Selecting a set of tracks

[Pastim]

I'm struggling a little with selecting sets of tracks. I suspect I'm being a bit slow, so please bear with me.

I have a list of items on display. If these are Albums, I can select one and send all of it to be played with one click.

If these are, say, Artists, I can't do the same. Is this intentional? It would be useful to be able to play a set of tracks belonging to any tag at any level (except the very top level). I am aware of the 'Group' concept, but I haven't implemented this, partly because it would be a heck of a lot of work, and partly because it is, as far as I know, unique to minimserver. I do have 'Work' tags, but they suffer from the same problem as Artists. It seems I have probably failed to comprehend something fundamental, but it seems counter-intuitive to me.

I am not entirely sure whether this is a feature of minimserver, or of my control points. I have been using foobar2000, and a new one currently being developed called upplay.

[simoncn]

(06-10-2014 09:09)Pastim Wrote:  I'm struggling a little with selecting sets of tracks. I suspect I'm being a bit slow, so please bear with me.

I have a list of items on display. If these are Albums, I can select one and send all of it to be played with one click.

If these are, say, Artists, I can't do the same. Is this intentional? It would be useful to be able to play a set of tracks belonging to any tag at any level (except the very top level). I am aware of the 'Group' concept, but I haven't implemented this, partly because it would be a heck of a lot of work, and partly because it is, as far as I know, unique to minimserver. I do have 'Work' tags, but they suffer from the same problem as Artists. It seems I have probably failed to comprehend something fundamental, but it seems counter-intuitive to me.

I am not entirely sure whether this is a feature of minimserver, or of my control points. I have been using foobar2000, and a new one currently being developed called upplay.

This is a function of the control point, not the server. It seems that your control points can select UPnP album containers for playing but not other kinds of UPnP containers.

You should find this also works for Groups, as these are sent to the control point as UPnP album containers.

[Pastim]

Thanks. I thought that might be the case. foobar2000 and upplay seem to do subtly different things on selecting 'containers'. I'll have to do some more experiments. I'll report any issues specifically with upplay in the thread on that subject (at http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...0#pid11430 etc).

foobar2000 definitely has problems, so you might want to note that (and its habit of re-sorting display tags) in your documentation on compatibility with control points.

[simoncn]

(06-10-2014 11:34)simoncn Wrote:  This is a function of the control point, not the server. It seems that your control points can select UPnP album containers for playing but not other kinds of UPnP containers.

I checked this with BubbleUPnP and it seems to work as you want.

[simoncn]

(06-10-2014 11:45)Pastim Wrote:  foobar2000 definitely has problems, so you might want to note that (and its habit of re-sorting display tags) in your documentation on compatibility with control points.

What problems do you mean exactly? I wouldn't consider the inability to select the contents of a non-album container to be a problem, just a missing feature.

I thought there had been a fairly recent change to foobar2000 to allow the option for some lists not to be resorted. What kind of list is being automatically resorted for you?

[Pastim]

(06-10-2014 11:54)simoncn Wrote:  What problems do you mean exactly? I wouldn't consider the inability to select the contents of a non-album container to be a problem, just a missing feature.

I'd call that a bug myself, not being able to play what I select. It's certainly a problem, and one that means I've never really been able to commit fully to using UPnP due to the lack of a good linux control point, however good Minimserver is. The user interface is really important when it's something one uses many times a day. Frustrations in selecting what you want to play can drive one mad

Quote:I thought there had been a fairly recent change to foobar2000 to allow the option for some lists not to be resorted. What kind of list is being automatically resorted for you?

My artist list is being resorted. Minimserver uses my ArtistSort tag, but foobar (but not other CPs I have tried) resorts the list by Artist. I'm not sure how I can change foobar's behaviour but I'll take another look.

[Pastim]

I tried foobar again, but can't see a way of stopping it resorting.

I also booted up my windows partition, installed Kinksy and tried that. It produces a different problem.

If I want to select a tag and all underneath it, I get duplicates (and with upplay I also tend to get the whole album as well). So, for instance, If I select a tag that has a breakdown of more tags underneath it, I think what I am getting is all the tracks for each and all the underlying tags, so every track gets repeated. I may be reading too much into what I'm seeing but that's what I think is happening. Is that a CP feature or a minimserver one? I don't know the protocol employed.

[simoncn]

(06-10-2014 12:25)Pastim Wrote:  I'd call that a bug myself, not being able to play what I select. It's certainly a problem, and one that means I've never really been able to commit fully to using UPnP due to the lack of a good linux control point, however good Minimserver is. The user interface is really important when it's something one uses many times a day. Frustrations in selecting what you want to play can drive one mad

As you have discovered, this capability is not very useful unless duplicate tracks are eliminated. I believe BubbleUPnP is the only control point that can do this.

Quote:My artist list is being resorted. Minimserver uses my ArtistSort tag, but foobar (but not other CPs I have tried) resorts the list by Artist. I'm not sure how I can change foobar's behaviour but I'll take another look.

I don't think you can prevent foobar resorting lists of containers, just lists of items within containers.

[simoncn]

(06-10-2014 13:01)Pastim Wrote:  I tried foobar again, but can't see a way of stopping it resorting.

I also booted up my windows partition, installed Kinksy and tried that. It produces a different problem.

If I want to select a tag and all underneath it, I get duplicates (and with upplay I also tend to get the whole album as well). So, for instance, If I select a tag that has a breakdown of more tags underneath it, I think what I am getting is all the tracks for each and all the underlying tags, so every track gets repeated. I may be reading too much into what I'm seeing but that's what I think is happening. Is that a CP feature or a minimserver one? I don't know the protocol employed.

This happens because most control points use the over-simplistic approach of recursively browsing all subcontainers of the selected container. If there are multiple browsing paths that lead to the same item, this item will appear as a duplicate.

With this approach, the server can't eliminate duplicates because there are no duplicates returned in each of the Browse responses that the control point is sending. The duplicates occur because the control point combines these different Browse responses into a single list.

A better approach would be for the control point to send a single UPnP Search request instead of a series of recursive UPnP Browse requests. With this approach, the server can eliminate duplicates, and MinimServer does this.

[simoncn]

To add all the items for an artist (etc.) with no duplicates, you can open the container and add the "n items" subcontainer (if your control point supports this).