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[swinster]

Hi,

I'm desperately trying to get a music player that will synchronise with my iPod classic (but not iTunes), but it seems that MJ might have some issues (iPod classic 160GB 6th gen, latest firmware)

I have some albums where the artists names are different but they are NOT compilations. I have set the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) fields to the single artist name but on the iPod they are continuing to show up as compilations.

Also, when altering some tags on a track, even though the file is synchronised with the iPod, the tracks do not appear to be updated on the iPod. For example, I had lots of tracks from Eminem, but I had place a extra character in the artist field on some of the tracks by accident. On the iPod it looks as though you have multiple artists so I edited the tag in MJ and resynchronised. However, the change was not reflected on the iPod. I have just re-initialised the iPod and am re-syncing to see if this makes a difference.

In addition, in the the Coverflow seems to get a little screwed up. For instance, if I select an "Unplugged" album (maybe Eric Clapton - Unplugged) the track listing actually shows ALL my other unplugged albums. If I go into just the artist and select the unplugged album, I see only the tracks on the album. Not sure if this is an iPod weird thing or an MJ problem.

[swinster]

Right, things are now really weird.

After a re-initialise and re-sync the albums that were compilations are no longer in the compilations list. The albums that aren't compilation and have had their Album Artist field set to one name, are STILL in the compilations list!

Certain artist do not show up in the Artist list at all, such as "Eminem feat Dr Dre". Eminem is there but if you go into this artist and look at an album that has other names set in the Artist field then you only see the track that are solely labelled as Eminem - ie 16 out of the 20 tracks. Go back to the compilation list and all 20 tracks show along with the artist name as above (Eminem feta Dr Dre), but you can't find these artist actually listed anywhere!

WTF is happening? Anyone got a clue and how to actually resolve the problems?

Coverflow still not working either.

[Matt]

The compilation flag is driven off of the "Mix Album" field.  Add the "Mix Album" column to your view in Media Center to check it.

Media Center fills this field in automatically based on tags and file locations.  The help file explains the rules for how it's done in detail.

I think Coverflow is always based off of string matching on the album name.

[swinster]

Well, the "Mix Album" field is set to 1 for ALL the albums that I would expect to appear in the compilations (such as "Later with Jools Holland", or "The Best of MTV Unplugged"). However, these albums still DO NOT appear in the compilations within the iPod, although they did at one stage.

The albums that I don't want to appear in the compilation but do, also have a "Mix Album" tag set to 1. This is because some of the Artist names are different (such as "Eminem", or "Eminem feat Dr Dre". However, I have overridden the default "Album Artist" by just giving a single Artist Name - however, this doesn't set the "Mix Album" tag back to 0 and it seems as though this is an uneditable filed.

So the questions still remain. Why are compilation that ARE compilation not showing up, and how can I set albums that are NOT compilations back to normal albums without overwriting all the artist fields with a single artist name??

After reading some old posts I'm not sure if Coverflow is just plain screwed up by Apple, however I don't know if this has been fixed in the new firmware.

[swinster]

As a side note, MJ seems to recognise which albums are compilations and which are not, even though all albums have a "Mix Album" field set to 1.

If I change the The View Scheme to "Album Artist (auto)/Album", then change the view to show "Artists", I immediately see a group of albums from "(Multiple Artists)". In this group, I see all the albums I would expect to be in the compilations. Of course, the other albums are listed correct under the relevant artist, such as Eminem.

I simply don't know why it doesn't work!