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[Krazykanuck]

I have managed to get a track on a multiple artist album labeled with album artist(auto) = to All(197).
Not sure how it happened but would like to get it set to (Multiple Artists) like the rest of the album and as it should be.
Is there an easy way to do this other than deleting and reimporting the album?

[Matt]

Show and edit the "Album Artist" column.

Remember that the automatic field uses "Album Artist" if it's filled in.  Otherwise, it uses logic to decide between the artist and (Multiple Artists).

[Krazykanuck]

What am I supposed to key into the album artist field?

The field is blank for my entire library including this entry.
Do I key in (Multiple Artists).
I am not trying to be dense just want to make sure that I am not messing up something else.

[Matt]

If album artist is blank the artist itself must be "All (197)".  Just change it to the actual artist.

[tcman41]

Here is how i do it:

1. label each song, artist-name-track#
2. have one folder for each album and label the folder, artist-album
3. after importing albums into mc11, display them using album thumbnails
4. under customize current view, thumbnail text i choose the following,
    [Album Artist (auto)]
    [Album]
    [Date (year)] - [Duration] - [Rating]

Under each multiple artist album thumbnail i now get something like this:
   (multiple artists)
   American Pie Soundtrack
   1999 - 45:57 - 4

Hope something helps, obvisously you may choose whatever thumbnail text you would like to appear, showing mine for example only.

TC 

[Krazykanuck]

Actually the artist is The Supremes.

What I had was

Track one:
Album Artist(auto) = All(145)
Album Artist = blank
Artist = The Supremes

Track two:
Album Artist(auto) = (Multiple Artists)
Album Artist = blank
Artist = The Rivieras

etc.

Not sure how/why track one ended up as it did. I am just doing some cleanup and noticed it.
All I want to do is clean up the track one entry.
If keying something into the album artist field is the correct way then that's what I'll do.

TC, that's how I do it as well. I just somehow ended up with a rouge entry.

[Matt]

It's a mystery to me.

Change the artist to KrazyKanuck, then look at the Album Artist (auto).  Hopefully it'll update.

Then switch it back to The Supremes.

If you figure out how to reproduce the strangeness, please let us know.

[Krazykanuck]

I tried various options but nothing updated the auto field. And yes I selected the whole album when trying to update.
I ended up deleting from the library and re-importing the album and all looks good now.

If I come across more I'll be sure to let you know.

[hit_ny]

I ended up deleting from the library and re-importing the album and all looks good now.

My first thought when you see strangeness like that is that there has been library corruption.

How'd that happen ?

You could try to fix it manually but then is that the only place ? what about in other fields.

Restoring from a previous backup is the only known way to get things back, fingers crossed that the backup is in better shape.

[Krazykanuck]

The problem is I have been doing cleanup so my most recent backup is a little dated. I could go back to it but would lose  a weeks worth of work and may be be no better off.

At this point I think all I can do is continue on and hope that I don't see too many more problems.

[hit_ny]

A week between library backups 

i do a backup after every album import, really obssesive about it.

I listen, if i like, import.  Slow & tedious but its the best i know to keep that library clean, the result of a problem many moons ago. Corruption does not happen very often, but times that is does is painful enough to want to make it never happen again.

How to ensure library is 100% clean ??  that's the question of the ages..

a quick scan through most often used fields, i notice usually one column is totally missing, or a column will have the same values or even garbage in it. Why was this allowed ?

Some times, MC wil complain that the library is corrupt or outdated.

I get the feeling, things might be better if MC complained whenever the library was not 100% instead of trying to get by. At least this way a problem cannot creep in, only to be  noticed many days later making previous backups useless.

[tcman41]

I am not sure i understand where all this library corruption or outdated stuff could be coming from. I have been running media center 11 forever, always the latest build and i have never seen anything like that. I do tag all my files first with zortam before i import anything.

As far as library backups, i have the box checked "make a library backup before changes" and thus right before anything is imported a library backup is made automatically.