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Combining Genres
18-12-2014, 11:02
Post: #1
Combining Genres
I couldn't find a reference to this and I've become rather confused with all the tagging options so apologies is this is a stupid question as I've just come from JRiver with its view rules.
I have my Jazz tagged with multiple Genres (Jazz (Funk), Jazz (Post Bop) etc.). I've added #AudioQuality and I'd like a see a folder that gives me ALL Jazz at that quality. How do I combine the various Jazz (Xxxx) Genres together without making it a static playlist?
Thanks
Martin
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18-12-2014, 16:30 (This post was last modified: 18-12-2014 16:44 by DavidHB.)
Post: #2
RE: Combining Genres
(18-12-2014 11:02)mars51 Wrote:  I couldn't find a reference to this and I've become rather confused with all the tagging options so apologies is this is a stupid question as I've just come from JRiver with its view rules.
I have my Jazz tagged with multiple Genres (Jazz (Funk), Jazz (Post Bop) etc.). I've added #AudioQuality and I'd like a see a folder that gives me ALL Jazz at that quality. How do I combine the various Jazz (Xxxx) Genres together without making it a static playlist?

Thanks for asking this question, which I believe provides a very good illustration of the limitations of music tagging as we currently know it. Neither in MinimServer nor in any control point that I know of is it possible to group the results of a selection on a particular tag. And the point of MinimServer is that it does not have 'view rules'; the whole purpose of its intelligent browsing feature is that selections are made on the fly.

I assume that your files have just one Genre tag, and that the value in each tag is the full Genre designation - 'Jazz (Funk)' or whatever. Ideally, of course, it would be possible to use UPnP Search to identify files where the Genre tag includes the text 'Jazz', but as implemented in MinimServer (and in any control point I know, which is why Minimserver does it this way), the search function does not address the Genre tag. Any change to that approach would have to be implemented both in MinimServer and in (probably) more than one control point, so will not necessarily happen any time soon. So you can't achieve the grouping you are looking for without further tagging work.

There are two approaches I can think of. One is to have multiple genre tags in each file; one tag might have 'Jazz (Funk)', while another would have just 'Jazz'. The normal MinimServer selection process would enable you to select all the Jazz tracks and then the Audio Quality. Having multiple genre values in each file would slightly complicate the results of each selection step, but I don't think that would be a big issue.

The approach that I personally prefer, because it explicitly responds to your requirement for genre grouping, is to create a new tag altogether, which you might call 'Genre_Group'. This is the tag that would hold the value 'Jazz', and thereby combine your various jazz sub-genres. Having created this new tag, you would of course need to include it in the MinimServer indexTags property (and restart MinimServer) so that you can browse by genre group.

I'll not go into the 'how to' of multiple genre tags and creating a new tag, as this will be dependant on the software you use. But any good tagging program should do these things quite straightforwardly. Having a lot of files to re-tag can seem daunting, but again a good program that can deal with multiple files at once and read sub-folders recursively (such as MP3Tag on Windows machines) could probably get the job done in a couple of hours, even if the collection is quite large.

I hope this is helpful.

David
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18-12-2014, 22:44
Post: #3
RE: Combining Genres
(18-12-2014 11:02)mars51 Wrote:  I couldn't find a reference to this and I've become rather confused with all the tagging options so apologies is this is a stupid question as I've just come from JRiver with its view rules.
I have my Jazz tagged with multiple Genres (Jazz (Funk), Jazz (Post Bop) etc.). I've added #AudioQuality and I'd like a see a folder that gives me ALL Jazz at that quality. How do I combine the various Jazz (Xxxx) Genres together without making it a static playlist?
Thanks
Martin

I think the simplest way to do what you want is to use multiple genre tags (as suggested by DavidHB). The genres would be Jazz, Funk, Post Bop, etc. Here are some examples of how you would tag your files:

1) Instead of Jazz (Funk):
GENRE=Jazz
GENRE=Funk

2) Instead of Jazz (Post Bop):
GENRE=Jazz
GENRE=Post Bop

With MinimServer's Intelligent Browsing, you can browse for Jazz first and then browse for Funk or Post Bop. After doing this, you can select #AudioQuality. If you want to change the order of making these selections, that's fine.
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19-12-2014, 09:50
Post: #4
RE: Combining Genres
Thanks so much for this. Really appreciate the effort you made to explain this clearly, David. It works like a charm. I'm as new to it as Minimserver but, using MP3Tag, you go to Views>Customize Columns and create a new column "Genre Group" based on the value & field of the existing Genre column but replacing "$meta_sep(genre,\\)" with "$meta_sep(genregroup,\\)". That gets you a new Genre Group column without values. Next, Tools>Options & click on Tag Panel entering "Genre Group" as a new field (to the existing Album Artist, Composer and Discnumber fields). That gets you a new editing box on the left sidebar to input "Jazz" or whatever. Let MP3Tag grind through the re-tagging, add "GenreGroup" to indexTags, re-scan in Minimwatch and your Control Point sees GenreGroup in folder view. The total elegance of your idea is that you don't need to edit Genre. I tried both Lumin & Kinsky apps and it's perfect.
I will do the same for Classical where I fortuitously have "Classical (Piano Concerto), Classical (Symphony)" etc as existing Genres. I'm only now appreciating Intelligent Browsing for the genius it is because I'm really not a playlist person.
Martin
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19-12-2014, 15:40
Post: #5
RE: Combining Genres
(19-12-2014 09:50)mars51 Wrote:  It works like a charm.

That's excellent news.

(19-12-2014 09:50)mars51 Wrote:  ... using MP3Tag, you go to Views>Customize Columns and create a new column "Genre Group" based on the value & field of the existing Genre column but replacing "$meta_sep(genre,\\)" with "$meta_sep(genregroup,\\)". That gets you a new Genre Group column without values. Next, Tools>Options & click on Tag Panel entering "Genre Group" as a new field (to the existing Album Artist, Composer and Discnumber fields). That gets you a new editing box on the left sidebar to input "Jazz" or whatever. Let MP3Tag grind through the re-tagging, add "GenreGroup" to indexTags, re-scan in Minimwatch and your Control Point sees GenreGroup in folder view.

Thanks for posting this 'how to' guide. For anyone using Windows, I think that MP3Tag is the best application for this kind of work, so it's useful to see the specifics on the forum.

(19-12-2014 09:50)mars51 Wrote:  The total elegance of your idea is that you don't need to edit Genre.

Maybe not 'elegance', but I did make the suggestion with the thought that you might not wish to amend your genre tags.

(19-12-2014 09:50)mars51 Wrote:  I will do the same for Classical where I fortuitously have "Classical (Piano Concerto), Classical (Symphony)" etc as existing Genres.

A number of other users have similar schemes, so the approach could find quite wide application. To be honest, my own decision was to use only very generic genres, because I don't find the genre concept very meaningful below that top level, but the whole point of an application like MinimServer is that it can respond flexibly to different requirements. It's always good to see the details of other users' browsing schemes.

(19-12-2014 09:50)mars51 Wrote:  I'm only now appreciating Intelligent Browsing for the genius it is because I'm really not a playlist person.

Nor am I; I have always felt that the playlist idea was a bit alien, and a function of the technology rather than of user need. We didn't use playlists in the simpler days of LP and CD!

The clever thing about MinimServer is that, from the user perspective, it's not clever. It 'just' gives any cooperative control point the means to offer the user a responsive browsing experience. Of course, there will be a lot of cleverness needed 'under the hood' to provide this service, but, given the data sets and protocols he has to deal with, Simon has proved remarkably adept at shielding us users from the really geeky stuff.

David
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