Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[park]

3. Changed: Library views of "Albums" no longer group all albums with the same name together.

What does this mean exactly? I've been looking and cant see any differences in groupings.

[datdude]

think 'greatest Hits'

[hit_ny]

11.1.186 (6/7/2006)

11.1.186 (6/7/2006)

3. Changed: Library views of "Albums" no longer group all albums with the same name together.

Can anyone explain why this was done and what does it achieve ?

Album is a unique tag, if the same name is given isn't it logical to expect them to show up under.......that same name ?

If not, give it a different name

I usually append the label name after the album name to indicate this when i come across albums with the same name, happens rarely.

[park]

gotcha.

[gappie]

Can anyone explain why this was done and what does it achieve ?

Album is a unique tag, if the same name is given isn't it logical to expect them to show up under.......that same name ?

not when they are from different artists.

[Fex]

"Best Of"
"Greatest Hits"
...

[NickM]

Alex_B offered some helpful advice to my earlier post on the same subject
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33957.0

BUT, there is one additional complication that I have come across when there is the same name for compilation albums.  Following Alex_B’s resolution, the calculated field, [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album], generates a non-unique result.

[I have two compilation albums called “Jazz Moods”, for which the calculated expression would be the same i.e. “Multiple Artists – Jazz Moods”]

So, back to my earlier work around – I cheat, and add a space ( or two ) to the album name.

And as for the change in .186 - I see no difference....
nick

[hit_ny]

not when they are from different artists.

Fine, thats why i add the label after it.

The reason i ask this is i have a few radio shows in which i place the show's name in the album tag, after that all artist that did a show with the radio station are grouped together under the shows name ie Album.

With this new addtion what does it look like now ?
The ABC Show (1)
The ABC Show (2)
....

 ?

[matt-uk]

I don't like this.. I have dozens and dozens of "Various Artists" compilation albums. In the album view, it now defaults to showing the same tile for each artist on each compilation.. There are thousands of repeat albums tiles. Album art navigation is much harder now. How do you revert this to showing one tile or stack per album?

[Matt]

I don't like this.. I have dozens and dozens of "Various Artists" compilation albums. In the album view, it now defaults to showing the same tile for each artist on each compilation.. There are thousands of repeat albums tiles. Album art navigation is much harder now. How do you revert this to showing one tile or stack per album?

This shouldn't happen.  Make sure "Album Artist (auto)" is correct for these mix albums.

[matt-uk]

This shouldn't happen.  Make sure "Album Artist (auto)" is correct for these mix albums.

OK.. I've looked into this a bit further.. It seems like the albums in question were ripped & labeled/filed by another app that I used before MC.. So the files are stored in separate artist directories (but they do have the correct album title tags).. How do change things to work in the MC manner?

Thanks

[mhakman]

Works great Now I can see Greatest Hits by Joe Cocker as different album from Greatest Hits by Queen, which they are.

Many thanks/Mikael

[JONCAT]

"I don't like this.. I have dozens and dozens of "Various Artists" compilation albums. In the album view, it now defaults to showing the same tile for each artist on each compilation.. There are thousands of repeat albums tiles. Album art navigation is much harder now. How do you revert this to showing one tile or stack per album?"

Some of us edit the Album Artist field to "pull out" certain artists from the (Multiple Artist) Tile. I want to see all of Bob Dylan's tracks in the Bob Dylan Album Artist/ Album Artist (auto) Tile.

This change is a HUGE problem for me. I can keep albums together on disk and in MC but I want to edit compilations because MC buries those tracks in Multiple Artists when I am browsing Artists.

Please see this thread as I have tried to repeatedly explain myself.

How hard is it to add "Bob Dylan's" or "Dylan's" to "Greatest Hits"?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=32740.msg231764#msg231764

going back to 185 for now.



DC

[mhakman]

I don't like this.. I have dozens and dozens of "Various Artists" compilation albums. In the album view, it now defaults to showing the same tile for each artist on each compilation.. There are thousands of repeat albums tiles. Album art navigation is much harder now. How do you revert this to showing one tile or stack per album?

I use MC 11.1.186 and I don’t have this effect at all. For example I have an album with Album=”Karajan Adagio”. Karajan is the famous conductor and Adagio is a certain type or phase in classical compositions. Tracks on this album are composed by different composers. Because this is classical music then I use the composer name as artist name because in classical music I usually search for a composer (e. g. Mozart) and not performer (e .g. London Symphonic Orchestra). Consequently some tracks on this album have Artist=”Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart”, others Artist=”Antonio Vivaldi”, yet others Artist=”Ludwig van Beethoven” etc. The Album Artist is not assigned at all in this case. Each track has also unique track name which is the name of the actual musical piece. I have also set Image for each of the tracks to be the original album cover image. On the disk the tracks of this album are in “Herbert Von Karajan/Adagio” folder where also the image named “Herbert Von Karajan - Karajan Adagio.jpg” is stored.

In the panes view of “Audio” node I have the usual 3 Genre/Album Artist (auto)/Album panes. MC shows the actual album in “Classical” genre as “(Multiple Artists)” artist and “Karajan Adagio” album. This is exactly what I want. In the Genres view I see image of the album in the “Classical” group stacked together with the other classical albums. This is also exactly as I want it. In the Artists view I see this album in (Multiple Artists) group and only there. This is right too (see also my answer to Dr. C below concerning Artists view).  In the Albums view I see this album as a unique album “Karajan Adagio”. This is also what I want. I don’t see all the combinations of individual track artists and album as you describe it.

I have an effect that reminds of the one that you describe but in another situation – this is however my own fault. I have a large collection of radio recordings. I started to collect them long before I had MC and long before I had my categorization scheme clear for me. These recordings have all Genres, Artists, and Names assigned but not Albums. This is because Album is very often missing in radio broadcast and I was too lazy and was busy listening to the music rather than searching on the Internet for correct Album. These tracks require already a lot of manual work when editing away commercials, DJ’s talk, and fixing nice start and end. The recordings are stored under their corresponding Artist folder in “Unknown Album” folder. Because I don’t know the Albums I assigned one and the same image to all of them – the logo of the actual radio station.

In the “Albums” view of “Audio” node I see now hundreds of “Unassigned” albums, each corresponding to one of artists for which I have one or more tracks recorded from the radio. All these albums have the same image – the logo of the radio station. My solution to this problem is to undertake the huge work of finding names of correct albums, assigning correct album name and image in MC and moving the files to correct album directory. For older music, which most of these recordings are, this is not a simple matter and will not be done in a day, rather in months or years to come. One album at a time it gets better and better.

/Mikael

[mhakman]

Some of us edit the Album Artist field to "pull out" certain artists from the (Multiple Artist) Tile. I want to see all of Bob Dylan's tracks in the Bob Dylan Album Artist/ Album Artist (auto) Tile.

This change is a HUGE problem for me. I can keep albums together on disk and in MC but I want to edit compilations because MC buries those tracks in Multiple Artists when I am browsing Artists.

The key, the whole key, and nothing but the key – so help me Codd.

Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd – the father of relational database systems and the relational model. MC is not based on a relational database but a database it is, and very much so. Therefore an analysis of information to be stored in MC, its categorization scheme (e .g. the keys), and how that information will be used and searched in your own case may be worth a though.  Given a large and varying material, the design task (e. g. what keys to use, and what values to assign to them) need not to be simple.

If I understand you correctly Dr. C., you would like to:

For a selected artist display all albums containing at least one track where at least one of track artists is the selected one. The display should not depend on Album Artist of the albums, only on the track artists. Well, that would be nice to have. I don’t know whether it is possible in MC but let analyze what MC would have to do in order to implement this.

First MC would have to produce a list of all artists including individual track artists – a non-duplicate union of all artists appearing in MC database. How about tracks with more than one artist, e. g. Tina Turner and Eros Ramazzotti in Cose Della Vita?

Next, for each artist on above list, MC would have to find all tracks where Album Artist or (track) Artist contains that artist. Then for each such track MC would have to get corresponding Album and prepare a non-duplicate union of all such albums. This list of albums is your result.

Yes, please, do! But then I would like to display all albums where at least one track is “Blues” that was composed or recorded before 1950. Or how about displaying all artists that played together with… etc., etc.? The search requirements could be endless. Some of this you can achieve by playlists with expressions but not all of it.

The point is that the Panes, Genre, Artist, Album views of the “Audio” node are predefined queries that result in what people would normally expect, that is, what people normally call Genre, Artist and Album. For some people that have their material structured in some unusual way such predefined views will not work well but playlists may.

Then again, if database material is structured and categorized in a way that is unsuitable for the search/query/grouping that you need then no matter how intelligent the database system is, you will not get what you want.

/Mikael

[mhakman]

For a selected artist display all albums containing at least one track where at least one of track artists is the selected one. The display should not depend on Album Artist of the albums, only on the track artists. Well, that would be nice to have.

Dr. C., I just discovered that if you create a new View Scheme under Audio node or if you edit Audio node’s view scheme to contain Genre/Artist/Album view items (as opposed to default Genre/Album Artist (auto)/Album) then for a selected artist you get all albums where this artist appears on at least one track. This works in Panes view and also in Artist view in that view scheme. Now for Mozart I see 3 albums named Karajan Adagio, Mozart, and Violinkonzerte Nos. 2 & 4. Mozart is the sole artist on last two but on Karajan he appears only on some tracks. In Artist view, for Mozart, I see a stack of these 3 albums. I also see Karajan album for Antonio Vivaldi, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jules Massenet, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Tomaso Albinoni – all the artists that contributed to Karajan’s album. However, in Album view of this scheme I see Karajan Adagio only once. This is perfect! Isn’t it what you’ve been looking for?

/Mikael

[Alex B]

As mhakman said, when you use the Artist field for browsing you can see every album in which a particular artist is included, but you don't see tracks from other artists in case the album is a various artists album.

When you use the Album Artist (auto) field for browsing you can see the complete albums and all track artists.


Have either both view schemes separately, e.g.
- Genre/Album Artist (auto)/Album
- Genre/Artist/Album

...or

one view scheme that can be used for album artists and track artists, e.g.
- Genre/Artist/Album Artist (auto)/Album


...also

Don't use more than one "Album Artist" for each album that you would like to see as one complete separate album everywhere in MC.


About various artists albums:

If the default "(multiple artists)" string in the Album Artist (auto) field does not satisfy you can type something better in the Album Artist field (these two fields are separate),

but as already said, use only one album artist for each album. The Artist field is meant for individual track artists.

[JONCAT]

The point of editing a different artist into the Album Artist field, on the same cd, allows you to use the Album Artist (auto) in a View Scheme. This allows a user to define NOT all Artists, but weed out less popular or less well known Artists. You guys probably have big collections, Artist shows you EVERY single Artist; I have tons of compilations and I want LESS CLUTTER, thus I use Artist Album (auto) which is either defined by me or MC when it fills it by default because Album Artist is empty.

So I can use Artist when I want to see every single Artist, or I can use my Album Artist (auto) which is modified to let me see only certain Artists (big name/preferred) but also ALL of their tracks, many of which are buried in the Multiple Artists tile along with all those other one-time occurences of lesser known artists.

I have just started ripping the rest of my CD's and I have 350gb of audio; I wish the stats or MC could figure a way around this but I know what I am doing is not SOP but it works great since I get really overwhelmed by the Artist view scheme; it's just not conducive to general browsing imo. And the recent change in .86 makes this technique unusable since it now lists every album seperate that has multiple Album Artists.....

Maybe I'm being to anal about this but it seems to work great so far, although you have to take the time to rip carefully and it can be a pain editing compilation CDs to leave some as Multiple Artists and others defined as a particualr artist.....sticking with .85 for now.

DC

[JONCAT]

I was thinking:

Since this all revolves around Compialtion or (Multipple Artist) discs, I could backup my library and just go into my Multiple Artist Veiw Schemes and change them all back to Multi to make Stats......then I though maybe my actions were destructive in that MC would then only see the tracks that had Multiple Artist in the Album Artist field....nope.....not only in the actual View Schemes which are Disk locations (e.g. Jamaican Various Artist Albums & All (other) Music Various Artist Albums) but also in Albums of every view scheme, even Audio looking in Artists>Multiple Artists (the albums still contain ALL the correct artists and they have also been "pulled out" and placed in the correct artist tiles according to their edited album artist field). So MC is internally recognzing the file structure, and it keeps track of this. It seems like it should be easy for MC to modify its behavior to simply check for a reduncancy of Album title in each Artist section and account for only one. The major problem is the change in 86, this it totally the wrong way to go imo.....! Please reconsider this, it's much more intuitve to have MC account for Multiple Artists the way they are on disk, as whole albums, but provide as user friendly way to segrgate the multi-artist albums so that certain files are found in Artist Album (auto) tiles.

DC

[JONCAT]

Any chance someone can chime on the official opinion here? After this latest discovery of MC being album to retain albums based on the file structure, I'm hoping that some kind of compromise can be made here. Couldn't MC, since it already retains albums as albums even when they have different Album Artist entries (based on file location?), add those with unique Album Artist data to the correlating Album Artist (auto) data.

My understanding is that Album Artist remains empty unless edited by the user, whereupon it modifies the Album Artist (auto) field. The Album Artist (auto) field is auto filled if all the artist fields are exactly the same, even when the Album Artist field is empty. So using the Album Artist (auto) field to view Artists works perfectly, all MC needs to do is scan and match up artist fields with Album Artist (auto) fields, then the user won't have to manully edit the tags as they import compilation CDs.

MC would be more accurate by then showing all songs of an Artist Album (auto) and then allowing the user to also keep the multiple artists CDs grouped in their own tile; it's a redundancy that makes sense to me. It also allows the user to configure a much more browser friendly Artist (Album Artist auto) view by defining something more comprehensive than Album Artist and less overwhelming than Artist.

DC

[JONCAT]

I realized I was wrong regarding the Mulitple Artists' albums being retained as entire albums when their Album Artist (auto) fields differ; only if you keep a View Scheme that is the disk location of your Multiple Artist albums. The catch is that in Artists>Multiple Artists the albums are inncorrect (lacking files), but in the Albums (not the disk location scheme but Audio ofr example) MC displays them correctly, seemingly based on the file location by default. Interesting....

DC

[Matt]

Album Artist is designed to be the same for an entire album.  The Artist is the per-track artist.

If you want a special pick-n-choose artist, you could create a field and use that new field in view schemes.  Or you could make a field like "Obscure Artist" and filter those artists out of some views.

[JONCAT]

Thanks Matt, that's a good idea. I could retag all the albums that I have left as Multiple or actually tag those with the new field. This would allow the filtering you suggest but also allow for a new view scheme with just obscure artist. Best of both worlds, and accurate stats. I'll give it a whirl. Thanks again.

DC

[JONCAT]

Played around with this a bit. Seems like you'll still end up with the initial problem of having tracks shoved into the Multiple Artists tile and not added to the Album Artist (auto) tiles. The functionality offered by the Album Artist (auto) scheme is defeated as soon as I retag all the Various Artist album artist (auto) tags to Various even when creating a new field.

I have created a scheme that does only use the Artists I want, non-obscure ones, but the problem is that those artists have files on Multiple Artist albums, so a tile is created and the files are seperated from the Album Artist (auto) tile. It comes down to the fact that I need to use the Abulm Artist (auto) field for pulling out files into that scheme and stats will never be correct because to do so I defeat the Album Artist (auto) scheme by changing the Artist Album fields.

 I'll have to play around with this some more, but I am not hopeful; the view schemes I created with extra fields or one field edited with "obscure" vs. major didn't seem to solve the fundamental issue I just mentioned.

I shtere any way to have a tag field auto fill from another, then I could have the Album Artist (auto) info copied to it, retag to Multiple Artists, and use the new view scheme with correct stats.

I could possibly created a field that could mimic the Alum Artist (auto) in that I would just have to manually enter the name of each artist, but that's a LOT of work.

DC

[JONCAT]

Any chance MC will change this feature back and find a more logical way to differentiate between 2 albums with the same name. "There's got to be a better way" that can accomodate users like me who want to  be able to edit the Album Artist field of Multiple Artists CDs.......

DC

[Matt]

You can use expressions to auto-fill from the artist if some other field isn't filled in.

[JONCAT]

This kind of tagging can not use an expression because the user needs to manually check each artist and decide if they want to edit the Album Artist field. Please read the thread I linked to if you haven't already, this change is killing me and I simply can not go forward. There must be a way to accomodate both needs; my method may not be a popular one but it does point out that MC needs to address the Multiple Artist/Album Artist (auto) issue. And doing that would simply be finding a way to assess doubles of album title in a more through way instead of the database assuming that ANY change in the Album Artist (auto) of a multi album means it is an altogether different album.

The fact is that using Artist gives you way too many instances of artists and their variations, using Album Artist (auto) avoids this but then tracks by artists are stuck in the Multiple Artists tile, thus editing the Album Artist (auto) field allows for TRUE browsing of a reduced & selective (simpler) browsing experience of Album Artist (auto) that contains ALL the songs by an artist. Of course you can use the search when you really need it, but MC should be browser friendly and accurate to boot; as it stands, I don't feel it is. My solution is a middle ground that let's the user configure the experience and cut down on excessive "one hit wonder" artists that through a ton of compilations add up to major clutter...unless you decide to include those artists who start to show up more periodically or interest you. PLEASE consider this.

thanks
DC

[JONCAT]

Any comments from users with large databases? If you keep your multiple artist CDs in a folder you can always revert back to (Multiple Artist) in the Album Artist field.

A new field is needed to do a workaround or more appropriately MC scanning Artist field to match it with Album Artist field for Multiple Artist discs, and if the album name is the same, STOP creating an extra tile for the album just because some tags on the album are Multiple Artist tags and others are particular artists. Showing the album  Album Artist (auto) tile views when browsing "into" an Artist is crucial but of course browsing albums is inncorrect as certain files are attached to the Album Artist (auto) field so these albums show inncorrect stats and # of files.

I'm not saying my way is right or wrong, but it illustrates a weakness of MC's logic. I don't want to have to type in a Bob Dylan search to see all of his songs, some of which appear on multiple artist compilations, after browsing to his Album Artist (auto) tile.

The reason I am not browsing by Artist is that even if you exclude all files that you left with Multiple Artist, you lose the unity of one Tile per artist because you lose the Album Artist (auto) filed which lets you retain original spellings, various incarnations, duets, etc. of the artist.

I hope some of you can take the time to back up your libraries and experiment with this.

thanks
DC

[JONCAT]

I worked a solution out that seems to be the best of both worlds:

I made a new field, Album Artist (custom) & copied all the Album Artist (auto) fields into it. Then I reverted all Multiple Artist CDs to have their Album Artist (auto) field set as (Multiple Artists). Then I simply changed my view schemes to use the new field and it mimics Artist Album (auto) allowing me to browse through Artist Album (custom) tiles that include every song and album an artist appears on which is much more to my liking the the standard MC logic.

Anyone know of a way to auto-fill so that future CDs by a single artist can have Album Artist (auto) copied to the Album Artist (custom) field?

thanks
DC