2014-01-26, 16:17
Hi guys,
after updating to Gotham I had to take a closer look into into musicbrainz, because (unfortunately) XBMC seems to scan for all Musicbrain-data stored in the MP3-tags and makes use of it - no matter what other information might be included in other tag fields. It also seems that XBMC is scraping and using those Musicbrainz information no matter what kind of scraper you use (even if you select the scraper "local information only").
At first I tried to comply with this new feature and benefit from it. So started tagging my (already tagged) MP3-Files with the Musicbrainz-Infos using Picard. But I came across the following issues:
1. Some of my albums include songs that are not officially included in the retail version, like "Bonus-Tracks" or tracks that I just added myself because they somehow fit into the album. E.g. I have the 12-inch version of Depeche Mode's Strangelove and I also have some remixes like blind-mix and pain-mix that I added to that album. My tags do show "Depeche Mode" as Album Artist and "Strangelove (12-inch)" as album for all included songs. But Picard does not seem to recognize it that way and adds different IDs for those songs. Therefore the songs are finally mixed up in my XBMC-library.
2. Musicbrainz sometimes has different IDs for the same album or even same artists, causing files to be scattered throught my library. E.g. I Anna Vissi suddenly was listed four times as a different album artists, each carrying different albums. Some albums just showed part of the songs that were "physically" included while the rest was listed under the same album name but within another "Anna Vissi"-column.
3. Musicbrainz - of course - cannot identify compilations (= albums with various songs of different artists) that are selfmade. But like a lot of people I creat my own compilations for certain subjects, like "UK Top 100 of 2012" or "Various Hits of the 80s". Musicbrainz tries to identify the included songs individually and assigns each of them to its separate "album" that Musicbrainz deems to be its correct origine. Some of the songs will not be identified at all and therefore do not get any kind of assigment.
After a lot of trying I decided that I will not tag my songs with Musicbrainz-IDs because - besides the amount of work to do it - I cannot assure any file getting a reliable ID and therefore I also cannot avoid messing up my whole database. Unfortetely Picard did not only add the Musicbrainz IDs but also replaced all other tags of the files. Therefore I had to restore my music-folder's backup and start over again. I then used mp3tag to scan all tracks and made sure to delete all Musicbrainz-ids that were possibly included in some of my files.
Afterwards I had XBMC scraping the library again by using Universal Artist Scraper and Universal Music Scraper. Basicly everything went well and the database was built up the way I wanted it, based on the information provided in the respective tags for album artist and album. But unfortunately a lot of artists and albums were not supplied with any kind of biography or information by the scrapers this way. E.g. ABBA, Adele or ABC - all famous groups or artists - were shown with empty biographies and their famous albums were shown with empty album information (though their names were spelled correctly).
After some research in the internet and especially in this forum I found out that you should be able to include additional information in files called "artist.xml" (stored in the artist-folder) and "album.xml" (stored in the respective album folder). But I was not able to find any kind of tool automatically pulling thos infos from the internet and creating the XML-files based on the names of the artist- and album-folders. So this was no way to proceed,
Next I found out that you should be able to just provide the respective Musicbrainz-links within those XML-files and the Universal Artist Scraper and the Universal Album Scraper would download those information from Musicbrainz themselves. Again I was look for a tool to do the jov, but could not finde one. So I decided to do it manually. I created an "artist.xml"-file for every artist containg just the http-link to the artist-page at musicbrainz-org and stored it in the artist folder. I also created an "album.xml" for every album containg just the link http-link to the album-page at musicbrainz.org and stored it in the album-folder. Then I had XBMC scrape music-files again and came across the following issues:
1. The artist.xml seems to be ignored by Album Artist Scraper. Having just this xml-file in the artist-folder (and having no album-xml-file in the subfolders) did not get me any kind of biography or artist-infos.
2. Adding the album-xml-file to the album-folders would result in not only getting album-infos, but also the artist infos. Therefore artist.xml-file seems to be ignored totally.
3. The scraped information will not only be used for the requested purpose (providing biographies and infos about the artists and albums), but also for naming and sorting of the artist and the album within the database again. Therefore I ended up having about the same problems again that I had when I used to tag the MP3-files with Picard (especially issues no. 2 and 3 as outlined above).
So do you have any suggestions as to solving my Problem? I would like to have my database built up on the album and artist infos I have included in the respective tag fields. I would like to get additional artist and album information pulled from the internet by the scrapers based on the names included in the tags or - alternatively - the musibrainz-iDs that I might include in an artist.xml and album.xml-file, but without using them for sorting and naming.
At least it would be fine if Universal Artist Scraper would only use the artist.xml file and I thereby could get biographies and artist-infos without having to also include an album.xml-file in the subfolder (because the Musicbrainz-Album-IDs are the major reason for the creation of the database-chaos).
Brgds,
FantasticN
after updating to Gotham I had to take a closer look into into musicbrainz, because (unfortunately) XBMC seems to scan for all Musicbrain-data stored in the MP3-tags and makes use of it - no matter what other information might be included in other tag fields. It also seems that XBMC is scraping and using those Musicbrainz information no matter what kind of scraper you use (even if you select the scraper "local information only").
At first I tried to comply with this new feature and benefit from it. So started tagging my (already tagged) MP3-Files with the Musicbrainz-Infos using Picard. But I came across the following issues:
1. Some of my albums include songs that are not officially included in the retail version, like "Bonus-Tracks" or tracks that I just added myself because they somehow fit into the album. E.g. I have the 12-inch version of Depeche Mode's Strangelove and I also have some remixes like blind-mix and pain-mix that I added to that album. My tags do show "Depeche Mode" as Album Artist and "Strangelove (12-inch)" as album for all included songs. But Picard does not seem to recognize it that way and adds different IDs for those songs. Therefore the songs are finally mixed up in my XBMC-library.
2. Musicbrainz sometimes has different IDs for the same album or even same artists, causing files to be scattered throught my library. E.g. I Anna Vissi suddenly was listed four times as a different album artists, each carrying different albums. Some albums just showed part of the songs that were "physically" included while the rest was listed under the same album name but within another "Anna Vissi"-column.
3. Musicbrainz - of course - cannot identify compilations (= albums with various songs of different artists) that are selfmade. But like a lot of people I creat my own compilations for certain subjects, like "UK Top 100 of 2012" or "Various Hits of the 80s". Musicbrainz tries to identify the included songs individually and assigns each of them to its separate "album" that Musicbrainz deems to be its correct origine. Some of the songs will not be identified at all and therefore do not get any kind of assigment.
After a lot of trying I decided that I will not tag my songs with Musicbrainz-IDs because - besides the amount of work to do it - I cannot assure any file getting a reliable ID and therefore I also cannot avoid messing up my whole database. Unfortetely Picard did not only add the Musicbrainz IDs but also replaced all other tags of the files. Therefore I had to restore my music-folder's backup and start over again. I then used mp3tag to scan all tracks and made sure to delete all Musicbrainz-ids that were possibly included in some of my files.
Afterwards I had XBMC scraping the library again by using Universal Artist Scraper and Universal Music Scraper. Basicly everything went well and the database was built up the way I wanted it, based on the information provided in the respective tags for album artist and album. But unfortunately a lot of artists and albums were not supplied with any kind of biography or information by the scrapers this way. E.g. ABBA, Adele or ABC - all famous groups or artists - were shown with empty biographies and their famous albums were shown with empty album information (though their names were spelled correctly).
After some research in the internet and especially in this forum I found out that you should be able to include additional information in files called "artist.xml" (stored in the artist-folder) and "album.xml" (stored in the respective album folder). But I was not able to find any kind of tool automatically pulling thos infos from the internet and creating the XML-files based on the names of the artist- and album-folders. So this was no way to proceed,
Next I found out that you should be able to just provide the respective Musicbrainz-links within those XML-files and the Universal Artist Scraper and the Universal Album Scraper would download those information from Musicbrainz themselves. Again I was look for a tool to do the jov, but could not finde one. So I decided to do it manually. I created an "artist.xml"-file for every artist containg just the http-link to the artist-page at musicbrainz-org and stored it in the artist folder. I also created an "album.xml" for every album containg just the link http-link to the album-page at musicbrainz.org and stored it in the album-folder. Then I had XBMC scrape music-files again and came across the following issues:
1. The artist.xml seems to be ignored by Album Artist Scraper. Having just this xml-file in the artist-folder (and having no album-xml-file in the subfolders) did not get me any kind of biography or artist-infos.
2. Adding the album-xml-file to the album-folders would result in not only getting album-infos, but also the artist infos. Therefore artist.xml-file seems to be ignored totally.
3. The scraped information will not only be used for the requested purpose (providing biographies and infos about the artists and albums), but also for naming and sorting of the artist and the album within the database again. Therefore I ended up having about the same problems again that I had when I used to tag the MP3-files with Picard (especially issues no. 2 and 3 as outlined above).
So do you have any suggestions as to solving my Problem? I would like to have my database built up on the album and artist infos I have included in the respective tag fields. I would like to get additional artist and album information pulled from the internet by the scrapers based on the names included in the tags or - alternatively - the musibrainz-iDs that I might include in an artist.xml and album.xml-file, but without using them for sorting and naming.
At least it would be fine if Universal Artist Scraper would only use the artist.xml file and I thereby could get biographies and artist-infos without having to also include an album.xml-file in the subfolder (because the Musicbrainz-Album-IDs are the major reason for the creation of the database-chaos).
Brgds,
FantasticN