Feature suggestion: customise abum, title inside groups

[Oliviander]

Hi Simon,
at first I want to apologize for some stupid ideas,
I think while playing around with MinS I sometimes got carried away,
trying out things I probably will never use myself.

(26-04-2013 14:12)simoncn Wrote:  I did read it (several times), and I've been thinking about how MinimServer can provide more flexibility without adding more complexity.

Woops, I hope I didn't steal youre time

Quote:I think it would be useful to add displayFormat support for albumArtist, subject to the constraint that the albumArtist value for a track (<item> in DIDL-Lite) must match the albumArtist value for the containing group or album (<container> in DIDL-Lite).

This constraint is needed to ensure correct functioning of control points that use DIDL-Lite albumArtist values to group tracks on the playlist.

The current fixed formatting of albumArtist in DIDL-Lite is as follows:

i) If the album has an AlbumArtist tag, send the value of this tag

ii) else, if the album has multiple artists, send the combination of all the artist names

iii) else, don't send an albumArtist value in DIDL-Lite

This would continue to be used as the default if no AlbumArtist.displayFormat setting is specified.

The albumArtist value for a group container in DIDL-Lite is currently the same as the albumArtist value for the containing album (if any). This should be customizable (for both album groups and nonalbum groups) using a new tagFormat setting AlbumArtist.group.displayValue={format-string}.

The default if this isn't specified would be as above for album groups, and as follows for nonalbum groups:

i) If the group has multiple artists, send the combination of all the artist names

ii) else, don't send an albumArtist value in DIDL-Lite

This sounds great - and is exactly what I originally searched for.
(For me personally the problem is solved by sending the AlbumArtist
to nil and formatting the artist instead.)

Quote:

Quote:and in the meantime
I have some more experience with grouping

I still think this should be optional:
In an abstract level you can say sending the group instead of an
Album entry to the playlist is useful when the grouping
is used to group the items based on content.

I do this, and I am quite satisfed with the results.

Isn't grouping always based on content? I'm not sure what other kind of grouping there might be.

If you need a more flexible kind of grouping, I'd recommend using another tag. For example, you could use CONTENTGROUP, which corresponds to the Grouping field in iTunes. You could use $contentgroup in your tagFormat values, and you wouldn't get an a DIDL-Lite container for the content group.

Your' right - Stupid Idea by me

Quote:

Quote:In Another MinS instance I want to use group to group
all Multidisc albums in single discs.
In this case I want to tagFormat the group with a rather long name
to indicate the contents of the group.
Therfore the album name as a header would be redundant and not helpful
for selecting purposes.
But I still would like to have it for displaying purposes.

Please clarify what you mean by 'displaying' and 'selecting'. If these values are created by the control point from the same DIDL-Lite value, it's not possible for them to be different. If the 'selecting' value is a MinimServer index selection, you should be able to make these values different by using a suitable Title.displayFormat setting.

Oh, I just wanted the old behaviour back as in 0.63 (or was it even in 0.70) as an option, you stated the change of the behavior in this thread above:

(15-04-2013 21:55)simoncn Wrote:  4) For a track that's a member of a group, the DIDL-Lite presented to the control point has the <upnp:album> value set to the group instead of the album.

Therefore this shouldn't be impossible or am I wrong ?

Quote:You can select a subtitled disc for playing. Select the ">> subtitle" entry under the album, and then "select to play" the second item (after ">> Hide Contents"). Try it!

Found it THX
And THX for MinS

[simoncn]

(27-04-2013 00:00)Oliviander Wrote:  Oh, I just wanted the old behaviour back as in 0.63 (or was it even in 0.70) as an option, you stated the change of the behavior in this thread above:

(15-04-2013 21:55)simoncn Wrote:  4) For a track that's a member of a group, the DIDL-Lite presented to the control point has the <upnp:album> value set to the group instead of the album.

Therefore this shouldn't be impossible or am I wrong ?

It isn't impossible, but each extra option adds complexity (in the implementation and in the documentation). For example, this option would also need to change the way albumArtist is computed for the tracks in the group (see the description in my previous post). I'm not convinced that the benefit from adding this option is worth the added complexity.

Is there some way you could use DISCSUBTITLE to get what you want? This provides a structure for viewing the contents of an album without affecting what's sent to the control point in DIDL-Lite.

[Oliviander]

(27-04-2013 12:45)simoncn Wrote:  It isn't impossible, but each extra option adds complexity (in the implementation and in the documentation). For example, this option would also need to change the way albumArtist is computed for the tracks in the group (see the description in my previous post). I'm not convinced that the benefit from adding this option is worth the added complexity.

Is there some way you could use DISCSUBTITLE to get what you want? This provides a structure for viewing the contents of an album without affecting what's sent to the control point in DIDL-Lite.

Hi Simon
ok if this is complex - skip it, it is only a very minor issue for my ideas
(and maybe it won't be an issue anymore in some time).
When I will feel still the way that this would be a good idea,
I'll be back with it when MinS has reached 1.0

I don't see Discsubtitling in this case being helpful,
but I do see great potential in using Discsubtitle in many more
ways if the seperation it makes wouldn't actually be limited to the physical discs.
Especially I would see very good use in my Pop Collection
if this could be used to separate the Original Album Titles
from the bonus titles of an Album.
It is not very helpful to make 2 groups for that
as you won't select tracks that way but, as a reminder
to see where the bonus titles begin
Discsubtitle could be a great feature for this if it could be used
independently from the discnumbers.

I just tried to alias such a seperation to the DISCNUMBER TAG
to get this result but with no luck even when making it 1,2,3,4
like real discnumbers and using discsubtitles accordingly.

Obviously I don't fully understand how this disc seperation
actually works. (Maybe I should begin with the Tracknumbers
each time at 1 to get any effect.)

Additionally I have discovered a presumably unwanted effect of
the Multidisc handling. (at least in my eyes):

In one of my MinS Instances I want to do strictly a work search
(as described in a previous post) and therefore i have aliased:
Work:Album

From your Description of the multidisc beahviour in the handbook
I suspected that this would work easily - and it does
nearly.

Here are my example(s)

First I have a Album which originally consists of 2 discs
but contains 5 Works: the first 2 on Disc 1 the other 3 on Disc 2
After aliasing Work:Album (and Album to something else to avoid conflicts)
MinS shows a list of 5 Albums as expected.

The Title list of the first Work appears as expected
The Title list of the second Work looks the same,
but with one exeption the Tracknumbering does not begin
with 1, but with the first Original Track number.
The Title list of the third work begins again
with tracknumber 1 but now there is a Disc 2 Separator
at the top of the list (like from discsubtitle)
The fourth work has a Seperator 2 and doesn't begin with a 1
(as the 2nd Work)

From the explanations of your handbook I would have suspected that
the renumbering of multidiscalbums would work here
to renumber each album created from a Work this way
with number 1 and not indicating multiple discs.

To understand this behavior better I eliminated
the discnumber Tag.
The the disc-seperator vanished, but then obviously
I will have a sorting problem when there are works that
occupy more than 1 disc.

Am I right with the following:
an items list of an Album is always sorted

1.discnumber
2.tracknumber
3.title

it always begins with
tracknumber of the first title in the list
the discnumber is shown as a DiscSeperator when the
first discnumber is 2 or greater.

Renumbering only kicks in when there is a change
of discnumber from 1 to 2 in the list.
(and it doesn't kick in from 2 to 3 if there wasn't a 1 to 2 change)

If that is so would it be possible
(without much effort - and as an option)
to force the renumbering
at the beginning of the item list in any case ?

If this is not possible I will have think of an easy way to
tag an alternate tracknumber for the works.

Thanks to your great alias Funktion
I Imagine I can get what I want by doing this.
(having a simple list beginning from 1 for each work)

Ahh I got carried away again Post is much too long SORRY

[simoncn]

(28-04-2013 00:18)Oliviander Wrote:  I don't see Discsubtitling in this case being helpful,
but I do see great potential in using Discsubtitle in many more
ways if the seperation it makes wouldn't actually be limited to the physical discs.
Especially I would see very good use in my Pop Collection
if this could be used to separate the Original Album Titles
from the bonus titles of an Album.
It is not very helpful to make 2 groups for that
as you won't select tracks that way but, as a reminder
to see where the bonus titles begin
Discsubtitle could be a great feature for this if it could be used
independently from the discnumbers.

You need to have DISCNUMBER tags to use DISCSUBTITLE. It should be fine to create these DISCNUMBER tags by aliasing some other tag.

Quote:I just tried to alias such a seperation to the DISCNUMBER TAG
to get this result but with no luck even when making it 1,2,3,4
like real discnumbers and using discsubtitles accordingly.

This should work, assuming you don't have "real" DISCNUMBER tags as well as aliased DISCNUMBER tags.

Have you checked the log for warning messages?

Quote:Obviously I don't fully understand how this disc seperation
actually works. (Maybe I should begin with the Tracknumbers
each time at 1 to get any effect.)

This isn't necessary.

Quote:From the explanations of your handbook I would have suspected that
the renumbering of multidiscalbums would work here
to renumber each album created from a Work this way
with number 1 and not indicating multiple discs.

Merging and renumbering will work if you follow the rules described in the second paragraph of this section. You won't get merging and renumbering if there are DISCSUBTITLE tags or if the Album tags have a [disc n] or (disc n) suffix.

Quote:Am I right with the following:
an items list of an Album is always sorted

1.discnumber
2.tracknumber
3.title

Yes, that's right.

Quote:it always begins with
tracknumber of the first title in the list
[//quote]

Yes.

[quote]
the discnumber is shown as a DiscSeperator when the
first discnumber is 2 or greater.

You should get an initial separator for a discnumber of 1 if your album is tagged to show multiple discs (see above). Are you sure you have a disc with a DISCNUMBER=1 tag?

Quote:Renumbering only kicks in when there is a change
of discnumber from 1 to 2 in the list.
(and it doesn't kick in from 2 to 3 if there wasn't a 1 to 2 change)

Renumbering only kicks in when your album is not tagged to show multiple discs (see above). In this case, it is done for all discs except the first.

Quote:If that is so would it be possible
(without much effort - and as an option)
to force the renumbering
at the beginning of the item list in any case ?

If this is not possible I will have think of an easy way to
tag an alternate tracknumber for the works.

This sounds like a problem with how this album is tagged. (It's also possible that there might be a bug in MinimServer.) It would help if you could attach some screenshots showing the incorrect numbering you are getting.

[Oliviander]

(29-04-2013 12:37)simoncn Wrote:  Merging and renumbering will work if you follow the rules described in the second paragraph of this section. You won't get merging and renumbering if there are DISCSUBTITLE tags or if the Album tags have a [disc n] or (disc n) suffix.

Hi Simon,
I just tested this with a single disc:
I set the Discnumber to 2 in all tracks.
And whoops I get the
>> Disc 2
separator on top of the item list.
According to the manual this shouldn't be.

And I did some more testing
giving the 10 tracks of the album the wildest
combination of discnumbers.

I came to the following conclusion:

1. Renumbering fails if there is't
at least one track with a
discnumber 1

2. Renumbering fails if the discs are not consecutively numbered

(I did tag the tracks with random
discnumbers using 1,2,3,4,5
and renumbering works !

When I only use number 1,2,4,5 it won't work
and as stated above
when I use only 2,3,4,5 it won't work either.)

This behaviour accordance with my previous results
I experienced.

[Oliviander]

(29-04-2013 12:37)simoncn Wrote:  

Quote:I just tried to alias such a seperation to the DISCNUMBER TAG
to get this result but with no luck even when making it 1,2,3,4
like real discnumbers and using discsubtitles accordingly.

This should work, assuming you don't have "real" DISCNUMBER tags as well as aliased DISCNUMBER tags.

Ok I will try it again sometime,
according to my previous post I am convinced
I did something wrong and this should work.

[simoncn]

(29-04-2013 21:36)Oliviander Wrote:  Hi Simon,
I just tested this with a single disc:
I set the Discnumber to 2 in all tracks.
And whoops I get the
>> Disc 2
separator on top of the item list.
According to the manual this shouldn't be.

This is correct. Every disc in a multi-disc album is preceded by this header/selector. If the album includes any discnumber greater than 1, MinimServer treats it as a multi-disc album.

Quote:1. Renumbering fails if there is't
at least one track with a
discnumber 1

2. Renumbering fails if the discs are not consecutively numbered

I've done some experiments and I can confirm what you are seeing. I'll investigate why this is happening.

[simoncn]

(29-04-2013 21:53)simoncn Wrote:  I've done some experiments and I can confirm what you are seeing. I'll investigate why this is happening.

I've checked the code, and this is being done intentionally to alert the user that a disc is missing from the album. If the tracks were renumbered and the disc headers removed, there would be no obvious indication of the missing disc.

Is there any reason why you can't use consecutive disc numbers if you want the tracks to be merged and renumbered?

[Oliviander]

(29-04-2013 22:06)simoncn Wrote:  

(29-04-2013 21:53)simoncn Wrote:  I've done some experiments and I can confirm what you are seeing. I'll investigate why this is happening.

I've checked the code, and this is being done intentionally to alert the user that a disc is missing from the album. If the tracks were renumbered and the disc headers removed, there would be no obvious indication of the missing disc.

Is there any reason why you can't use consecutive disc numbers if you want the tracks to be merged and renumbered?

Hi Simon,
no there is no reason or need for me, i just did this as an experiment to explore how the renumbering works.
Understanding that, I can now manipulate the behaviour of MinS to my liking, by doing an alternate Disc- and Tracknumbering.
In the meantime I have 5 Instances of MinS running only for my classical collection:
(rather as a proof of concept than the intention to use all 5 for all time, but in the moment i am quite happy with it)
And I can do this with only one database, as the new features of MinS are really mighty once you understand them in full.

I use now following structures:

1. Server
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- no groups
- discsubtitles = Original CDs (see text)
to make the Discsubtitles show up (and eschew the renumbering)
i created a DISCMULTI tag for multidisc albums (only)
in the Form of "CD 1 of 2" and aliased it to DISCSUBTITLE

2.Server
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- no groups
- discsubtitles = WORK (aliasing)
here I had to create a WORKDISC Tag
counting the WORKS on an Album
and a WORKTRACK Tag counting
the Titles of a work
aliasing these to Discnumber and Tracknumber
and WORK to Subtitle shows each album
as if each Work would be a single physical disc.

3. Server (as 2 but)
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- Group = WORK (aliasing)
- no discsubtitles

4. Server
- Album = WORK (aliasing)
- no Group
- Discsubtitle = PART (aliasing)
PART is for instance an act of an opera
Here I had to Alias the Discumber to WORKPART,
a Tag that counts the PARTs of a WORK
but still using the WORKTRACK for Tracknumber.

5. Server (as 4 but)
- Album = WORK (aliasing)
- Group = PART (aliasing)
- no Discsubtitle

The great thing thanks to your software I could do this with no additional manual tagging of my collection
only by configurating MinS and creating some additional TAGS that can be used as counters:

DISCMULTI, WORKTRACK, WORKDISC, WORKPART.
The tricky part is to create these fully automated with actions in Mp3tag.

I even use Tagformat to show up the things in different ways:

Server 1-3
Album: Album
Title: Composer: Work - Part - Title
Artist: [Album_Release_Year] ALBUM_ARTIST

Server 4-5
Album: Composer: Work
Title: Part - Title
Artist: [Recording_Year] ARTIST

Now I can finally go to rip the rest of my collection having the following afterthoughts:

It would be helpful if you would explain a little more on renumbering
and aliasing in the manual. After I tested all out I now fully understand
the intentions of these features and how to use them, but it did take
some effort; especially that you have to alias the original tags to NIL
if you don't want them to interfere. (I think you shouldn't change
that behaviour as it is quite logical.)

In the Moment there are only 2 minor issues for me,
that I really would like to see changed or get rid of
(and have not mentioned by now)

1. Groups
Groups have to consist consecutive Titles.
This is quite ok, but with my usage I have sometimes (seldom) the problem
that there is the same work twice (or even more) on the same album.
If they are consecutive then they are in 1 group, that is not right,
but as I can think of no way to prevent this (except of changing the name manually) i have no problem with that.
==>>
But if they are not consecutive this leads to an error, destroying the rouping for the whole album.
I think it should be possible that in this case, if there is at least 1 item in between the identical named groups, that
2 groups (or even more) with the same name are shown.


2. Subtitles
I have no idea how the display of subtitles
is managed. But obviously it s not the same like the other
infos, as the Tagformating doesn't work on it.
But I would really appreciate a method to
influence the display of the Discsubtitles.
==>>
At least it would be very helpful if the $Discsubtitle
would be available for Tagformating.
In the Moment the infos of my WORK or PART tag
are not available when I use them for subtitling

[simoncn]

(01-05-2013 22:40)Oliviander Wrote:  Hi Simon,
no there is no reason or need for me, i just did this as an experiment to explore how the renumbering works.
Understanding that, I can now manipulate the behaviour of MinS to my liking, by doing an alternate Disc- and Tracknumbering.
In the meantime I have 5 Instances of MinS running only for my classical collection:
(rather as a proof of concept than the intention to use all 5 for all time, but in the moment i am quite happy with it)
And I can do this with only one database, as the new features of MinS are really mighty once you understand them in full.

OK, I understand. I've added a few comments inline below.

Quote:I use now following structures:

1. Server
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- no groups
- discsubtitles = Original CDs (see text)
to make the Discsubtitles show up (and eschew the renumbering)
i created a DISCMULTI tag for multidisc albums (only)
in the Form of "CD 1 of 2" and aliased it to DISCSUBTITLE

You could have done the equivalent of this by using the [disc n] or (disc n) suffix on the album name for each CD. Your approach is fine, and it provides more flexibility in the formattting of the disc header/selector.

Quote:2.Server
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- no groups
- discsubtitles = WORK (aliasing)
here I had to create a WORKDISC Tag
counting the WORKS on an Album
and a WORKTRACK Tag counting
the Titles of a work
aliasing these to Discnumber and Tracknumber
and WORK to Subtitle shows each album
as if each Work would be a single physical disc.

I think it would not be necessary to create WORKTRACK unless the tracks of a work span multiple CDs. If all the tracks of a work are on the same CD, you should be able to use the original track numbers, although they would generally not start at 1. Your approach is fine, and it provides a more consistent display.

Quote:3. Server (as 2 but)
- Album = Original ALBUM (no aliasing)
- Group = WORK (aliasing)
- no discsubtitles

4. Server
- Album = WORK (aliasing)
- no Group
- Discsubtitle = PART (aliasing)
PART is for instance an act of an opera
Here I had to Alias the Discumber to WORKPART,
a Tag that counts the PARTs of a WORK
but still using the WORKTRACK for Tracknumber.

5. Server (as 4 but)
- Album = WORK (aliasing)
- Group = PART (aliasing)
- no Discsubtitle

The great thing thanks to your software I could do this with no additional manual tagging of my collection
only by configurating MinS and creating some additional TAGS that can be used as counters:

DISCMULTI, WORKTRACK, WORKDISC, WORKPART.
The tricky part is to create these fully automated with actions in Mp3tag.

I even use Tagformat to show up the things in different ways:

Server 1-3
Album: Album
Title: Composer: Work - Part - Title
Artist: [Album_Release_Year] ALBUM_ARTIST

Server 4-5
Album: Composer: Work
Title: Part - Title
Artist: [Recording_Year] ARTIST

All this makes sense to me.

Quote:Now I can finally go to rip the rest of my collection having the following afterthoughts:

It would be helpful if you would explain a little more on renumbering
and aliasing in the manual. After I tested all out I now fully understand
the intentions of these features and how to use them, but it did take
some effort; especially that you have to alias the original tags to NIL
if you don't want them to interfere. (I think you shouldn't change
that behaviour as it is quite logical.)

I will do this.

Quote:In the Moment there are only 2 minor issues for me,
that I really would like to see changed or get rid of
(and have not mentioned by now)

1. Groups
Groups have to consist consecutive Titles.
This is quite ok, but with my usage I have sometimes (seldom) the problem
that there is the same work twice (or even more) on the same album.
If they are consecutive then they are in 1 group, that is not right,
but as I can think of no way to prevent this (except of changing the name manually) i have no problem with that.
==>>
But if they are not consecutive this leads to an error, destroying the rouping for the whole album.
I think it should be possible that in this case, if there is at least 1 item in between the identical named groups, that
2 groups (or even more) with the same name are shown.

My concern about doing this is that it would create an inconsistency between the cases of consecutive groups and nonconsecutive groups. At present, you would use the same approach (change the name manually) for this nonconsecutive case that you would use for the consecutive case.

Perhaps a better approach would be to adopt the "match filter" concept that is already used to prevent unintended merging of albums with the same name and artist (see this section). This could be done either by including the match filter in the GROUP tag or by having a separate GROUPMATCH tag (probably better). For consistency, this would apply to both consecutive groups and nonconsecutive groups.

Quote:2. Subtitles
I have no idea how the display of subtitles
is managed. But obviously it s not the same like the other
infos, as the Tagformating doesn't work on it.
But I would really appreciate a method to
influence the display of the Discsubtitles.
==>>
At least it would be very helpful if the $Discsubtitle
would be available for Tagformating.
In the Moment the infos of my WORK or PART tag
are not available when I use them for subtitling

It should be possible to add support for Discsubtitle.displayFormat and $discsubtitle. I'll look into this.