albumcovers - problems with certain compilation albums (1 Viewer)

[jameson_uk]

OK could you please place these files in the plugin directory (Folder/File Locations - MediaPortal Wiki) and plugins\Windows
make sure you backup the existing WindowPlugins.dll first

Then can you open up MP go to the screen you have above and then close MP. Then can you upload the log files.

 

[MJGraf]

Hi,

this is a very interesting thread, because I'm just about to retag my collection to match "MP's understanding" of multi disk releases as good as possible. I'm using MusicBrainz Picard to tag my files, name them and sort them into folders because I don't have to take care of any naming convention, which is (in most cases) automatically taken care of by MusicBrainz.

In your example of "The Wall", MusicBrainz has two entries: "The Wall (disc 1)" (Release: The Wall (disc 1) - MusicBrainz) and "The Wall (disc 2)" (Release: The Wall (disc 2) - MusicBrainz).
As a result, in the folder structure I would have two folders "\...\Pink Floyd\The Wall (disc 1)" and "\...\Pink Floyd\The Wall (disc 2)". The album tag for the tracks from disc 1 would contain "The Wall (disc 1)", for the tracks from disc 2 "The Wall (disc 2)".
To get the AlbumArt displayed, I currently use folder.jpgs, which I have copied in both folders (not ideal due to duplication, but in times of 3 TB drives, it doesn't really matter...)

However, there is also a plugin for Picard called "Disc Numbers" (Picard Plugins - MusicBrainz), which - as I understand - would strip the "(disc 1)" and "(disc 2)" from both, the folder name and the album tag and instead put the correct disc number in the respective tag. However, in my understanding, this means that all the tracks of multiple discs of one album would be within one folder called "The Wall", making it hard to distinguish track 1 of disc 1 from track 1 of disc 2 on a pure file basis (but on the other hand, requiring only one folder.jpg...). I still have to think about this, because maybe this could be solved by putting the disc# in front of the trac# in the filenames for multi disc albums...

To make a long story short: I don't know whether you use MusicBrainz, but which of the two possibilities described above would you choose? I personally don't really care as long as it is the way MP supports (and will support in future versions) multi disc albums.

Thanks for your great work,
Michael

 

[jameson_uk]

this is a very interesting thread, because I'm just about to retag my collection to match "MP's understanding" of multi disk releases as good as possible.

MP understands most things... If you have album tags for "The Wall (disc 1)" and "The Wall (disc 2)" these are considered separate albums which might cause issues with internet lookups but will still work.

Using the disc ID tag you can have MP (and other programs) recognise it as one album but multiple discs. I use this approach and store my music still in separate folders so I have
album artist\album\disc#\tracks
for multi-disc albums.

Starting in 1.2 the music views will work for non multi-disc albums by adding a view level between album and tracks if there are multiple discs. So you can go
Pink Floyd
The Wall
Disc 1
Track 01
Track 02
...

and you can press play at any level. If you want to play the whole of the album you can select "The Wall" and press play if you only want to play disc1 you can go down to the next level and then press play and you will play that disc.

For single disc albums it will just jump straight from album to tracks by default.

In MP 1.1 the disc tag is prefixed to the track number so if you have the album tagged as "The Wall" with disc IDs set this will list the tracks as
101. Disc 1 Track 01
102. Disc 1 Track 02
...
201. Disc 2 Track 01
202. Disc 2 Track 02
....


MP will cope with either method (slightly better in 1.2) and using either method you can still store music in separate folders. Which you choose I guess is down to how you want to treat you multi-disc albums

 

[1gkar]

OK could you please place these files in the plugin directory (Folder/File Locations - MediaPortal Wiki) and plugins\Windows
make sure you backup the existing WindowPlugins.dll first

Then can you open up MP go to the screen you have above and then close MP. Then can you upload the log files.

I'm assuming this is directed at me.

Not sure what files exactly you are after? The page hyperlinked does not show any plugins additional to what is already on my system. Or are you just after my logs via debug mode? Cheers.

 

[jameson_uk]

I'm assuming this is directed at me.

Not sure what files exactly you are after? The page hyperlinked does not show any plugins additional to what is already on my system. Or are you just after my logs via debug mode? Cheers.

It was for you... I however forgot to actually attach the files

Here we go. backup windowplugins.dll first and then upload your logs.

Thanks

 

[1gkar]

OK. I have collected the logs via debug mode, available from my start menu. If this is not what you wanted, please state.

I also assumed the *.pdb file was to go in the plugins/windows folder as well.

 

[1gkar]

I went back & retagged all my multi-disc albums & with your supplied windowplugins.dll file, I recompiled my music database; some albums are working perfectly, but others are still only showing the blue folder

Will continue to sort it out.

Regarding your suggestion to delete all the *.jps in my album folders, I found a batch file, which I modified to remove ALL albumart. Here is the thread.

 

[jameson_uk]

umm that is odd..... you have

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\Music\Albums\Pink Floyd-The WallL.jpg

for disc 1 (which is just called "The Wall") which is correct as you have seen
but for disc2 which seems to be called "The Wall -Disc 2" it is using

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\Music\Albums\Pink Floyd-The Wall L.jpg

notice the space before L.jpg (is it possible your tag data includes an extra space in the album name ?

It seems to think both these files do exist so should be used. Could you have a look in that folder to (a) check both files do indeed exist and (b) whether they actually contain valid images. I will look at this some more

 

[jameson_uk]

got me to find a new bit of code I have never come across before

string[] pattern = {
  "\\[[0-9]{1,2}-[0-9]{1,2}\\]",
  "[-_+ ]\\({0,1}(cd|dis[ck]|part|dvd)[-_+ ]{0,1}[0-9]{1,2}\\){0,1}"
};

don't worry what it does but basically it trims of things like "disc 2" as you have in your album name so is trying to look for the actual album name.

Can you try the attached file (this is in the main MP program files directory) backup the one that is there first. (if you use MPTray you may have to close that before replacing the file).

I would suggest you do a full rescan of your database with this replacement file then check to see if all your albums are showing artwork

 

[1gkar]

Regarding your first query on the closely-titled jpgs in my Pink Floyd folder, afraid I can't check as I've deleted all albumart & copied folder.jps into the music folders.

I tried your modified core.dll file. I rescanned after deleting the music database, but could not start up MP GUI; it would hang either at 'initializing ??' or 'starting Windows Plugins'. Changing back to original core.dll fixed the issue but, alas, no albumart for the problematic albums.

Please, do not spend any further time on my behalf. I have been working towards a successful work-around, as detailed in the link I posted earlier. I have since added another batch file. They work perfectly, & all my music albumart is now displayed in high-res.

I really appreciate all your efforts.


thread

PS. don't you sleep