Confused by Tags

[GavinB]

Hi Folks
I've just moved to using Minimserver on a Melco music server, having previously used Asset on a NAS. All my CDs were ripped with dbPoweramp. I'm confused by the various tags and specifically the names with spaces, no spaces and underscores.

If I look at my music files, I've got Album Artist Sort, Artist Sort and Album Sort filled in. I want to use these settings to get Kate Bush under B. I've also used Album Sort to get my preferred order for albums within an artist.

I have a paid-for subscription to Minimserver 2 so should be able to add profiles.

How can I do it?

Thanks
Gavin

[simoncn]

First, you need to sure what the actual tag names in the files are. This is important to be able to configure MinimServer correctly for what you want to do.

It is likely that the actual tag names are AlbumArtistSort, ArtistSort and AlbumSort (no spaces or underscores). You can check this by changing the indexTags property from:

Artist, All Artists, Genre, Date, Composer

to:

Artist, All Artists, Genre, Date, Composer, AlbumArtistSort, ArtistSort, AlbumSort

and restarting MinimServer. You can then browse your library and check that you see the files you are expecting in the AlbumArtistSort, ArtistSort and AlbumSort indexes.

Please post back here when you have confirmed this.

[GavinB]

I don't see anything extra appearing - there's only Folder View under the Composer options.

[simoncn]

Did you restart MinimServer after making the indexTags change? Also, some control points (for example, BubbleUPnP and the LUMIN app) require you to reload the MinimServer library into the control point.

Another way to verify the tag names is to use the writeAllTags property (see this section). On the Melco, you should set this property to:

/mnt/disk1/share/alltags.txt

After setting this property, do a rescan using the Melco front panel menus. This will create a file alltags.txt in the Melco shared folder with a list of all tags in all your files.

[GavinB]

I did do a restart (using Minimwatch).

I've added the writeAllTags property, and it is taking longer to re-start. The log file is giving me more warnings (seems to be for albums where I've set two artists into the ALBUMARTIST tag (as Brian Ferry; Roxy Music for example).

Okay, the file has been created, and it shows values for ALBUMARTIST, ALBUM ARTIST SORT, ARTIST SORT, ALBUM SORT
(with spaces)

[GavinB]

I now have indexes for ALBUM ARTIST SORT, ARTIST SORT and ALBUM SORT!

My ideal is to browse by Album Artist, where Kate Bush is displayed as Kate Bush but is listed with the Bs, and then after selecting Kate Bush, and albums under that artist, her albums are displayed according to the ALBUM SORT values.

Is this possible?

Thanks
Gavin

[GavinB]

The other potential issue I can see is that ALBUM ARTIST SORT is only completed where needed. Kate Bush would have the value Bush, Kate but Arctic Monkeys wouldn't have anything set - the ALBMUARTIST tag doesn't need any additional sorting.

[simoncn]

The following should work:

1) Remove the extra values you added to indexTags

2) Set itemTags to: Artist Sort, Album Artist Sort, Album Sort

3) Set tagValue to: Artist.value.sort={Artist Sort}, AlbumArtist.value.sort={Album Artist Sort}, Album.value.sort={Album Sort}

4) Restart MinimServer from the MinimWatch minim icon

[GavinB]

Excellent! That’s doing what I want. Thanks, Simon.

[GavinB]

The log file seems to be throwing up a few odd messages now. Here's an example:
Warning: Ignoring conflicting custom value for ALBUM tag 'Anthology' in file Throwing Muses/Anthology/14-Bright Yellow Gun-Throwing Muses-Anthology.flac
applied sort value is '1993 - Anthology'; conflicting sort value is '2011 - Anthology'

I'm confused by this. It only seems to be picking up one track from the album. The file does have the Album Sort tag of 2011 - Anthology. Has it applied this value to the whole album?
Does this mean I've got another album called Anthology somewhere in my collection with a different Album Sort value? (I can't remember!)

The other two I've investigated have been Greatest Hits (definitely mutlple version of that title) and Heartbreaker (could be more than one - need to check).