Compilations at end?

[simoncn]

(20-03-2019 19:47)paultaylor Wrote:  I must disagree, the trouble with this approach is its difficult to determine if an artist doesn't have a sort album artist because the sort album artist is the same or just because the user hasn't got round to entering a sort album artist.

As I said in my previous post, it is very simple to discover this with MinimServer by making ALBUMARTISTSORT an index tag.

Quote:And making this distinction for a growing music collection is unmanageable, a particular problem would be remembering to add the sort album artist as necessary when adding a new album by a particular artist.

This isn't a problem with MinimServer. If an ALBUMARTISTSORT value has been applied to the ALBUMARTIST value from any of the existing albums with the same ALBUMARTIST, it is applied automatically to the newly added album.

Quote:The memory and processing costs would surely be marginal.

If this duplication were present for every tag value in the library that could have a corresponding xxxSORT value (TITLE/TITLESORT, ALBUM/ALBUMSORT, ARTIST/ARTISTSORT, ALBUMARTIST/ALBUMARTISTSORT, COMPOSER/COMPOSERSORT, etc.), I think the overhead would be noticeable.

[paultaylor]

(20-03-2019 20:50)simoncn Wrote:  This isn't a problem with MinimServer. If an ALBUMARTISTSORT value has been applied to the ALBUMARTIST value from any of the existing albums with the same ALBUMARTIST, it is applied automatically to the newly added album.

What happens if you have two files with the same ALBUMARTIST but different ALBUMARTISTSORT values ?

[simoncn]

MinimServer produces a log message telling you there is a conflict. The message provides details of the track that caused the conflict and both conflicting values, so that you can easily fix it. Until the problem is fixed, MinimServer ignores both sort values because it isn't clear which is correct. This provides a further indication to the user that there is a problem in case he or she has missed the log message.

Here is an example of the message:

Warning: Ignoring conflicting custom value for ALBUMARTIST tag 'Lionel Meunier' in file RIC332/01-06-Henry_Purcell-Canzona_Z_860-SMR.flac
applied sort value is 'zzz'; conflicting sort value is 'aaa'

[redged]

Hello Simon the tagupdate file worked a treat, thankyou.

I was wondering if it is possible to do the following using the same/similar process (I have tried but no joy).

I wish to list the following artists albums chronologically, as if they are all by Frank Zappa on his own. (I don't want to use Frank Zappa as 'albumartist' if possible, as this will show under album.

Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart & The Mothers

At present all my albums sort via artist first, then chronologically. So at present all Frank Zappa albums show first and then all Frank Zappa & the Mothers Of Invention albums and so on.

Thanks in advance for any help given.

[simoncn]

If all these tags are AlbumArtist rather than Artist, you should be able to do what you want by putting the following in your tag updates file:

@ALBUMARTIST=Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
+ALBUMARTISTSORT=Frank Zappa
@ALBUMARTIST=Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart & The Mothers
+ALBUMARTISTSORT=Frank Zappa

If they are Artist tags, you can use:

@ARTIST=Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
+ARTISTSORT=Frank Zappa
@ARTIST=Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart & The Mothers
+ARTISTSORT=Frank Zappa

In this latter case, you would also need to add ArtistSort to itemTags and add Artist.value.sort={ArtistSort} to tagValue.

[redged]

Cheers Simon, I now realise why it wasn't working. I hadn't added the itemtag & tagvalue.

Thanks again mate

[paultaylor]

Not really important, but just continuing discussion.

(20-03-2019 20:50)simoncn Wrote:  

(20-03-2019 19:47)paultaylor Wrote:  I must disagree, the trouble with this approach is its difficult to determine if an artist doesn't have a sort album artist because the sort album artist is the same or just because the user hasn't got round to entering a sort album artist.

As I said in my previous post, it is very simple to discover this with MinimServer by making ALBUMARTISTSORT an index tag.

Not really, that simply tells if an ALBUMARTISTSORT has been set it doesn't tell you why it hasnt been set. More to the point, as you explained if you consider a single ALBUMARTIST MinimServer logic dictates that if two songs by the same ALBUMARTIST have different values then the ALBUMARTISTSORT value would be ignored, therefore there should only be one ALBUMARTISTSORT valuer for a particular ALBUMARTIST, which makes sense. So from a MinimServer pov it would be best for only one of the songs by a particular ALBUMARTIST to have ALBUMARTISTSORT set and leave the rest blank. This would use the least processing, and possibly the least memory because only one ALBUMARTISTSORT field would be read for all songs with that ALBUMARTIST. But would it really make any difference, since MinimServer would only need to store the ALBUMARTISTSORT value once in memory anyway for a particular ALBUMARTIST. And although it would work for MinimServer it would clearly be wrong if using your files outside of UPNP.

Similarly even if ALBUMARTISTSORT is set for every song even when they have same value as ALBUMARTIST, you would only have to store once for a particular ALBUMARTIST. And you could in fact just store as boolean to note sortartist is the same. I don't think MinimServer should modify usual tagging behaviour.

[simoncn]

I don't think setting ALBUMARTISTSORT for every song even when it has the same value as ALBUMARTIST is "usual tagging behaviour". When I rip a CD using dBpoweramp, I get ALBUMARTIST tags but not ALBUMARTISTSORT tags.

In MinimServer, there is an overhead for every tag value that has a custom sort value. This overhead applies whether or not the custom sort value is the same as the tag value. For a specific tag value, adding the custom sort value to every file increases processing cost when scanning these files but does not increase memory usage because only one copy of the custom sort value is stored. If a custom sort value is required, this processing cost is a necessary price to pay and I have never advocated trying to reduce this processing cost by only storing the custom value in a single file. The point we are discussing here is whether this cost should be incurred when the sort value is not being customized.

Having MinimServer process the custom sort value and store a boolean if it is present and identical to the tag value would be significantly more complex than the way MinimServer current handles this and would not reduce processing time compared with the current design. Adding a boolean to every tag value object would increase memory usage for the normal case of no custom values except where needed and I would not wish to do this.

[paultaylor]

(01-04-2019 12:12)simoncn Wrote:  I don't think setting ALBUMARTISTSORT for every song even when it has the same value as ALBUMARTIST is "usual tagging behaviour". When I rip a CD using dBpoweramp, I get ALBUMARTIST tags but not ALBUMARTISTSORT tags.

Yes I don't think DbPoweramp has any data for ALBUMARTISTSORT so that is why it never adds it. But with SongKong I usually do have that data and to me it makes sense to add that data so it is clear what the sort value should be, if I just left it blank then it is not possible at a later date to determine if blank because same as ALBUMARTIST or blank because I didn't have the data and it hasn't been considered.

I'll give another example ISCOMPILATION=1 indicates an album is compilation, setting ISCOMPILATION=0 indicates an album is not a compilation, not having an ISCOMPILATION field at all we assume it is not a compilation, but we don't really know it may just not have been checked.

So there is a definite advantage in always setting the value, maybe for MinimServer the disadvantage of storing more data outweighs the advantage, I guess it depends on personal circumstances.

[redged]

(20-03-2019 00:11)simoncn Wrote:  You can use a tag update file to do this without needing to edit any tag values. The file should contain:

@ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists
+ALBUMARTISTSORT=zzz

With this tag update file active, MinimServer will add the tag ALBUMARTISTSORT=zzz when scanning a file containing the tag ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists.

You also need to add AlbumArtistSort to itemTags so that MinimServer reads the AlbumArtistSort tag and you need to set the tagValue property to AlbumArtist.value.sort={AlbumArtistSort} so that MinimServer uses the value zzz when sorting the album artist named "Various Artists".

Morning Simon, this is no longer working since I updated. I have tried renaming my sorting text etc but still no joy various artists are no longer at end of list. Any ideas as to what I can try?

PS all other sorts are still working, but these are all ARTIST & not ALBUMARTIST. I have also changed 'Various Artists' to 'The Beatles' and this worked (moved Beatles albums to end). I then changed it back and it still did not work...

As always thanks for any help in advance