Exclude Various artists from albumSortTags?

[Cableguy]

Hi,

I have Minimserver setup with albumSortTags: Artist,Date

This is great, but all my Various artsits albums get listed chronologically as well (obviously!) but it would be much easier and more logical if it would be possible to sort only these alphabetically by album title.

Would this be possible?

Thanks

[Cableguy]

Another partially related thing is this:

All mp3 albums are sorted by date at the end of all Flac albums that are also sorted by date.

The albums by Artist X would "chronologically" be displayed like this:
Artist X, Flac Album 1 1970
Artist X, Flac Album 2 1971
Artist X, Flac Album 3 1972
Artist X, Mp3 Album 1 1969
Artist X, Mp3 Album 2 1971

[simoncn]

(04-02-2013 15:00)Cableguy Wrote:  Another partially related thing is this:

All mp3 albums are sorted by date at the end of all Flac albums that are also sorted by date.

The albums by Artist X would "chronologically" be displayed like this:
Artist X, Flac Album 1 1970
Artist X, Flac Album 2 1971
Artist X, Flac Album 3 1972
Artist X, Mp3 Album 1 1969
Artist X, Mp3 Album 2 1971

This doesn't sound right. What exact values do you have for the Date tags in your FLAC albums and your MP3 albums?

[simoncn]

(04-02-2013 14:42)Cableguy Wrote:  Hi,

I have Minimserver setup with albumSortTags: Artist,Date

This is great, but all my Various artsits albums get listed chronologically as well (obviously!) but it would be much easier and more logical if it would be possible to sort only these alphabetically by album title.

Would this be possible?

Thanks

I can't think of an easy way to do this. The best I can suggest is to add a new custom tag AlbumDate and set this to the same value as Date for your non-VA albums only, and change your albumSortTags setting to 'Artist, AlbumDate'.

[Cableguy]

They are YEAR tags in both cases, year only (no complete date) like 1970.

[simoncn]

(04-02-2013 17:21)Cableguy Wrote:  They are YEAR tags in both cases, year only (no complete date) like 1970.

If you have a YEAR tag in a FLAC file, this won't be picked up by the Date entry in albumSortTags.

In an MP3 file, the TYER ID3v2 frame will be translated by MinimServer into a DATE tag, which will be picked up by the Date entry in albumSortTags. The next release of MinimServer will also look for TDAT ID3v2 frames and combine these with TYER values.

The sorting should work correctly if you use DATE tags in your FLAC files instead of YEAR tags. These DATE tags can contain either a four-digit year or a full date formatted as yyyy-mm-dd.

[Cableguy]

Thanks, but oddly enough the YEAR tags get picked up and correctly sorted when using sortorder by DATE!

I will look into your other suggestions later tonight.

[simoncn]

(04-02-2013 19:02)Cableguy Wrote:  Thanks, but oddly enough the YEAR tags get picked up and correctly sorted when using sortorder by DATE!

I will look into your other suggestions later tonight.

This probably means you have both DATE and YEAR tags in your FLAC files.

[Cableguy]

(04-02-2013 20:00)simoncn Wrote:  

(04-02-2013 19:02)Cableguy Wrote:  Thanks, but oddly enough the YEAR tags get picked up and correctly sorted when using sortorder by DATE!

I will look into your other suggestions later tonight.

This probably means you have both DATE and YEAR tags in your FLAC files.

Hi Simon,

I looked into this some more.

When examining extended tags in mp3tag, there is no DATE tag on my files, only YEAR.
Furthermore, I added the DATE tag to my panel and manually applied a four digit year value which oddly enough resulted in the YEAR tag being changed and the new DATE column remained empty.

My conclusion from this is that maybe DATE and YEAR somehow are the same? That would also explain why my YEAR tags work as sorttag in MinimServer. Except from the strange behaviour detailed in the first post.

[simoncn]

(05-02-2013 12:44)Cableguy Wrote:  When examining extended tags in mp3tag, there is no DATE tag on my files, only YEAR.
Furthermore, I added the DATE tag to my panel and manually applied a four digit year value which oddly enough resulted in the YEAR tag being changed and the new DATE column remained empty.

My conclusion from this is that maybe DATE and YEAR somehow are the same? That would also explain why my YEAR tags work as sorttag in MinimServer. Except from the strange behaviour detailed in the first post.

It seems that Mp3tag displays the DATE tag in the FLAC file as a YEAR tag in its user interface. Mp3tag also allows you to edit this "Year" value to add month and day information (very confusing!)

Now we've got that straightened out, I'm not sure what's causing the unexpected sort order with FLAC albums preceding MP3 albums. Please try the following:

1) Start MinimServer
2) From the minim icon, select 'Show log'
3) In the log window, change the logging level from Info to Trace
4) In the control point, select the index entry for "xxx albums"
5) You should see some messages appear in the log window, similar to the following:

sorting album Selection of Western Film Music
ARTIST: Ennio Morricone
DATE: 2001
sorting album Lassus: Prophetiae Sibyllarum & Missa Amor ecco colei
ARTIST: Stephen Rice: The Brabant Ensemble
DATE: 2011

6) Press 'Save as' to save a copy of this information. Zip the saved log file and attach it to a post here.
7) In the log window, change the logging level from Trace back to Info

I'll take a look at the saved log file and try to find the explanation.