I've really been procrastinating about moving my iTunes music library to Kodi because I'm sure there will be some issues. Last night I started just experimenting with a few albums, but I'm seeing some potential problems and want to try and resolve as many of these as possible ahead of time.
1) iTunes uses a file naming format tracknumber. nameofsong. My music Addons use a format nameofalbum - nameofsong. Both formats seem to work with Kodi. Does it really matter which one is used? I can see that Kodi is displaying the exact file name including the track number so from a personal preference having the name of the album displayed with the name of the song might be better during playback.
2) I have some albums from various artists. Mostly movie soundtracks. iTunes uses a folder structure Compilations/nameofalbum/audio files. Will this work ok with Kodi? From the little info I've been able to find, it looks like Kodi is pulling most (maybe all?) of its info from the id3 tags. Couldn't really find anything that shows exactly what info is obtained from id3 tags and what is obtained from file names and folder structure. I thought at first that all the info used in Kodi was coming from the id3 tags but maybe I'm wrong about that since Kodi is displaying track names based on the file name.
If anyone can point me to a good "How To" for setting up the music library that would be wonderful. A good music media manager for Mac would also be nice.
2) all info is taken from tags. none from the filename/folder structure.
Tagger recommendation:
Musicbrainz Picard
(2014-11-06, 17:16)helta Wrote: [ -> ]2) all info is taken from tags. none from the filename/folder structure.
Tagger recommendation: Musicbrainz Picard
Then is there an option somewhere to display the track name rather than the file name? The few files that I added yesterday were displaying the file name during playback. Would be nice not to have to rename all the files.
have you scanned your media into the library and not just using files view?
I scanned it and am viewing from the Music menu. Thanks for the tagger recommendation btw.
Just to expand a bit. Concur that proper use of metadata tags within song files is pretty much mandatory if you want to use the music "library", vice simply browsing the folder/file structure. It's best if all song files in a folder are "part of" a single album. In that case you have the option of using a "folder.jpg" file as an album cover icon, and an "album.nfo" file to provide additional data about the album (which otherwise might be scraped from an online data source). Then, it also helps to have the folder containing the album song files as a child/sub-folder of another folder which represents the album artist (or, at least the first album artist if there are more than one) or "various artists" for a compilation album (also use "various artists" as the album artist tag in song files). If you do this, it also provides the option of using a "folder.jpg" file as the artist thumbnail/icon (typical in portrait size), a "fanart.jpg" file as a background 16:9 image, and an "artist.nfo" file to provide additional data about the (first) album artist (which otherwise might be scraped from an online source). Some skins will also look for an "extrafanart" subfolder in this artist folder to display a background slideshow of fanarts.
Scraping using the default scrapers looks first for a musicbrainz ID in the tags for the album and album artists and uses that in searching. If musicbrainz is not provided, the artist text name and album text name are used instead. The text searches can fail, result in wrong associations, or require manual selection of correct name depending on what the search results return (musicbrainz ID searches should return a unique result).
I don't have any iTunes, but I think the song file tag readers / parsers are set up to understand any tags that iTunes uses. Agree that use of dedicated tagging software can ensure things are scanned smoothly and properly into the music library.
scott s.
.
Thanks. Still trying to figure out the song naming though. I thought at first that Kodi was just using the file name for the song name being displayed in Music, but the more I dig into this the more variations I see. Some songs are titled
albumname - trackname. Some are titled
tracknumber. trackname. A few are titled
albumname - tracknumber. trackname.
I'd really like to get a handle on this before I start importing a bunch more music if anyone has any ideas. All the id3 tags I have checked just have the name of the song in the title field.
If you go to System/Settings/Music/File lists/ you see some options (you must set the settings level to "advanced" or "expert" first to see all these). There is something called the "track naming template" which allows you to modify how a "track" is listed in the listings. The default is track#. artist - title (and on the right side duration in min
ec). Not all views display all this. The "track" display is just that -- for display. The tracknumber, artist, and title are all stored separately in the library and can be used for grouping, searching, etc. (Aside: in "smart playlist" filter rules there is a rule for "track" which actually is the "tracknumber").
scott s.
.
(2014-11-07, 23:25)scott967 Wrote: [ -> ]If you go to System/Settings/Music/File lists/ you see some options (you must set the settings level to "advanced" or "expert" first to see all these). There is something called the "track naming template" which allows you to modify how a "track" is listed in the listings. The default is track#. artist - title (and on the right side duration in minec). Not all views display all this. The "track" display is just that -- for display. The tracknumber, artist, and title are all stored separately in the library and can be used for grouping, searching, etc. (Aside: in "smart playlist" filter rules there is a rule for "track" which actually is the "tracknumber").
scott s.
.
Great. Exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks. Knew it would be something in the settings that I was just missing.
I'm still hoping someone can recommend a media manager for music. Similar to Ember or ViMediaManager for videos. Been watching
Symphony, but it's windows only and still in early alpha stage. I'm sure it will be a while before a multi-platform version is available.