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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 22 for Windows => Topic started by: holsen1 on April 18, 2017, 11:12:36 am

Title: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: holsen1 on April 18, 2017, 11:12:36 am
This is driving me Crazy but I know there must be a simple answer.   I have several multi CD albums but they all show up in MC as individual albums.  For example Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" which is a 2 CD album shows up in both file structure and library as 2 CD's :  Bitches Brew CD1 track 1 & 2  and Bitches Brew CD2 Track 1,2,3,4.  I want to combine them as 1 File Directory and 1 Library entry as Bitches Brew 1 - 6.   This was a simple affair in iTunes but for the life of me, I cant figure out how to accomplish this with JRiver MC.    Can someone help me with this?  Thanks
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: DJLegba on April 18, 2017, 11:39:38 am
To make them show up as one item in MC give them different disc numbers but the same album name. It's been a while since I last ripped a disc with MC, but I seem to recall you can't set the disc number field when ripping. In that case I always used different names (eg "Acme 1" and "Acme 2") and then renamed after updating the disc # tag. This of course puts them into different folders if you use the default naming convention when ripping. I now used dBpoweramp to rip discs. It lets you set the disc # field (use 1, 2, 3, not 1/3, 2/3, 3/3) and will put everything into the same folder when ripping if you use the same album name (Acme instead of Acme 1 or Acme 2). I don't worry about folder locations because MC keeps track of all that for me, but you may have your own reason for preferring to put multiple discs in the same folder.
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: dtc on April 18, 2017, 06:17:46 pm
Some additional information -

If you use separate names for each CD (like Bitches Brew CD1 and Bitches Brew CD2) MC will see these as two separate albums. MC looks at the tag Album Artist to determine if a set of tracks is one album. So, make sure that Album Artist is the same for all 6 tracks. That will combine all tracks into 1 album.

Once you have a common Album Artist tag, you can, optionally, specify the disc number for each disc. If you do not want to bother with disc number, just tag the tracks consecutively, for example as 1 to 6 for Bitches Brew. MC will then see this as 1 album with 6 tracks.

Alternatively, you can set the disc # tag to 1 for the first 2 tracks and to 2 for the last 4 tracks, in your example. If you do that, you can choose to number the tracks on disc #2 as 1 to 4, or as 3 to 6. Again album artist needs to be the same for all tracks. If you go this route, you should also display disc # in your views, especially if you number the second CD tracks starting at track 1.

Once you figure out that MC uses Album Artist to makes albums and how to use the disc # tag, everything should work.
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: blgentry on April 18, 2017, 06:30:53 pm
DTC, you're confusing matters a tiny bit.  You're right about [Album Artist].  But in this case, the OP has different values for [Album].  No amount of changing [Album Artist] will make two different values of [Album] appear as one album.  Though, after he corrects his [Album] field to be one common value, he may also have to change the [Album Artist] field as well.

Brian.
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: dtc on April 18, 2017, 08:39:52 pm
Brian - Sorry for the confusion. I should have been clearer. I was trying to add additional  information to the previous post.  The additional information I was adding was that  you need  the same Album Artist and not just Album to  form an album. That is  Album and Artist  and Album Artist should to be the same for all tracks to form an album. I agree Artist is not an issue in the Miles Davis case, but it may be in other cases. Thanks for the clarification.
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: imugli on April 19, 2017, 06:23:05 am
The audiophiles curse every time I say this, but I rip my multi disc albums , then give them the same name, and make the track numbers 101, 102 for disc 1, then 201, 202 etc for disc 2.

It works for me 😊
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: Awesome Donkey on April 19, 2017, 07:00:23 am
The audiophiles curse every time I say this, but I rip my multi disc albums , then give them the same name, and make the track numbers 101, 102 for disc 1, then 201, 202 etc for disc 2.

Blasphemy! :P

Personally, I take advantage of the Total Discs tag as it works out perfectly for multi-disk albums/sets. I use Track # and Total Tracks, along with Disc # and Total Discs and it works and displays perfectly with the discs having the same album title.
Title: Re: Ripping or Renaming Multiple CD Albums as One Album in MC
Post by: jjazdk on April 19, 2017, 09:13:57 am
Personally, I take advantage of the Total Discs tag as it works out perfectly for multi-disk albums/sets. I use Track # and Total Tracks, along with Disc # and Total Discs and it works and displays perfectly with the discs having the same album title.

Cool, I didn't know that would work.

dBPowerAmp uses 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 as default in Disc#, and I have always wondered if that information was used for something somewhere... Seems like MC will understand it, if I change dBPowerAmps behaviour into 1, 2, 3 for Disc#.

Quite tedious to update all my multi-disc albums, but definitely worth trying :-)