[jmarshall]

Hi there,

I've just placed a new music library system in SVN.

Hopefully you shouldn't notice much difference, as it's not really about new features - the fundamentals have not changed. What has changed is the way we store albums in the library.

We used to store based on album and path, so songs were considered part of the same album only if they had the same album tag and were located in the same folder. Album thumbs were cached based on album tag and path in order to fit in with this system. This worked great for users that stored all their albums in separate folders, but wasn't so flash for those that didn't.

The new method stores albums based on album and album artist. Songs are considered part of the same album only if they have the same album tag and if they have the same albumartist tag. If no albumartist tag is present, we use the track artist tag. Thumbs are then cached on album and albumartist. There is <some> additional checking, however, for various artists albums for those that still store their albums in separate folders:

If all the songs in a folder have the same album tag, and none of them have an albumartist tag, and they have different artists, then we consider it a various artists album, and automatically set the albumartist tag to "Various Artists".

In addition to this, thumbs are now cached into 16 separate folders to eliminate the likelihood of running out of thumb caching slots (was previously 4096).

In order to do all this, the music library had to have a number of changes made to it, so a rescan is a necessity. Also, it's recommended that you kill UserData/Thumbnails/Music as well.

To sum up:

1. Albumartist tag is supported in all major tagging formats.

2. Albums are considered unique if they have the same name and artist.

3. Delete your userdata/thumbnails/music + rescan everything into the library.

Any comments/bugs etc. please let me know.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[lexicon]

Sounds like a good approach. I've got a moderately large collection, well-tagged, with albumartist used sometimes but not always, and tracks nicely organized into one folder per album (so it worked perfectly in the old system), all with a folder.jpg. I'll start using the new library now.

[sho]

Just installed yesterdays build, threw out the music library and scanned again.
Just to make sure, are all albums that have more than one single entry in the "Artist" field classified as compilations?
(That really does not make sense for albums with guest artists.)

[jmarshall]

Short answer: You should be just fine. If it worked before, it should work still.

Long answer:

The logic is as follows:

1. For each folder, Assemble a list of albums and songs on each album as follows:

a. Grab all songs in the folder.

b. Run through these and throw out anything with an albumartist tag (we presume the user knows what they're doing)

c. Check whether this songs album has been added to the list - checks only on albumname at this stage. If so, add it to the list of songs for that album, otherwise, add the album + song to the list.

Once we've done that (ie we have a list of albumnames, and a list of songs associated with each of those albumnames) we do the filtering for two kinds of compilation albums. It works like this:

2. For each albumname in the folder, categorise it as follows:
a. Run through the songs assigned to this albumname. If the primary artist of any track is different, assume it's a various artist album. We set the albumartist field to "Various Artists".

b. If the primary artist of all tracks agree, but secondary artist(s) disagree, then we assume it's an album by the primary artist, featuring the secondary artist(s) on some tracks. We set the albumartist field to the primary artist.

What's a primary artist you ask? In artist tags of the form:

artist1 / artist2 / artist3

we consider the first artist before " / " (space slash space) to be the primary artist. In tag formats that allow more than one artist field (eg vorbistags) then the first one is the primary artist.

Ideally, albums with guest artists should be tagged as such to begin with, via the albumartist tag, but we're nice, in that we at least try to auto-identify some other common cases.

Hope this sums the process up well enough.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[sho]

Ok, I will have to look at the tags when I get home.
But It is apparent that XBMC is categorizing albums with the 'Artist' tag as "Artist1, Artist2" or "Artist1 & Artist2" and 'Album Artist' as "Artist1" as compilations.
"Artist1, Artist2" and "Artist1 & Artist2" seem to be common conventions at the CD database sites.
(This applies to the 8519 build)

[jmarshall]

They may seem to be common conventions, but they're not what XBMC considers separate artists. It only considers artists separate if they are separated by " / ", or are in separate tags completely (eg vorbistags can do this).

If you want to label your artists like that, then please also set the albumartist tag. foobar2000 can do this, among others.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[sho]

Thats just it.. my build of XBMC seems to categorize albums as collections even IF the Album Artist tag is in place. (as Artist1)

[jmarshall]

That's because you don't have 8526 or newer.

[sho]

mmkay, (keeping up is the hardest part )

[sho]

Question, is Albumartist then a valid <rule> in smart playlists?
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/inde..._Playlists

[jmarshall]

Not as yet, no.

[jmarshall]

Ask and you shall receive.

Better various artists filtering for those with lots of albums in the same directory - it now rules out albums as candidates for various artists albums if the songs assigned to the album contain overlapping track numbers (eg two track 3's).

And "albumartist" may now be used in smart playlists.

Also, a "Year" node is now at the root of library view.

The "Search" button on the right is now identical to the search node of the library root. I've left it up to skinners to decide whether to include it or not.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[lexicon]

Also, a "Year" node is now at the root of library view.

cool

The "Search" button on the right is now identical to the search node of the library root

very cool

[KingJames]

Can i a request a new/custom node to be added Ive added custom fields to my mp3 files.

[jmarshall]

You can, ofcourse, request it, however I doubt I'll bother implementing it as I don't see the demand for it.

Cheers,
Jonathan