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Author Topic: Reading in all values in Style list?  (Read 2197 times)

MahlerFreak

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Reading in all values in Style list?
« on: February 02, 2009, 01:49:01 pm »

There must be an easy way to do this, but in all my forum searching I haven't found a solution which exactly addresses my issue:

I have a large library ripped using the latest version of dbPowerAmp, which creates Style tags from AMG data containing multiple styles, semicolon delimited. I want a field containing the whole semicolon-delimited string from the Style tag. The current Style field displays only the first style in the tag string. Thanks for any help.


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MahlerFreak

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Re: Reading in all values in Style list? And, a bug.
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2009, 04:32:05 pm »

More information, in case it helps:

The files are FLAC. The Style tag displays the complete semicolon-delimited string in dbPowerAmp and MP3Tag, so I know it's all there.

I tried using an expression to read the string directly from the tag into a new field called StyeList:

=Tag(Style)

This also only gives me the string up until the first semicolon. Also, if I then open the tagging window for a file or files, and click on the StyleList field to edit it, MC13.0.114 locks up and has to be terminated via task manager.


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bunglemebaby

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Re: Reading in all values in Style list?
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2009, 08:06:33 pm »

Since Media Center has Style as a default tag now, with "String" as the data type it is not possible to import the full semicolon delimited list into this field. I believe that if you create a custom field ("Style2" for example) with a Data Type of 'List (semicolon delimited)' you should be able to accomplish what you're after.
-JB
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MahlerFreak

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Re: Reading in all values in Style list?
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2009, 08:28:38 pm »

Since Media Center has Style as a default tag now, with "String" as the data type it is not possible to import the full semicolon delimited list into this field. I believe that if you create a custom field ("Style2" for example) with a Data Type of 'List (semicolon delimited)' you should be able to accomplish what you're after.
-JB

I have tried creating a new list field, and copying from the Style field to the new field, but again, the list only contains the first item. If your assertion is correct, and string fields with semicolons will always truncate at the first semicolon, there is a considerable loss of information in my library when importing into MC13. There are other fields - Composer, for instance - that similarly contain multiple entries in a semicolon-delimited list. I suppose this is partly a consequence of the lack of standards in how various fields are represented, but nonetheless, I would hope a tool as generally configurable as MC would find a way to handle this type of situation.

I could, I suppose, use a tool like MP3tag to rename or copy the Style field for every CD I rip - a pretty unfriendly, error prone solution, though.


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MahlerFreak

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Re: Reading in all values in Style list?
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2009, 07:17:04 pm »

Well, as usual, there was a simple answer and the problem did include operator error, or at least, operator misunderstanding. Although dbPowerAmp shows the Style tag as a semicolon-delimited string, in fact it stores multiple Style tags with one string for each style. As far as I can tell, MC provides no way to merge multiple entries for a single tag, so I used mp3tag's "merge duplicate" action to merge the multiple style tags into one semicolon-delimited style tag per track, then updated the library from tags. Viola.

And of course, after figuring out all of this, I found this thread, which would have saved me all the trouble to begin with:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40670.0

The bug I mentioned above remains. Create a new user field, make it a calculated field with =Tag(someotherfield). Open the tag window for a file - the user field displays the proper value. Click on the field to edit: MC13.0.114 locks up.


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