Album Artist Tag (1 Viewer)

[kev160967]

Hi folks,
Just installed MP last night, and very happy so far. I've previously used myHTPC and Meedio, then started using MCE2K5 on my latest box. I always liked the configrability of meedio, but also like the better stability of MCE. Anyway, enough of the past.

There are a handful of things that I found irritating in MCE which I hoped I'd be able to overcome in MP. I'll post each one in a seperate thread to keep things tidy.

First off:
I've got a fairly large music collection (about 30-40 gig of MP3s), and navigating by artist can be quite painful, as I also have a lot of compilation albums, so often artists may only have a handful of songs, or even just one. Within windows media player I was able to handle this quite nicely by using the Album Artist tag. This means that each track on a compilation album has the appropriate name in the artist tag, and "Various Artists" in the album artist tags. As a result, my typical search mode works very well - I tend to look for a specific album, going by the artist name for a specific band, or looking under compilations if it's in there.

Question is, is there any way to support this under MP? The tag doesn't appear to be handled, as far as I can tell. If it were I'd be able to set up a list view of album artists, with the actual albums displayed at the next level.

Any thoughts?

Kev

 

[kev160967]

Nobody? I notice that the album artist does have a slot in the tagreader source code, but svn problems have stopped me proceeding any further so far.

 

[reagan+carter]

I believe (but i'm maybe wrong) that the Album Artist tag is not supported yet, even in SVNs. but it is planned AFAICS (see https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=9552&p=80544 and following posts). if hwahrmann stops by this thread he will surely clarify the situation.

 

[Spragleknas]

I might misunderstand what you want, but have you tried ticking the "Treat songs in same folder as one album" and use the album-view?

 

[tomtom21000]

I had a similar problem as I also have lots of compilations plus have tagged them all back to original albums, which also means that I often have only one song of an album.

I made a custom view with the external setup program of mp.

so the artist view shows:
-A list A,B,C...Z
within A all the artist starting with A
and than by entering the artist all the songs.

The original view that comes with mp has no A..Z which is nearly unusable for larger collections and goes artist - album - tracks which is uncomfortable if there is only one song under the album.

all that works without artist and album artist.

If this might help you and you need details on how to set the view up, post back. A description is also somewhere in the new music engine thread.

tomtom

 

[kev160967]

Thanks Ronald+Jimmy, I'll take a look in that thread

Kev

 

[kev160967]

I might misunderstand what you want, but have you tried ticking the "Treat songs in same folder as one album" and use the album-view?

Not quite what I'm looking for. I'd like to be able to select an artist first then browse their albums, or select Various Artists and browse compilations (in fact, I have several special AlbumArtist tags, such as Soundtrack to get me to what I'm looking for faster). i'm using this on a dedicated HTPC using only a remote control, and the album view still involves too much scrolling to be really useful. I have approx 180 distinct album artists in my collection, which can be scrolled through in about 15 screens, so it's quite a nice way to navigate (for the way i select music)

 

[kev160967]

Thanks TomTom I've just set one up and it's easier to work with. I'd still prefer the album artist solution though, so with a bit of luck that might be supported soon. In the meantime I might have a play with the sources myself to see what I can implement.

Kev