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[RobotX]

First of all, I did a search and haven't found an answer.  

Does MC9 (or will it be able to in the near future) sort albums by compilation. itunes has a "Part of a Compilation" check box. This would be wonderful to have in MC9. I know there are a ton of work arounds but to be honest they all leave much to be desired. I have a ton of soundtracks and my ipod is a complete mess of single song artists when searching by "artist."

[Matt]

MC's "Album Artist (auto)" does this.  Use it in view schemes, etc. to clean up the mess.

[_K_C_]

If you use MC to transfer tracks to your IPOD you can specify whether it transfers "Artist", "Album Artist" or "Album Artist (auto)" to the Artist field on the ipod.

 

[RobotX]

Excellent!  

I'll give it a try! Thanks.

[RobotX]

ok I feel stupid. Or this just isn't very obvious or user friendly. But I can't seem to get it to work without MC9 changing all my artist tags whenever I try to change the album artist (auto). Also exactly where do you specify how you want this ordered in the ipod?? My dream, and I don't believe it's a very big one, is that I can select a bunch of songs, right-click perhaps, and simply tag it a compilation, without resorting to changing all my id tags. Sigh...

[Phil Lee]

ok I feel stupid. Or this just isn't very obvious or user friendly. But I can't seem to get it to work without MC9 changing all my artist tags whenever I try to change the album artist (auto). Also exactly where do you specify how you want this ordered in the ipod?? My dream, and I don't believe it's a very big one, is that I can select a bunch of songs, right-click perhaps, and simply tag it a compilation, without resorting to changing all my id tags. Sigh...

OK, first of all the Album Artist (Auto) is a calculated field, that's to say you can't change its value. If you have a compilation album, for example a film soundtrack, the Album Artist (Auto) will be set to (Multiple Artists). You can select which artist field MC uses to fill the iPod database by right clicking on the iPod under CD, DVD & Handhelds and using the Select Artist Field option to choose which artist tag you want to use.

As for compilations you can achieve this using tags. You could introduce your own custom field called Compilation into the MC database and enter text into this for each track you want in a compilation. You could then construct a smartlist that looks for tracks with the Compilation field set to a specific value to build your compilation. That could then be transferred to the iPod and listed under Playlists. Alternatively you could use one of the existing tags, for example Comments, to do the same thing.

[kiwi]

You might also be able to use the "Album Artist" field.  It is normally left blank, unless you fill it in with a different value.  I've done this on a few albums where they really were just one artist and shouldn't be popping up in the Multiple Artists category.

At first when I read this, I thought that you were talking about compilations, as in multiple disks in the same set.  At times, I wish that there was an easy way to manage this.  I have a few sets of disks that I would like to manage... in a  better way than just "Album Name (disc 1)" & "Album Name (disc 2)"  Since they really are 1 album, made up of two different disks.  Hmm.  Anyone have any thoughts?

[knickelfarz]

RobotX,
maybe you can also build up a viewscheme based upon the "Album Type" field.
Or use one of the "Custom" fields as your own "Album Type" field and fill it with entries like "Artist Albums", "Compilations", "Soundtracks"... and  then build up viewschemes based on it. I did that in MJ 8 and still use it...
Maybe this all looks a little bit complex first, but in the end, MC will be much more handy for a larger library than every other program

[jleerigby]

Is the info in this thread any help to you?

[Doof]

Album Artist (Auto) : This is a calculated field based on the Album and Artist tags. If all of the Artists for an Album are the same, then Album Artist (Auto) will be the same as Artist. If all of the Artists are different, then Album Artist (Auto) will contain (Multiple Artists). If you create your View Schemes based on Album Artist (Auto) rather than just Artist, then they will show albums under (Multiple Artists) rather than individually. It's really handy for any kind of Album-centric View Scheme.

Album Artist : This is a manual override field for Album Artist (Auto). If you are happy with your compilation CD's showing up under (Multiple Artists) then you can leave this blank. If you'd rather specify your own "artist" for a specific CD (compilation or otherwise), then enter that in here. For instance, many of my compilation CDs are soundtrack albums. If I put "Soundtrack" into the Album Artist field, then these CD's will show up under the artist "Soundtrack", as long as I'm using a View Scheme based on Album Artist (Auto). If I leave this field blank, then they will show up as (Multiple Artists).
 

 
Multi-Disc CDs : What I do is pretty simple. I give all tracks the same album name, minus the (Disc 1), (Disc 2) stuff. For instance, Metallica's Garage Inc. is just "Garage Inc." and not "Garage Inc. (Disc 1)" and "Garage Inc. (Disc 2)". Then I just renumber the tracks accordingly. The only time I preserve the disc numbers in the Album tag is when there's something to gain by doing so. For instance, Metallica's Binge & Purge is 3 discs. Each disc is a different concert. So I keep the 3 discs seperate in order to better choose which concert to listen to.

[RobotX]

Is the info in this thread any help to you?

Yes it has, and staying up to 2:30AM figuring it all out was helpful to. I looked through the help menu which I did not feel explained it well enough. What I think is needed is a tuturial ( as simple as it may be) for what to do with a soundtrack for example. It would be great for people new to MC9. I was finally successful by creating multiple schemes to organize everything into nice little sub catagories. And it transfered over to the ipod without a hitch. I'm the kind of person who will tear his hair out rather than give up, I'm just wondering how many people just give up and say screw this! I like schemes now I know they are even there and what they do.  They are really easy to use, I just wish learning them was nice and easy.

Also: Doof's explanation was very helpful!