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[fnordfnordfnord]

New customer. Really pretty highly pleased, but there are just a few flies in the ointment. In descending order of annoyance:

(1) WMA supports a tag called WM/PartOfSet to indicate the disc number of a multi-disc set. Media Center doesn't use this tag, however; if the tag is set, it is ignored by Media Center, and if the disc number is set in Media Center it saves it into a tag called JR/DISC#. Can this be fixed?

See also: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/dd757974

(2) In my library, each album is displayed with a header like this:

[Album] by [Artist]                          [Year]

[Artist] here is set by Media Center from the contents of each individual track's Artist tag(s)s. If the tracks have different artists, I see "[Album] by Various Artists". This behaviour would be great except that this is what the Album Artist tag is for. If the Album Artist is set, its contents should always be used here.

Example: Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Each track on the album is by either John or Yoko. "Double Fantasy by Various Artists" is absurd; I should see "Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono". Every other music player of my acquaintance works this way, and Media Center ignoring my Album Artist tags is really rather irksome. Can I do anything about this?

This gets even worse on my Media Center-managed iPod, where albums that MC has decided to treat as "Various Artists" don't even get listed on the iPod's "Albums" menu (it puts them under "Compilations" instead). This is very wrong - I really, really need Media Center to not tell the iPod that these are compilation albums.

(3) Speaking of my iPod, when syncing it Media Center decided that a couple of tracks on one album were duplicates. They really weren't, and I couldn't figure out any way to batter some sense into Media Center short of changing the name of one of the tracks. This isn't a particularly good solution.

(4) I have a compilation album where each track has a different year (the original release date of each track). Media Center displays [Year] as... the average value of all the years? That's kinda weird. I can see a case for it, though. Other music players just use the year from the first track. Neither solution is great, but at least Media Center doesn't assume that every track on an album has the same date.

Why does each track have a different year? Because I should see "Hey Jude" when I search for songs from 1970, and I shouldn't see it when I search for songs from 2009 - but the compilation album should be identified as "Past Masters by The Beatles (2009)".

The only way I see to make this work is with a second tag, let's call it "Release Year", to specify when the compilation or remaster was issued when that's different from the actual original release date. So I'm just daydreaming aloud here. But if Media Center could be made to work with such a scheme... then I'd like a pony with that, too.

(Note that the vast majority of my music is WMA Lossless, in case the tagging scheme is relevant to my comments above.)

[Alex B]

Welcome!

In general, If I recall correctly, WMA tagging in MC was mostly defined almost ten years ago. At that time Windows Media Player didn't support many tags. I think only the basic tags (track title, track number, artist, album, year, genre) that commonly come from CD databases are identical to those that WMP uses. Most, if not all, other WMA tags that MC writes use the JR/ identifier in the tag headers.

1) Good request. If WMA has now a more "official" tag for the disc number it would be good to support it.

2) When preferred you can tag an album artist also in MC. By default MC uses an automatic value (Multiple Artists) when it detects a "various artist" album and grouping usually works correctly, but a manually tagged Album Artist can be used for overriding this automatic value. I have not tested this, but probably MC uses "JR/Album Artist" when it writes this tag to WMA files (and reads it).

Regarding iPod syncing, if the file format is MP3 I think creating and tagging an iTunes Compilation tag should help. More info: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=70514.msg475946#msg475946. This may work also with m4a and AIFF files (I don't have an iPod to test this).

3) Do the "duplicate" tracks have identical source filenames on disk (except the path) or identical tags? Could you post an example of the filenames and/or tags that do not work for you?

4) I think the year of the first track would be more incorrect that an averaged value. You can tag the date values as you like. I don't use a custom "release year" tag, but for albums I always use the original release year, e.g. "Abbey Road, 1969" - even if the CD release is quite a bit newer. In addition I often have something like "CD released 1990" in the comment field.

I have Past Masters tagged as 1988 (the original release year) even though the CD is from the 2009 Stereo Box Set (which info I have in the Comment field). In this case I have not bothered to tag the individual track years by hand, but I could use my "Date (Original)" custom field for that purpose.

[rick.ca]

Welcome to the forum, fnord³.

First, you'll get a better response to questions like these if they're posted in separate topics of only closely related questions. The resulting discussion is also easier to follow and of more use to others.

I don't know much about WMA tags or iWhatever, so I'll leave those questions for others. (And I see Alex B has posted while I type.)

(2) You're referring to just one of the default Group By settings (found on the tab drop-down menu). This can be any field you like, including an 'expression field' used to combine data and format data in any way imaginable. For example, mine is...

[Album Artist (auto)]If(IsEmpty([a.Released]),, / ● [a.Released]) ● [Album]  If(IsEqual([a.Rating], 0.5, 2), Not rated, Mid(★★★★★, 0, [a.Rating])If(IsEqual(Right([a.Rating], 2), .5),, ))

• [a.Released] is a custom Album-related field with the year of release;
• [a.Rating] is a custom Album-related field with a 0.5-5.0 album rating imported from Allmusic;
• the  is a half-star that won't display here.

Never mind the complexity (included to dispel the notion MC does the absurd rather than exactly what it's told to do). In your case, you probably want [Album] by [Album Artist (auto)], assuming that for albums like this you've set [Album Artist] to 'John Lennon and Yoko Ono' to override the otherwise automatic 'Various Artists'.

(4) As you can see from my Album grouping, I do exactly what you're daydreaming. All tracks, unless they're re-recordings or live versions, have [Year] set to the original release date. (BTW, note that [Year] is a special field which is actually the year part of [Date]. You can record the actual full release [Date] and [Year] will show the year, or record [Year] and [Date] will be set to the year as well.) The album release date is recorded in [a.Release], an album-related field to ensure all the tracks of the album are set to same value.

MC's way of averaging [Year] is very handy, if that's what you want. You have the choice of displaying and/or sorting by that or an album release date—if you choose to record one.

[fnordfnordfnord]

2) When preferred you can tag an album artist also in MC. By default MC uses an automatic value (Multiple Artists) when it detects a "various artist" album and grouping usually works correctly, but a manually tagged Album Artist can be used for overriding this automatic value. I have not tested this, but probably MC uses "JR/Album Artist" when it writes this tag to WMA files (and reads it).

Every single track is manually tagged with an Album Artist, and Media Center is correctly reading the WM/AlbumArtist tag.

Regarding iPod syncing, if the file format is MP3 I think creating and tagging an iTunes Compilation tag should help. More info: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=70514.msg475946#msg475946. This may work also with m4a and AIFF files (I don't have an iPod to test this).

I'll experiment, but I don't think this really helps me. My (slightly older) iPod is managed exclusively through Media Center; iTunes isn't even installed and I'd love to keep it that way.

3) Do the "duplicate" tracks have identical source filenames on disk (except the path) or identical tags? Could you post an example of the filenames and/or tags that do not work for you?

Two different tracks on a four-disc set, tagged correctly and of similar length (47 and 48 seconds).

1-14 untitled.wma
2-14 untitled.wma

It is only within handheld synchronisation that MC seems to want to treat these tracks as duplicates. Personally, I'd like to just be able to disable duplicate detection entirely - my curation is entirely too obsessive-compulsive for that to ever be a problem for me.

4) I think the year of the first track would be more incorrect that an averaged value. You can tag the date values as you like. I don't use a custom "release year" tag, but for albums I always use the original release year, e.g. "Abbey Road, 1969" - even if the CD release is quite a bit newer. In addition I often have something like "CD released 1990" in the comment field.

Like I said, neither method is entirely correct. I'm sure I can get what I want by defining a custom field, but I can't see a way to associate a field with a tag. This is unfortunate. For example, your Date (Original) field is a natural fit for the officially-defined WM/OriginalReleaseYear.

(And yes, yes, I know, 1988. I'm just trying to keep my pickiness from necessitating three different dates: original song release, original compilation release, remastered compilation release. For my purposes, the more important thing to know is which specific release of an album I'm dealing with, so I don't find myself buying the same remaster a few years down the road!)

(2) You're referring to just one of the default Group By settings (found on the tab drop-down menu).

Indeed I am. I hadn't quite found that little bit of UI. Thanks. Unfortunately, Media Center still seems to want to use its automatic artist behaviour when updating my iPod's database.

[MrC]

Two different tracks on a four-disc set, tagged correctly and of similar length (47 and 48 seconds).

1-14 untitled.wma
2-14 untitled.wma

It is only within handheld synchronisation that MC seems to want to treat these tracks as duplicates. Personally, I'd like to just be able to disable duplicate detection entirely - my curation is entirely too obsessive-compulsive for that to ever be a problem for me.

This is a known issue.  From another post, I've requested:

The current sync expression fragment used for duplicate detection of non-images (eg. audio) is:

  [Name] Clean([Artist], 1) [Album] [Genre] FormatNumber([Track #, 0]) [Media Type]

Some albums have second (or third, ...) disc's that are identical to the first disc in terms of Track #/Name (and of course Album, Genre, Artist and Media Type), so MC marks all but one track as Duplicates and does not transfer them.  Consider Fleetwood Mac's Tusk special edition:

   Disc 1 Track 3: Think About Me
   Disc 2 Track 3: Think About Me

I can see that the converted files (mp3's) have a [Discnumber] tag, but am not sure if MC is able to compare [Discnumber] against [Disc #]

Would it be possible to include [Disc #] as part of MatchKeyExpression ?

[Matt]

(1) WMA supports a tag called WM/PartOfSet to indicate the disc number of a multi-disc set. Media Center doesn't use this tag, however; if the tag is set, it is ignored by Media Center, and if the disc number is set in Media Center it saves it into a tag called JR/DISC#. Can this be fixed?

See also: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/dd757974

Would you be willing to send a sample file that uses WM/PartOfSet to matt at jriver dot com?

One tricky thing is that we don't store the total number of discs.  With MP3, we just preserve the existing number of discs when tagging if the tag has one.

Thanks.

[Matt]

In a coming build:
Changed: WMA tagging using WM/PartOfSet for disc numbers.

We'll preserve the total number of discs if it's there, otherwise just write a number (with no slash and trailing total number of discs).

[fnordfnordfnord]

Splendid. Thanks.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Would it be possible to include [Disc #] as part of MatchKeyExpression ?

I second that. How do I second that?