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[hifrad]

Hi, I'm auditioning Media Center and I'm a bit confused about some things.

The most important thing I'm confused is that I have already tagged all my music in dbPowerAmp with "Artist Sort" and "Album Artist Sort" but I cannot get Media Center to reflect the proper sorting.  Everything is sorted by first name.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[MrC]

I don't think MC reads or uses the TSOP (artist sort) and TSO2 (album artist sort) tags.

You can create your own user-defined fields (such as Album Artist Sort and Artist Sort) and use those as the basis for sorting.  You can also define user fields that are calculated based upon the results of various expressions, so these fields could be automated.

As for specifics if you need help.

[hifrad]

Thank you.  I'm so new at this.  How would go about sorting the artist in this case?  Where do I need to look in the menu?

Thank you very much

[MrC]

At the top of the view, in the tab, there is a pulldown triangle.  There is a Sort menu, where you can select the Sort By key.  There are some defaults there, but you can also choose additional fields from under Custom.

By the way, I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that these were mp3 files.  What file formats are these?

[hifrad]

FLAC, does that change things?

[hifrad]

i dont see what it is you're talking about.  I'm in the black on black skin.  I see nothing that says "sort"

[MrC]

Yes, that might help.

You'll want to create the exact same named custom user fields in MC, and then have MC re-read the tags.  It will then import these fields.

To create the fields, use Tools > Options > Library & Folders > Manage Library Fields... and click Add New Field.  Name the field exactly the same as you have the tag in dbPowerAmp.  Use the default String type and set Save in file tags (when possible).  Do this for both your sort fields.

Once these are created, you can now use Library Tools > Updated Library (from Tags) to re-read the in-file tags, and populate your MC fields.

You can add these as columns in the file list to see them.

Once you have these filled in, you can use the Sort By to sort by these fields.

[MrC]

i dont see what it is you're talking about.  I'm in the black on black skin.  I see nothing that says "sort"

See attached screenshot.

[hifrad]

Thank you! I will experiment and get back to you. Thanks for the help!

[hifrad]

i still can't get it to sort this way in theater view, am i missing something?

[MrC]

This will be a two step process.

1) Learn how Theater View sorting works.  Tools > Options > Theater View > Audio > Artist and then under Details, edit Album Artist (auto).  You see the Sorting pulldown.  There are selections there you can use to sort.  But you won't find your new fields there.  You'll have to create these as custom sorting presets.  This is done in Step 2.  But try some different sorting here to get the hang of it.

2) In a Standard View, select a Sort By (as shown in the screenshot above) and select Custom and setup your sort field as the custom sort key(s) and then select Preset to save as a named preset.  Once saved, this can now be used in (1) above.

[hifrad]

I'm trying to get the "Year" tag to work, but it seems to be changing it to "DATE" and reading incorrect dates that aren't even tagged in my file.  This is in theater view and regular view.  How do I get the correct year (as I've tagged it) to register?

I've done everything right as far as I can tell.

[MrC]

[Year] is an abbreviation for [Date (year)], and is a calculated field derived from the [Date] field.

See: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/File_Properties_%28tags%29#Date_year

[hifrad]

But I still don't understand how to get my date tagging to work.  There are dates with months showing that have nothing to do with how the files are tagged.

If I tag a track with Year = 1977, why would it be showing to me as 01/27/1972

How do I get the media center to recognize my tags?  Only my tags?

[MrC]

Can you post a tag dump of a file that shows this problem?

Click on the indicated area in the Tag Action Window, and copy / paste the data.

[dhhittle]

The directions for setting up a Sort Album Artist field seem fairly clear, but it would be nice if this was built-in.  I am using dBpoweramp, and Album Artist Sort (or Sort Album Artist?) is carried over to iTunes when I use dBpoweramp to convert my FLAC files to ALAC (for my iPod). But it would be good to be able to view "sort album artist" using MediaCenter 18 for my FLAC files.  I know that I can and probably could be successful setting this up, but I hate to go through the process and then not be able to make it work.