Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple folders (2 Viewers)

[doveman]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

But this is the point you are missing. The tracks DO have album data (assuming I am not misinterpreting you). They have something in the albumartist tag. They have track numbers (possibly) and discnumbers.

Album data does not simply refer to having something in the 'album' tag.

Yes, you've completely misunderstood. I said in my first post "Album view groups all my MP3s with blank Album data under a single folder. However, if some of those tracks have other data, such as AlbumArtist", so I don't know how you came to think by Album data I meant any of the fields related to albums.

To reiterate my point, for the final time, mp3 tracks with only the song title and artist are grouped in album view exactly as you want them. Personally I am not convinced this is the expected behaviour, although it is probably more hassle than it is worth to check for an empty string and not display anything at all.

Still you talk about "expected behaviour" when surely what should be more important is "convenient behaviour for users", yet you're still suggesting that if anything, you'd be inclined to make it more inconvenient simply because you feel it's inappropriate to have a Singles folder available from the Album view.

We are spending so much time on this non-issue that we are losing time that could be used to identify actual bugs.

Clearly you're never going to accept there could be any benefit from my suggestion and perhaps this would have been more appropriately posted as a feature request rather than a bugreport. Without meaning to be rude however, it seems to me that we've only spent so much time discussing this issue because you've repeatedly misunderstood and misrepresented what I've said (and failed to acknowledge or apologise for this when I've pointed it out to you).

 

[mm1352000]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

Hi again doveman

To directly address your first post comment by comment...

Album view groups all my MP3s with blank Album data under a single folder. However, if some of those tracks have other data, such as AlbumArtist and DiscNumber, this results in Album view creating multiple folders, each with multiple subfolders.

We consider "AlbumArtist" and "DiscNumber" as album information where you apparently do not. If we ignored those fields as you're asking then it would lead to behaviour that other people would consider undesirable.

Example: using the "AlbumArtist" field to group album tracks that have different values in the "Artist" field. Many people use the "AlbumArtist" field as a way to force all tracks from an album to be shown in the same folder even though the "Artist" field might have different values. That is useful when dealing with compilations and for recording collaboration details for tracks.

We perceive a direct conflict between what you are asking for and what other people in the MediaPortal community have come to expect.

Actually, the multiple subfolders problem can be dealt with by removing the second tier (discnumber) from Album view and I understand why some people will want this tier and that it probably can't work one way for the folder with the MP3s with blank Album data (singles) and a different way for the rest of the actual Albums. I don't think I need the discnumber tier though, so it's no problem for me if I delete that to avoid this issue.

By this comment you seem to acknowledge that you could get MP to do what you want by deleting the "DiscNumber" and "AlbumArtist" information for your singles but you would rather not have to do so. In other words, the problem is the inconvenience caused. You consider it more user friendly to ignore the information automatically rather then forcing users to delete it. Is that correct?

What we are saying is that we believe the behaviour that you are proposing to be more inconvenient for the other people in the community that view the current behaviour as correct. Not only that, I can't think of a workaround to give them the behaviour they desire if we were to make the changes that you are requesting. If you have a workaround to get what you want from MP as it currently is but other people would not have a workaround if we implemented the changes that your requested then I think the approach that we should take is to leave things as is.

However, Album view still creates multiple folders if the Album data is blank but the AlbumArtist varies (e.g. if all the tracks have AlbumArtist - Single, except for one which has the AlbumArtist - Singles, this will result in two folders, with the second just containing the track tagged AlbumArtist - Singles). I don't think it's useful to have multiple folders created like this and it would make more sense to have all tracks with blank Album data just grouped under one folder.

I acknowledge that you don't think it is useful, however other people use the very thing that you consider inconvenient to do things that they consider convenient. As I said to you earlier today, sometimes we have to acknowledge that software doesn't always work the way that we want and we either have to adapt our approach to work with the software or move on and find something that suits us better.

Still you talk about "expected behaviour" when surely what should be more important is "convenient behaviour for users", yet you're still suggesting that if anything, you'd be inclined to make it more inconvenient simply because you feel it's inappropriate to have a Singles folder available from the Album view.

When we say "expected behaviour" we are not speaking only on our own behalves. The community has shaped and defined how MP behaves. Personally I believe that it is convenient to keep MP's behaviour how it currently is. I genuinely believe that is how the majority of our community "expect" album view to work.

Clearly you're never going to accept there could be any benefit from my suggestion...

That is certainly not the case from my perspective. I fully accept that there is a benefit from your perspective. Doing things in the way you've suggested would be more convenient for you. However we are trying to consider what the community as a whole would expect and consider as convenient. We clearly have a difference of opinion in this case about what is more convenient. Since there seems to be a conflict between what you want and the current functionality (which has arisen from what other members of the community in the past have asked for) and it is possible for you to work around the problem by deleting the albumartist and discnumber information for your singles then I am asking you to consider doing that in this case.

...and perhaps this would have been more appropriately posted as a feature request rather than a bugreport.

Personally I think so, yes.

mm

 

[doveman]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

Hi mm

We consider "AlbumArtist" and "DiscNumber" as album information where you apparently do not.

I certainly do consider them to be album information and don't think I've ever said otherwise. I referred to Album data to mean the data in the Album field, which I thought I'd made clear.

If we ignored those fields as you're asking then it would lead to behaviour that other people would consider undesirable.

Example: using the "AlbumArtist" field to group album tracks that have different values in the "Artist" field. Many people use the "AlbumArtist" field as a way to force all tracks from an album to be shown in the same folder even though the "Artist" field might have different values. That is useful when dealing with compilations and for recording collaboration details for tracks.

We perceive a direct conflict between what you are asking for and what other people in the MediaPortal community have come to expect.

That's fair enough. That may be a good example of how my suggestion would cause problems for others and I certainly wouldn't expect that to be done. I'm not certain that making MP ignore the AlbumArtist (in Album view) if the Album field is blank (and thus putting all tracks with a blank Album field in one folder) would necessarily prevent the AlbumArtist field being used in the way you describe for actual albums (with non-blank Album data) though.

By this comment you seem to acknowledge that you could get MP to do what you want by deleting the "DiscNumber" and "AlbumArtist" information for your singles but you would rather not have to do so. In other words, the problem is the inconvenience caused. You consider it more user friendly to ignore the information automatically rather then forcing users to delete it. Is that correct?

Yes, if these fields could be ignored when the Album field is blank (resulting in all such tracks being displayed in one folder in Album view) without affecting the display of actual albums (with non-blank Album data) then I believe it would be more user-friendly than forcing users to check for and delete any such stray information. I'm not particularly thinking of myself anymore, as much of this I've already done, but it might perhaps save a fair bit of effort on the part of many future users.

When we say "expected behaviour" we are not speaking only on our own behalves. The community has shaped and defined how MP behaves. Personally I believe that it is convenient to keep MP's behaviour how it currently is. I genuinely believe that is how the majority of our community "expect" album view to work.

I understand that point and I'd certainly hesitate before proposing a change that could lead to confusion amongst existing users. The only reason I made a distinction between "expected behaviour" and "convenient behaviour" is I got the impression that elliotmc was refusing to consider my suggestion (which I believed would be more convenient) simply because it would slightly alter the current "expected" behaviour (but not, as far as I can see, substantially or to the detriment of existing users). If you believe there's no way to implement this change without such confusion or detriment, I'm certainly not going to push for it.

Thank you for your considered response. If, after reading this reply, you still believe my suggestion would not be possible to implement without "breaking" things for others, I'm happy to leave it at that.

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

I got the impression that elliotmc was refusing to consider my suggestion (which I believed would be more convenient) simply because it would slightly alter the current "expected" behaviour

I certainly didn't refuse to consider your suggestion. I just felt that your suggestion was wrong. Hopefully the amount of time I have spent on this thread shows you that I did consider what you said.

"Expected" behaviour is very important. MP needs to be intuitive, so that users can anticipate what will be shown in each view. Making a change for the convenience of a small number of users to the possible confusion and detriment of other users is not good.

Responding to your specific example, if a track has nothing in the album tag, but has something in the albumartist tag, then I would argue that this track is improperly tagged. You are suggesting that we make MP ignore anything that has no meaning in the current context.

I do actually have some sympathy for your position, but if we ignore certain tags in album view, then we would probably have to add code to ignore other tags in other views. Before we know it, the code would be complex and hard to maintain, as well as being slow (which would negatively affect everyone).

Overall, the best thing to do is tag your music collection correctly (for MP). As I have said before, I am not suggesting you do anything that I am not prepared to do for myself.

Mark

 

[jameson_uk]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

This is not a bug but I have created a mantis entry to only look for tracks with an album tag populated in album view as an improvement
0003793: Improve album view to only show tracks where the album tag is populated - MediaPortal Bugtracker

 

[doveman]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

This is not a bug but I have created a mantis entry to only look for tracks with an album tag populated in album view as an improvement
0003793: Improve album view to only show tracks where the album tag is populated - MediaPortal Bugtracker

Actually your mantis entry suggests you would not show the singles in Album view at all, which would in my view be a retrograde step and make MP less convenient than it is currently and exactly the opposite of what I suggested/requested. Is that what you really intend?

 

[Nemulate]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

This is not a bug but I have created a mantis entry to only look for tracks with an album tag populated in album view as an improvement
0003793: Improve album view to only show tracks where the album tag is populated - MediaPortal Bugtracker

Actually your mantis entry suggests you would not show the singles in Album view at all, which would in my view be a retrograde step and make MP less convenient than it is currently and exactly the opposite of what I suggested/requested. Is that what you really intend?

To me it's the right way to do this, I've asked in the past about why my singels appear in the album view. With this addition I can have an albums view which only contains album tracks and a seperate singles view for files with no album tag.

 

[jameson_uk]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

To me it's the right way to do this, I've asked in the past about why my singels appear in the album view. With this addition I can have an albums view which only contains album tracks and a seperate singles view for files with no album tag.

Actually there is no way to create a singles view. I will think about this...

 

[tourettes]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

To me it's the right way to do this, I've asked in the past about why my singels appear in the album view. With this addition I can have an albums view which only contains album tracks and a seperate singles view for files with no album tag.

Actually there is no way to create a singles view. I will think about this...

Remember that a single could contain multiple songs

 

[doveman]

Re: Album view: looks at other fields in MP3s with blank Album, creates multiple fold

To me it's the right way to do this, I've asked in the past about why my singels appear in the album view. With this addition I can have an albums view which only contains album tracks and a seperate singles view for files with no album tag.

Are you really so bothered by having one untitled folder containing all your singles (i.e. tracks with blank Album tag) in the Album view, that you'd want to inconvenience other users (like myself) who like having this folder as it saves them having to go through the menus to switch to another view to access their singles? (not that there is a singles view at the moment, as jameson_uk says, but even if there was).