[antisuck]

I can only offer a couple of data points that may or may not be helpful.

- In my experiments, the existence of MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID in any of the files caused the boxset feature to fail, when used this way.  Probably because I am basically tricking Kodi into displaying multiple different albums like one big release.
- Likewise, the presence of an album.nfo file anywhere in the chain caused it to fail.
- I was only ever interested in "grouping" sets of albums that were by definition composed of different file types with different tagging schemes, FLAC (vorbis) and DSF (id3).  It wasn't my goal to try and group sets of SACDs together - only to group individual SACD albums with previous releases from CD, DVD-A and BluRay, those all being in FLAC.

Furthermore, once a failure occurred, I was only able to correct things by physically removing the files, removing all tags, cleaning the library and starting over.  Sometimes.  I don't know why.

In the end, I decided to convert all my SACD rips to 24/88.2 PCM FLAC, file the DSFs in a remote corner of my NAS for another time, and enjoy creating a pretty library with a bunch of FLAC files.  My current system doesn't have a DAC that can decode DSD anyway, so no loss there.

Also be advised, I don't think there's currently a way for a smart playlist or such to return an individual "disc" from a boxset rather than returning the "album", which is now the entire set.  So if that type of functionality is important to you, plan ahead.  For me it was kind of a bummer since I will be unable to pull discs tagged with "surround" or "sacd" without pulling the entire associated discset.  I suspect it won't be a big deal for this type of usage with opera.

[DaveBlake]

Trying to trick Kodi into displaying multiple different albums each with a MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID like one big release is not going to work. Kodi uses the mbid when it is present to uniquely identify the album.

It will also pick up and use suitably located album.nfo to provide additional album information.

Furthermore, once a failure occurred, I was only able to correct things by physically removing the files, removing all tags, cleaning the library and starting over.

Yes, there is no nice way to update the identifying tag values of something without a clean out, I really can't see a robust way to make that possible. Video library has a management facility because the data is only in the db derrived from scraping the filename (or maybe from an nfo) while music lib entries are tied to the embedded tag data. The tag basis for the library has lots of benfits, but a few downsides.

The songs from a disc can be filtered using smart playlist rules, but it is user unfriendly (fixing it is something lost on my todo list). You need to know that disc + track are held as a combined number and base the rule on that. I am being vague becasue I can't check details right now and so working from memory, sorry.

...and enjoy creating a pretty library with a bunch of FLAC files

Yeap, do that @antisuck 
Also great that you are using Kodi creatively, pushing it to do more of what you want.

[black_eagle]

@DaveBlake You can do it with 'disctitle contains' and an album(set) name and/or artist in a song playlist and you will just get the tracks for the relevant disc(s), but I think that @antisuck  is more after seeing a list of discs where the disc title contains 'SACD' or whatever and then being able to navigate into one of those discs or play it.  The navigation isn't up to that as it stands.

Tech question - would grouping by disctitle and setting pItem->m_bIsFolder = true facilitate a nav view like this if the isFolder parameter was passed in as part of the url as an option ?  Just a random thought for later

[antisuck]

Trying to trick Kodi into displaying multiple different albums each with a MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID like one big release is not going to work. Kodi uses the mbid when it is present to uniquely identify the album.

Yep. A big part of my massive retagging project is getting Musicbrainz IDs in everything. Once I started playing these games with boxsets, I chose to forgo ALBUM ID while always including RELEASEGROUP ID , ARTIST ID, TRACK ID. Hopefully this won't bite me down the line.

Yes, there is no nice way to update the identifying tag values of something without a clean out, I really can't see a robust way to make that possible. Video library has a management facility because the data is only in the db derrived from scraping the filename (or maybe from an nfo) while music lib entries are tied to the embedded tag data. The tag basis for the library has lots of benfits, but a few downsides.

The songs from a disc can be filtered using smart playlist rules, but it is user unfriendly (fixing it is something lost on my todo list). You need to know that disc + track are held as a combined number and base the rule on that. I am being vague becasue I can't check details right now and so working from memory, sorry.

Understand I don't "blame" Kodi for not doing exactly what i want it to do in every case, sorry if my previous post came across as negative. I see myself as playing on the bleeding edge in my own small way, and mostly wanted to let HeresJohnny know about some of the pitfalls that I ran across in case it helps him achieve what he's after. Your ongoing attention to all this is GREATLY appreciated.

I think that @antisuck is more after seeing a list of discs where the disc title contains 'SACD' or whatever and then being able to navigate into one of those discs or play it.

Spot on.

Tech question - would grouping by disctitle and setting pItem->m_bIsFolder = true facilitate a nav view like this if the isFolder parameter was passed in as part of the url as an option ? Just a random thought for later

I barely understand that, are you saying that Kodi can display groups of songs in an arbitrary "container" (like album view) based on setting this IsFolder flag? Super cool if it's true. Don't get me started thinking...
And I can't fail to mention my appreciation for the work you've been doing recently. Great stuff.

[black_eagle]

I barely understand that, are you saying that Kodi can display groups of songs in an arbitrary "container" (like album view) based on setting this IsFolder flag? Super cool if it's true. Don't get me started thinking...

Ah, that was more aimed as a question for Dave, and relates to Kodi internals.   I have a very vague idea of how I might achieve what you're after but I haven't looked at it yet.  I'm just going to let it buzz around in my head until it gets a little more formed and then we'll see if it indeed leads anywhere.  In the meantime, I'm hoping the date stuff isn't too far from fruition as personally, I find it massively useful.

And I can't fail to mention my appreciation for the work you've been doing recently. Great stuff.

Thanks very much !!   It's just things that I have long thought would improve the way the library works or to be more accurate, things that I always wished I could do when navigating around. Never thought I would actually implement some stuff myself mind, but if you don't try then you never will.  Dave has been a massive help along the way, I couldn't have done it without his invaluable knowledge and input.  I've learnt loads that I never thought I would, it's fun to do and worthwhile when other users find it useful, so I've personally got a lot out of it.  Plus of course, my box sets are separated out and easily navigable

[DaveBlake]

I didn't take anything you said the wrong way @antisuck, explore, enjoy, make Kodi fit your needs. I just wanted to point you away from futile efforts or indicate what was to be expected etc.

Editing mbid tags: it really is best either to have the full set of values that Picard provides or not to have any. If I remember correctly without album mbid the processing ignores the other mbids so you probably get away with what you are doing. But the tag processing was designed (before me) for files to either have the set of mbids or not to have them, hence home edits can produce unexpected/unwanted outcomes.

[antisuck]

Editing mbid tags: it really is best either to have the full set of values that Picard provides or not to have any. If I remember correctly without album mbid the processing ignores the other mbids so you probably get away with what you are doing. But the tag processing was designed (before me) for files to either have the set of mbids or not to have them, hence home edits can produce unexpected/unwanted outcomes.

Ahh. In researching how to proceed I read this post by scott967 without understanding the entire context. Oh well, no matter. By the time I am done, every single music file I own should be identifiable in a pretty unambiguous manner, with the additional metadata I find valuable (and little other redundant information) saved in .nfo files. Thanks for your insight and encouragement.

[HeresJohnny]

Thanks @antisuck for the detailed exposition of your tagging process. It looks like we think very much alike, as I also use MBIDs without the ALBUMID if the exact release is not available at musicbrainz. I do submit a fair share of edits, mind you, but I have some personal tagging habits which do not comply with MB habits (like not putting composer and artist together as album artist in classical releases). Also, especially in the case of SACDs and DVD-As it's very frustrating that multichannel mixes are often omitted by the original editor or SACD content is tagged as CD layer.

That said it looks like you were willing to endure a fair amount of pain to get your music into a state that's displayed nicely in Kodi. I guess people in this thread all suffer from their fair amount of OCD

@DaveBlake will be happy to hear that I gave Picard another try and will use it as a starting point from hereonafter. It's just less hassle that way. Unfortunately, the tags created there now make track display for DSF and MP3 in foobar2000 a little wonky. For example, genres are often not split properly if there is no space between entries.

From my point of view id3 tags as defined by Musicbrainz should be avoided at all costs since the names used are completely different from the other tagging schemes. For MP3 I can work around that by prioritizing APEv2 tags but for DSF files I will need to start lobbying a better and universally agreed upon solution in various forums, starting with not using id3v2.3 tags (which are missing some required fields).

[DaveBlake]

DaveBlake will be happy to hear that I gave Picard another try and will use it as a starting point from hereonafter. It's just less hassle that way. Unfortunately, the tags created there now make track display for DSF and MP3 in foobar2000 a little wonky. For example, genres are often not split properly if there is no space between entries.

Yes, less hassle

From my point of view id3 tags as defined by Musicbrainz should be avoided at all costs since the names used are completely different from the other tagging schemes. For MP3 I can work around that by prioritizing APEv2 tags but for DSF files I will need to start lobbying a better and universally agreed upon solution in various forums, starting with not using id3v2.3 tags (which are missing some required fields).

I don't think the issue is Picard and writing tags, but reading tags from DSF files - FFmpeg has flaws, and Taglib does not do it (bespoke fork not withstanding, so maybe some day...)

[black_eagle]

Picard uses the same tag names for ID3 as are laid out in the official specification for both versions.  ApeV2 tags are less well specc'd (you need to download the SDK from monkeysaudio to get them) and Vorbis tags even less so.  The fact that both of those have a lot more tags in use than are laid out in the specifications (and the fact that they are named differently) is purely down to common use within the tagging community and the co-operation of the authors of tagging programs.  Vorbis only defines 15 actual tags and Ape V2, 23.  By comparison, id3v2.4 defines 47. (More actually but those 47 cover our use-cases here).

It actually takes a fair bit of research to be sure that the tag names you are reading from the various different formats are actually the names you want and that they correspond to a similar field in another tag format (which isn't always the case).  Throw FFmpeg's tag reading into the mix and add a dash of Taglib moving id3v2.3 tags into v2.4 names (something I only found out it does recently) and it can become quite a minefield at times!

[HeresJohnny]

Yeah, my id3v2 comment was a gut reaction. The problem is actually not with the tags, but how well different softwares write them.

[HeresJohnny]

I have a 14-SACD boxset of the complete Ring of the Nibelungen by Solti. I've converted them to taggable DSF-files and tagged them correctly (I hope) with MBIDs.

Finally, I was able to resolve this. Even though some shortcomings with taglib/ffmpeg were discovered, in the end it was basically... a tagging issue. To apply the boxset feature and add disc titles I had used a combination of (example):

Code:

<MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM TYPE>: Album; Boxset
<DISCSUBTITLE>: «multiple items» Das Rheingold (1958); Die Walküre (1965); Siegfried (1962); Götterdämmerung (1965)


The correct combination for MP3 and DSF files are in fact:

Code:

<MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM TYPE>: Album; Boxset
<SET SUBTITLE>: «multiple items» Das Rheingold (1958); Die Walküre (1965); Siegfried (1962); Götterdämmerung (1965)


where <SET SUBTITLE> is written as a TSST frame which is present in id3v2.4 only. The actual field name <SET SUBTITLE> is not listed in the official mapping overview, I only gleaned that from tags applied by Picard.

(But to be fair, as long as there is a tag reading issue with taglib, the boxset feature doesn't activate at the moment for DSF files unless the album MBID is removed)

[black_eagle]

where <SET SUBTITLE> is written as a TSST frame which is present in id3v2.4 only. The actual field name <SET SUBTITLE> is not listed in the official mapping overview, I only gleaned that from tags applied by Picard.

The actual field name (frame name) is TSST for id3v2.4 tags.  That is quite clearly specified here (4.2.1 - TSST) and 'DISC SUBTITLE' -> TSST in the 'official mapping overview' that you refer to.

[HeresJohnny]

The actual field name (frame name) is TSST for id3v2.4 tags.  That is quite clearly specified here (4.2.1 - TSST) and 'DISC SUBTITLE' -> TSST in the 'official mapping overview' that you refer to.

Don't confuse me with facts!

[gibxxi]

Have not read the entire thread, but I get the basic scope of the discussion here. Just wanted to intone on how I set up my media library, and at the same time ask a question that's been bugging me for a while.

Currently, I have some albums / collections in my library twice, because of the (current) limitations over multi-disc sets, given that I don't (in the main) want to play back all the disks of a given set in one sitting, so still retaining the individual standalone albums in addition to the complete box set makes finding the album / disc of choice easier.

The issue I have at the moment with the way things work, at least in v18, is with disc artwork. Before Leia, Kodi would read the discart.png (or cdart.png) files from the same folder the music resided in. It didn't matter if it was in the album root folder, or in a "Disc X" subfolder. It seems, at least with several skins I've used in v18, that Kodi is only picking up discart.pngs from the "Disc 1" folder for any given multi-disc album. To clarify, my naing scheme in MusicBrainz Picard is as follows:

Single Disc Releases: Music Library  (Root Folder)\Album Artist\[Year] Album Name\Track# - Track Artist(s) - Track Title.ext

Multi-Disc Releases: Music Library  (Root Folder)\Album Artist\[Year] Album Name\Disc #\Disc#-Track# - Track Artist(s) - Track Title.ext (Please note the difference between Disc # and Disc#)

So this becomes...

Single Disk Album Example: Music\Aerosmith\[1973] Aerosmith\01 - Aerosmith - Make It.mp3

Multi-Disk Album Example: Music\[2001] Young Lust_ The Aerosmith Anthology\Disc 1\1-01 - Aerosmith - Let The Music Do The Talking.mp3

Now with the above being the case, and with both albums having complete discart.png coverage, if I play a track from Disc 2, from the multi-disk album, artwork shown in Kodi is still that of Disc 1. Who is at fault, Kodi or the skin in question? I ask the question since I've seen this problem in multiple skins, so at this point am suspecting this is a Kodi issue (since the above naming nomenclature worked fine in v17 (Krypton).

EDIT: To clarify, the folder.jpg and discart.png files reside with the music tracks, so for multi-disc albums, under the "Disc #" folder, and not in the parent (album) folder.

Dan / Gib.