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[yooz]

Have multiple album "sampler" cleared the field "album artist" how do i get -"Album Artist (auto)"- to be updated cause there is the single artist still standing?!

PS: The Field "Album type" is showing "single artist (incomplete)" an i cannot change that

PPS: Okay have it..all the files where in different subfolders for the single artists,,, i moved them to one folder manually an now it works...but this is not okay cause im sorting out "sampler-Albums" by renaming the files from tags...so that they can be moved from the single artist folders to the "/assorted/" folder ...now this is not working...so what to do now?

[Matt]

MC will show (Multiple Artists) if the album contains different artist values.

This seems to be working for me. (if I change an artist, the album artist (auto) column updates at the same time)

[Krazykanuck]

Just to follow up from the problem I had with multiple artist(auto) something funky does seem to be going on.
I have been doing a fair bit of cleaning and importing and occasionally am not getting multiple artist as a value in the auto field.
I haven't been able to reliably reproduce it yet but am playing with it.

[Alex B]

This is from the Help. Does it help?

Multiple Artist Albums

Media Center comes with a number of tools to help automatically identify compilation albums that include various artists.


Album Artist (auto)

This is a built-in automatic field.  It auto-completes as follows:

- If something is manually typed in the Album Artist field, that content is included in the Album Artist (auto) field as well.
- If the Album Artist field is empty, then the Album Artist (auto) field gets completed as follows:
     - Single-artist name in the case of a single-artist album.
     - (Multiple Artists) in the case of a multiple-artist album*.

* In order for (Multiple Artists) to appear automatically, the album must be in its own exclusive directory (i.e., if there are files from more than one album in a directory, the program will not label it as Multiple Artist).

Here is the logic. A track is a mix if all the files with the same [Album] value in the same directory:

- have more than one [Artist] value among them
- have no other [Album] values used by any other file in the same directory
- are Audio and have a non-empty [Album] value


Automatic Assorted

When you rename files (right click > Library Tools > Rename Files from Properties), the window that appears provides the option to "Use Assorted for [Artist] on multi-artist albums". This is just under the Directories Rule. When selected, the files will be saved in a directory called Assorted if you have included the [Artist] rule in the directory rule.

Example:

Artist: Stackabones, Album: Best of Truck Driving Songs

Directory Rule:
Base path: M:\Music\
Rule: [Artist]\[Album]
"Use Assorted [Artist] on multi-artist albums" is checked.

Result:
M:\Music\Assorted\Best of Truck Driving Songs\Filename rule


Complete Albums

Media Center can automatically display complete and incomplete albums. An album is considered complete if all the files with the same [Album] value in the same directory:

- are sequentially numbered tracks starting at 1
- have at least 2 files or 10 minutes of audio
- are Audio and have a non-empty [Album] value.

View Schemes for Multiple Artist Albums
Create the following scheme to view Multiple Artist Albums:

1. Right click on Audio in the tree.

2. Select Add View Scheme.

3. Click "Add", Standard View Item, and add the following:
- Album Type (shows multiple vs. single artist albums, and whether they are complete or incomplete). Note: you may have to scroll up the list to get Album Type. Press Ok.
- Repeat, and add Album

4. Or display fields for each of the items displayed in #3:  Album Type, Album Artist (auto), Complete Album, Album.

You can now quickly view your Multiple Artist albums, and better yet, you can view all of your complete and/or incomplete albums. Complete albums are indicated by a "1", and "0" displays incomplete albums.

[Krazykanuck]

Unfortunately my problem is that one or two tracks don't get multiple artist in the auto field.
If I delete and reimport it works the second time. I just haven't figured out what is happening the first time.

Is the auto field populated and then updated after MC figures out that it should be multiple artist?
Could the file be locked by another process and not get the second update.

[yooz]

The fields "album type" and "album artist (auto)" are definetly affected by the filepath cause in my sorting for single artist albums and tracks:

..\Album\[artist]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [name]

And for sampler:

..\Sampler\[album]\[track] [artist] - [name]

it's not possible to collect the "sampleralbums" in the album path together to have them in one folder in the samplersection...because the program is not recognizing it as multipleartist album if the files are in different subfolders...so it dosent take its information from the tags but from the filename or path...thats the thing disturbing me,
cause i use rename from tags with the option assortet to find "sampleralbums" and sort them out.

thx for repl.

yooz

[Alex B]

In any case you can always write whatever you like in the Album Artist field. Album Artist (auto) will use the same value.

I don't like (Multiple Artists) albums. After the first 100 or so I decided to write something meaningful in the Album Artist field. I use for example the album series or DJ's name. Or the main artist of the album like in this example from last December:

AFAIK, the internal system has not changed. This is all about how the field names are displayed in the browser buttons. However, having two artist buttons side by side is confusing and in my opinion the Album Artist is not the Artist.

Here is an real-life example how I use the Album Artist field.

I just bought this record: "Louis Armstrong & Friends - What A Wonderful Christmas." I filed it like this:



I wanted this album to show up besides the other Louis Armstrong albums instead of "multiple artists" or "Louis Armstrong & Friends". Also, I saved the disk files in the "Louis Armstrong\What A Wonderful Christmas" path, not in the "Louis Armstrong & Friends\...". With this filing system I can search for track artists as well. For example, I can use the separate Artist button for finding all Eartha Kitt tracks even she is not an Album Artist in my library.

.

[JONCAT]

Nice but I feel that Album Artists (auto) and Artist fields should not be tied together.

1. If you have 10 albums of an artist in various incarnations or a cover album you want to associate with one artist MC can't help you. Id love to clean up my artist (album artist (auto)) view by simply renaming all the albums to one main artist name.

Big Youth & Clancy Eccles
Big Youth &
Big Youth Band Big Youth With
etc. etc.

=
Big youth

The user can try to put the extra artist info somewhere else by it quickly becomes ridiculous with a large library. I like the View Scheme you provided; it "pulls out" the Multiple Artists albums, but it would be more intuitive if the fields were linked as much more freedom would be allowed to the user to organize the Album Artist (auto) field.

2. Also, when browsing Album Artist (auto) view scheme, any files on a multiple artist album are "stuck" in those panes. Browsing to a particular artists one will find those files or album missing; because the two fields are linked.

I don't see why they can't be seperate and save us a lot of counter-intuitive trouble. Make sense?

Dr. C