Streamlining the browsing tree & multiple configs

[Dieter Stockert]

Hi David,

I like your approach for classical music, and for most parts it's the same way I'm doing it for myself. But I wonder how you are dealing with multi-movement works. For me the best solution was to use track names to specify the movement and use the album track to specify the work (and albumartist to specify the album). I am not really happy with that kind of 'tag abuse', but I didn't find a better way.

[simoncn]

(20-09-2013 16:03)Dieter Stockert Wrote:  Hi David,

I like your approach for classical music, and for most parts it's the same way I'm doing it for myself. But I wonder how you are dealing with multi-movement works. For me the best solution was to use track names to specify the movement and use the album track to specify the work (and albumartist to specify the album). I am not really happy with that kind of 'tag abuse', but I didn't find a better way.

You might consider trying the Group tag again. The implementation of this has been much improved in the last couple of releases.

[haggis999]

(20-09-2013 16:03)Dieter Stockert Wrote:  Hi David,

I like your approach for classical music, and for most parts it's the same way I'm doing it for myself. But I wonder how you are dealing with multi-movement works. For me the best solution was to use track names to specify the movement and use the album track to specify the work (and albumartist to specify the album). I am not really happy with that kind of 'tag abuse', but I didn't find a better way.

Hi Dieter,
I have found what I think is a better way. You just need to define a custom tag called 'Work'. That way, you can still use the Album and Album Artist tags for their intended purpose.

If you use dBpoweramp CD Ripper to rip your CDs you will find that you can't enter a value for Work. I get round this by putting the work name in the Comment tag. This is only a temporary measure, as I copy the Comment tag into the custom Work tag I have created in J River Media Center.

If you use JRMC to save its library tags back into the FLAC files then Work can be read by most other metadata software, including MinimServer.

David

[DavidHB]

Thank you for your interest.

(20-09-2013 16:03)Dieter Stockert Wrote:  I wonder how you are dealing with multi-movement works. For me the best solution was to use track names to specify the movement and use the album track to specify the work (and albumartist to specify the album). I am not really happy with that kind of 'tag abuse', but I didn't find a better way.

I don't think that there is one answer that works for everything. This is for two reasons: (1) classical music is immensely variable in the way that it names things, and (2) the usefulness of any particular scheme will depend on control point behaviour.

I'm a fan of standards, and I do see problems with what you describe as 'tag abuse', though it is widely done in the published tag libraries like freedb. The main issue is how any particular control point will interpret your metadata. If it works for you, then fine, but it is worth trying out your data on more than one control point, so that you can form a view as to how future-proof your scheme is likely to be.

I try to stick with well used tags. The control points I currently use are Kinsky, foobar2000/foo_upnp and (to a lesser extent) UPnPlayer, all running on quite high resolution devices. My Linn DSM also scrolls the metadata, so I am not particularly worried about tag length. This, at least so far, has enabled me to put all the data I want to record about the work in the Album and Track fields.

Because I try to normalise my data, I have made a deliberate decision not to include composer information in the Album field. Kinsky shows the browsing path, which in my case tends to give the composer name. So, with "Beethoven" showing in the path, a typical solution might be to have ''5ymphonies 5 and 7 [Kleiber]" as the Album (and also the folder) name and " Symphony No. 5 in C minor; 1. Allegro con brio" as the Track (and also the file) name. This allows for a reasonably consistent browsing experience across both folder and index views, and identifies what I am listening to to a sufficient degree. If I require more information, there is (almost invariably for me) the CD booklet and, of course, the internet.

I try not to be too dogmatic about all this. Even with my preference for normalised data, I might allow an album title like "Mompou Piano Works", and an associated track name of "Canción y Danza 5 (1942)". If I feel that it works on the control point, I am happy.

If I may say so, I think that this scheme has the merits of being simpler and more standards-friendly than the one you outlined. Specifically, I don't think that it is necessary to use one tag/field for the work name and another for the movement. I also think that keeping Album/folder and Track/file names consistent helps me to navigate the folder tree when I am outside an 'indexed' environment.

If this simple arrangement does not suit your needs, I'd be interested to know why. I'm still relatively new to this game, and it is always possible that I've missed something that will come back to bite me later ...

David

[DavidHB]

(20-09-2013 17:10)simoncn Wrote:  You might consider trying the Group tag again. The implementation of this has been much improved in the last couple of releases.

I think that this is the way forward, if you feel the need to group works, and this to record the work name separately (so far, I don't, but that could change). It is also very similar to the other David's suggestion concerning the creation of a 'Work' tag.

JRiver, which David mentions, is paid for software. You could implement his suggestion using MP3Tag which free (unless you want to make a donation).

Bottom line; you could add Simon's/David's suggestion to my scheme without difficulty. If you do, it will require more work (to a manageable degree, I think), but will give you more control. It's your call.

David

[haggis999]

(20-09-2013 14:09)DavidHB Wrote:  I'm sorry if this sounds a bit obvious, but the folder view is a function of the way the folders are arranged within your music folder (the folder MinimServer is directed to by its contentDir option). In my case, because (following my 'CD shelf' paradigm), the genres are separately stored, my top level categorisation is into genre folders.

My brain is so hard-wired to thinking in terms of metadata that I never considered the possibility that you might be using genres in your folder structure! In my case, I ripped first and thought about genres later - and fully expect to adjust my genre definitions over time. My focus on metadata means that I never have to change my folder structure after ripping.

Quote:I use track names to specify the work, as this works with all the Control Points I have tried.

It is quite common for metadata found on various online databases to include the work name as a prefix to the track name but I find this a hindrance to easy browsing with an interface that has a limited number of viewable characters. My initial tests before banishing all work references from the track titles showed that it was often the case that all tracks appeared to have the same name because there was only room to see the work prefix. I was using a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 'phablet' as my control point and this has much less space than Kinsky on an iPad.

Quote:The good thing about this view is that it mimics the way that I am used to accessing my collection. You already know the bad news ...

In my case, I was actively trying to throw off the restrictions of my previous 'shelf scanning' access to my collection. If a work did not appear on the visible spine of the CD I would soon forget it was available. As you say, compilation CDs simply exacerbate that issue.

Quote:What the problem demonstrates is that no one view is ever going to give us all that we need, and that, when the combination of a Control Point and MinimServer offers us a range of browsing options, it is self-defeating to try to cram too much of our browsing activity into any one view.

I guess this is where we part company. Can you be a little more specific about situations where you think a metadata-based view just doesn't work?

Quote:You get plenty of classical CDs that contain two or more disparate works by different composers and of pretty much equal 'weight'. It is a real pain to know where to file those CDs on the shelf, and that is a hint that, in the digital collection, you should not necessarily keep the individual works together.

I agree that the physical filing of CDs can be a right pain at times. My solution has been to file all composer-specific CDs in alphabetical composer order (though a few CDs with minor items by other composers are included in this section). All compilation CDs are simply filed randomly, in what is thankfully a much smaller section of my shelving.

In the digital domain, a tool such as JRMC makes it easy to instantly switch from an album-oriented view of your music to a composer-oriented view, or any other tag based view you can imagine. I was more than happy to pay the price for JRMC (trivial compared to an Akurate DSM! ) to get access to what is probably the most powerful media application currently on the market.

A NAS doesn't have the horsepower to run something like JRMC, hence my keen interest in MinimServer for PC-free browsing.

David

[haggis999]

After making that comment about being happy to pay the price for JRMC I should make it clear that I fully intend to make a donation to Simon for MinimServer just as soon as I have it running to my satisfaction on my new Synology NAS box

Being an occasional website and database developer (using ASP.NET and SQL Server), I know just how much effort it takes to produce good software.

David

[DavidHB]

By way of a change, I'll not respond in-line.

Firstly, I don't think that there is any significant difference between us about the value of index- or metadata-based browsing. Where my thinking, I believe, is different from yours is that I tend to regard the file system as just another set of metadata, one that is more universal within the computer machine but less well adapted to the specifics of a particular task (in this instance the creation and maintenance of a music library) than the metadata sets designed for that task. However, the very generality of file system metadata has value; as I have said before, the general and the specific are complementary and not mutually exclusive. I learned this during a decade of involvement with digital photography; the thought seems to be equally applicable to digital music.

If the file system is 'just' metadata, it can be changed like any other metadata. The genre level in my own library was an afterthought (I'm not necessarily quick to grasp the logic of my own conclusions!), but the lifting and shifting required to implement the change was accomplished in twenty minutes. Would it have taken much longer with, say, 600 CDs' worth of folders and files, rather than the 80 or so I did move? Actually, I don't think so. But I did do the moving around on a copy of the library that was not in use, and then used SyncToy to mirror the changes in the 'live' library on the NAS (and of course re-started MinimServer to get the library re-indexed).

Another conclusion from my digital photography work was that it is essential the correct data structure, software and hardware infrastructure in place before allowing the library to grow. If your experience is like mine, it is during the course of ripping and managing the first 100 or so albums that you learn what the 'correct' infrastructure actually is. I'm glad that I had mine in place before I committed to the purchase of the Akurate.

I take your point about browsing long data elements (of any kind) on devices with limited screen real estate. I could install install Kinsky on my Android phone, but I doubt that I will. A high resolution (Nexus 10) tablet is an essential part of my infrastructure.

You and I seem to have reached diametrically opposed conclusions from our shelf scanning past. You want to "throw off the restrictions" (and so the shelf paradigm must seem to you like backward thinking). I want to take the past as a starting point, but use new opportunities to make the system more capable, thereby (I believe) also removing the restrictions. Is one approach inherently better than the other? I doubt it (so long as you can at least find your files in something other than a Control Point ).

Are there circumstances where metadata-based browsing does not work? Well, yes. The obvious one is where tagging-type metadata is inaccurate, inconsistent or just absent. Getting the data right, even using the best software applications, is challenging and labour-intensive. Classical music throws a curved ball at the metadata writer from (I'd guess) at least one album in three. When, as from time to time it will, the tagging proves to be faulty, it is good to have the dear old omnipresent file system to fall back on. And ripping and tagging always involve a great deal of file system use and maintenance, so it is as well to devote as much care and attention to this as to other forms of metadata input and editing.

Your comments about JRiver interest me. I agree that the cost is not exorbitant, but, looking at the media-rich but content-poor website, I find it hard to form a view as to whether JRiver does anything I need for which I do not already have a capable application. Certainly, it deals with aspects of media (video, for example) in which I currently have little interest. But if it can tag files more easily than, say, MP3Tag (which is very powerful, but presents the new user with a pretty steep leaning curve), I might be interested.

David

[DavidHB]

(20-09-2013 23:24)haggis999 Wrote:  I fully intend to make a donation to Simon for MinimServer just as soon as I have it running to my satisfaction on my new Synology NAS box

I hope that your experience with the Synology is as good as mine has been with my Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. Barring one moment of nervousness-induced confusion , the installation was as smooth as silk, and subsequent running has been faultless. MinimServer has baulked at the occasional stupidity over the configuration settings, but that is what it is supposed to do .

David

[Dieter Stockert]

(20-09-2013 18:48)DavidHB Wrote:  Specifically, I don't think that it is necessary to use one tag/field for the work name and another for the movement.

I want to keep my iPhone and iPad as control app devices. And as far as I can see there is no app that is able to display long titles. So for me there's no way of putting composer, work title and movement title all together in one field.