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[badger]

It seams there are multiple ways of doing this, but before I start to experiment, I thought I'd ask how others catalog their compilation albums with MC13.  I'm speaking of Movie Soundtracks, Oldies CDs, "Best of the 70s", etc.  Is this what the "Artist Album" tags are used for?

For each track I will tag the artist, original (album, cover, track, year and genre), but I'd also like to catalog the compilation as an album...and also occasionally play the compilation (by track order of the compilation).  Can this be done without having multiple copies of the same song?  Hope this makes sense.

I'll tell you what I do now is I enter the compilation album name and track # in the comment tag... and then search, sort and select to play the compilation.  I'm assuming there's a better way to use the MC13 library for this?

[imugli]

If your compilation album is in one folder e.g \Music\XYZ compilation and you put each individual artist in the Artist field, MC should automatically tag the Album Artist field as (Multiple Artists) and place the album under that category in your views.

I use track numbers in the format 101, 102, 201, 202 etc for multiple CD sets as opposed to naming the album 'xyz (Disc 1)' etc and I also use the Disc# field so I can choose to play all tracks, or simply one CD or the other.

The biggest test of my HTPC for me is whether my wife can use it, and she likes it this way so I'm happy 

[badger]

Thanks, I see how this works.  Now.... to be able to play the compilation in track order, where do you put the track number.  I think the problem I'm going to have is I use the file's track tag for the original album track #....not the compilation track number.

[imugli]

I just change the 'Track #' field manually. There's probably a rule you could write to do it automatically, but I'm sorry to say that's beyond my abilities 

[lise]

This solution assumes you want the tracks in one place, under the compilation album, with it's track numbers.

I just went through this process a couple of days ago, wanting to permanently save a few important playlists (and having once too often lost essential playlist info when the database and the files got disconnected).

I read everything I could find, and the solution is still what it has always been:
you need to keep duplicates of your files.
So I duplicated all the files in Playlist A, put them in their own folder under Assorted, and filed under Album (which is the playlist name) with the track numbers (of the playlist). I then imported that album, and now I have a permanent playlist (or you would have a permanent compilation album).  The pain is that you have duplicate mp3s in different locations on your disc. The real pain is that when you modify tags, you have to remember to modify then to both files or they will get out of sync.

[bunglemebaby]

Depending on how you do things this might be a good time to use custom fields.

Create two custom fields "Album (Compilation)" and Track # (Compilation)" and obviously copy the compilation info over to these fields.
Then create a smart list or library view with a criteria along the lines of "Album (Compilation) is not <empty>" and then group or sort by your two custom fields. This way you can tag all of your songs with their original album, date, track #, etc but then have a quick way to play the whole compilation album as well, without having to have multiple copies of the files.

It's dirty, but depending on how you like to do things could work pretty well.
-JB

[lise]

but how would you connect the album with the track #?

I had just such a setup.
Custom field 1: Album A.
Custom field 2: Album A track #
Custom field 3: Album B
custom field 4: Album B track #

So with this in place, I was definitely able to get two compilation albums with the proper track numbers without issue. But, each album required 2 custom fields, so I nixed that.

I then considered what you were suggesting, but I couldn't figure out how to connect the albums with the track Numbers.

Custom Field 1
Album A
Album B

Custom Field 2
01
02

How do you connect Album A with ITS track 6 with a view scheme?
I couldn't figure it out, so gave up, and did what I suggested in my first reply.

[badger]

Here's what I ended up with....so far.

I use the "Album Artist" field for the "Compilation Album Name" and I use the "Grouping" field for the "compilation Track #".  I didn't think I'd need the grouping tag for anything else. (note: don't use "Album Artist (auto)" as it appears to automatically fill with artist name)

Then I created a library view categorized by "Album Artist" (with the rule "album-artist not empty) and then sort the bottom detail section by group number.

This way I don't have to duplicate files and MC doesn't care where they are located.  I get only the compilations in this view and I can play sorted by compilation track number.  The only thing I can't get this way is the compilation cover art, but the integrity of each song's art is there.

I did have to do some cleanup, as some tracks had data in the Album Artist field when it wasn't necessary.

[lise]

Hey badger,

I tried your method, except that I created two fields: Compilation Album, and Compilation Track.

Worked out quite well for the first three virtual albums.
But I came to create my 4th, and tada... Violent Femmes "Nightmares" was already on a compilation album with a different track number, so now I can't add it to my new compilation. 

But at the end of the day, I guess it's better to make just one copy of that file, than it is to make duplicates for all my compilation albums...

[badger]

Exactly....I know what you mean.  Many artists release a lot of "Best Of" albums, and after a while it becomes quite a project to maintain just one file accross multiple compilations.