Compilation albums dont work right in My Music

[8bit]

Hi all,

I originally posted in MediaPortal Talk forum but decided it should really be in Support so I've deleted my original post to post in here.

Basically most of my albums are dance mix CDs so as such they're "compilations" in that rather than all tracks being by one artist, they're all by different artists. In My Music I use the "Albums" view in "Big Icon List" layout. What I see is not one icon/list entry for each of the compilations but one of each compilation for each artist that appears on the album. Each of the entries for a given album therefore has only one track in it since MP seems to think it's multiple albums with the same name, each from a different artist.

Can anyone help me to get My Music just to display each compilation album once with all the tracks in there? Anyone familiar with itunes will know about the "Group compilation albums when browsing" feature, something similar to that is what I'm looking for...

Really hope someone can help, the reason I moved away from using MCE 2005 was because despite showing compilations as one album, it *insisted* on ordering the tracks in them by artist name rather than track number, meaning the tunes in a mix played out of order...

Edit: OK I've done a support template:

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 (2006-07-03)
MediaPortal Skin: Razor
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
.NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
Audio Codec: MPA Decoder Filter
Video Codec: MPV Decoder Filter
CPU Type: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Memory: 1 GB
Motherboard: A8V Deluxe (ASUSTeK Computer Inc.)
TV Card Model: Hauppauge HVR-1300
TV Card Type: DVB/Hybrid
TV Card Driver: 2.4 I think, latest one anyway...
Video Card Model: Radeon X800 Series (256 MB)
Video Card Driver: 6.6
Video Card Resolution: 1920x1200
Video Render Type: VMR9
Audio Card Model: Creative Audigy Audio Processor (WDM)
Audio Card Driver: Not sure, latest tho
Synopsis:: -

[hwahrmann]

make sure that every compilation resides in it's own folder.
Then in Configuration -> Music -> Music Database select following check boxes:
Treat tracks in individual folders as an album
Scan albums for various artists

this will do the trick for you.

[mbuzina]

Originally Posted by hwahrmann

make sure that every compilation resides in it's own folder.

I have the same issue. But if the fix requires reorganizing my music files, than I will rather implement a fix in the code. Why should mp show each album more than once in the album view? If this is a feature, than I would like to see who and why somebody needs this.

I guess the issue is that some people like to see the artists name next to the album in the album view. Since this would produce nonsense for compilations, a kind of workaround seems to be added for the various artists. I guess a fix shoud be easy: Just scann the database for albums with more than one artist and "shrink" that to one album with various artists?

[hwahrmann]

I'm not saying that there aren't other ways to do it.
But this is the way it works currently.

we might look into it in the future.

[mbuzina]

hwarman: No offense meant. But you have to understand that such a behaviour change is strange for people using the sw. Why should an album be shown more than once?

I know from the db setup that MP referes each album to an artist. So I guessed this duplicates the album entries.

[SteveV]

Albums are added to the database using one of 2 methods:

Album Name
Album Path

Adding by album name creates problems with albums that have the same name ("Best of", Greatest hits", etc). If, for example, you have 4 albums titled "Greatest hits" from ArtistA, ArtistX, ArtistY, and ArtistZ all of the tracks are lumped into one album called "Greatest hits"

Adding by album path (which is what happens when you select the "Treat tracks in individual folders as an album" option) solves this particular issue by using the folder path to determine what constitutes an album. This is much more accurate but fails miserably if your music collection isn't organized in Artist-->Album-->Tracks fashion.

The bottom line is that this is a problem that seems like it should be easy to fix but each fix has many (sometimes not so obvious) implications.

A few users have suggested using the "Album Artist" tag present on some formats such as WMA. As you might guess, this impacts those who don't use formats that support this tag (myself included). I'm more than happy to listen to suggestions on ways to improve this.

Steve

[8bit]

Originally Posted by SteveV

Albums are added to the database using one of 2 methods:

Album Name
Album Path

Adding by album name creates problems with albums that have the same name ("Best of", Greatest hits", etc). If, for example, you have 4 albums titled "Greatest hits" from ArtistA, ArtistX, ArtistY, and ArtistZ all of the tracks are lumped into one album called "Greatest hits"

Adding by album path (which is what happens when you select the "Treat tracks in individual folders as an album" option) solves this particular issue by using the folder path to determine what constitutes an album. This is much more accurate but fails miserably if your music collection isn't organized in Artist-->Album-->Tracks fashion.

The bottom line is that this is a problem that seems like it should be easy to fix but each fix has many (sometimes not so obvious) implications.

A few users have suggested using the "Album Artist" tag present on some formats such as WMA. As you might guess, this impacts those who don't use formats that support this tag (myself included). I'm more than happy to listen to suggestions on ways to improve this.

Steve

Personally the reason I use iTunes (and have done since before I got an iPod) is because I find it's method of organising and displaying the library contents the most straightforward.

For those not familiar with iTunes, album folders are in the Artist_name/Album_name/Track format except for compilations. Providing the "Group Compilations together when browsing" option is switched on, in the library folder there is a folder called "Compilations" and it follows the format Compilations/Compilation_name/track. In iTunes library itself there is an entry in the "Artists" list called "Compilations". Selecting this displays a list of all albums marked as compilations.

The user marks compilations by selecting all the tracks in the compilation and setting the corresponding option in the properties for the multiple selection. If the My Music plugin had a similar option (but obviously marked the compilation tag in the SQLite database) I could see that working well. Of course, for those of us like myself who already point their MP install to their iTunes library folder, if MP could either read the compilation tag iTunes sets (either in the files themselves or by importing the iTunes library - it's in XML format) that would work even better, but obviously that doesn't really help users of other desktop media players.

From what you're saying Steve it looks as though there are means to handle libraries structured in iTunes method or that of Windows Media Player (providing the user hasn't deviated too far from WMP's default method). I'd reckon that probably covers it for the most part; without wishing to sound harsh to those this applies to, those users who define their own structure for their music libraries probably should understand that if they do so they aren't likely to be so easily catered for in apps like MediaPortal. As you said yourself Steve, there's so many variables in the way this can be handled you can't possibly hope to please everyone!

I've just deleted the musicdatabase5.db3 file and re-imported my library with the "Treat tracks in individual folders as an album" and "Scan albums for various artists" options switched on and that seems to have worked fine for me, thanks hwahrmann (and Steve!). The only slight problem is that for a number of compilations it doesn't pick up the coverart from the ID3 in the files but I can live with that so long as they play right.

Sorry for the long post, I've tried countless different desktop media players and a number of HTPC apps and this is just what my experiences have brought me to! Get a lot of BS for your $0.02 with me Thanks for the good work Steve, and all for the assistance here.

8 out

[zombiepig]

Originally Posted by SteveV

A few users have suggested using the "Album Artist" tag present on some formats such as WMA. As you might guess, this impacts those who don't use formats that support this tag (myself included). I'm more than happy to listen to suggestions on ways to improve this.

Steve

hey steve - i still think there's a way to add "album artist" support without impacting people who don't use it. basically - when tags are scanned, if an albumartist tag exists then use that for the cd artist, otherwise proceed with the current logic. That way, for people who don't use the tag, things are exactly the same as now, but for those that do they get the benefit of it!!

(..yup.... i know... i'm like the #1 annoying guy pushing for albumartist support )

[8bit]

Originally Posted by EqualRightsForWerewolves

hey steve - i still think there's a way to add "album artist" support without impacting people who don't use it. basically - when tags are scanned, if an albumartist tag exists then use that for the cd artist, otherwise proceed with the current logic. That way, for people who don't use the tag, things are exactly the same as now, but for those that do they get the benefit of it!!

(..yup.... i know... i'm like the #1 annoying guy pushing for albumartist support )

I reckon that, plus the existing stuff (although maybe label it slightly more clearly, I didn't get that the two options i needed on were what I thought they were) would probably cover it. At least that's WMP and iTunes sorted

[SteveV]

Originally Posted by EqualRightsForWerewolves

hey steve - i still think there's a way to add "album artist" support without impacting people who don't use it. basically - when tags are scanned, if an albumartist tag exists then use that for the cd artist, otherwise proceed with the current logic. That way, for people who don't use the tag, things are exactly the same as now, but for those that do they get the benefit of it!!

(..yup.... i know... i'm like the #1 annoying guy pushing for albumartist support )

Once we have the new tag reader finished (getting very close) we'll use the "Album Artist" tag if it's present so no need to worry