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[eCo]

I can't seem to customize my audio view scheme the way I'd like it.  ? I am trying to use the 'paned' view, with album thumbnails for browsing and loading onto my mp3 player.  I prefer to load one complete album at a time.  The problem is, my albums with multiple artists are showing up with as many thumbnails as there are artists.  For example, "Motown Classics" will generate 20 thumbnails with one or two songs under each.  This is despite *not* including "artist" as a sort field.  I'm sorting the thumbnail view by "band" and "year".  The multi-artist albums all have "(Multiple Artists)" in the "band" field.  Each album is located in its own directory with the usual log files and thumbnail image: folder.jpg.  It doesn't appear to matter which fields I select for the panes above.  I've played with the 'Edit view scheme...' function, to no avail.

I'm not sure if this is important, but the directory tree structure is: \\NAS\Media\Music\[genre]\[Artist]\[Album]\[Disc No.].  MC12 is loaded on a PC connected to the NAS via a switch.

I have spent several hours on this, and have searched the forum extensively.  Any ideas that would help me consolidate each multi-artist album into its one thumbnail would be really appreciated.

Edit: I forgot to mention these are all FLAC encoded files tagged with Tag&Rename.  This reminds me of the odd problem that the 'Album Artist' tag in Tag&Rename does not get copied into the "Band" field of MC-12 as I expected when file tags were copied into the library.  So I had to manually edit the "Band" field to show both single artists and "(multiple artists)".

Thanks,
eCo

[Alex B]

... I have spent several hours on this, and have searched the forum extensively.

I guess you didn't find for example this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33255.0

MC has an excellent automatic system for keeping the tracks of the "multiple artists" albums together, but this system does not use the Band tag. You need to use the "Album Artist (auto)" field as a view item in the view scheme options.

In MC the Band field is used for the name of the band or orchestra. (e.g. Artist: Beethoven, Conductor: Karajan, Band: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra).


EDIT

marko explains his system here:

http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Simple_Artist_Based_Album_View

[eCo]

I guess you didn't find for example this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33255.0

As a matter of fact, I did.  But as far as I can tell, it doesn't discuss specifically how MC compiles lists of songs for a particular album thumbnail.  I have now deduced that the 'album' tag is insufficient since there may be two albums from different artists with the same name.  So it must be based on 'album' and 'album artist'.  Or is it 'album' and 'album artist (auto)'?  Up to now I was thinking it depended solely on the view scheme.  That was my fundamental mistake.

In MC the Band field is used for the name of the band or orchestra.

I've been using Tag&Rename for some time.  I got started on the "band" field, because I expected the "Album Artist" field of Tag&Rename (ID3 TPE2) to copy to the "band" field in MC12.  This is from my reading here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=35068.0.  I was surprised to learn this wasn't the case.  In fact, I've explored all the fields in MC12 and T&R's 'Album Artist' hasn't been copied to any of them.  Perhaps that's because these are FLAC files with Vorbis comment fields?  Other fields are picked up fine, tho.

I fixed my problem in MC12 by copying the contents of the 'band' field into the 'album artist' field for all the albums.  I presume album artist (auto) updated accordingly, because the problem disappeared immediately afterward.  Fortunately, copying from field to field en masse is painless.

Thanks a lot for your help.

eCo

[Alex B]

As a matter of fact, I did.  But as far as I can tell, it doesn't discuss specifically how MC compiles lists of songs for a particular album thumbnail.  I have now deduced that the 'album' tag is insufficient since there may be two albums from different artists with the same name.  So it must be based on 'album' and 'album artist'.  Or is it 'album' and 'album artist (auto)'?  Up to now I was thinking it depended solely on the view scheme.  That was my fundamental mistake.

MC uses track images. After cover art is added each audio file has a link to the cover art file (alternatively each audio file can have an embedded cover art image). For display purposes MC can show the album tracks as one entity. I am not sure what is the exact rule, but if the tracks are tagged as explained in the linked thread they normally show up as one album in album thumbnail views.

I've been using Tag&Rename for some time.  I got started on the "band" field, because I expected the "Album Artist" field of Tag&Rename (ID3 TPE2) to copy to the "band" field in MC12.  This is from my reading here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=35068.0.  I was surprised to learn this wasn't the case.  In fact, I've explored all the fields in MC12 and T&R's 'Album Artist' hasn't been copied to any of them.  Perhaps that's because these are FLAC files with Vorbis comment fields?  Other fields are picked up fine, tho.

For some reason T&R uses a FLAC tag named as "Ensable" for its "Album Artist" field. You can make this tag show up in MC12 if you ceate a similarly named user field.

I fixed my problem in MC12 by copying the contents of the 'band' field into the 'album artist' field for all the albums.  I presume album artist (auto) updated accordingly, because the problem disappeared immediately afterward.  Fortunately, copying from field to field en masse is painless.

If the track files are detected as a complete "multiple artists" album MC fills the Album Artist (auto) field automatically with the (Multiple Artists) value, but this can be overrided by tagging the Album Artist field with a preferred value (like in my "Louis Armstrong" example).

[eCo]

For some reason T&R uses a FLAC tag named as "Ensable" for its "Album Artist" field. You can make this tag show up in MC12 if you ceate a similarly named user field.

Ah...If I had known that in the beginning, it would have saved me some time.  (BTW, I presume you meant "Ensemble".)

I'm good to go now, tho.

Thanks again for the help.

eCo

[Alex B]

I presume you meant "Ensemble"

Oops, I meant Ensemble, of course....