Topic: Merg Downloaded Albums (Read 3229 times)

vjbelle · « **on:** March 05, 2013, 03:01:59 pm »

I have downloaded some music from HD tracks and the download goes into one folder and yet appears in MC as three or four albums with a few songs in each. I am trying to merge them but haven't figured out a way. Oddly iTunes treats this the same way. The tags for the albums are identical and I've even tried adding a suffix to an album name to see if they would merge but they don't. There must be a way to do this, I just don't know how.

Any help appreciated.

Victor

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** March 05, 2013, 03:12:08 pm »

If they belong in a single album, you can edit the "Album Artist" tag.

vjbelle · « **Reply #2 on:** March 05, 2013, 03:44:02 pm »

The album artist tag is the same for all of the displayed albums. Each album has associated with it a selection of tracks that if combined would equal a complete recording. One album might have track 8 and 9 another 1,2,3,7 and so on. The tags are the same on all of the albums. I can't be the only one with this problem and question.

Very much appreciate your response......

csimon · « **Reply #3 on:** March 05, 2013, 04:46:15 pm »

Just as an experiment, can you highlight all these tracks (in recently imported or whaetver) and look at the Tags pane and see if there any items that say "[Varies]" that you would not expect. For example, Track # obviously varies. There might be odd characters in a particular field that you might not spot by observation.

vjbelle · « **Reply #4 on:** March 05, 2013, 05:50:46 pm »

First of all thanks for the suggestion..... I have a suggestion. Why don't you download Getz/Gilberto from HD tracks..... It should show up in one folder. However in MC it will show up as four different albums. If you can figure out how to combine those albums then please pass it on as I'm sure it will help others as well as me.

Again..... thanks for the reply but it doesn't help my issue.....

MrC · « **Reply #5 on:** March 05, 2013, 05:59:57 pm »

You're asking an ordinary MC user like yourself to go invest time in your problem, and to go pay for a download to help you. I doubt that is going to happen.

Select all the tracks an the album that exhibit the problem. Do a File > Export Playlist and export with the following settings:

- Text File (CSV delimited)
- Included Fields > All Fields
- Output Range > Selection

Zip that file and attach it here as a reply. Someone will take a look at see if there is anything obvious.

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:09:53 pm »

Quote from: csimon on March 05, 2013, 04:46:15 pm

Just as an experiment, can you highlight all these tracks (in recently imported or whaetver) and look at the Tags pane and see if there any items that say "[Varies]" that you would not expect. For example, Track # obviously varies. There might be odd characters in a particular field that you might not spot by observation.

This is the way to solve it.

vjbelle · « **Reply #7 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:22:49 pm »

Thank you for replying....... I realize that there is something that is triggering the multiple albums in MC. I accept that, it also happens in iTunes. But..... I really wanted to know if there was some way to just merge the albums.... I will try your suggestions but this must happen to others and not just me....

Thanks all for suggestions......

Magic_Randy · « **Reply #8 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:25:15 pm »

Just a guess but check the "Mix Album" field in MC which I think maps to the "Part of compilation" field in iTunes.

vjbelle · « **Reply #9 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:31:12 pm »

Quote from: csimon on March 05, 2013, 04:46:15 pm

Just as an experiment, can you highlight all these tracks (in recently imported or whaetver) and look at the Tags pane and see if there any items that say "[Varies]" that you would not expect. For example, Track # obviously varies. There might be odd characters in a particular field that you might not spot by observation.

I will try that if I can pull it up in recently imported. However if not, then I don't know how to since there are four different albums with various tracks that would add up to one complete album.

Appreciate the suggestion.......

vjbelle · « **Reply #10 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:38:41 pm »

Quote from: MrC on March 05, 2013, 05:59:57 pm

You're asking an ordinary MC user like yourself to go invest time in your problem, and to go pay for a download to help you. I doubt that is going to happen.

Select all the tracks an the album that exhibit the problem. Do a File > Export Playlist and export with the following settings:

- Text File (CSV delimited)
- Included Fields > All Fields
- Output Range > Selection

Zip that file and attach it here as a reply. Someone will take a look at see if there is anything obvious.

Thanks much for the reply. I will try to post a file but I'm not looking for what is the problem but rather how to just merg the four separate albums. That's what I really want to know how to accomplish. Or, maybe what you are telling me is I have to figure out the date fields to fix to accomplish what I want. Ok..... maybe that's the only fix.

BTW..... there are no 'Ordinary' users of MC...... I hope you think that all users of this wonderful program are special.... I do!!

Thanks again for the suggestion.....

Magic_Randy · « **Reply #11 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:44:43 pm »

Quote from: vjbelle on March 05, 2013, 06:38:41 pm

Thanks much for the reply. I will try to post a file but I'm not looking for what is the problem but rather how to just merg the four separate albums. That's what I really want to know how to accomplish. Or, maybe what you are telling me is I have to figure out the date fields to fix to accomplish what I want. Ok..... maybe that's the only fix.

BTW..... there are no 'Ordinary' users of MC...... I hope you think that all users of this wonderful program are special.... I do!!

Thanks again for the suggestion.....

There is no merge function. The problem you are seeing is with the tagging of the tracks. Some tracks are tagged different than others. That is why it is showing up as multiple albums in both MC and iTunes. To fix it you need to find out what tags are causing the issue. Once the tags are corrected it will display correctly in both MC and iTunes.

csimon · « **Reply #12 on:** March 05, 2013, 06:54:53 pm »

Quote from: vjbelle on March 05, 2013, 06:38:41 pm

Thanks much for the reply. I will try to post a file but I'm not looking for what is the problem but rather how to just merg the four separate albums. That's what I really want to know how to accomplish.

Yeah - I think the key thing here is that no-one really knows what's going wrong without being there to look at your data and your setup, so we can't really tell you outright. We're just trying to find ways to diagnose the problem, suggesting things that we know from the past are likely to cause problems of this type and ways to investigate further if this is not the case. Single albums being split is indeed quite a common problem and is almost always caused by variations in tags, but there may be other unique situations that haven't yet been spotted. It may well be some sort of bug or oversight in MC. As mentioned above, the Mix field could be relevant, and the Single Artist (?) and Complete Album fields have also been known to cause issues and these sort of things can be difficult to correct if they were set automatically by MC on import. I'm talking very generally, these could be the issue, or they could be red herrings. Let's investigate! As also mentgioned, there is no Merge function - altering the tags to be the same has the same effect.

csimon · « **Reply #13 on:** March 05, 2013, 07:06:49 pm »

Quote from: vjbelle on March 05, 2013, 06:31:12 pm

I will try that if I can pull it up in recently imported. However if not, then I don't know how to since there are four different albums with various tracks that would add up to one complete album.

If they have disappeared from Recently Imported or you otherwise can't get them all on the screen at the same, you can create a new playlist and drag all the files into that so that when you view the playlist you see all the files listed together. Or create a new view with a filter on it that selects a field that you know to be common to all, e.g. Album = "Whatever" (and, in fact, if in doing that you find that not all tracks are listed then you know it's a problem with the Album field!). Or, if you can see the 4 separate album covers in the screen, highlight them all at the same time then go to the Tag pane - this will automatically select all files and display the tag summary for them.

glynor · « **Reply #14 on:** March 05, 2013, 07:45:14 pm »

Everything MC shows you in the "Views" (the different ways you can look at your albums using the tree on the left hand side) is driven by the file tags. So, it automatically groups together files that have the same Album tag, or Artist tag (or both). If they're showing separately, it is because some of the files have differing tags.

Quote from: MrC on March 05, 2013, 05:59:57 pm

Select all the tracks an the album that exhibit the problem. Do a File > Export Playlist and export with the following settings:

- Text File (CSV delimited)
- Included Fields > All Fields
- Output Range > Selection

Zip that file and attach it here as a reply. Someone will take a look at see if there is anything obvious.

If you do this, we can tell you what tag is causing it. But it is better to teach a man to fish than to catch him some fish, you know?

If you select any group of files and look in the Tag Action Window, it will list the actual tags for any files that "match" and show [Varies] for any tags that have multiple entries in that tag. So, for example, you want the Track # and Name tags to say [Varies] when you select more than one file, because those things should be different. But if you select a bunch of files that should all be part of the same Album, or Artist, and they show [Varies] in that tag, then you know that one or more of the selected files has something "differing" in that tag.

You can quickly and easily, from right there, fix the tag. If you click on the drop-down arrow in the Tag AW, it will list the tags each of the different selected files contain right at the top. You can pick the right one, and it'll apply that tag to all of the selected files.

Quote from: vjbelle on March 05, 2013, 06:31:12 pm

I will try that if I can pull it up in recently imported. However if not, then I don't know how to since there are four different albums with various tracks that would add up to one complete album.

You simply need a view where you can see them all at the same time. This is easy even with the default views. You can select multiple albums and it will show the combined list of files in the file-view area below. If that doesn't make it clear for you, ask how, and I'll spell it out (I'll have to switch Libraries to pull screenshots, and I don't feel like it right now).

vjbelle · « **Reply #15 on:** March 06, 2013, 07:11:30 am »

First of all thanks to all who have been so helpful. I did export the playlist as suggested and opened it in Excel and as expected the artists on the offending albums are different than the first album. However, when I check the tags in MC it shows the artists as being the same..... but the exported CVS file doesn't. I had checked the tags prior to posting because I suspected there could be something amiss there but couldn't find anything. I wanted to post this even before I try to change the artists names but it seems very odd that the tags would all show up the same in MC

Victor

vjbelle · « **Reply #16 on:** March 06, 2013, 07:17:14 am »

I tried to change the names of the artists on the tracks that showed differences in the CVS file but it makes no difference. This is a true mystery!

Probably the only fix is to export to a playlist and save that..... as suggested. I'm just so curious as to why MC displays the tags as being the same when in fact they are not.

csimon · « **Reply #17 on:** March 06, 2013, 07:21:44 am »

What are the actual artist names and the differences?

Are you saying that for any particular file (pick one) MC is dumping the Artist tag out in a CSV file as one thing but on the screen it is displaying Artist as something else for the same file?

vjbelle · « **Reply #18 on:** March 06, 2013, 07:52:28 am »

I found the discrepancy. Its not the 'Artist' that is at fault but rather 'Album Artist' that has changed on some albums and is not a tag that is replaceable or shows up in MC. My thoughts are to correct those fields and save the file, again, as a cvs. My question then is can I select all of the files in MC and then import the new cvs file to replace the existing playlist? Thought I would ask before going through the exercise and maybe really screwing something up.

Victor

csimon · « **Reply #19 on:** March 06, 2013, 07:59:38 am »

Album Artist is indeed a tag in MC that you can see and edit, it's a rather fundamental one, where are you getting the idea from that it's not there? See this from the Wiki for more information: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

Is it displaying as "[Varies]" when you view the tag info pane for all files?

You can very easily replace it in all files, simply edit the [Varies] to what you want the Album Artist to be.

If you still cannot do this for some reason, please tell us exactly what you are seeing in the contents for the tags.

vjbelle · « **Reply #20 on:** March 06, 2013, 08:15:20 am »

Album artist is not listed as one of the tags (in the lower left hand corner of MC) or as a field in the main body. I must be able to add it...... I just don't know how...yet.

Thanks so much for your help.

csimon · « **Reply #21 on:** March 06, 2013, 08:17:35 am »

At the top of the Tags pane, there is a symbol I think that allows you to change what tags are shown. I think the options are something like Show All Tags, Show Only Tags That Have a Value; Show Only Tags In The Current View. You should probably choose Show All Tags.

vjbelle · « **Reply #22 on:** March 06, 2013, 08:21:03 am »

I found it and changed the tags that didn't match and I now have one album. It would be nice to be able to view that field or change field views for the main body..... that way I could have seen the offending field immediately.

Thanks again..... you deserve all of your stars!

csimon · « **Reply #23 on:** March 06, 2013, 08:24:07 am »

Phew.

[Goes for a lie down]

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Author Topic: Merg Downloaded Albums (Read 3229 times)