixed in MC10, this is one problem i had and steve fixed it for me like 2 days later. I still never got them to convert a Mono file to stereo so i could convert my mono files to stereo so the player will play it. But i guess this is not a big problem for most players and users.

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