Multiple Artists in Various Artists Album

[gnomus]

I have a couple of minor issues. I don't know if these are issues to do with the way I have MinimServer set up, or if it is my control points that I need to set up differently and, therefore, should be bringing up on a different forum. Please let me know.

I have a few "Various Artists" albums that I have ripped via dBPoweramp. On these albums, the AlbumArtist is left blank. In the Artist field, I have put the names of the Artists on the track. For example, on my Cole Porter album, track 3 is "Bennett, Tony\\Count Basie" (from MP3Tag).

When I browse the Library (in both Kinsky and Bubble), this appears as "Bennett, Tony, Count Basie". I had hoped that these might appear as separate Artists. Is this normal behaviour?

Secondly, in Kinsky/Bubble, I would like to browse Composers by surname. Is there an easy way of doing this, or am I going to have to manually change all composers to "Bruckner, Anton" or similar at the time of rip?

As I aid above, if I should be asking these questions elsewhere, please let me know.

[simoncn]

(16-04-2014 15:38)gnomus Wrote:  I have a couple of minor issues. I don't know if these are issues to do with the way I have MinimServer set up, or if it is my control points that I need to set up differently and, therefore, should be bringing up on a different forum. Please let me know.

I have a few "Various Artists" albums that I have ripped via dBPoweramp. On these albums, the AlbumArtist is left blank. In the Artist field, I have put the names of the Artists on the track. For example, on my Cole Porter album, track 3 is "Bennett, Tony\\Count Basie" (from MP3Tag).

When I browse the Library (in both Kinsky and Bubble), this appears as "Bennett, Tony, Count Basie". I had hoped that these might appear as separate Artists. Is this normal behaviour?

To see these artists separately, you need to add All Artists to the indexTags property. Multiple artists are combined in the Artist index and listed seprately in the All Artist index.

Quote:Secondly, in Kinsky/Bubble, I would like to browse Composers by surname. Is there an easy way of doing this, or am I going to have to manually change all composers to "Bruckner, Anton" or similar at the time of rip?

There is no configuration option to change this. You should be able to use Mp3tag to do a bulk change. There has been some previous forum discussion about how to use regular expression matching to do this.

Quote:As I aid above, if I should be asking these questions elsewhere, please let me know.

This is the right place to ask questions like these.

[gnomus]

(16-04-2014 18:10)simoncn Wrote:  ...To see these artists separately, you need to add All Artists to the indexTags property.

OK, I already have All Artists and that is the way that works. I'll probably end up browsing my library using All Artists then. I'll soon get used to this.

(16-04-2014 18:10)simoncn Wrote:  There is no configuration option to change this. You should be able to use Mp3tag to do a bulk change. There has been some previous forum discussion about how to use regular expression matching to do this.

It's only really become an issue now that I am about to start ripping my classical. Thinking of what you said about the All Artists tag, does that mean I could add a "ComposerSort" tag to the indexTags property? Would that then do what I wanted?

(I've had MinimServer only for a few days installed on my NAS. I only put MinimWatch on my PC this morning, so please excuse my unfamiliarity.)

[simoncn]

(16-04-2014 18:41)gnomus Wrote:  It's only really become an issue now that I am about to start ripping my classical. Thinking of what you said about the All Artists tag, does that mean I could add a "ComposerSort" tag to the indexTags property? Would that then do what I wanted?

This depends on whether you want to see the Composer entry in the index and the composer name in the control point as "firstname lastname" or "lastname, firstname".

1) How do you want to see the composer name in the Composer index?

2) How do you want to see the composer name in the control point display of album information and track information?

[DavidHB]

As matters stand, if you want to sort composers by last name and display them in 'natural' first name, last name order, you will need both a Composer Tag for the natural display and a ComposerSort tag for the indexing. IndexTags with then include A 'ComposerSort:Composer' entry, and itemTags will include 'Composer'

Simon has said that, as a future enhancement to MinimServer, he intends to provide a natural display option for Composer tags formatted in last name, first name order. This will be a welcome change, as it will allow users to dispense with the ComposerSort tag. But all Composer tags will still need to be appropriately formatted; using regular expressions in MP3Tag is, as Simon says, the obvious way to do this. Online metadata libraries typically provide composer data only in the 'natural' order, though some also provide a corresponding ComposerSort tag.

I am pretty much committed to using the two tag approach which works currently. As it is now part of my routine, it does not add enormously to my ripping and metadata entry workload.

David

[gnomus]

(16-04-2014 19:23)simoncn Wrote:  1) How do you want to see the composer name in the Composer index?

2) How do you want to see the composer name in the control point display of album information and track information?

I would like a list of composers showing as "last name, first name", sorted alphabetically by last name, if possible.

[simoncn]

(16-04-2014 23:20)gnomus Wrote:  I would like a list of composers showing as "last name, first name", sorted alphabetically by last name, if possible.

Do you also want the control point to show the composer as "last name, first name" (assuming that it is capable of showing composer information)?

If so, you don't need to use ComposerSort. You need to change your Composer tags to the "last name, first name" format.

[gnomus]

(17-04-2014 10:07)simoncn Wrote:  

(16-04-2014 23:20)gnomus Wrote:  I would like a list of composers showing as "last name, first name", sorted alphabetically by last name, if possible.

Do you also want the control point to show the composer as "last name, first name" (assuming that it is capable of showing composer information)?

If so, you don't need to use ComposerSort. You need to change your Composer tags to the "last name, first name" format.

Yes, I want the control point to show "last name, first name". So are you saying I need to manually edit the Composer tag (in DBPoweramp or later in MP3Tag) so that it reads the way I want it? I can do this, I just wondered if there might be a way to set up one of the programs to do this for me.

[simoncn]

(17-04-2014 12:45)gnomus Wrote:  Yes, I want the control point to show "last name, first name". So are you saying I need to manually edit the Composer tag (in DBPoweramp or later in MP3Tag) so that it reads the way I want it? I can do this, I just wondered if there might be a way to set up one of the programs to do this for me.

I am not aware of any program setting to reverse these names, other than using Mp3tag to do batch processing with regular expressions (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

[gnomus]

(17-04-2014 15:21)simoncn Wrote:  I am not aware of any program setting to reverse these names, other than using Mp3tag to do batch processing with regular expressions (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

I'm a little surprised about this and I wonder if I am trying to do something unusual. (As you know I am new to this.) My intention was simply to "order" my virtual albums in the same way that I have my CDs ordered on my shelves - that is by the surname of the composer.) When I installed dBPoweramp, I found that I had the option of including a tag called ComposerSort - this did reverse the names, and I assumed, therefore, that that was there to allow for what I want to do.

I am not, however, "locked into" this way of doing this - I am just about to start ripping the classical CDs. If there is a better way of doing this than the one I have in mind then I would be very pleased to consider this. Ripping the "non-classical" CDs was tedious enough, and it seems that the classical ripping is going to be even more labour intensive.

Thanks again for your ongoing interest, patience and assistance, with this and my other queries.