More > JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows
Album friendly Media Library setup thoughts (long)
kstuart:
Three points:
* Album in MC18 is only determined by [Album] field. But, you can make a View that shows anything. MediaCenter is based on the ideas of Views. It is "Virtual", it can be customized however you like.
* I make a point of not putting newlines into [Description] and it works fine for me. For each album and/or each file, I have a column for [Album] and a column for [Description]. I do have more than one SACD ISO for a couple of titles, and it works fine. However, my reason for using [Description] is that it is both saved into the file tags and is searchable in MC18. If you don't want to save it into the ISO's file tags, then there is no reason not to use a custom field.
By the way, you say "This means I cannot use file tags because ISO files don't support them." When I tell MC18 to write file tags to my SACD ISO, it reports doing so. It also reads file tags that are on the SACD ISO from authoring.
* I make a point of making all multiple disk sets into one album. For 90 years, multiple disks have always been used due to physical limitations, first 4 minutes, then 42 minutes, then 74 minutes, and now a different size for SACD. Using hard drives has no such limitation. So, I put the files in order in a view by sorting by file path and file name, selecting all, doing "Fill Track Numbers from List Order" and changing [Album] to one album name for the whole set.
MrG:
Are you sure ISO files are taggable? I mean MC18 amends the ISO files (this would change the md5 checksum of the file) ?
I would prefer ISO files to be my backup of physical disk and therefore not amended by any software.
I feel the whole "album" concept is virtual in MC. Does it mean everything is track-based and all the meta-data is also track-based? No grouping structures in the database like header/details = album/tracks? This would mean there is no such thing as "album" and album is just a subset of tracks/rows in the database filtered by "album" tag in a specific view?
In this case I would need: Album, Album Version, Priority tags and present it as a concatenation of "Album + Album Version" filtered by "Priority" ?
MrC:
MC doesn't tag data ISOs - I don't know about SACDs (don't have any handy).
MC is file-based. It has an album analyzer, that determines the status of an album. See:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Multiple_Artist_Albums#Complete_Albums
Your views can switch on Album, and then below that (or adjacent if Panes), the variations. You don't need to concatenate unless you want to see the variations at the top level.
kstuart:
First off, SACD ISO files have almost nothing in common with other ISO files - for example, they are not readable by archive software like 7z. The use of ".iso" for SACDs was foolish, to put it mildly. (.sacd or .dsd would have been better) It's basically similar to a whole-disk FLAC or APE file.
MC18 reads tag data from SACD ISO files when it imports them. If you change a field and the do "Update Tags from Library", it reports success.
By the way, in Options->General, there is an option "Update tags when file info changes". If you uncheck this, nothing will ever be written to your audio files.
" I feel the whole "album" concept is virtual in MC. Does it mean everything is track-based and all the meta-data is also track-based? "
Exactly. (In fact, I think I have seen glynor write about this in the middle of threads, but it never really appears in any "FAQ" or "Intro"...)
This has some advantages, as you can use your own customization and definitions, rather than being stuck with someone else's. The disadvantage, is that you have to spend some time doing it. The point of my original post in the thread is to give some indication how that might be done, so other people don't have to start from scratch.
Vincent Kars:
--- Quote from: MrG on March 21, 2013, 11:49:22 am ---I feel the whole "album" concept is virtual in MC. Does it mean everything is track-based and all the meta-data is also track-based?
--- End quote ---
It is very simple, it is file based.
Not track based but in practice, one often rip to 1 file per track
If you rip to one single file per album + CUE sheet you have 1 file containing an entire album.
If the model is file per track then of course an Album don’t exist as a physical entity.
JRiver thinks tracks belong to the same album if the tags “Album” and “Album Artist” are the same.
This is a definition based on the tags and the tags only.
The files don’t have to reside in the same folder, not even on the same HD.
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