Music Organization (1 Viewer)

[jsimmons]

I'm starting to rip CDs to the disk, and I'm a bit confused by MPs organization of music. How do you guys organize your files? If you have multiple CDs from a given artist, do you just rip them all into the same folder, do you put them in album-specific sub-folders, or do you put each album into a separate "top-level" folder?

 

[hwahrmann]

Well basically, we look at the tags that you give the music files.
but it is a good parctice to have a folder per artist and and put every album in a separate sub folder of the artist folder.
This way you can also use the "Shares" view, which maps the physical hdd representation.

 

[lloydsmart]

Right, I'll hijack this thread because my question is basically on-topic, I think!

I have my music organized as follows:

My Music\Artist\Album\Track.ext

My Music\Compilations\Album\Track.ext

Where Track is in one of the following formats:

Track Number - Title

Disk Number-Track Number - Title

There is also a folder.jpg file in each album directory for the coverart. My question is how to get it all looking the way I want it in Mediaportal.

At this point, I feel I should point out that I'm using StreamedMP as my skin. I think I'm part-way there, but I just can't figure out this "views" section in the MP config program. What I want, if possible, is:

• Go to Music, be presented with a list of artists (with "Compilations" in there somewhere) - So far I've been using "shares" view to achieve this, and it seems to work. When I use "Artist" view, I get a directory for each letter of the alphabet, which I don't really want.
  
• Click on an artist, be presented with all their albums in "Filmstrip" view. This seems to be working ok too, but I don't know why some artists will come up in filmstrip view by default, and some will come up in icon, big icon or even list view. Is there a way to set this universally?
  
• Click on an album, and be presented with all its tracks in "List" view. Again, I can get this working, but how do I set it as default? I don't want to have to keep changing it in MP's "side menu", if possible.

Also - is there anything I can do about the text that shows up?
(Sorry for all the questions) :sorry:
Basically, what shows up in the root "shares" view is fine, as is the album name showing up underneath the filmstrip - this is great. What's not so good is what comes up in list view for each album. I really only need to see the track name, and perhaps the number. I don't need "101. Akon - Right Now (Na Na Na)", although there is one situation where this behaviour would actually be useful, and that's when viewing compilations.

I know I'm being quite demanding here, but it seems like what I want shouldn't be too hard to achieve. I just don't know how to do it.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[hwahrmann]

I have my music organized as follows:

My Music\Artist\Album\Track.ext

My Music\Compilations\Album\Track.ext

Where Track is in one of the following formats:

Track Number - Title

Disk Number-Track Number - Title

ok. first i asume that all your files are tagged correctly. meaning they don't have the track and title in the name, but also in tags. Right?
This is the only to use the database views.

[*]Go to Music, be presented with a list of artists (with "Compilations" in there somewhere) - So far I've been using "shares" view to achieve this, and it seems to work. When I use "Artist" view, I get a directory for each letter of the alphabet, which I don't really want.

Just edit the Artist view in Configuration.
The first line which reads "artist group 1 ..." needs to be removed. Do that by pressing "d" in the last column of that row.
Press the save button and you're done. the letters are gone.

[*]Click on an artist, be presented with all their albums in "Filmstrip" view. This seems to be working ok too, but I don't know why some artists will come up in filmstrip view by default, and some will come up in icon, big icon or even list view. Is there a way to set this universally?

Again in the Artist view, select the value you like from the "ViewAs". so you could start the Artists with icons and the Albums in Filmstrip view for example.
Don't forget to press the Save button when done.

QUOTE=lloydsmart;417134]
[*]Click on an album, and be presented with all its tracks in "List" view. Again, I can get this working, but how do I set it as default? I don't want to have to keep changing it in MP's "side menu", if possible.
[/QUOTE]
[/LIST]

in the artist view on the track level select "ViewAs" -> "List" and the tracks are shown as list
don't forget the Save Button

Also - is there anything I can do about the text that shows up?
(Sorry for all the questions) :sorry:
Basically, what shows up in the root "shares" view is fine, as is the album name showing up underneath the filmstrip - this is great. What's not so good is what comes up in list view for each album. I really only need to see the track name, and perhaps the number. I don't need "101. Akon - Right Now (Na Na Na)", although there is one situation where this behaviour would actually be useful, and that's when viewing compilations.

Sure, you can do something.
In the Artist view, you are just editing, look into the "SortBy" column.
For the last level, the Track in our case, this is "Track".

Now go to "Music Sort" in the Treeview and select "Track" from the combo.
Adjust the format as you like.


good luck and have fun

 

[lloydsmart]

That's great - just what I was looking for.

Now, however, I have another slight problem. It concerns compilations. Basically, as I mentioned in my last post, I have my compilations as:

My Music\Compilations\Album\Title.ext

Where Title is either one of:

Track Number - Title

Disk Number-Track Number - Title

When I use artist view, all the artists who've done tracks on the compilations come up individually, and many of them only have one track. Ideally what I'd like is to have a list at the "root" of the Music section, which lists all artists, but with "compilations" listed in there aswell. Most of the artists (who I have full albums for) would work as described previously, but for the compilations, I'd like to go to "Compilations" in the artist view, and be presented with a filmstrip of all the compilation albums, select one of them, and be presented with all the tracks on it, in the format "Track Number. Title - Artist".

Is it possible to set this up?

 

[hwahrmann]

That's what AlbumArtist is for.
if you don't have tagged your compiltaions album artist field AND you have ticked the "Treat individual folders as album" check box when scanning the shares, then they all go into Various Artists.

If you have filled the AlbumArtist tag, then instead of going into Various Artist, it'll be sorted by the AlbumArtist.
So you can separate your compilations, e.g. all Blues Compilation go to Blues, with "Blues" as albumartist and all your Jazz compilations show up under Jazz.

Now in your case i would do all the configuration sugested by me above to the Album Artist view and then the "One Hit Wonders", will not show up individually, but being grouped into the compilation.
You can however always switch back to the Artist view and then you have the "One Hit Wonder" listed as an artist.

i think this is exactly what you need.

BTW, if you need a good Tagger to set the albumArtist field, look for MPTagThat in the Donwload section.

 

[lloydsmart]

So, is this what you mean?

EDIT: I've just realized that a lot of my files are incorrectly tagged for AlbumArtist. The rest of the tags are fine. (I missed AlbumArtist because it's on a seperate page in the tagging program I use, Tag&Rename).

Do you know of a program that will strip all files in a given directory of a certain field in their tags? Namely this AlbumArtist field. I just want to wipe it completely from all my tags.

Thanks.

 

[globaldonkey]

I was looking for a solution to this compilation problem too, and had been susing the shares view with all my music organised into \album\artist directories with a directory for compilations. But I'm not sure how the AlbumArtist method helps. Are you saying you need to remove all the AlbumArtist tags from all the artist specific albums, and only add genre style tags to the compilations? Most of my artist specific albums appear to have the AlbumArtist taged the same as the artist.

lloydsmart

I used to use Tag and Rename too until I found MPTagThat, which was a shameless self promotion by hwahrmann above BTW . Look for it in the plugins repository. Very nice piece of software that combines a lot of common functions, such as getting album art and lyrics, as well as ripping and burning.

 

[lloydsmart]

The solution I think we're getting at here is that the AlbumArtist tag should either be blank, or should say something like "Various Artists" for compilations. For artist-specific albums, I don't think it makes a difference what AlbumArtist says, or at least if it does, it should be either empty or tagged the same as "Artist".

I've just downloaded MPTagThat, and am using it to set the AlbumArtist tag of all my compilations to "Various Artists".

The point about Genres was that rather than just using "Various Artists" as a tag, if you instead use a genre, then when you navigate to "Compilations" in MP, you will be presented with a list of genres first, then your compilation albums.

I THINK! ymmv. ;-)

 

[hwahrmann]

Right, the genre stuff was just a sample.

to be more concrete. I don't want to have 100's of albums under Various Artists.
So i have an AbumArtist of "SoundTrack" and "Musical", etc.

there are also other albums like:
B.B. King and Friends, where i havean AlbumArtist of "B.B. King".
Basically it is up to you, how you would like to organise it.