Help with sorting optins

[Phydeaux]

Really sorry to bring this up as I've seen the online manual information on this.. but I'm really not too sharp with the complex (to me) format of the sort options... Can someone spoon feed me a bit? Here's what I want:

Relocate the 'The' for bands like The Beatles or The Band in the Artists view and the All Artists view - so display "Beatles, The" and "Band, The".

Also, within the Artists, Albums view, sort the album's by year, ascending.

Might also be nice to relocate the 'The' for album names in the Albums view but can this be done only for that view and not affect the album's within the individual Artist view?

Sorry again, I know it's a powerful feature but I'm just really struggling.

Cheers,
Robert

[antonmb]

If you use the ignore.sort feature as described here it will sort The Beatles under B but still show as The Beatles. You can do the same with album names.

[Phydeaux]

I sure appreciate the reply and you trying to help. But as I mentioned in my original post, I have read the online manual you posted the link to and although the information is all there... it's kind of Greek to me. So I was hoping someone could just show me the option to use.

Now to be fair, there is an example in the manual and I've used that and added to the default tagOptions field the two items suggested:

Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}, Artist.ignore.sort={The}, Artist.ignore.sort.index={The}

This seems to work in the All Artists view but the Artists view is unaffected.

Cheers!
Robert

[antonmb]

Try adding albumartist.ignore.sort as well.

[Phydeaux]

OK, thanks, that makes sense. I now seen the differentiation between Artist and AlbumArtist. Here's what I have:

Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}, all.ignore.sort={The}, Artist.ignore.sort.index={The}, Albumartist.ignore.sort.index={The}, Album.ignore.sort.index={The}

This gets me what I want from the Artists and All Artists views. And it also ignore the 'The' in the list of albums for each artist. But it does not ignore the 'The' in the overall Albums view, how do I make this happen?

Also, I would like the Albums in the list for each Artist to be sorted chronologically, so their first album at the top of the list. I don't know how to achieve this...

And finally, a question about the values used. It seems according to the manual that there can be multiple values within the brackets, but that doesn't seem to work for me. For example: Album.ignore.sort.index={The} does work to ignore the 'The' for Albums in the Artists view for the sort. But Album.ignore.sort.index={The,'} does not ignore the ' for sort, as in the Miles Davis album 'Round About Midnight.

Cheers and thanks so much for your assistance...
Robert

[Phydeaux]

I also see a section in the online manual called Custom sorting for tag values. And the example given looked promising for the couple albums I have that have weird characters as first in their names such as the above mentioned album 'Round About Midnight and "But Seriously, Folks..." and #10 and (pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd). I could maybe do this instead of adding the multiple values along with 'The' as mentioned in my previous post.The manual tells me:

Add AlbumSort to the itemTags list
In the tagValue property, add the setting: Album.value.sort={AlbumSort}
In the tags for this album, add an AlbumSort tag with the value desired (in my cases - Round About Midnight - But Seriously, Folks - 10 - pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd )

OK, did this. Yeah, I see no change in Album view or in Artist, Album list view.

Cheers,
Robert

[antonmb]

Hi Robert, unfortunately I'm away for a couple of days and can't access my system or settings so can't help you further until later this week. Maybe Simon can chime in.

[Phydeaux]

No worries Anton, life can get busy! Yep, happy to have Simon chime in or whenever you get some free time. I AM trying to make sense of it all, nothing worse than a guy who won't lift a finger to help himself, lol!

Cheers,
Robert

[simoncn]

The AlbumSort changes you have made are correct and should cause the album list to be sorted in a different order assuming that your control point respects the sort order sent to it by MinimServer. Which control point are you using?

Also, have you restarted MinimServer since making these changes and have you restarted the control point? With some control points, changes on the server side are not picked up immediately by the control point and in such cases a control point restart can be helpful.

[Phydeaux]

Thanks Simon, it took awhile for me to get back to the keyboard...

I'm using BubbleUPnP on my Android phone as a control point and it does seem to respect the sort order as it's changed with Artist and AlbumArtist views. I have indeed restarted it and MinimServer after every change, as well as forcing MinimServer to rescan.

I can't seem to make the AlbumSort I mention above to work. I've added the required tag to the albums noted above and followed the directions in the manual as show above. It's not that big of a deal really, it's only a couple albums with weird characters at the start of the name. What I really would like to nail down though is the sorting of the albums listed under each artist so that they start at the earliest and scroll down to the latest.

Cheers,
Robert