Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

psme · 09-02-2012, 09:07

Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted! Use the <desc> in <item> to provide detail song tag pair to a smart Controller.

For example, I add a user tag name "Audio Format" and set the value to "Super Audio CD" for SACD ripped track, set it to "Vinyl ripped" for song ripped from LP, etc.

In that case, the smart UPnP server can return all tag values in a song include this user tag "Audio Format", within song's <item> section...

For example, for a song "Rolling In the Deep", the <desc> section in the song <item> section may look like:

<desc id="Artist Name" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">Adele</desc>
<desc id="Track Title" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">Rolling In The Deep</desc>
<desc id="Album Title" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">Adele Best Collection</desc>
<desc id="Date" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">2014 06 32</desc>
<desc id="Track Number" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">12</desc>
<desc id="Disc Number" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">2</desc>
<desc id="Genre" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">R&B</desc>
<desc id="Audio Format" nameSpace="minimServer:UserTag">Super Audio CD</desc>

There shouldn't be much compatibility issue, as proper UPnP client should simply ignore any unknow/un-needed xml item. And a smart Controller can get all the real tag info in a song.

If such UPnP server exits, then I can really push someone to make a smart controller! And I have a smart controller UI all planned in my mind... Smile

(08-02-2012 12:09)simoncn Wrote: Thanks for this suggestion. It's an interesting idea. Most (or all) current control points wouldn't be able to take advantage of this information, but this could change with "smarter" control points in the future.

The main problem I see is defining a standard format for how this information would be sent. The format would need to be defined as an XML schema in some XML namespace. I did some web searching and I found an example of doing this from Microsoft in the urn:schemas-microsoft-com:WMPNSS-1-0/ namespace (see this link) and also from Meedios in the http://www.meedios.com/ namespace (see this link). I wouldn't want to use either of these proprietary namespaces and schemas in MinimServer, and I'm also not too keen on inventing a MinimServer proprietary namespace and schema. If/when there's a standard namespace and schema for doing this, I'd be quite interested in taking it further.