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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows => Topic started by: Captor on February 12, 2013, 11:52:33 am

Title: Various artists problem
Post by: Captor on February 12, 2013, 11:52:33 am
Hi
This various artist label drives me nuts  :'(  For example the CD Passione CD1.
17 of the songs are under Various Artist but 1 song is under Chris Rea!
How can it be like this? How can I get that single song to join the other 17 songs under Various Artists?

When I look into tags it seems like there is the same text in both.

In folder Various Artists:                      In folder Chris Rea:

Album: Passione Cd1                                    (same)
Artist: Various Artist                                    (same)
Date: 2009                                                 (same)
Genre: Easy Listening                                   (same)
Name: [Varies]                                            Paul Potts / Nessum Dorma
Playlists: [Only available for single selection]     none
Track #: [Varies]                                         1

So please can someone give me a hint what is wrong? In my music Library they are all songs in the folder Various Artist.
But not in JRiver. Thanks...

Captor
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: MrC on February 12, 2013, 11:54:17 am
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_%28Auto%29
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: glynor on February 12, 2013, 12:13:37 pm
For the record, Album Artist and the whole dang system drives me nuts too.

I just remove it entirely from all of my views and go with plain-vanilla [Artist].  It depends on what you want to achieve, though, I suppose.  I don't, personally, care about "album structure" for any "mixed" album, and if I do, it is simple enough to browse by [Artist] = All, and then find the album in question.  I just want songs by Sonic Youth to show up under Sonic Youth regardless of the source, and I don't ever want anything written to disk with "various" (or other such useless info) in the filenames or anything like that.

"Various" to me means "I was too lazy to tag this properly".
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: Captor on February 12, 2013, 12:28:37 pm
 Hehe, well I agree with you but in just this particular case with a CD that has actually various artists I guess
it is OK if they group under that folder. But why in the hell there is 1 song under the Chris Rea folder is big
question which I would like to find an answer on. This thing has happen before with other albums. But that time I have always managed to find out the reason. Most of the time it is something about the tags that is different. But not in this case. Unfortunately. Hopefully someone can help to solve this mystery  ?
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: rjm on February 12, 2013, 12:35:27 pm
Hopefully someone can help to solve this mystery  ?
Check for differences in the tags [Album Artist] and [Disc #].
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: MrC on February 12, 2013, 12:44:09 pm
Export the album as a CSV playlist, including all tags and I'll take a look.  Upload it here as a .txt file.
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: kstuart on February 12, 2013, 12:48:30 pm
(Replying to glynor)

Actually it depends on what you are doing.

What I realized I needed to do is use Views that are named for tasks.  So, rather than "Artist", "Album", "Panes", I have "Collecting" (View that shows everything, including poor sounding versions, MP3s, etc.), "Family and Friends" (only the best sounding versions, and no avant garde like Ornette Coleman or Bartok), "Exploring" (Panes), "Favorites" and so forth.

Some might use Artist and some might use Album Artist(auto).

Getting back to the OP, I have found the online databases have errors - the most annoying one is when "Artist" is the Big Name On the Cover and "Album Artist" is the actual artist for each track - the exact opposite of the definition of the tags.   Unfortunately, neither MC18 nor MP3TAG has a "Swap Tags" function.
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: Captor on February 12, 2013, 12:57:53 pm
kstuart, maybe it is because of the online info. That makes sence.
I have now done as per MrC´s post and that did the trick. In album artist and in albim artist (auto) there was the name Chris Rea in both. I wonder were that comes from. Maybe from online databases. Anyway, the problem is solved. Thanks MrC, kstuart. rjm and glynor  ;D
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: glynor on February 12, 2013, 01:10:09 pm
(Replying to glynor)

Actually it depends on what you are doing.

Totally agree.  My comments were all for me, personally.

I just don't have that much of a use for viewing a scheme where "various" Various Artists albums are grouped together.  The majority of mine are either:

a. Compilation albums of some kind (benefits, or whatever) where only a handful of the songs, by specific artists, are any good.  The rest are deleted or rated 1 star.
b. Movie soundtracks.

In both cases, it is exceedingly rare that I'd want to sit down and listen to the entire album.  Occasionally for the really stand-out soundtrack album, I suppose, but when that happens (twice a year or something), I'd just navigate through my "regular" Genre\Artist\Album view picking "All", "All", and then the album in question.  Because I'd be looking for it specifically, it wouldn't be a problem to find it in that list.

But YMMV.  I think people who have large Classical collections, and Jazz collections, are much more likely to have a dire need for the Album Artist (Auto) scheme.  To me, it is just noise.
Title: Re: Various artists drives me nuts!
Post by: xplain on February 12, 2013, 01:25:33 pm
It drives me nuts to, I think some thing is wrong with the way it is handled,

Three screenshots to show what I mean.

In ex. 1 I have an album with "Album Artist"= Delain and "artist"= Delain, exept for one where "artist"= Delain (feat. Burton C. Bell)
and then it writes "We are the others by Various Artists" I think it should write "We are the others by Delain".

In ex. 2 It shows a compilation album with "Album Artist"= Various Artists, it then says "Now thats what I call music (DK) - 4 by Various Artists"
wich I think is correct.
If I then search for ex. Robbie Williams it then shows "Now thats what I call music (DK) - 4 by Robbie Williams", and still album artists is Various Artists,
that is not correct

Hope this makes sense.
Title: Re: Various artists problem
Post by: MrC on February 12, 2013, 01:33:36 pm
Just define and use your own group header.  I have an Album (mine) field which is:

if(isempty([Album]),[Name],[Album])if(isempty([Album Artist (auto)]),,/ by if(isequal([Album Artist (auto)],/(Multiple Artists/)),Multiple Artists,[Album Artist (auto)])  ● [Year])
Title: Re: Various artists problem
Post by: Alex B on February 12, 2013, 02:17:27 pm
This is only a problem with the default group header. It gets the "Artist" part of the header only from the (track) Artist library field.

If the Artist value varies inside the group, the displayed header value is always "Various Artists" independently of the Album Artist / Album Artist (auto) logic.

As MrC said, a workaround is to use grouping that is based on a custom, expression based field.

However, I don't know how to make a custom field to sort the grouped albums in the date order when the date value is not the first item in the displayed header string.

This issue has been discussed a few times before. For example, here are a couple of links to my old replies (and threads):
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=71134.msg480256#msg480256
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52475.msg357894;topicseen#msg357894
Title: Re: Various artists problem
Post by: MrC on February 12, 2013, 03:10:25 pm
It would be very nice to have an independent sort setting for Group By. 

Using Date as leading text can break some albums apart where tracks are dated with the track release date as opposed to album release date (common w/collections albums).