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Behavior of Artist tag
09-05-2012, 15:18
Post: #1
Behavior of Artist tag
I added some usertags to my classical music collection this weekend, intending to take advantage of MinimServer's flexible browsing approach. However, instead of making things easier to find, they're now more difficult to find Confused

In the old situation I only used the Artist tag. It holds the main performer, e.g. "Janine Jansen".

In the new situation I didn't change the Artist tag, but I added "Orchestra" and "Conductor" tags.

So, a work (Album/Composition) that was previously tagged as

Artist: Janine Jansen
Album: Violin concerto Op.64
Composition: Violin concerto Op.64
Composer: Mendelssohn

now received additional tags:

Orchestra: Gewandhausorchester
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

For some reason when browsing the Artists, Janine Jansen is nowhere to be found. I do have an entry "Riccardo Chailly, Janine Jansen, Gewandhausorchester" Huh

This means that if I decide to listen to something played by Janine Jansen, I have to search through the entire Artists list to find her.

Why do Orchestras and Conductors get mixed into the Artist field when browsing? And which takes precedence?

Or rather, is there a setting that I've missed to avoid this from happening?
Or should I add another usertag "Performer" & copy what I now have in "Artist" into "Performer", and ignore the "Artist" tag when browsing?

Cheers,
JW
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09-05-2012, 19:13
Post: #2
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
I noticed following behavior on my library:
- tags like performer, orchestra, conductor... which are added in the "userTags" property are added to the artist browsing
- the composer tag is not mixed with the artist browsing, maybe because it's a standard tag from minimserver ?

For me, there should be 2 different behavior (with a prop switch to choose ?) :
1 - I want minimserver to scan userTags and I want them to appear at topmost level for browsing as individual tags, but in this case, I don't want the tags to be miwed with "artists"
2 - I want minimserver to scan userTags, to be able to refine some searches, but I don't want my top level tree to be "polluted" by theses extra tags and I'm fine with mixing them in the "artists" tree entry

Best regards

RTh
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09-05-2012, 19:19
Post: #3
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(09-05-2012 19:13)Raphaël Thévenin Wrote:  I noticed following behavior on my library:
- tags like performer, orchestra, conductor... which are added in the "userTags" property are added to the artist browsing
- the composer tag is not mixed with the artist browsing, maybe because it's a standard tag from minimserver ?
I'm not sure how MinimServer decides which tags to mix. It doesn't mix all the usertags into the artist list: I also have usertags "Bits" (values 16/24/HDCD) to indicate if a track is hi-res, and "Live" (values Live/Studio) to help me find Live music quickly. These aren't mixed into the artist list Huh

A property to choose between your option 1 and 2 would be nice. I'd set it to option 1 Tongue
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09-05-2012, 21:59 (This post was last modified: 09-05-2012 22:14 by simoncn.)
Post: #4
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(09-05-2012 15:18)rb73 Wrote:  I added some usertags to my classical music collection this weekend, intending to take advantage of MinimServer's flexible browsing approach. However, instead of making things easier to find, they're now more difficult to find Confused

In the old situation I only used the Artist tag. It holds the main performer, e.g. "Janine Jansen".

In the new situation I didn't change the Artist tag, but I added "Orchestra" and "Conductor" tags.

So, a work (Album/Composition) that was previously tagged as

Artist: Janine Jansen
Album: Violin concerto Op.64
Composition: Violin concerto Op.64
Composer: Mendelssohn

now received additional tags:

Orchestra: Gewandhausorchester
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

For some reason when browsing the Artists, Janine Jansen is nowhere to be found. I do have an entry "Riccardo Chailly, Janine Jansen, Gewandhausorchester" Huh

This means that if I decide to listen to something played by Janine Jansen, I have to search through the entire Artists list to find her.

Why do Orchestras and Conductors get mixed into the Artist field when browsing? And which takes precedence?

Or rather, is there a setting that I've missed to avoid this from happening?
Or should I add another usertag "Performer" & copy what I now have in "Artist" into "Performer", and ignore the "Artist" tag when browsing?

Cheers,
JW

To see all the artists listed separately, you need to add "All Artists" to the userTags list. In 0.31, this is included by default.

The Artist index shows a summary of artist-related information:
1) If there's an AlbumArtist tag, this will be shown
2) Alternatively, if there's a single Artist tag (and no Conductor/Orchestra tags), the single Artist value will be shown
3) Alternatively, if there are multiple Artist tags (and/or Conductor/Orchestra tags), a combination of these values will be shown, in the following order: Conductor, Artist..., Orchestra.

The above scheme was the result of quite a bit of debate on this subject. I'm open to suggestions for (further) improvement.
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09-05-2012, 22:29
Post: #5
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(09-05-2012 19:13)Raphaël Thévenin Wrote:  I noticed following behavior on my library:
- tags like performer, orchestra, conductor... which are added in the "userTags" property are added to the artist browsing
- the composer tag is not mixed with the artist browsing, maybe because it's a standard tag from minimserver ?

For me, there should be 2 different behavior (with a prop switch to choose ?) :
1 - I want minimserver to scan userTags and I want them to appear at topmost level for browsing as individual tags, but in this case, I don't want the tags to be miwed with "artists"
2 - I want minimserver to scan userTags, to be able to refine some searches, but I don't want my top level tree to be "polluted" by theses extra tags and I'm fine with mixing them in the "artists" tree entry

Best regards

RTh

It isn't possible to have different userTags in the top-level tree from those that appear in lower-level trees (your option 2). I'm not keen to change this (or provide a switch to change it) because one of the fundamental principles of MinimServer is that the browse selection should work in a consistent way whether it's at the top level or a lower level.

Your option 1) will be possible in the next release of MinimServer by removing Artist from indexTags (the new name for userTags). This will give you a separate index entry for each tag in indexTags, with no unexpected combinations.

The Composer tag isn't mixed into the Artist index entry because the artist information only includes performers.
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09-05-2012, 22:43
Post: #6
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(09-05-2012 19:19)rb73 Wrote:  I'm not sure how MinimServer decides which tags to mix. It doesn't mix all the usertags into the artist list: I also have usertags "Bits" (values 16/24/HDCD) to indicate if a track is hi-res, and "Live" (values Live/Studio) to help me find Live music quickly. These aren't mixed into the artist list Huh

That would be because those tags don't represent artists/performers. Smile

Quote:A property to choose between your option 1 and 2 would be nice. I'd set it to option 1 Tongue

I'm keen to keep MinimServer easy to use. If there are too many options, it becomes confusing for people to understand what all the options do and how they work when they're combined in different ways. There will always be different opinions about how far to go in adding options, and at the moment I'm taking quite a cautious approach.
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10-05-2012, 08:00
Post: #7
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(09-05-2012 22:43)simoncn Wrote:  That would be because those tags don't represent artists/performers. Smile
Ah, but how does it know that? Tongue I could have used "Orch", for example.
I guess it has a list of names of tags that are mixed into the artist list?

Quote:I'm keen to keep MinimServer easy to use.
Seems to be working well. And from what I read above I'll be able to make it behave the way I want Smile
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10-05-2012, 08:56
Post: #8
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
(10-05-2012 08:00)rb73 Wrote:  
(09-05-2012 22:43)simoncn Wrote:  That would be because those tags don't represent artists/performers. Smile
Ah, but how does it know that? Tongue I could have used "Orch", for example.
I guess it has a list of names of tags that are mixed into the artist list?

That's right. The "mixed in" tags are currently AlbumArtist (which replaces everything), Conductor, Artist and Orchestra. The ordering is Conductor, Artist..., Orchestra. I'd consider changing this ordering if it isn't what most people want. If the default mix-in result isn't suitable, you can override it by using the AlbumArtist tag.
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20-06-2012, 14:28
Post: #9
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
I've just installed 0.51, and it seems to be working well so far. I very much appreciate it that MinimWatch tells me which server it's watching. Excellent Smile

I'm still struggling with the Artist tag in my classical collection, though. How do I configure MinimServer to give me a listing of just the values in the Artist tags, without anything mixed in?

From one of the posts above I concluded that I needed to remove "Artist" from the "indexTags" property, but that (probably not very surprisingly) just removed the entire Artist list Sad

I think I understand the logic behind the "mixing in" of other tags, but it results in the weirdest values in the Artist list, such as
"Ton Koopman",
"Ton Koopman, Ton Koopman",
"Ton Koopman, Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra",
"Ton Koopman, Tini Mathot"
and so on...

I could of course remove the Artist tag from the indexTags, create a new usertag "Performer", copy all my Artist tags to the Performer tag, but that doesn't seem like the most elegant solution. So far MinimServer shines when it comes to elegant solutions, so I guess there must be a better way?

Also, I noticed that "Tini Mathot" does not appear in the Artist list. Any idea why that'd be the case?
The tracks in question were tagged "Ton Koopman\\Tini Mathot" in MP3tag. According to metaflac this works as expected, embedding 2 Artist tags in the file:
Artist=Ton Koopman
Artist=Tini Mathot

Cheers,
JW
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20-06-2012, 20:07
Post: #10
RE: Behavior of Artist tag
I think I can explain what's happening. It's a combination of a bug, a feature, and the way you've done your tagging.

To see a listing of Artist tag values with nothing else mixed in, you need to put All Artists in indexTags. This will give you a All Artists index selection, which will show every individual artist that appears in an Artist tag. If you select one of these artists, you'll see all the tracks that contain an Artist tag for that artist (and maybe other Artist tags as well).

The mixed-in artist computation works as follows:

For a track, you get all the values of the Conductor tag (if present), then all the values of the Artist tag (if present), then all the values of the Orchestra tag (if present). All duplicates are supposed to be eliminated, but I made a change in 0.50 that has the accidental side-effect of only eliminating duplicates for values in the same category (Conductor/Artist/Orchestra). This means that if Ton Koopman is tagged as both Conductor and Artist (very reasonable, as he is both of these), you'll see his name twice in the computed mixed-in artist value. This is a bug, and I'll fix it in the next release of MinimServer.

For an album, you get the AlbumArtist value if that's present. If not, you get all the Conductor values for all the tracks (if present), then all the Artist values for all the tracks (if present), then all the Orchestra values for all the tracks (if present). Again, duplicates should be eliminated, but because of the bug they'll only be eliminated to values in the same category.

The Artist index contains all the (possibly mixed-in) track artist values. So, when I've fixed the bug, you'll see:

Ton Koopman
Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra
Ton Koopman, Tini Mathot

You should see Tini Mathot (on her own) in the All Artists list. She'll only be in the Artist list if she appears on her own for a track. If she always appears with other people, her name will be combined with those other people in the Artist list.

I hope this helps! Does this approach (when the bug is fixed) seem reasonable?
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