Selecting a set of tracks

[Pastim]

(08-10-2014 20:33)simoncn Wrote:  The best way to handle this is to tag this set of four tracks as a Group. This is what many MinimServer users with classical collections are doing.

Retagging over 25000 tracks for minimserver doesn't really appeal. Can't I use my Work as being Group? I've been trying and failing to play Works (amongst other selections), which is why I keep nearly giving up (but am too stubborn for my own good).

I have tried to understand your description of group in the 'browsing' guide but some of the restrictions worry me, particularly the multi-disc one. I'll have to read it several times again, but I can't possibly start such a major undertaking without understanding every nuance. Further, I'd have to have a really usable linux CP before starting. Upplay is getting close, but it's not quite there yet.

Quote:Without Group tagging, you would need to back up one level from shot 1 and select Abbado Claudio. This isn't ideal because you don't know that this will be necessary until you have selected Abbado Claudio and seen there is only one album containing this work with this conductor.

Precisely. It's a pain. Further, I have to turn off the (useful) showExtras, otherwise I get the whole album and duplicates.

Quote:From shot 3, you should be able to select the Movement container and get all four movements in the correct order. What happens when you do this?

I'm straight back to the duplicates and more problem I have tried (and probably failed) to explain before. I get the whole album and some duplicates. If I turn off the (useful) showExtras I get the right tracks, but not in the right order.

There are other selections I do from time to time which don't involve whole works. So I may want to pick all tracks from La Boheme with two particular singers (Artists). When I get them on screen I can't just 'play' them as seen. No 'group' tag will help with this.

I really do want to play what I see on screen, no more, no less, however I have selected it, and regardless of any deeper meaning being imposed by the server on the data. The fundamental menu structure provided is great, partly because there is almost no meaning imposed on the data by the server - just tags in common. The meaning is imposed inside my head.

[simoncn]

(08-10-2014 21:06)Pastim Wrote:  Precisely. It's a pain. Further, I have to turn off the (useful) showExtras, otherwise I get the whole album and duplicates.

Having showExtras enabled shouldn't cause this. Which control point are you using? What exactly do you see under the Abbado Claudio container?

Quote:I'm straight back to the duplicates and more problem I have tried (and probably failed) to explain before. I get the whole album and some duplicates. If I turn off the (useful) showExtras I get the right tracks, but not in the right order.

Again, I'm not sure why showExtras should make any difference to this. Are the tracks sorted alphabetically by their title?

Quote:There are other selections I do from time to time which don't involve whole works. So I may want to pick all tracks from La Boheme with two particular singers (Artists). When I get them on screen I can't just 'play' them as seen. No 'group' tag will help with this.

This would be similar to the Abbado Claudio situation discussed earlier in this post. For this, you wouldn't want to use grouping because you wouldn't be able to select just one track from within a group.

Quote:I really do want to play what I see on screen, no more, no less, however I have selected it, and regardless of any deeper meaning being imposed by the server on the data. The fundamental menu structure provided is great, partly because there is almost no meaning imposed on the data by the server - just tags in common. The meaning is imposed inside my head.

I understand. It seems surprising that most control points don't allow this.

[Pastim]

(08-10-2014 21:54)simoncn Wrote:  Having showExtras enabled shouldn't cause this. Which control point are you using? What exactly do you see under the Abbado Claudio container?

Upplay seems do this because the '>> Complete Album' is present at the next level down, so it gets included. I get the selected 'work', plus the complete album.

foobar2000 suffers from several niggles (not playing containers, restorting etc), so I've given up on it. In some situations it also plays more than I want, but I've not attempted to show this in examples to you because of the other shortcomings. upplay is my last hope.

Quote:I understand. It seems surprising that most control points don't allow this.

A 'play all', or 'n items' at every level (regardless of how many unique value tags there are) would fix it for all CPs, would it not? It would also avoid the CP duplication problem for those CPs that don't do duplication detection as you have proposed. If optional, you could could keep yours how you want, minus the clutter you are averse to, and others with lesser CPs would still be able to do what they want without rules they don't quite understand the reason for, like me. I guess I like consistency and get puzzled when what seem to me to be arbitrary rules impose a change in presentation and structure.

I admit to being biased. LMS provides a visible and selectable 'play all' at all levels in all my menus there, and I use it a lot because it is so useful. However, LMS menus are not nearly as flexible as yours, and the dedicated hardware will fail one day. Further, using UPnP would be more direct, server to player, which seems to me to be a more elegant solution, since I don't need multi-room synchronisation.

[simoncn]

(08-10-2014 22:54)Pastim Wrote:  Upplay seems do this because the '>> Complete Album' is present at the next level down, so it gets included. I get the selected 'work', plus the complete album.

I have discussed this with the author of upplay and he has implemented a solution that should omit the additional '>> Complete Album' tracks.

[Pastim]

(09-10-2014 22:40)simoncn Wrote:  

(08-10-2014 22:54)Pastim Wrote:  Upplay seems do this because the '>> Complete Album' is present at the next level down, so it gets included. I get the selected 'work', plus the complete album.

I have discussed this with the author of upplay and he has implemented a solution that should omit the additional '>> Complete Album' tracks.

Thanks - upplay now omits the '>> Complete Album' tracks. It is also improving in other ways, although still has some problems with duplicate detection. It is, apparently, being worked on.

Getting back to the reason for raising the thread in the first place, if you'll forgive me for repeating myself somewhat, here is where I have got to.

I thought more about using Group tags. I realised had to solve the multi-disc Album problem first (I still have no idea why minimserver insists there can be only 1 AlbumArtist, but so be it) since Groups would fail in many cases unless this was fixed. So, as reported on another thread, I created a new tag on all my tracks, just for minimserver, being a concatenated copy of all AlbumArtist tags, and made this an AlbumArtist alias in minimsever.

Once that worked I could create Groups that shouldn't fail. I worked out an algorithm for adding Group to all my classical tracks, mainly just copying work to group, but allowing for manual override as needed, and that works reasonably well. I had 3 main types of problem with this:

• I had to patch a few Albums with missing discs (due to duplication between collections) by creating empty discs.
• I also had to use manual overrides on several dozen tracks where the same work (and hence group if just a copy of work) is present on one album (the worst being a Julian Bream collection over 30 discs).
• The other hassle was recital albums where there are multiple non-consecutive tracks with parts of the same work. In such cases I arranged to add the movement name to the group.
  

It's been a lot of work, what with testing it and then backing it all up (several copies each taking many hours).

I will say that the error log from minimserver has been most helpful. I would not have resolved many of the issues without it.

I'd still like 'n items' at the lowest level, but I can see this is not viewed favourably.

So thanks for your help. I do appreciate your patience, time and effort.