Topic: Problem with multiple values tags (Read 6139 times)

luci0m · « **on:** January 25, 2012, 05:10:13 am »

I would submit to your attention an issue with multiple values tags.
Multiple values on the same tag are separated by a ';' character.

I created a custom view organized in panes with the following categories shown in this order:

Composer
Album
Director
Soloists

I also set the following rules for file display: "Genre is Classica" and "Period is Barocco".

Now, for a track with the following "Soloists" tag content:

Soloist One; Soloist Two; Soloist Three; Soloist Four

I would expect to see the following items on my view Soloists Panel:

Soloist One
Soloist Two
Soloist Three
Soloist Four

Instead of the above items I see only this item (exactly):

Soloist OneSoloist TwoSoloist ThreeSoloist Four

I think this is a software problem on the tag interpretation.
The ';' character is not handled.

Obviously this problem is valid also for other standard/custom tags like "Artist".

wig · « **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2012, 07:20:26 am »

The problem is that you are trying to put multiple values in a String type field.

Have a look here

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/File_Properties_(tags)

Look at the Field Data Types. String fields will only accept one value. List fields will accept multiple values like you are trying to enter.

Some of the default JRiver fields (like Artist) are string fields and can't be changed.

My advice would be to create new List fields to handle your data when you want multiple values.

luci0m · « **Reply #2 on:** January 25, 2012, 07:42:59 am »

> The problem is that you are trying to put multiple values in a String type field.

wig,

I know about that.
The "Soloists" tag type is "List (semicolon delimited)".

The problem is just that, "Soloists" is a List type field and is handled as a string.

> Some of the default JRiver fields (like Artist) are string fields and can't be changed.

Yes, "Artist" is a string type field, but I think it's wrong.
Other media players treats this tag as a list field.

Alex B · « **Reply #3 on:** January 25, 2012, 10:20:12 am »

"Soloists" works correctly for me. I just tested it by pasting the Soloist One; Soloist Two; Soloist Three; Soloist Four string into the Soloists field. In a list view column and Action Window > Tag > Soloists the string was correctly interpreted as four list items.

"Artist" as a list field could cause problems with the internal automatic Album Artist logic, online databases and many other programs & player devices. In my opinion it is better to not change the behavior of the most common, traditional "CD database", fields. I have used a custom "Contibuting Artists" list field for this purpose.

luci0m · « **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2012, 10:53:27 am »

This is a screenshot of what I have:

Looking to the dbPoweramp dialog the "Soloists" tag i correct, but if you look to the Soloists panel of JR something is wrong.

Matt · « **Reply #5 on:** January 25, 2012, 11:02:39 am »

Quote from: luci0m on January 25, 2012, 10:53:27 am

Looking to the dbPoweramp dialog the "Soloists" tag i correct, but if you look to the Soloists panel of JR something is wrong.

Could you email me a sample file? I'm matt at jriver dot com.

Thanks.

syndromeofadown · « **Reply #6 on:** January 25, 2012, 11:09:51 am »

When creating your view don't use the field 'soloists' as a pane.
Instead use an expression. You can name your expression Soloists.
For the expression, paste this

Code: [Select]

listbuild(1,;,[Soloists])&datatype=[list]

MrC · « **Reply #7 on:** January 25, 2012, 11:16:23 am »

Quote from: syndromeofadown on January 25, 2012, 11:09:51 am

When creating your view don't use the field 'soloists' as a pane.
Instead use an expression. You can name your expression Soloists.
For the expression, paste this
Code: [Select]
listbuild(1,;,[Soloists])&datatype=[list]

FYI - a list data type will automatically show list items as a list. No need to use an expression.

Alex B · « **Reply #8 on:** January 25, 2012, 11:28:25 am »

"Soloists" works correctly in a pane too.

Probably this a file tag issue.

luci0m,

What is the file format and did you use MC for tagging the "Soloists" field values? What did you use if not MC?

Otello · « **Reply #9 on:** January 25, 2012, 11:52:26 am »

Quote from: Alex B on January 25, 2012, 10:20:12 am

"Artist" as a list field could cause problems with the internal automatic Album Artist logic, online databases and many other programs & player devices. In my opinion it is better to not change the behavior of the most common, traditional "CD database", fields. I have used a custom "Contibuting Artists" list field for this purpose.

Well, Artist (and Genre) field not accepting multiple values is the main problem I have with JR, as it's a keystone of my library organization (I'm quite new to JR, but I didn't start yesterday with PC music).

Now, reading old posts on the forum I understood, please correct me if I'm worng, that this feature will never be added and the main reason against is "compatibilty"...
At this point I'm completely lost, as most programs use multiple value for Artist and Genre (even iTunes!); moreover I see a compatibilty issue in beeing forced to use optional fields for a main tag, breaking the portability of the library; finally, a multi-value field is backward compatible with single value by definition and not the contrary, if you don't want/need to use multiple values you may simply ignore it...
So to speak, I'd be perfectly happy to have the "Data Type" dialog unlocked even with a pop-up saying: "WARNING! This function is not recommended, not supported and you're using it at your own risk!"

But of course I'd miss something; as I'm not a programmmer it's very possible.
Can somebody explain me what exactly is the compatibility problem with Artist (and Genre) multi-value field?
I'm ready to change idea if a get a resonable explaination.

luci0m · « **Reply #10 on:** January 25, 2012, 12:10:24 pm »

@Matt
I'm uploading a sample file. I will send you a link as soon as the upload will end.

@syndromeofadown
Using the expression I have the same behaviour of directly using the field.

@Alex B
The file format is FLAC.
I leave the tags inserted by dbPoweramp.
I also use MediaMonkey and Foobar 2000.

MrC · « **Reply #11 on:** January 25, 2012, 12:14:57 pm »

I wonder if the semicolon is really something else?

There is an issue when using Acceptable Values in a fields definitions. If the values have whitespace after the semicolons, MC gets lost (see this thread).

Alex B · « **Reply #12 on:** January 25, 2012, 12:20:40 pm »

Otello, the JRiver developers are considering this.

In addition to the potential "Album Artist (auto)" logic and online database problems, one of the possible compatibility issues is file tagging.
With my kind permission, here is my "very confidential" reply from the closed beta forum:

Quote from: Alex B on January 25, 2012, 11:51:19 am

If this will be implemented then you will have no excuse to not implemented also the correct way to tag FLAC and OGG files:

From: http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html
Quote
Field names are not required to be unique (occur once) within a comment header. As an example, assume a track was recorded by three well know artists; the following is permissible, and encouraged:
   ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie
   ARTIST=Sonny Rollins
   ARTIST=Sonny Stitt

In ID3v2.3 tags the separator should be / . ID3v2.4 is different.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3
Quote
ID3v2.3 expanded the frame identifier to four characters, and added a number of frames. A frame could contain multiple values, separated with a / character. This is the most widely used version of ID3v2 tags.

ID3v2.4 is the latest version published, dated November 1, 2000. Notably, it allows textual data to be encoded in UTF-8, which was a common practice in earlier tags (despite the standard, since it was not supported yet) because it has several noticeable advantages over UTF-16. It uses a null byte to separate multiple values, so the character "/" can appear in text data again.

This will of course expose the well known AC/DC artist tag problem with ID3v2.3. So far it has not been a problem in MC.

I can check what the other formats should use (m4a, wma, wv, mpc, aiff & wav, ape), but be prepared that you will need to change each and every format.

In the meanwhile, you could start by removing the Media Jukebox strings from the APE tags. Currently if e.g. "Soloists" is tagged outside MC there is no way to make MC use the field. The same is true for WMA (expect for those original WMP tags that are already supported in MC).

Alex B · « **Reply #13 on:** January 25, 2012, 12:26:22 pm »

Quote from: luci0m on January 25, 2012, 12:10:24 pm

@Alex B
The file format is FLAC.
I leave the tags inserted by dbPoweramp.
I also use MediaMonkey and Foobar 2000.

Thanks. I'll check how other programs handle multi-value FLAC tags.

Matt · « **Reply #14 on:** January 25, 2012, 01:47:46 pm »

Thanks for the sample.

It stores soloists as a newline delimited list (using 0x0D). Is this common or the standard?

Because this says we should expect multiple 'Soloist' entries:
http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

Alex B · « **Reply #15 on:** January 25, 2012, 05:19:50 pm »

I think the xiph.org standard is correct.

Apparently dBpoweramp follows the standard when it writes the "Artist" and "Genre" fields but not when it writes a custom field like "Soloists".

Mp3tag and foobar2000 write also a "Soloists" field as described in the standard.

luci0m · « **Reply #16 on:** January 26, 2012, 03:04:38 am »

@Matt

yes, opening the file with an hex editor I can see that the delimiter is a 0Dh character.
Though the dbPoweramp UI shows a ';' characted.
Quite confusing...

Are you considering to support the 0Dh character in addition to ';' ?

helefanndt · « **Reply #17 on:** January 29, 2012, 09:31:35 am »

I have the same problem as luci0m. However I figured out that this only happens when there's a space after semicolon.
See the attached picture. Between Barbara Schlick and Agnes Mellon there's no space, and they show up as soloists. However between Mellon & Gerard Lesne there's a semicolon followed by a space '; '.
So I guess it's a problem of dbPoweramp tagging? Or can JRiver not display strings that start with a space?
http://postimage.org/image/r4f3pnbvr/full/

luci0m · « **Reply #18 on:** January 30, 2012, 03:27:13 am »

I have to interpret the silence after my question about the 0Dh character as a negative response.
Then, I have to assume that tags inserted by dbPoweramp are not compatible with JR.

I would also spend a word about the problem of the space (20h character) following the semicolon, emerged in this thread.
I think this is a BUG.

Will JR people fix this bug in the near future?
If, even in this case, the response is NO, please provide us a valid technical reason, because we have to check thousands of tracks.

glynor · « **Reply #19 on:** January 30, 2012, 07:14:30 am »

Quote from: luci0m on January 30, 2012, 03:27:13 am

I have to interpret the silence after my question about the 0Dh character as a negative response.
Then, I have to assume that tags inserted by dbPoweramp are not compatible with JR.

I would also spend a word about the problem of the space (20h character) following the semicolon, emerged in this thread.
I think this is a BUG.

Will JR people fix this bug in the near future?
If, even in this case, the response is NO, please provide us a valid technical reason, because we have to check thousands of tracks.

They're working on it.

luci0m · « **Reply #20 on:** January 31, 2012, 03:03:52 am »

glynor,

what problem you mean they are working on?

The one I found on the Soloists tag with the 0Dh character?
The one with the 20h character after the semicolon?
The one on the Artist tag where multiple values are not supported?

Or all of these?

Otello · « **Reply #21 on:** January 31, 2012, 05:31:55 am »

About the <space> after semicolon, I noticed something weird.

I created a calculated multi-value field for Artists (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57477.0) to see what happens with my library, previously tagged using another program, with the syntax "artist1; artist2; artist3".
In Artists column I get listed only Artist1, except for one album, which works as expected (if you don't know the space after semicolon is not supported)...
Now, the only difference is this album is not composed by Flac files but Apple Lossles ones.

I don't know if it may help to track the issue with the space after semicolon, but I'd be really curious to know why JR has this problem with Flac files and not with Apple Lossless.

Matt · « **Reply #22 on:** January 31, 2012, 08:36:05 am »

Artist, Genre, Composer, and Conductor will be list fields in a coming build.

Once the build is available, you may need to do 'Update Library (from tags)' to get the list fields populated from your tags.

glynor · « **Reply #23 on:** January 31, 2012, 01:15:30 pm »

Quote from: luci0m on January 31, 2012, 03:03:52 am

what problem you mean they are working on?

Matt gave you the 1000 foot view. I can't reveal details because the builds aren't public yet.

helefanndt · « **Reply #24 on:** January 31, 2012, 01:23:10 pm »

Quote from: Matt on January 31, 2012, 08:36:05 am

Artist, Genre, Composer, and Conductor will be list fields in a coming build.

Once the build is available, you may need to do 'Update Library (from tags)' to get the list fields populated from your tags.

That's great!
The instrument tag would also be a good candidate for a list field.
Could you update us when you arrived at a conclusion regarding delimiting characters.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Problem with multiple values tags (Read 6139 times)