Four digit tracknumber disables group tag functionality?

[hvaleton]

Hi Simon,

It's been a long time since I posted something on this forum, but today I stumbled upon a very strange problem:
Recently I've changed the way I populate the Tracknumber tag. For multiples cd's it goes like this:
Tracknumber = <m><n>
where m stands for the discnumber and n for the (original) tracknumber.
<n> is always padded with one leading zero.
<m> is only padded with a leading zero when there are more than 9 cd's in an issue.
So, for instance, the seventh track of the fourth cd in a 10 cd issue has Tracknumber 0407.

Until recently the maximum number of digits in any tracknumber throughout my collection was three, but now it can sometimes be four.
And only with those albums/issues having four digit Tracknumbers I've encountered the problem that the group functionality in MinimServer ceases to function entirely. And I don't need to tell you how well I like this grouping!
Could this be a bug?

I've added a screenshot of Kinksky desktop containing a number of performances of Mahler's first symphony, where two of those (under Chailly and Sinopoli) come from a large multiple cd box and therefore have four digit tracknumbers. The rest of them have three digits at most.

Thanks very much for your time and I'm still very much enjoying your software on a daily basis!

Hans Valeton

[simoncn]

(04-10-2013 17:20)hvaleton Wrote:  Until recently the maximum number of digits in any tracknumber throughout my collection was three, but now it can sometimes be four.
And only with those albums/issues having four digit Tracknumbers I've encountered the problem that the group functionality in MinimServer ceases to function entirely. And I don't need to tell you how well I like this grouping!
Could this be a bug?

Please check the MinimServer log for warning messages. I think you will find messages saying that these invalid TRACKNUMBER tag values have been ignored. The maximum track number supported by MinimServer is 1023.

If you populate the DISCNUMBER tag with the disc number and the TRACKNUMBER tag with the track number, everything should work OK.

[bbrip]

.... and I do not see any valid reason why one would ever have an Album with more than 999 tracks....

bbrip

[Dieter Stockert]

(05-10-2013 14:19)bbrip Wrote:  .... and I do not see any valid reason why one would ever have an Album with more than 999 tracks....

Well, there may be no existing album with as many tracks, but it could be someday (lets me think of an audio book of Robert Musil's 'Man without Qualities' and the like). So why the restriction?

[simoncn]

(05-10-2013 17:48)Dieter Stockert Wrote:  Well, there may be no existing album with as many tracks, but it could be someday (lets me think of an audio book of Robert Musil's 'Man without Qualities' and the like). So why the restriction?

This restriction is required for resource/performance reasons. There is a similar restriction of a maximum of 63 discs in a multidisc album.

[hvaleton]

(04-10-2013 18:31)simoncn Wrote:  Please check the MinimServer log for warning messages. I think you will find messages saying that these invalid TRACKNUMBER tag values have been ignored. The maximum track number supported by MinimServer is 1023.

If you populate the DISCNUMBER tag with the disc number and the TRACKNUMBER tag with the track number, everything should work OK.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your prompt reply and you're right, as usual. I can now see where I went wrong.
There were indeed a number of error messages such as:
"
Scanning directory Symfonieën (PO 1985-96)
Error: group contains tracks that aren't consecutive: Mahler - Das klagende Lied (PO, Sinopoli 1990)
"

and:
"
Warning: invalid TRACKNUMBER tag value 1102 ignored for file Beethoven/Kamer/Pianowerken (Brendel)/Pianosonates (1970-77)/1102 Op.110; 1 Moderato cantabile molto espressivo.flac
"

My reason for these 'extravagant' Tracknumbers was to be able to keep seeing the original tracknumber (on the original disc) so I could easlily compare tag data with the tracklist in the cd booklet, while also complying with the rule that, within a multi-disc album, all tracknumbers should be unique and consecutive. And so I created this monstrosity.

Apart from getting tracknumbers greater than the maximum allowed track number of 1023 (which I wasn't aware of but seems a fair maximum), I also broke up some track sequences that should be regarded as a group, such as these two consecutive (parts of) movements in Mahler's eighth symphony, this symphony being spread out over discs 8 an 9:

0809 Nr.8: II: 'Alles Vergängliche' (Chorus mysticus)
0901 Nr.8: II: Poco adagio - 'Waldung, sie schwankt heran' (Chor und Echo)

Now I'm not exactly sure why this didn't work. It might also have been because MinimServer was already taken off track (no pun intended) by other tracks in the same directory having Tracknumbers greater than 1023. Or is it because 0901 is not regarded to be the proper next track after 0809?

Well, anyway, I've rewritten part of my numbering script (in VBS) so that it now creates proper consecutive series of tracknumbers within each directory. (My file names still begin with 101, 102 ... 201, 202 etc for sets with less than ten cd's and 0101, 0102 ... 0201, 0202 for sets containing 10 cd's or more). Now everything works fine as before.

Sorry for bothering you with all this!

Regards,

Hans Valeton

[simoncn]

(05-10-2013 19:54)hvaleton Wrote:  My reason for these 'extravagant' Tracknumbers was to be able to keep seeing the original tracknumber (on the original disc) so I could easlily compare tag data with the tracklist in the cd booklet, while also complying with the rule that, within a multi-disc album, all tracknumbers should be unique and consecutive. And so I created this monstrosity.

There is no such rule with MinimServer. The recommended approach is to tag each track with the original track and disc numbers, as I suggested in my previous post.

Quote:Apart from getting tracknumbers greater than the maximum allowed track number of 1023 (which I wasn't aware of but seems a fair maximum), I also broke up some track sequences that should be regarded as a group, such as these two consecutive (parts of) movements in Mahler's eighth symphony, this symphony being spread out over discs 8 an 9:

0809 Nr.8: II: 'Alles Vergängliche' (Chorus mysticus)
0901 Nr.8: II: Poco adagio - 'Waldung, sie schwankt heran' (Chor und Echo)

Now I'm not exactly sure why this didn't work. It might also have been because MinimServer was already taken off track (no pun intended) by other tracks in the same directory having Tracknumbers greater than 1023. Or is it because 0901 is not regarded to be the proper next track after 0809?

This didn't work because the track numbers are not consecutive. In a group, track 809 would need to be followed by track 810 (assuming these are both from the same disc).

This should not be a problem if you tag the first track as disc 8/track 9 and the second track as disc 9/track 1 and let MinimServer merge the discs in the album display. In this case, MinimServer will automatically renumber all tracks from the album with consecutive numbers starting at 1, and you will be able to create groups that span disc boundaries.

Quote:Well, anyway, I've rewritten part of my numbering script (in VBS) so that it now creates proper consecutive series of tracknumbers within each directory. (My file names still begin with 101, 102 ... 201, 202 etc for sets with less than ten cd's and 0101, 0102 ... 0201, 0202 for sets containing 10 cd's or more). Now everything works fine as before.

This works, but you could achieve the same result without a script by using disc m/track n tagging and letting MinimServer merge the discs and renumber the tracks, as described above.

Quote:Sorry for bothering you with all this!

Regards,

Hans Valeton

No problem! I hope the above suggestions are useful.

[simoncn]

(05-10-2013 18:46)simoncn Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 17:48)Dieter Stockert Wrote:  Well, there may be no existing album with as many tracks, but it could be someday (lets me think of an audio book of Robert Musil's 'Man without Qualities' and the like). So why the restriction?

This restriction is required for resource/performance reasons. There is a similar restriction of a maximum of 63 discs in a multidisc album.

I've made a few code changes to remove these limitations in the next release. The maximum disc number will be increased to 32767 and the maximum track number will be increased to 65535.