Displaying half-star ratings

[DanielB]

(31-10-2023 23:01)simoncn Wrote:  The mapping happens before anything is sent to the control point. From that point on, the POPM value (if there was one) is no longer available.

What is the problem with letting MinimServer do the mapping from POPM (if applicable) and using only mapped values (1 to 5) in your tag update file?

BubbleUPnP is a control point, not a tagging program.

I want to use MinimServer to serve my music and BubbleUPnP to display it. I currently use the MediaMonkey Android app against the MediaMonkey server, and whilst it does work against MinimServer BubbleUPnP is better.

For BubbleUPnP to display the star rating they need to know how to translate from incoming rating, so a lookup is needed.
So tagupdate can change the rating back and then BubbleUPnP could use 20,40,60,80,100 for flac and Jriver lookup for mp3.

[simoncn]

With MinimServer update 242, BubbleUPnP will receive a star rating of 1 to 5 in the upnp:rating property.

For a FLAC file, this value will be provided by the RATING tag. For an MP3 file that uses the POPM frame to provide a rating value in the range 1 to 255, this value will be mapped by MinimServer to a RATING value in the range 1 to 5.

There is no need for any tagUpdate mapping and I don't understand why you think there is a need for rating values in the range 20 to 100.

[DanielB]

BubbleUPnP isn't a controller just for MinimServer is it?

Controller developer would/should use the "standard" mapping for both MP3 (Jriver mapping?) and FLAC (20=1, 40=2 etc), but that wouldn't work for MinimSever with MP3s.

(01-11-2023 11:03)simoncn Wrote:  There is no need for any tagUpdate mapping

If controller was developed to the standard, I could use tagUpdate to change MinimServer rating back to the standard e.g. 2 = 64, 3 = 128.

Rather than just ask developer to "add ratings" I'm trying to be helpful and propose a route to solution that would account for the products I'm aware of.

I know MP3 could use all of 1-255 but in products I've tested it's 1, 64, 128, 196 and 255 (ignoring half stars for now), so adding in MinimServer would produce:
1 = 1
2,64 = 2
3,128 = 3
4,196 = 4
5,255 = 5

Adding in FLAC leaves table proposed earlier, and because there's no overlap controller wouldn't need to worry about checking format.


Or they could use Jriver mapping with MinimServer included for MP3 and other lookup for FLAC:
1-51 -> RATING 1
2, 52-102 -> RATING 2
3, 103-153 -> RATING 3
4, 154-204 -> RATING 4
5, 205-255 -> RATING 5

Does that make sense?

[simoncn]

The standard seems to be 1 - 5 for the RATING tag and 1 - 255 for the ID3v2 POPM frame. In my opinion, the value in upnp:rating should match RATING, not POPM.

You can use tag update to replace 1 - 5 RATING values with 1 - 255 POPM values if you wish. This will also change what is sent in upnp:rating. It is your choice how you want to use the RATING tag and the upnp:rating property.

[DanielB]

My concern was that there might be a disjoint between servers, but I've tested a few others and they all appear to be sending out the mapped rating values, albeit on occasion using different ranges:
MinimServer 1-5 for MP3 and 20,40,60,80,100 for FLAC.
MediaMonkey converts the MP3 to the FLAC standard so all are 20,40,60,80,100.
Jriver presents both as 1-5.

I think all would probably pass through the other non-standard FLAC values but their interface doesn't support it so I haven't worried about those.

Thanks again for introducing the rating change, it's already working well in the MediaMonkey control point (using tagUpdate as it expects the FLAC standard of 20,40,60 e.t.c.).

[simoncn]

To clarify, MinimServer does not send 20,40,60,80,100 for FLAC. It sends the RATING tag value that the tagging program has put into the FLAC file.

[DanielB]

(02-11-2023 12:59)simoncn Wrote:  To clarify, MinimServer does not send 20,40,60,80,100 for FLAC. It sends the RATING tag value that the tagging program has put into the FLAC file.

I do understand that it's just passing the values up the chain, and I did try to cover that off with the following comment, but I obviously wasn't clear enough.

(01-11-2023 22:27)DanielB Wrote:  I think all would probably pass through the other non-standard FLAC values but their interface doesn't support it so I haven't worried about those.

One thing I've just noticed is that MinimServer is serving the tag rating at the album level too, although it looks to be just the first one it encounters from the album.
I'm not aware of anything that would display this, but thought I'd let you know.

[simoncn]

Adding RATING to albums was intentional. It is consistent with how MinimServer handles many other tags (take the tag value from the first track in the album that has this tag).

Something like this is needed for album-level tags as there is no file for an album that can be tagged directly. If this is not useful for RATING, I can remove it.

[DanielB]

(02-11-2023 16:04)simoncn Wrote:  Adding RATING to albums was intentional. It is consistent with how MinimServer handles many other tags (take the tag value from the first track in the album that has this tag).

Something like this is needed for album-level tags as there is no file for an album that can be tagged directly. If this is not useful for RATING, I can remove it.

I do create a weighted album rating based off track ratings, but unless there's a way to use that in the album context I'm not sure using the rating of the first track makes any sense.

[simoncn]

For many albums (especially classical) the rating of the first track should be applicable to the album as a whole.

The album rating could be used in displayFormat to show (for example) a star value next to the album name.