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Missing Albums
18-04-2015, 11:56
Post: #1
Missing Albums
Friends,
My iTunes album count shows 6401 albums
All renderers (kinsky, lumin, lightning) show 6162
No duplicate albums on iTunes

Any clues?

Thanks
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18-04-2015, 12:38
Post: #2
RE: Missing Albums
Is it a case of too few albums or too many? ... Smile

You don't say, but as you are posting here, I assume that your control points are all accessing MinimServer. What MinimServer regards as an 'album' is described on this page of the User Guide. Note that the definition is based on tags, and not on the file or folder name or location. All the tracks in and Album must be tagged with the same Album name and AlbumArtist value, and only one AlbumArtist value is allowed for each album.

I don't use iTunes (my views about it not being printable in the civilised environment of this forum), so I don't know what conventions it uses to define an album. The obvious possibility is that, perhaps because of inconsistent tagging, MinimServer has split some of your albums into more than one part, but with a large collection like yours the actual cause may be more complicated. However, it is a good working assumption that most if not all of your problem is the result of tagging issues.

With so many albums, the main problem is finding the 'rogues'. You may be able to identify at least some of them by looking at the MinimServer log, to see if there are any error messages relating to albums. Copy and paste these messages (or a representative sample if there are a lot of them) into a post here, and it should be possible for us to identify the problem(s).

You could go also through the Album List, perhaps artist by artist to make things easier, to see where duplicate album art is a sign that an album has been split. Once duplicates are identified, you will need to use a tagging program (on Windows, I'd recommend the free MP3Tag) to correct any tagging problems. If you give me an example of a specific duplicate album, I'll be able to give you a step by step guide to fixing it in MP3Tag. If you use a Mac, the tagging program most frequently recommended on this forum is Metadatics, though I haven't used it myself.

I hope this enough to get you started on an investigation. Of course, if you find no split or mis-defined albums in your list, you can regard the inconsistency between iTunes and MinimServer as just one of those odd things ... Smile

David
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18-04-2015, 13:08
Post: #3
RE: Missing Albums
Thanks for helping on David!
Actually it has crossed my mind that iTunes may be counting an album consisting of several discs as albums, altough they appear as one.
I had already checked the log and no unusual errors there. I did a rescan just now and it confirmed that.
Any experience on the above?
Thanks
Pedro
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18-04-2015, 13:14
Post: #4
RE: Missing Albums
Actually I checked the number of files/musics. It is also greater in iTunes (85.194 in iTunes and 80320 in the renderers/ Minim server) which IS consistent with the greater number of albums in iTunes but I think overules my theory of the multiple discs in one album.
Oh well...
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18-04-2015, 13:28
Post: #5
RE: Missing Albums
(18-04-2015 13:08)promao Wrote:  Actually it has crossed my mind that iTunes may be counting an album consisting of several discs as albums, although they appear as one. I had already checked the log and no unusual errors there. I did a rescan just now and it confirmed that.
Any experience on the above?

Your thought is perfectly feasible. Having now seen that I read your numbers the wrong way round on the first pass (apologies for that), the most likely cause is that (to over-simplify the rules, which are fully explained in the User Guide) MinimServer will treat tracks with the same album name and AlbumArtist value as a single album, even when the tracks are stored in different folders. Maybe iTunes doesn't do that; as I said, I don't know.

Can I take "no unusual errors" in the MinimServer log to mean simply "no errors"? If I can, then your collection is probably already pretty well tagged. An error free log does mean that MinimServer is likely to be able to deal with your collection without problems on a day to day basis; you can pick off and deal with any residual errors as they come to notice.

I'd guess that we're now in the general area of "if it works, don't fix it".

David
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18-04-2015, 13:34
Post: #6
RE: Missing Albums
(18-04-2015 13:14)promao Wrote:  Actually I checked the number of files/musics. It is also greater in iTunes (85.194 in iTunes and 80320 in the renderers/ Minim server) which IS consistent with the greater number of albums in iTunes but I think overules my theory of the multiple discs in one album.

Could iTunes be accessing folder(s) that MinimServer does not 'see' (based on the value of the contentDir property)?

David
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18-04-2015, 15:49
Post: #7
RE: Missing Albums
No, good theory but thats not that. All in the same folder "music".

What I have done is to compare by genre the number of albums in iTunes and in minimserver. MS is consistently lower than iTunes for each genre.

I located two missing albums in a genre and check their tags. All well, nothing missing. I am using Tag, by the way. The only way I could make these two appear in MS was to create a new version of the files in iTunes. They were AIF and AIF they stayed. After that and a MS rescan they appear.

Problem is, I cannot think of a quick way to identify/compare without running iTunes and Kazoo side by side and comparing one by one... any cleaver way?

Thanks for helping!

Pedro




(18-04-2015 13:34)DavidHB Wrote:  
(18-04-2015 13:14)promao Wrote:  Actually I checked the number of files/musics. It is also greater in iTunes (85.194 in iTunes and 80320 in the renderers/ Minim server) which IS consistent with the greater number of albums in iTunes but I think overules my theory of the multiple discs in one album.

Could iTunes be accessing folder(s) that MinimServer does not 'see' (based on the value of the contentDir property)?

David
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18-04-2015, 23:29
Post: #8
RE: Missing Albums
(18-04-2015 15:49)promao Wrote:  No, good theory but thats not that. All in the same folder "music".

What I have done is to compare by genre the number of albums in iTunes and in minimserver. MS is consistently lower than iTunes for each genre.

I located two missing albums in a genre and check their tags. All well, nothing missing. I am using Tag, by the way. The only way I could make these two appear in MS was to create a new version of the files in iTunes. They were AIF and AIF they stayed. After that and a MS rescan they appear.

Problem is, I cannot think of a quick way to identify/compare without running iTunes and Kazoo side by side and comparing one by one... any cleaver way?

Thanks for helping!

Pedro

Do the missing albums or tracks show up under MinimServer's [folder view] or in the [untagged] section?
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19-04-2015, 08:07
Post: #9
RE: Missing Albums
(18-04-2015 23:29)simoncn Wrote:  
(18-04-2015 15:49)promao Wrote:  Problem is, I cannot think of a quick way to identify/compare without running iTunes and Kazoo side by side and comparing one by one... any cleaver way?

Do the missing albums or tracks show up under MinimServer's [folder view] or in the [untagged] section?

I should have thought of folder view, though it has the same issues with comparisons as other Control Point lists. But are not entries in the 'untagged' section included in the item count?

David
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19-04-2015, 16:19
Post: #10
RE: Missing Albums
(19-04-2015 08:07)DavidHB Wrote:  I should have thought of folder view, though it has the same issues with comparisons as other Control Point lists. But are not entries in the 'untagged' section included in the item count?

David

The item count discrepancy might have a different cause than the missing albums and tracks.
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