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[sbdallas]

I am having a big problem getting my files to rename properly.  I have a multi-artist album, but it won't go into the Assorted artist folder.  I have had this working for some time, but this album does not seem to want to cooperate.

The Artist tag is set to each artist.
The Album Artist is blank on all files.
All files have the same Album name.
Track numbers are correct.
The Album Type is auto-set to Single artist (complete)  <-- I think this is the problem, but it is auto set.

Does anyone have any ideas for what I could check?

[MrC]

Are the tracks located in a single, unique folder, or are they mixed with other tracks from other albums?

[sbdallas]

Right now they are all located in a single folder.  My renaming rules will move them based on artist, etc.  In this case, I want them in the Assorted folder, but rename is trying to put them in folders by artist.

I want...

     d:\media\audio\A\Assorted\60s Music Revolution\01 - Good Vibrations.mp3
     d:\media\audio\A\Assorted\60s Music Revolution\02 - One.mp3

... but Media Center is trying to do...

     d:\media\audio\B\Beach Boys\60s Music Revolution\01 - Good Vibrations.mp3
     d:\media\audio\T\Three Dog Night\60s Music Revolution\02 - One.mp3

[MrC]

You'll need to create a Folder rule to place multiple artist tracks into a folder such as Assorted, Various Artists, or (Multiple Artists).  The latter is MC's default.

You can use a Folder rule such as:

   if(isequal([album artist (auto)], /(Multiple Artists/)), Assorted, [album artist (auto)])

Place this in Tools >  Options > File Location > Audio > Folder rule.

[sbdallas]

Well, I have a pretty sophisticated rename rule that has worked fine up to this point.  I have (so far) relied on the 'Use 'Assorted' for [Artist] on multi-artist albums' checkbox to assign multi-artist albums.  The problem in this case, is that the Album Type is not set to 'Multiple artist' but rather to 'Single artist'. 

I do not want to change my rename rule.  What I am asking is...

Why is the Album Type set to 'Single artist' and how do I get it to set to 'Multiple artist'?

[MrC]

You're in a pickle I think.

The general rule with MC has been to keep tracks for an album in a unique folder (See Complete Albums).

Sometimes MC does recognize files from one album as a complete album when they are mixed in with files for other albums, but sometimes not, and I don't know what triggers Yea or Nay.

So, when Nay is the case, you can't rely on the Album Type or Completeness.  Sometimes it works fine, but this is now probably the 4th or 5th case recently where someone has had issues (and I can't replicate them to help the JRiver folks reproduce it, and they may not care since it violates the rules about Complete Albums).

So when this issue is triggered, the Use 'Assorted' (now '(Multiple Artists)') checkbox won't do you much good I think.  Hence, you need to base the decisions off of Album Artist (auto).

[Frobozz]

Check the "Band" tag and make sure it is the same for every track in the album, or just clear it and make it empty.
Also make sure the Disc# tag is the same for every track.

[csimon]

I think the easiest way to sort this particular album out is to temporarily change the folder rule in Rename to hardcode the path you want.

[sbdallas]

Okay, I have managed to fix the problem and isolate where MC18 is going wrong.  When I imported the 60s Music Revolution boxset, I imported all 8 cds at once.  This was a problem for MC because there are 4 different album titles in the set.  For whatever reason, MC viewed these as single artist albums of one or two songs per artist.

How I fixed it...

I deleted all of the files from my auto import path and deleted the files from the library.  I then added the files back to the auto import path one album title at a time.  MC then imported these as Multiple artist albums and the rename functionality worked properly.

Therefore...

MC18 developers, if you want to find the cause of this error, I can suggest a place to look.  Look at the code that does the imports and figure out why, when importing more than one multiple artist album at a time, the software is tagging these tracks as Single artist. 

Thanks everyone, for helping me work through this problem. 

[MrC]

MC has an Album Analyzer, that uses some heuristics to determine the status of an album.  It is not clear to me when this runs, but one of the long time rules is that Albums need to be in their own folders.  My guess is that the album analyzer runs after the last import of the folder.  When all tracks are in a single folder, they are imported in an undefined order, and MC sees the collection of tracks as being single-artist tracks.

Rather than delete and reimport tracks to fix the problem; you can do something that triggers the album analyzer to reanalyze the status of an album, such as change the Disc #, or Album name.