2017-11-06, 15:13
(2017-11-02, 23:35)Bryan_W Wrote: So, while I haven't read every single post in this thread, from what I did read I got the impression that idiots where welcome to join in on the testing........so here I am. I've spent the last few days playing around with version 1025.Yes testing very welcome. What made Kodi such a great media player is the enthusiasts that contributed to it, with either design/coding skills or by testing and feeding back in a helpful and unexpectant way. Having millions of users is a huge burden, and those of us that work on Kodi would happily have fewer of them. But having more enthusiasts supporting the project development by testing things is very welcome indeed.
(2017-11-02, 23:35)Bryan_W Wrote: Second, I have to admit that most of my "playing" has actually been fixing mistakes in tags that were only noticed while analyzing my newly exported folder structure...... most errors being caused by the Performer/Musiciancredits field.Yes good quality consistent tagging is still key to getting a good library
Kodi has more robust tag processing than it did, but good to find and fix any inconsistencies in your files.
I have been waiting for more feedback from you because at first I didn't completely understand what you were experiencing. Now I will see if I can get any issues that you have not been able to resolve yourself.
(2017-11-02, 23:35)Bryan_W Wrote: With that said, so far I only have a couple of observations:Yes that kind of tagging error effectively creates two albums in one folder. On export Kodi spots that and separates them. But I will make a note of that experience for the wiki.
a.) A lot of album sub folder names were appended with partial MBID's (similar to the post where Dave wrote about artists having the same name) but this is with albums that don't have the same name and it also doesn't seem to be consistent. - My album folder under Aretha Franklin is "Aretha Franklin_918d" but my album folder under Bob Dylan is just "Bob Dylan" - no MBID appended.
b.) Not sure I can clearly describe this one, but the bottom line is that if I do multiple exports to different directories, the newly generated "trees" don't get the same number of "folder.jpg's" and fanart.jpg's...... no scanning or scraping in between exports. I'll post back if I pick up on a pattern as to when a folder gets a jpg transferred and when it doesn't.
EDIT: It appears (probably no surprise to most) that the appended folders are the result of tagging errors. My initial export generated a sub folder for Bob Marley's album "Legend" to "Legend_edfd". Checking the "album" (actually only have 2 tracks from it) with mp3tag, I found that one track did not have a MB album id while the other did. Fixed it, updated/cleaned library, and did a fresh export and the album sub folder was not appended. Then checked the next artist with an "appended folder issue" and all of it's tracks have the same Album id but I'm sure there's some kind of tag issue involved. I'll try to take note of the various causes as I go thru the affected artist.
An explanation of how local artist artwork is handled in Leia, and how that works with the improved export facility is yet to be written. Some of it is burried in this thread, but those doing testing now are running on intuition only. I know I need to write up the basics at least (and then have others improve it), meanwhile here is part of it...
The output form export can go to 3 different places:
- Single file: A uniquely named xml file is produced that can later be imported into a music library (that has already been populated by scanning tags from music files) to modify/add the additional artist and album information and artwork. A nice and complete approach to replicating additional info in a clean install, but editing one big file (if you want to change things) can be hard for people.
- Separate files per entry: This creates an <artist name>/<album name> structure in the specified destination and both art and nfo files beneath them. Useful for checking what export produces without mxing in with your music files and any existsing art or nfo. Or if you just want to edit nfo for specific artists or albums you can dump the lot somewhere, pickout the specific ones and make changes etc. then use them to manually replace those in the "library folders".
- To Library folders: This puts the art and nfo files in the locations that Kodi will subsequently scrape them from. That is the artist NFO and art is placed under <artist name> folders in the Artist Information Folder (a location that is part of Kodi settings, if you don't have one set it will as for it). The album NFO and art is placed in the album folder along with the music files
However there is nothing stopping users from giving the location of the Artist Information Folder as the destination folder when doing 2) (or having done 2. making the destination folder they used the Artist Information Folder). This results in album folders within the artist folders in the Artist Information Folder. It is not a problem, but Kodi is not looking there for album NFO or art when it scrapes.
That could be confusing for users, and I suspect it is what you have done. However it is natural to keep the additional album info alongside the music files of that album, and it is also backwards compatibile. But artists do not all fit in the music folder structure in a nice way, so a separate location for their additional info is necesary. hence a split location for library folders.
The other thing users can do is set the Artist Information Folder to be the same as their music folder (beneath which thay have album artist folders). Then export to 3) results in additional artists folders that don't have music beneath them. It will also create new folders for those albums artists where the artist name differes from the folder name containing the music for that artist. Similar mixing will happen to albums.
You may have experienced that too Bryan, I'm not quite sure.
I am open to suggestions for how the UI for this can be improved to make things clearer. But it is important to realise that music library export is not a backup facility (for that copy the db), it is an advanced user facility for management of additional local artist and album info and art. Beginners will be scraping online art etc., this is for those that want to go further, have exotic music collections or are control freaks for what data/art they have (no insult intended as I speak of myself).
(2017-11-05, 23:19)Bryan_W Wrote: Just following up..... eliminated a number of problem folders by one of the following:1) I'm not sure what tags had colons. Folder naming deals with removal of reserved characters, so not sure what effect your edited tagging was having. Can you explain?
1) Removed "illegal" characters (ie colons and such) from MusicBrainz modified album tags that I hadn't anticipated being turned into a folder name so I hadn't worried about it.
2) Changed disc number from 1/1 to just 1......really couldn't believe that would work, but it did on some albums.
3) Similar to #1, renamed a "music folder" which wasn't exactly what the tags said the name of the album was.....apparently location matters now
2) Not clear on how disc number tag could have had an impact either. Can you give example?
3) No, just as before the name of the folder containing music files for an album does not matter. I think what you are experiencing is the result of setting export destination for export to separate files to be the same as your music source. The artist folder name matched, but the album folder name below it did not.
I guess it is too easy to do that unintentionally, and then draw those conclusions from the results. Not sure how to discourage it, as it is not "wrong" just creates results that can confuse. Maybe some rewording of labels? Export to separate files is the more a diagnostic tool than for everyday use, used with an isolated destination for output rather than mixed in with music.
(2017-11-05, 23:19)Bryan_W Wrote: That left me with nine albums that I could not find anything wrong with in the tags or location folder names. They are all self-titled albums (as in Dire Straits/Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac/Fleetwood Mac etc)What exactly was the resulting folder layout for those 9 albums, sorry but I have become lost along the way about what happend. Can you clarify please.
All I could do there was to remove the MB album id from the tags completely and then verify that the "export folders" weren't appended with something else .......they were not, so I'm calling it "good for now".
As for inconsistent exporting of folder.jpg's, no pattern found yet but since I already have them with my music files I'm not too worried about it.
And was that artist of album folder.jpgs?
I think it would help to export all items to separate files, with a destination folder completely away from both music sources and Artist Info Folder, and see what you get. Then come back with anything unexpected in the resulting <destination>/<artist name>/<album name> folder layout. Thank you for your enthusiasm.
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