[jackhulk]

Hello

I have a multi-disc album in one folder but separate folders for each disc, ie, CD1 & CD2. I've set 'discnumber' tag to '1/2' for CD1 and '2/2' for CD2, however all tracks are lumped together in music library as such....

1. Song 1 from CD1
1. Song 1 from CD2
2. Song 2 from CD1
2. Song 2 from CD2

Where am I going wrong please? I believe my disc numbering is correct as foobar2000 correct separates the two discs in library mode.

I don't believe the way I name my file and number track tag should come in to play here as the discnumber tag should identify the different discs, but just in case here is an example...

01 - Will You Remember Mine.mp3 (This is track 1, CD1)
(Track tag set to "01")

01 - So Much to Do.mp3 (This is track 1, CD2)
(Track tag set to "01")

Thank you

[WelshPaul]

Hi,

Mine is picking up the discnumber so it's not impossible in XBMC. It may be as simple as the sort order you choose when using the filter menu. If your sorting by title or name I don't think it will use the disc number, but on others like track or album sort it will.

Firstly to check it is picking up the tag could you check song information on a track. If it's reading the tag it should show disc 1 or 2. If not it's probably because different tagging softwares use different formats, so it may be worth just trying if tagging an album with just 1 or 2 rather than 1/2 and 2/2 makes any difference. See if any of that works and let us know.

[jackhulk]

DOH!!! I just came back here to edit my post to say what a numpty I've been! I was checking in the settings, messing with the 'track naming template' by adding the %S so that the disc number should show in library view, and sure enough it did, so of course meant discnumber tag IS being picked up. Then it was a simply case of figuring out why it wasn't 'sorting' in the correct order, which of course was due to what you rightly pointed out, I hadn't correctly changed the 'sort by' field. Soooo stupid, but in my defense, I'm only just apply MP3 tags right now, and trying to sort out the mess that is my music library, which is a brain busting thought by itself!

All sorted now (pun intended)

Anyway, thanks Paul. Hopefully at least this post will help another newbie at some point, if there ever is a newbie and numpty as me.

[WelshPaul]

No worries, glad you're sorted. Happy tagging.

[jackhulk]

I do have one related new question please. Is it advisable to tag discnumber as 1/2, 2/2, or simply 1,2 or does it not really matter? I mainly use foobar2000 and XBMC and both seem to be happy with either formatting, but I'm just thinking in terms of compatibly with other software I might use in the future?

[WelshPaul]

I imagine most decent software is written to recognise both. I think if you autoscrape with something like mp3tag from Discogs or other site they'll often use the 1/2, 2/2 type. Probably this is to do with lookups on Amazon and ITunes so may be worth using that format.

[jmarshall]

We should recognise both, yes. If you find a combo that we don't recognise, provide a file and we'll add it in

[jackhulk]

Nice one, thanks guys.

Would you say Discogs is the best database to use? I like the idea of just a limited amount of genre and then 'styles', which I guess I could create smart playlist from? How well does that work as I've only used one smart playlist before, all be it with movies (Top 250), so not to familiar with using them. I need to whip my music library in to sharp, but it's going to be very time consuming so want to make sure I get it right the first time.

[WelshPaul]

To be honest I find whatever db you scrape from it's going to depend on the idiosyncrasies of those who loaded the info originally. So you may find Mozart tagged as pop, etc. Also a bit like moves you may find some dbs give an album virtually every genre or style imaginable so it crops up in whatever playlist you design.

I did my tagging before using XBMC, which is why I'm used to an external scraper and editor. Others like Jonathan may know better how good the built-in scraper is. For popular well-known titles any database would probably work, but for the obscure ones I either searched Discogs or MusicBrainz (or did manually for classical). I took cover art from Amazon or if they were too low res searched google and pasted in from there. Unfortunately I'd suggest a bit of trial and error is probably best, doing a few albums and seeing whether you're getting the accuracy and level of detail you want. It all probably depends how picky you are. I would do a rough and ready first import so at least you're up and running and then over time go through and refine to your taste with an editor.

[jackhulk]

All makes sense. Thanks again.