[steve1977]

I am revisiting my tags and wanted to check with @DaveBlake on how exactly the albumartists (with "s") is working / supposed to work?

1) I have added albumartists tag via Picard adding script "$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)". Was wondering whether I also need to add something like albumartistssort or how does Kodi pick up the sort order?

2) In which instances does Kodi read the albumartists tag? I noticed that sometimes my albumartist and albumartists are inconsistent and it appears Kodi is scanning albumartist if just one artist in the tag?

3) I noticed there appears no albumartists tag to be present in m4a files (alac)? Even if I re-add them, they don't seem to "stick". Is this a Picard issue or are they somewhere there and Picard just cannot see them?


Thanks in advance for your help!

[DaveBlake]

1) There is no "albumartisssort" (note 3 x "s") tag. Kodi parses the ALBUMARTISTSORT (TSO2), ARTISTSORT (TSOP) and COMPOSERSORT (TSOC) tags to find sort names for the artists given in the tags. It is obviously possible to confuse this parsing, but it will handle the obvious.

2) It always reads the ALBUMARTISTS tag, if it is present, in ID3, APE (Mp3 files), Vorbis (FLAC files) tag formats and mp4 files. However it only uses these values if there are multiple artists - that was the purpose of this tag: to clarify/separate out multiple artists from a single description string. So you are correct, if there is only one artist to match to an mbid then Kodi uses ALBUMARTIST, not ALBUMARTISTS

The parsing logic is in code here https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/Krypto...um.cpp#L46

3) For mp4 files Kodi is looking for the ALBUMARTISTS tag to be called "----:com.apple.iTunes:ALBUMARTISTS" (similar to "----:com.apple.iTunes:ARTISTS" for ARTISTS) , but I don't know if it made it into the full release of Picard. Neither are documented, so probably best asking them.

[steve1977]

Thanks for your quick reply.

re 1 - What sort-logic does Kodi apply in the artist view (applied albumartist only). Alphabetically from albumartist or from artistsort? For example, Joshi Mizu (https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/7c...44a9e618b3) under J or under M?

re 3 - what about M4A (not MP4)? Not supported? If so, multi-artist would revert back to albumartist as albumartists doesn't exist?

[DaveBlake]

The artist sort name facility is an addition for Leia (save any confusion to others reading)

At the moment to enable the use of artist sort name you need to add the following to advancedsettings.xml

Code:

<advancedsettings>
    <musiclibrary>
        <useartistsortname>true</useartistsortname>
        <promptfulltagscan>true</promptfulltagscan>
    </musiclibrary>
</advancedsettings>

Obviously you need to scan music files with sort tags into the library, and <promptfulltagscan> enabled causes "Scan to library" faciity to prompt for re-scanning music files that are already in the library and have not changed. This way a migrated library (hence not having sort names even though they may be in the music files) can re-scanned without having to drop the source etc.

These options will be incoroprated into the settings UI fully before Leia is released, this is just a phase#1 of implementation, the UI a bit clunky but the facility works.

Bottomline: want Joshi Mizu under the "M" not the "J", using a nightly enable the sorting.

3) Kodi attempts to scan tags from .mp4, .m4a, .m4r, .m4b, .m4p" and .3g2 files in the same way using the Taglib library looking to "iTunes" format tags. Sorry if my abbreviation using "mp4" to mean all of these confused you.

I have no idea how well this works as I don't own any music videos to test with
I have read elsewhere that MP3tag can tag iTunes format, so maybe try that?

Yes if Kodi can not find an ALBUMARTISTS tag it does what it can to parse multiple artist names from ALMBUMARTIST. Remember Krypton on has facility to add <artistseparators> to improve this task, it will cope by default with "artist1; artist2 / artist3" (but not "," or " and " as a separator as this is in band names e.g. "Earth, Wind & Fire". So if Mp3tag can't add the ALBUMARTISTS tag to iTunes format either then just take care with what is in the ALMBUMARTIST for those multiple artist videos.

[steve1977]

Thanks daveblake.

How will Leia deal with the situation described above, where there are three albumartists? Given Kodi does not read albumartists_sort or albumartist_sort tag, what would it apply to sort Joshi Mizu? M or J?

M4A is actually not a music video, but a lossless audio (the apple one supported by Itunes). The Picard forum is not overly active. I can just try it out though. Do I need to include any script or should it work out of the box? I don't see any tag as the one you have described above, but may miss to add a script or option?

I am using Picard (not MP3Tag).

[DaveBlake]

Steve I prefer FLAC format (lossless and generic rather than proprietry like iTunes), I have no idea of how any tagging software deals with .m4a files. I'm also not a Picard expert, I find I use a mix of it and Mp3tag depending on what I am doing.

I am using Picard (not MP3Tag).

Well if you find that you can't add add ALBUMARTISTS tags to .m4a files with Picard, I suggest that you try Mp3tag.

Sorting:
I repeat Leia will process the ALBUMARTISTSORT (TSO2) tag.
Actually it uses a combination of ALBUMARTISTSORT (TSO2), ARTISTSORT (TSOP) and COMPOSERSORT (TSOC) tags to find sort names.

Say you have:
ALBUMARTIST = "Dvořák; Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi" - what you want the player to show
ALBUMARTISTS = "Antonín Dvořák / Scottish National Orchestra / Neeme Järvi" - use standard separator or multiple value tags (both ID3 v2.4 and Vorbis support that)
ALBUMARTISTSORT = "Dvořák, Antonín; Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Järvi, Neeme" - a single string value
+ 3 x Muiscbrainz AlbumArtist IDs tags

Kodi will parse and identify the following individual artist names and sort names
"Antonín Dvořák", "Dvořák, Antonín"
"Scottish National Orchestra" [sort = name]
"Neeme Järvi", Järvi, Neeme"

Enable sort names in Leia, and sorting artists by name will show Antonín Dvořák under "D" and Neeme Järvi under "J"

And if it did not have the ALBUMARTISTS (note s) tag (although having one would be best), then Kodi would still get it right, although in that exact example Antonín Dvořák would be called just "Dvořák" as it is tagged.

However if the multiple artists are less clear to parse, then ALBUMARTISTS tag becomes essential. For example
ALBUMARTIST = "B.B.King and Eric Clapton"
ALBUMARTISTSORT = "King, B.B., Clapton, Eric"
+ 2 MBID tags
Kodi needs more infomation to spot the artists that match the mbids, let alone know what each sort name is. Words like "and" can be in a band name, so Kodi can't know that this time it is to split using it.

But Kodi has lots of chances to find the sort name for an artist e.g from ARTIST and ARTISTSORT tags, or Eric Clapton track from another album with
ALBUMARTIST = "Eric Clapton"
ALBUMARTISTSORT = Clapton, Eric"
would be enough.

It takes sortname when it can find it, and applies it to the entire library (another advantage of a db not just a list of files).

But honestly this is making things sound far more complex than they are.

[scott967]

I create M4A files by extracting audio stream from MP4 using ffmpeg and then muxing into M4A again with ffmpeg. I don't think there is any particular requirement on the stream codec -- mine generally are AAC. The M4A container uses exactly the same metadata tag structure (Apple proprietary but reverse-engineered) so whatever tags you have in MP4 work the same in M4A.

scott s.
.

[steve1977]

I create M4A files by extracting audio stream from MP4 using ffmpeg and then muxing into M4A again with ffmpeg. I don't think there is any particular requirement on the stream codec -- mine generally are AAC. The M4A container uses exactly the same metadata tag structure (Apple proprietary but reverse-engineered) so whatever tags you have in MP4 work the same in M4A.

Thanks Scott967. Do you get customized tags to work (albumartists). Normal tagging works with M4A, but albumartists does not.

[steve1977]

@scott967, are you using Picard and found a way to get artists (with s) tag with MP4/M4A files?

@DaveBlake, you are right. Before I try out MP3Tag, let me send you this link. It implies that artists tag should work with Picard, but somehow it does not for me.

https://github.com/metabrainz/picard/blo...ats/mp4.py

[DaveBlake]

Steve that code implies that Picard will add an ARTISTS tag for mp4/m4a files, but not an ALBUMARTISTS tag.

This confirms 3) of your OP, "no albumartists tag to be present in m4a". It is a Picard issue.

I can only repeat if Picard does not allow you to add this tag then I suggest you try Mp3tag. Otherwise you could use nice generic FLAC files instead of propriatory iTunes format, lossless and no problems tagging that format.

[steve1977]

Thanks. Even artists tag appears broken for MP4 files (when tagged with Picard)? It only shows the first artist, but not the others.

Unfortunately, I cannot use FLAC as they are not supported by Itunes, which I'd still like to use.

That's really unfortunate that this is not yet working in Picard. Not as easy for me to switch to MP3Tag. I am a heavy user of the Picard scripting function. Also, MP3Tag does not appear to have an easy way to update 50k songs in one go.

[DaveBlake]

Also, MP3Tag does not appear to have an easy way to update 50k songs in one go.

I think it has script capability, but I'm not an expert in Mp3tag or Picard.

Anyway why 50k of songs? You only need to worry about ALBUMARTISTS on those albums that are collaborations (more than one album artist involved) and that do not use a defined artist separator in the ALBUMARTIST tag.

The other solution woud be to change the ALBUMARTIST tag from things like "artist1, artist2 & artist3", (that needs an ALBUMARTISTS tag to decode because "," and "&" could be part of a single band name) to something like "artist1 / artist2 / artist3".

[steve1977]

Got it, thanks for your help!

I have a tricky one (unrelated to my tagging issue) that Kodi does not identify correctly:

Falco curated by Blank & Jones
https://musicbrainz.org/release/9530560d...050a228002

It separates it into "Falco curated by Blank" and "Jones".

[DaveBlake]

Falco curated by Blank & Jones
https://musicbrainz.org/release/9530560d...050a228002

It separates it into "Falco curated by Blank" and "Jones".

That is the Kodi artist name parsing doing its best to find names to match the 2 artist mbid tags that Picard has provided. It tries but fails.

So either (preferable) add
ALBUMARTISTS = "Falco / Blank & Jones"

or assuming it is an mp4 file, and you fail to find a way to get Mp3tag or some other tag edito to add an albumartists tags in iTunes tag format change the
ALBUMARTIST = "Falco / Blank & Jones"

[scott967]

@scott967, are you using Picard and found a way to get artists (with s) tag with MP4/M4A files?

@DaveBlake, you are right. Before I try out MP3Tag, let me send you this link. It implies that artists tag should work with Picard, but somehow it does not for me.

https://github.com/metabrainz/picard/blo...ats/mp4.py

I use a combo of MediaMonkey and MP3Tag. I only tag M4A/MP4 as needed to generate music video .nfo files, so I haven't used any of the music library "hint" tags, or other music-unique tags.

scott s.
.