Wrong artist displaying

[simoncn]

(18-04-2017 19:29)sflaor Wrote:  I'm using the Columns UI installed component for my foobar2000 playlist display, and I'm pretty sure I set it up through that. I did it a long time ago, but I think I can track down what I changed.

I guess the first thing to ask is whether you're using the Columns UI component or not.

I haven't installed this component and after a bad experience with UI customization in the past I would prefer to stay with the standard UI.

I tried creating custom groupings with the format strings

%album artist% / %album%
%artist% / %album%

These both showed the expected results with correct artists.

I can't help wondering if you have some bogus AlbumArtist (or Album Artist) tags that you aren't aware of.

[sflaor]

(18-04-2017 19:56)simoncn Wrote:  I tried creating custom groupings with the format strings

%album artist% / %album%
%artist% / %album%

These both showed the expected results with correct artists.

I can't help wondering if you have some bogus AlbumArtist (or Album Artist) tags that you aren't aware of.

I'll look deeper into it. Even if my display settings were somehow messed up in Foobar2000, that wouldn't explain having the same problem on the Roku.

If I find the problem I'll post and let you know.

Thanks very much for looking into this!

[Hanu]

(18-04-2017 01:12)sflaor Wrote:  

(18-04-2017 00:45)sflaor Wrote:  

(16-04-2017 19:56)simoncn Wrote:  I'll see if I can set something up on the PC and give it a try.

I don't believe I have a single track in the playlist where the Album Artist field isn't empty.

I've attached a screen capture.

I'm not shure what you are talking about, in your example the field Album Artist is empty; may you have to check the tags Artist an Album Artist

[sflaor]

(19-04-2017 09:54)Hanu Wrote:  

(18-04-2017 01:12)sflaor Wrote:  I don't believe I have a single track in the playlist where the Album Artist field isn't empty.

I've attached a screen capture.

I'm not shure what you are talking about, in your example the field Album Artist is empty; may you have to check the tags Artist an Album Artist

I may have made it a little confusing by speaking in somewhat of a double negative. Maybe a better way of saying it would have been "All of my Album Artist fields are blank".

I went back to my playlist and found that were a handful of cases where this wasn't true. I also found a few tracks that had something in the Composer field. I blanked them out and will do a MinimServer rescan a little later today to see if it changes anything. I didn't see anything in the Album Artist changes I just made that referenced the particular artist that keeps coming up when the Album Title is "Greatest Hits".

One more thing concerning this playlist: It's a .m3u that just contains a subset of what's in [Items]. I haven't bothered clearing Album Artist for any of the tracks that aren't referenced in the .m3u. Could that make a difference?

[simoncn]

(19-04-2017 13:15)sflaor Wrote:  One more thing concerning this playlist: It's a .m3u that just contains a subset of what's in [Items]. I haven't bothered clearing Album Artist for any of the tracks that aren't referenced in the .m3u. Could that make a difference?

Yes, this could make a difference and it could explain the problem you are seeing. When you reference an item using a playlist, MinimServer uses all the metadata information for that item. If the item is part of an album and any other track in the same album has an AlbumArtist tag, the item will have this album artist as part of its metadata.

MinimServer matches tracks to albums in two different ways:
1) If the tracks are in the same folder, only the album name is used for matching
2) If the tracks are in different folders, the album name and the artist or album artist information is used for matching

Putting all this together, if you have tracks in the same folder from multiple albums named Greatest Hits, all these Greatest Hits tracks will be merged into a single album and the album artist for this merged album will be taken from any of the tracks that were merged and applied to all other tracks with the same album name.

The best way to prevent problems like this is to put each album into a separate folder.

[sflaor]

(19-04-2017 17:43)simoncn Wrote:  

(19-04-2017 13:15)sflaor Wrote:  One more thing concerning this playlist: It's a .m3u that just contains a subset of what's in [Items]. I haven't bothered clearing Album Artist for any of the tracks that aren't referenced in the .m3u. Could that make a difference?

Yes, this could make a difference and it could explain the problem you are seeing. When you reference an item using a playlist, MinimServer uses all the metadata information for that item. If the item is part of an album and any other track in the same album has an AlbumArtist tag, the item will have this album artist as part of its metadata.

MinimServer matches tracks to albums in two different ways:
1) If the tracks are in the same folder, only the album name is used for matching
2) If the tracks are in different folders, the album name and the artist or album artist information is used for matching

Putting all this together, if you have tracks in the same folder from multiple albums named Greatest Hits, all these Greatest Hits tracks will be merged into a single album and the album artist for this merged album will be taken from any of the tracks that were merged and applied to all other tracks with the same album name.

The best way to prevent problems like this is to put each album into a separate folder.

Aha, then that's the issue. I assumed MinimServer's Artist and Album lists were being built from reading each track individually, but I suppose that could be a very long process.

In hindsight, I wish I would have created separate artist sub-folders for my tracks. With over 35,000 files, it's going to be quite the process to do it now. I found some software that looks like it'll handle the folder creation and file moving through a regex, but I've also written some custom utilities of my own that depend on the current structure.

Thank you very much for your help. You've done a terrific job with MinimServer and its supporting utilities!

[Hanu]

(19-04-2017 17:58)sflaor Wrote:  [quote='simoncn' pid='25637' dateline='1492620227']
[quote='sflaor' pid='25634' dateline='1492604155']


In hindsight, I wish I would have created separate artist sub-folders for my tracks. With over 35,000 files, it's going to be quite the process to do it now. I found some software that looks like it'll handle the folder creation and file moving through a regex, but I've also written some custom utilities of my own that depend on the current structure.

Foobar can do it very easy.
Select albums>File operation>copy to or move to> and play with your tags

[sflaor]

(19-04-2017 19:30)Hanu Wrote:  

(19-04-2017 17:58)sflaor Wrote:  In hindsight, I wish I would have created separate artist sub-folders for my tracks. With over 35,000 files, it's going to be quite the process to do it now. I found some software that looks like it'll handle the folder creation and file moving through a regex, but I've also written some custom utilities of my own that depend on the current structure.

Foobar can do it very easy.
Select albums>File operation>copy to or move to> and play with your tags

Wow, I just took a look at it and I like this much better than trusting a regex to do it all properly. I didn't realize Foobar had that kind of functionality for file operations.

Thank you very much for the info!

[sflaor]

(19-04-2017 17:43)simoncn Wrote:  

(19-04-2017 13:15)sflaor Wrote:  One more thing concerning this playlist: It's a .m3u that just contains a subset of what's in [Items]. I haven't bothered clearing Album Artist for any of the tracks that aren't referenced in the .m3u. Could that make a difference?

Yes, this could make a difference and it could explain the problem you are seeing. When you reference an item using a playlist, MinimServer uses all the metadata information for that item. If the item is part of an album and any other track in the same album has an AlbumArtist tag, the item will have this album artist as part of its metadata.

MinimServer matches tracks to albums in two different ways:
1) If the tracks are in the same folder, only the album name is used for matching
2) If the tracks are in different folders, the album name and the artist or album artist information is used for matching

Putting all this together, if you have tracks in the same folder from multiple albums named Greatest Hits, all these Greatest Hits tracks will be merged into a single album and the album artist for this merged album will be taken from any of the tracks that were merged and applied to all other tracks with the same album name.

The best way to prevent problems like this is to put each album into a separate folder.

I just want to run a possible scenario by you that's different from mine, but would produce the same result.

Say I had a much smaller library (500 songs total), and most of it was comprised of "Greatest Hits" albums of various artists. I'd just want to make these songs available over my home network, so I'd export them to an appropriate network drive. I probably wouldn't consider sub-folders by artist because my song files are already tagged correctly.

Would it be possible for MinimServer to use album AND artist even if the music files are in the same folder?

[simoncn]

If all the songs are in the same folder, you would have the same issue that you have at present. It would not be possible for MinimServer to use album and artist for album merging when the songs are in the same folder because this would be a breaking change for many users.