Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

gnomus · 14-05-2014, 19:03

(06-05-2014 09:14)simoncn Wrote: ...
I have reviewed this discussion thread and I'm not convinced that using dc:relation to pass PDF URLs is a good approach. If support for PDF documents were to be implemented by MinimServer in a future release, I think it would be better for the server to send PDF URLs to the control point as textItem objects.

The other aspect of the previous discussion that remains unresolved is how the server would discover and identify relevant PDF booklets and associate them with tracks, albums or groups. This is not a simple matter, and I'm hesitant to invent a MinimServer-specific solution for this.

I hesitate to wade in on something that I know little about. However, when I was using Bubble DS today, I noticed that in the "Now Playing" view, when I pressed the album image, a series of options popped up, one of which was "Booklet". This invited me to open a PDF booklet associated with the album. I have put PDFs into the folders of some of the albums that I have downloaded, but these did not appear. Bubble DS seemed to want me to have "associated" the PDF with the album, and it wanted this recorded somewhere on the SD card on my tablet.

So, in short, I couldn't get it to work, but it seems like viewing associated PDFs should be do-able.

Budgie · 08-03-2017, 17:05

Just found time to address the long outstanding task of sorting out the tagging of my classical collection and thought I would revisit this thread. It is now 14 pages longer than when I first became aware of the many problems of classical music tagging and my head is spinning.
Rather than post here what I do I wonder whether we could take Simon's starting post, bring it up to date if necessary, keeping it simple, and add it to the literature as a starting point for others embarking on this journey. Just a thought.

I see mention in Your music library section the following:-
"Latest news Added support for digital booklets"
Will continue reading!
Budgie

paultaylor · 09-03-2017, 11:29

Hi Budgie in this post https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=3912 Simon introduces SongKong, SongKong automatically tags music very much in the same way as described in Simons schema and in fact Simon has given me valuable feedback to get SongKong to work well with Classical. I would be very interested in getting feedback from MinimServer users, the trial creates a detailed report showing exactly what has been matched and what metadata has been added so you can see if it would work for you.

Budgie · 16-03-2017, 15:40

(09-03-2017 11:29)paultaylor Wrote: Hi Budgie in this post https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=3912 Simon introduces SongKong, SongKong automatically tags music very much in the same way as described in Simons schema and in fact Simon has given me valuable feedback to get SongKong to work well with Classical. I would be very interested in getting feedback from MinimServer users, the trial creates a detailed report showing exactly what has been matched and what metadata has been added so you can see if it would work for you.

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the link to SongKong. I shall try it when I have finished sorting out some urgent operas. Meanwhile a question.
1. Why musicbrainz? Many of my cds are not in that database but are in freedb. Is it an option to use either?

Budgie · 16-03-2017, 15:52

(08-02-2012 18:24)simoncn Wrote: MinimServer is designed to give you the ability to browse your collection by any combination of tags in any order. This means that your collection needs to be tagged with all the information you might want to look at while you're browsing. Classical music generally has a lot of information associated with it, and it's important to have a consistent scheme for recording all this information in your tags.

There's no right or wrong way to tag your music. I'm still experimenting with different approaches for my small but growing classical collection. I have a combination of downloads and CD rips, and for both of these I generally find the original tagging needs a bit (or a lot) of improvement. It's amazing how much variation there is in the standard of tagging between different record companies!

It would be great if people could share the schemes that they're using to tag classical music, so that we can learn from each other's experience. This thread is a place to do this and chat about different approaches. To start things off, here's the scheme that I'm currently using to tag my tracks.

1. Set the Album tag to the full official name of the album.
2. Use a separate Artist tag for each artist who's performing on the track. The order of these tags is significant, as it affects the order in which multiple artists appear on the control point display. I generally use the order in which the artists appear in the record company's descriptive material. I don't include the conductor (if there is one), but use a separate Conductor tag for that.
3. Use a Conductor tag for the conductor (if there is one).
4. Use a Composer tag (or multiple tags) for the composer. Don't include the composer name in the list of artists or in the track title.
5. Set the Date tag to the year of the recording / issue.
6. Set the TrackNumber tag to the track number (not including "/ totaltracks").
7. Use one or more Genre tags as appropriate. Each Genre is a separate tag.
8. Use the Group tag to group together any musical works with multiple movements that appear as consecutive tracks on the album. For example, I would tag each of the four movements of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 as Group=Symphony No. 5 and Composer=Beethoven. For some large musical works, I've used multiple groups rather than a single group.
9. Use the Composition tag for all multi-movement musical works, whether or not they're grouped. (They won't be grouped if they're not consecutive tracks.) Don't include the composer in the composition name.
10. Don't include the composer, conductor, artists or track number in the Title tag.

This is an evolving work in progress. I know it's not fully consistent at the moment. For example, I haven't currently got Composition tags on musical works that only consist of a single movement/track.

If you've read this far, you're probably interested in classical music and have a scheme of your own. Please share it so that we can all learn from each other's experience!

Hi Simon,
I see in 2 above you suggest a separate Artist tag for each artist. I would like to try this rather than a comma separated list as in the BubbleDS display most of the information is chopped off. In fact there may be an issue with the size of certain fields in BubbleDS when I am entering all the artists for a quintet, (now I understand why I need a tablet).

If I am to try your proposal I assume I use the appropriate delimiter for the tag editor I am using. I seem to have this working now for EasyTAG where delimiter is "space-space" so in genre I have eg. Opera - Baroque so a disk appears in both genres if I search on them. I note that in the information shown when tapping the now playing screen this shows as "Opera, Baroque" which is interesting.

paultaylor · (This post was last modified: 16-03-2017 16:28 by paultaylor.)

(16-03-2017 15:40)Budgie Wrote: 1. Why musicbrainz? Many of my cds are not in that database but are in freedb. Is it an option to use either?

Hi thanks for your interest, Freedb provides no more than the basic metadata and is not really sufficient quality for use in automated tagging. Additionally the Freedb primary lookup is by the checksum that can be created when you rip from the CD, but once you have ripped the CD and just have a set of files that checksum cannot be recreated from the files. So whereas a tool like DbPoweramp looks up metadata when ripping, SongKong can be used on already ripped files, incomplete albums ectera.

We don't just use MusicBrainz, we also use Acoustid and Discogs, between all three we usually get pretty good coverage.

simoncn · 16-03-2017, 16:39

(16-03-2017 15:52)Budgie Wrote: Hi Simon,
I see in 2 above you suggest a separate Artist tag for each artist. I would like to try this rather than a comma separated list as in the BubbleDS display most of the information is chopped off. In fact there may be an issue with the size of certain fields in BubbleDS when I am entering all the artists for a quintet, (now I understand why I need a tablet).

If I am to try your proposal I assume I use the appropriate delimiter for the tag editor I am using. I seem to have this working now for EasyTAG where delimiter is "space-space" so in genre I have eg. Opera - Baroque so a disk appears in both genres if I search on them. I note that in the information shown when tapping the now playing screen this shows as "Opera, Baroque" which is interesting.

By default, MinimServer combines multiple values for the same tag using commas to separate the values and sends the combined string to the control point for display in album and track information. The advantage of tagging artists separately is that you get a separate index entry for each artist.

Budgie · 17-03-2017, 10:26

(16-03-2017 16:28)paultaylor Wrote:
(16-03-2017 15:40)Budgie Wrote: 1. Why musicbrainz? Many of my cds are not in that database but are in freedb. Is it an option to use either?
Hi thanks for your interest, Freedb provides no more than the basic metadata and is not really sufficient quality for use in automated tagging. Additionally the Freedb primary lookup is by the checksum that can be created when you rip from the CD, but once you have ripped the CD and just have a set of files that checksum cannot be recreated from the files. So whereas a tool like DbPoweramp looks up metadata when ripping, SongKong can be used on already ripped files, incomplete albums ectera.

We don't just use MusicBrainz, we also use Acoustid and Discogs, between all three we usually get pretty good coverage.

Hi Paul and many thanks for a clear and helpful reply. Beginning to understand.

In due course I shall have a look at how to upload some of the metadata I have created by tagging disks that are not yet on musicbrainz.

There is one issue which may cause problems with this. I now rip with Audex and use the file offset capability so that, for example, a three cd set is ripped into one directory with files numbered accordingly. This way the whole work ends up in one directory. Will this prevent me making a useful contribution to musicbrainz?

Budgie · 17-03-2017, 10:42

(16-03-2017 16:39)simoncn Wrote:
(16-03-2017 15:52)Budgie Wrote: Hi Simon,
I see in 2 above you suggest a separate Artist tag for each artist. I would like to try this rather than a comma separated list as in the BubbleDS display most of the information is chopped off. In fact there may be an issue with the size of certain fields in BubbleDS when I am entering all the artists for a quintet, (now I understand why I need a tablet).

If I am to try your proposal I assume I use the appropriate delimiter for the tag editor I am using. I seem to have this working now for EasyTAG where delimiter is "space-space" so in genre I have eg. Opera - Baroque so a disk appears in both genres if I search on them. I note that in the information shown when tapping the now playing screen this shows as "Opera, Baroque" which is interesting.

By default, MinimServer combines multiple values for the same tag using commas to separate the values and sends the combined string to the control point for display in album and track information. The advantage of tagging artists separately is that you get a separate index entry for each artist.

Hi Simon, thanks for the reply. Having reached the same conclusions the hard way and having finally sorted out the delimiter for my tagging software, I am now using your style (except for conductor) for classical works and am delighted. You have also explained the comma which appears in the list on BubbleDS. There is still the question of visibility when there are several artisit and I find the easiest way to see the data is to tap the now playing screen to see the lot. To have them scroll would be neat but may not be worth the effort.

I also have been trying to get the pdf booklet view working. At present I have put the pdf in the same directory as the track files and given it the same album name as the jpg file. It appears this is not enough but I do not understand the detailed instruction on where to put the pdf file as it refers to a BubbleDS directory. Where would that be other than on my control point? Sorry to be so dense.

Thanks again for your brilliant software.
Budge
Meanwhile all is well and I only have 5 or 6 hundred discs to retag. Will need to have a look at Paul's software now!

paultaylor · (This post was last modified: 17-03-2017 11:59 by paultaylor.)

(17-03-2017 10:26)Budgie Wrote: Hi Paul and many thanks for a clear and helpful reply. Beginning to understand.

In due course I shall have a look at how to upload some of the metadata I have created by tagging disks that are not yet on musicbrainz.

There is one issue which may cause problems with this. I now rip with Audex and use the file offset capability so that, for example, a three cd set is ripped into one directory with files numbered accordingly. This way the whole work ends up in one directory. Will this prevent me making a useful contribution to musicbrainz?

Not a problem since another major difference between MusicBrainz and freedb is that freedb is disc based whereas MusicBrainz is release based and hence understands multiple disc releases. However actually adding data to MusiBrainz is a largely manual process at the moment but if your release already exists in Discogs there are semi-automatic methods to add it.