Feature suggestion: customise abum, title inside groups

[simoncn]

(24-04-2013 18:53)Oliviander Wrote:  Ok I gueass my last post was too long to read

I did read it (several times), and I've been thinking about how MinimServer can provide more flexibility without adding more complexity.

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

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.

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.

Quote:You now could ask why I am not using discsubtitle for this
intent, and the answer is
1. You can't select a subtitled disc for playing and
2. My largest multidisc album has 75 discs, therefore
an ungrouped list would be very long.

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!