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Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
14-01-2020, 19:00
Post: #1
Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
Hello,

i'm still using my Roku Soundbridges with the minimserver, everything works fine.
Until today I defined the Title.displayFormat as follows:

Title.displayFormat={$title^$subtitle^(^)}

I use the subtitle tag/field to store information like "12'' Version", which also VirtualDJ did, so the result is

Name Of The Title (12'' Version)

Now I want the following string for Title

Name Of The Title (12'' Version) (xx/yy)

where xx should be the tracknumber of the title and yy should be a value like Totaltracks of the album.
Actually I only have the tracknumber within the music-file, not a total tracknumber, so maybe it must be calculated or something else.
I have "subtitle,track" defined as "itimTags" in the minimserver properties, but everything I tried, nothing is working, tests with only the value of "track" didn't work. Could someone please help me finding the right format string to get this working?

Bye
Alhifi
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14-01-2020, 20:58
Post: #2
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
The track number has the tag name tracknumber, not track. You will only be able to include the track total if this value appears in the file. In this case, the tag name is totaltracks. Your format string should be the following:

Title.displayFormat={$title^$subtitle^ (^)$tracknumber$totaltracks^ (^)^/}

Both tracknumber and totaltracks need to be in itemTags.
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15-01-2020, 06:50
Post: #3
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
Hi Simon,

thank you for your fast response!

(14-01-2020 20:58)simoncn Wrote:  The track number has the tag name tracknumber, not track. You will only be able to include the track total if this value appears in the file. In this case, the tag name is totaltracks. Your format string should be the following:

Title.displayFormat={$title^$subtitle^ (^)$tracknumber$totaltracks^ (^)^/}

Both tracknumber and totaltracks need to be in itemTags.

Ok!
I have searched the online documentation for a list of a kind of default tags MinimServer use, but I only found the list below "Tag mappings" so I though that were the tags the server use.

In the past I used "MP3Tag" to fill the tags, also the "totaltracks", it works. When I then use the files in VirtualDJ and edit something there, the totaltracks always was damaged so I decided to clean this tag completely within the files.

So actually i have to store the information again in the files to get this working, but then VirtualDJ will generate problems again. Maybe it's possible to fill the field with MP3Tag, then move the information to another tag I have to define by myself, this one I should map in MinimServer to totaltracks, so I can delete the value later again in the files, do you think something like that ist possible?
Ok, would be easier, if MinimServer could calculate that ...

Bye
Alhifi
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15-01-2020, 09:21
Post: #4
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
Can you say some more about how the totaltracks tag was damaged by VirtualDJ? Perhaps this is something that VirtualDJ should fix.
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15-01-2020, 10:30
Post: #5
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
(15-01-2020 09:21)simoncn Wrote:  Can you say some more about how the totaltracks tag was damaged by VirtualDJ? Perhaps this is something that VirtualDJ should fix.

Actually I'm trying to get this working.
I added the value of "totaltracks" with MP3Tag but it seems that it will not be stored in a special tag like "totaltracks" therefor I found it within the track-tag like "3/16". As I remember the thing that VirtualDJ does is to overwrite the value of track after that with something like "16" (or whatever, it's some time ago I had that problem).

But I'm still confused ... you explain, that the right tag name for MinimServer is "tracknumber", in MP3Tag it's called simply "track", but it seems to be the same. How can I now add the correct value for "totaltracks" and of course in which tag? Do you prefer another software for the tags?

Bye
Alhifi
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15-01-2020, 12:46
Post: #6
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
What format are your files (for example, mp3, FLAC, m4a, wav)? This affects how track numbers and track totals are tagged.
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15-01-2020, 15:20
Post: #7
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
(15-01-2020 12:46)simoncn Wrote:  What format are your files (for example, mp3, FLAC, m4a, wav)? This affects how track numbers and track totals are tagged.

All files are mp3! Maybe therefor the tag totaltracks did not exist because of the "3/16" in the track tag ...
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15-01-2020, 16:42
Post: #8
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
For MP3, 3/16 is the correct (standard) way to tag tracknumber/totaltracks. VirtualDJ should be able to handle this correctly and its failure to do this is a bug in VirtualDJ.

When MinimServer reads this information from an MP3 file, it reads the value before the / as TRACKNUMBER and the value after the / (if present) as TOTALTRACKS. This is simple and ensures that what is tagged in the files matches what MinimServer displays.

There are some issues with MinimServer trying to compute TOTALTRACKS if not present. Some examples:

1) The "total tracks" value might be tagged for some tracks of an album but not others. In such a case, should MinimServer use this tagged value for the tracks that don't have it or should it use the actual total number of tracks in the album (if this is different)?

2) Related to 1), if the actual total number isn't the same as the tagged total value, should MinimServer use the actual total number or the tagged total value?

3) The actual total number can't be known until the complete album has been read. This is too late to add new tags to the files because tag processing happens when each file is read. Also, MinimServer can merge albums across folders, which makes this even more difficult.

4) It is an important design principle of MinimServer that it presents exactly the tags that are in the library and doesn't try to "improve" them.

For these reasons, I would be very reluctant to make MinimServer attempt to compute the TOTALTRACKS value if it is not present in the file.

There is a possible workaround. You could define a custom tag named TOTALTRACKS in Mp3tag and set this in each file to the total number of tracks. The track field in Mp3tag would be set to the track number only (as you currently have it). MinimServer would map this number to TRACKNUMBER and would use the custom TOTALTRACKS tagged value for TOTALTRACKS. This should work without any problems in Mp3tag, MinimServer and VirtualDJ.
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15-01-2020, 20:45 (This post was last modified: 15-01-2020 20:48 by Alhifi.)
Post: #9
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
Hi Simon,

first a big thank you for your detailed answer, wow, thank you very much!

(15-01-2020 16:42)simoncn Wrote:  For MP3, 3/16 is the correct (standard) way to tag tracknumber/totaltracks. VirtualDJ should be able to handle this correctly and its failure to do this is a bug in VirtualDJ.

I have just tested it again, it's a little bit curious. If I open the tag editor of VirtualDJ the value of track is "3", below the field there is a string like "tag" and "3/19", so VirtualDJ could handle this, but then the user has to push this little button below to take over the value from the file instead of the one in the editor field. After that I decided NOT to use VirtualDJ to edit the tags, I think it's the easiest way.

Quote:When MinimServer reads this information from an MP3 file, it reads the value before the / as TRACKNUMBER and the value after the / (if present) as TOTALTRACKS. This is simple and ensures that what is tagged in the files matches what MinimServer displays.

Ok, now I understand. Sometimes the documentation is a little bit difficult to realize, but than I use "learning by doing". I did not notice that MinimServer split the values in tracknumber if there is a separator like /.

Actually I'm testing by applying the value for totaltracks with MP3Tag, is very simple, because every album is in a separate folder, I use the structure like iTunes, therefor I have a string to move the file and rename it.

But now i have a new problem with TOTALTRACKS

Title.displayFormat={$tracknumber$totaltracks^[^]^/$title^ $subtitle^ (^)$originaldate^ [^]}

This works, but not for the last track!
The tag TRACKNUMBER is as an example "19/19", but the Title is shown as "[19] Title [Year]", not "[19/19] Title [Year]", all tracks before are correct. Why?


If you think about the "originaldate", I want to use this in the future too, it's my first try and it seems to work.

Example:
Artist ABBA
Album Gold
CD Released 1992
Tracks are from 1974 etc.

So I use DATE for the CD and ORIGINALDATE for the track, but that's here the wrong place to discuss ...

Bye
Alhifi
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15-01-2020, 23:45
Post: #10
RE: Running into frustration: Title.displayFormat
The problem with [19] instead of [19/19] is caused by the way the tag format string is defined. I did it this way to handle the following combinations:

1) Neither tracknumber nor tracktotal is present -omit [ / ]
2) tracknumber is present but not tracktotal - include [ ] and omit /

If tracknumber and tracktotal are always present together, you can change

$tracknumber$totaltracks^[^]^/

to

$tracknumber^[$totaltracks^/^]

and this will make 19/19 display correctly. The problem with the first format string is that duplicate values are eliminated automatically when tags are grouped in a sequence like $tracknumber$totaltracks, so if both of these have the value 19, this is a duplicate value and it is eliminated. The second format string does not group tags in this way, so any duplicate values won't be eliminated.

The problem with the second format string is that a file that has tracknumber without tracktotal will format as [19 with no ] because the / and ] are added as part of the formatting of tracktotal.

The problem could be solved by extending the format language to include formats within formats but this would be very complex and I am concerned about adding this extra complexity. I will give this some more thought.
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