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[Doof]

From the wiki:

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.

Is this correct? I have quite a lot of files showing up as complete albums that don't meet all of these criteria.

"same [Album] value in the same directory" - Check. Although in these instances, there's only one file.
"are sequentially numbered tracks starting at 1" - Check. In these cases, all of these files are Track #1.
"have at least 2 files or 10 minutes of audio" - Nope! There are only these single files, and none of them are 10 minutes in length.
"are Audio and have a non-empty [Album] value." - Check.

So has criteria number 2 been altered? Is there something else MCs album checker is keying off of? Is this a bug?

Is there any way to manually override this?

[Alex B]

It was changed a bit, but I am not sure about the exact rules.

Before the change MC treated a single-track album as incomplete even when the audio file was alone in a separate folder.

Maybe you didn't notice or follow this thread in the beta forum:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=38882.0

Someone reported the same problem here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40071.0

[Doof]

Thanks. I had missed that thread, and now, after having skimmed it, I just can't understand the logic being used here or why it would be changed to the way it is now.

While I can see a need to have single track albums recognized as complete albums, it would seem to me that it be the exception, not the rule. There are as many Track 1s as there are albums out there. There aren't nearly that many single track albums.

With this logic in place, it's impossible to build a renaming expression that keys off of [Complete Album] to determine if a track belongs in the Albums folder or the Singles folder. As soon as I just happen to have a single file with a Track # of 1, then it winds up in the wrong place. The only alternative is to abandon the use of an Album folder with singles, which then greatly complicates how cover art is stored.

Currently I use a system like this:

Music\Albums\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] for albums
Music\Singles\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] for singles

It keeps them seperate, and allows me to store cover art in the folder with the tracks.

I then use an Expression to rename my audio files and to make sure that Albums and Singles wind up in the correct places. But it's broken because of this behavior.

What happened to the "at least 10 minutes long" part? If that were still being enforced, things would work correctly, at least in my case. Although I still think the logic is severely flawed. Why break a system that works for 99% percent of the cases in favor of the 1%?

[MrC]

Can you not create a user defined field named Single, and set that field for your singles, and key your expressions from its existence?

[Doof]

Can you not create a user defined field named Single, and set that field for your singles, and key your expressions from its existence?

So that the 3 people with single track albums don't have to?

Not to sounds snippy, but it just doesn't make any sense to me why the vast majority of singles have to have a work-around so that the minority can take advantage of the automatic feature.

[Alex B]

Thanks. I had missed that thread, and now, after having skimmed it, I just can't understand the logic being used here or why it would be changed to the way it is now.

While I can see a need to have single track albums recognized as complete albums, it would seem to me that it be the exception, not the rule. There are as many Track 1s as there are albums out there. There aren't nearly that many single track albums.

With this logic in place, it's impossible to build a renaming expression that keys off of [Complete Album] to determine if a track belongs in the Albums folder or the Singles folder. As soon as I just happen to have a single file with a Track # of 1, then it winds up in the wrong place. The only alternative is to abandon the use of an Album folder with singles, which then greatly complicates how cover art is stored.

Currently I use a system like this:

Music\Albums\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] for albums
Music\Singles\[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album] for singles

It keeps them seperate, and allows me to store cover art in the folder with the tracks.

I then use an Expression to rename my audio files and to make sure that Albums and Singles wind up in the correct places. But it's broken because of this behavior.

So you have a separate folder for each single track, correct? If yes, I think the system works correctly.

IMHO, the following albums should always be complete (when each file inside the folder has identical album tag):

-- Folder

\ Track 1

-- Folder	\ Track 1
	\ Track 2

-- Folder	\ Track 1
	\ Track 2
	\ Track 3

-- etc...

E.g. these should be incomplete:

-- Folder

\ Track (without a track number)

-- Folder

\ Track 2

-- Folder	\ Track 1
	\ Track 1
	\ Track 1

-- Folder	\ Track (without a track number)
	\ Track 1
	\ Track 2
	\ Track 3

-- Folder	\ Track 1
	\ Track 1
	\ Track 2
	\ Track 3

What happened to the "at least 10 minutes long" part? If that were still being enforced, things would work correctly, at least in my case. Although I still think the logic is severely flawed. Why break a system that works for 99% percent of the cases in favor of the 1%?

It was an artificial limit. Many complete CD or vinyl "single" releases are shorter than 10 minutes and some of them contain only one track. On the other hand many tracks are longer than 10 minutes.

To make everyone happy the "complete album" status could be editable. For example, the Album Artist (auto) field works automatically, but it can be overridden.

So that the 3 people with single track albums don't have to?

Not to sounds snippy, but it just doesn't make any sense to me why the vast majority of singles have to have a work-around so that the minority can take advantage of the automatic feature.So that the 3 people with single track albums don't have to?

And you seem to be one of the three...

If you don't have a separate folder for each #1 track then the logic is buggy and should be fixed.

If you have a separate folder for each #1 track, could you just remove the track numbers? That would be logical if the track is not supposed to be a part of an album that contains numbered tracks.

EDIT

BTW, probably very few of us even use the complete album info anyhow. I think you are the first one who has found the new logic problematic.

[hit_ny]

I've never used this 'complete' logic, all albums are by default complete except those in a purposely named folder called Various which lives on its own partition.

DONE!

[MrC]

So that the 3 people with single track albums don't have to?

Not to sounds snippy, but it just doesn't make any sense to me why the vast majority of singles have to have a work-around so that the minority can take advantage of the automatic feature.

There are plenty of single-tracked albums; please don't use the ad-hoc 99% you / 1% me argument, its silly.

My suggestion/question responded to your "there's no way" position.  There is a way.

I find my collection complete/incomplete match exactly as Alex B described.  I don't follow what Alex said about removing the track number, as that makes the Complete Album field undefined or become 0.  Yet it seems redundant to place a track number on a single - by definition, it is track 1.

I've used the Incomplete smartlist a couple of times; its especially useful when an album accidentally gets split into two folders.

[Alex B]

I don't follow what Alex said about removing the track number, as that makes the Complete Album field undefined or become 0.

If I understood correctly, that is what Doof wants. He would like the single tracks in dedicated folders appear as incomplete albums. An empty track number field makes an album incomplete.

[Doof]

I don't want to remove the track number since, if I later on acquired the some or all of the rest of the tracks, I would then have to look up the track numbers to set them all correctly. If I have the information now, why delete it?

I guess what it boils down to, in my mind at least, is that EVERY album has a Track 1. Only a very small percentage (no, I don't know what that percentage is, but honestly, I'd be willing to lay down money that the 99/1 ratio I mentioned above is actually skewing heavier toward the single track album side than it should - for every single track album in existence, I'm sure there are more than 100 multi-track albums) have only ONE track. The current logic that MC is using favors those single track albums over a case where the user just happens to only have the first track of a multi-track album.

I do think that a way to manually override this is needed, but I think it's the cases where a truly single track album exists that should be considered the exception, not the rule. But even if it was the other way around and I could override it, I'd be happy.

Sorry if I sound cranky. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night and then found out that what I thought was a nice, neatly, organized music filing system had put files in unexpected places due to this change.

[lise]

Has this been changed since this discussion? Or are there any SIMPLE work arounds?
I'm finding that all the smartlists/schemes I have that look for complete albums are now useless because they find they now return all single files that are in album folders (and yes, they seem to have to have track 1, but as was mentioned, it seems odd for me to have to get rid of complete and accurate tags just because I didn't download the rest of the album from emusic yet, for example. And if I remove the track, then I download the album again from emusic and I end up with duplicates!).