2017-01-01, 17:59
Hi there, sorry my answer has taken that long!
Coming back to this...
First of all, yes, music is database friendly, agreed, but...
Music, first of all is art and a release, album, concert, whatsoever is the piece of art the focus has to be on. No one would ever dearrange the Mona Lisa into background, foreground, colors, paint thickness, etc. A catalog may do this, to find art using same color or paint thickness or show all paintings showing women, but the main focus has to stay on the piece of art.
There's a reason why Vinyl is up on the rise again... people don't like the "cluttered" way but prefer the piece of art as to what it is, a piece of art. (For instance taken the Beastie Boys "Paul's boutique"... it's an artwork altogether, not a collection of single artworks)
A must, in my way of thinking is to put the piece of art back into focus. That's mainly the artist, it's releases/albums and the tracks being presented on it.
For movies it is done this way. The piece of art is the movie and Kodi shows piece by piece, while additionally being able to use the catalog for 'relations' (actors, regisseur, studio, etc...)
So, what to do with this way of view on music? :-)
Is music database friendly? Yes, it is, but within kodi it's cluttered from the very beginning. Why would I want to have a list of all my albums (not talking about a list of albums by a specific artist, but the all-albums list? Only 2 reasons I can think of: a) search for a specific album I know the title or b) get inspired.
Why a list with all artists? 2 reasons, same as above.
But both get the user distracted from the piece of art itself. If I want to look at the Mona Lisa, I don't want to reach it via a huge list of painters...
So all in all it's nice, handy and useful to have a database containing all kind of infos and more, as long as it is centered around the artwork itself.
As I've sorted my music on file level I'm able, like poster in OP is, to find the music I'm looking for by location (it's like a donkey bridge to find the path).
So, what to do? How to make use of the massive infos and tags available within the database without losing orientation or loose focus on the art itself?
If I get the use of databases correctly, it's advantage lies in the ability to create 'views' and to be able to manage 'relations'. There's definitely not that one single 'view' working for all users or for all kind of musical art. A view working for Classic music isn't working for Riddims (one tune but multiple artists, Sean Paul's "Get Busy" is a good example here as it is quite popular. It's the Diwali Riddim voiced by many others). So it's a matter of filling up the database correctly and being able to create views. Classical music maybe has its view created as Orchestra->Composer->Title or Maestro->Year->Composer whereas Riddims need Albuminterpret being the Riddim (Diwali) creating a view like Albuminterpret->Artist->Title or Artist->Albuminterpret (to see what Riddims the artist has voiced)
A lot more 'views' come to mind when cluttering the piece of art itself into a collection of data being able to be put together again by the user... fast, fluid and on the fly.
A design concept which puts the artwork itself in the main focus (a standard view so to speak kodi starts with). This main view is adjustable as how the user like it to be (be it a replica of the filesystem structure or a only random albums or or or)
Together with this main view one could offer the possibility to click together views by providing the available infos/tags
It could use lists of available tags, the user can choose of. Every choice could offer another list with remaining Tags or a 'end here' making it easy to create a view like Albuminterpret->year or Year or TagG-TagZ-TagE-TagF
Navigation within the views itself could be hierarchical following the given Tag-Chain created.
One could also define as many predefined Views as one likes (Nodes, but dynamically)
So we have the standard view (needs to be discussed hows that defined as a default, but I would suggest simply using the filesystem replica as a new user directly recognizes his music... nevertheless, it's customizable), the on-the-fly views and predefined Views (schemes?).
Flagging could be done quite easily then! Just create a View (or a filter as to speak) and give ability to flag multiple results at once or only a few or only one, as the view is hierarchical and the filter could be set finer or broader (the best place to store this flag is within the Tags)
That's my suggestion for Media browsing part of Music within Kodi
The other suggestions regarding relations between music still keeps valid. Why can't I, even when using my tablet, use yatse and am able to open the song or album infos and jump directly to artist, album, year, genre, etc?
A non destructive playlist, things like play music, view movie, continue music once movie is finished...
Lastly, I've some remarks regarding database. I've got a huge collection speaking of a 125MB database file within mysql. It's slow, although connected with gigabit lan. I make use of 'similar tracks' for last.fm a lot having the possibility to find similar music to the one that is playing just now within my own collection. It takes quite a time with local db but with mysql it's slow. Is there a way to fasten db queries by doing some indexing? Even adding huge genres (3k files) into a playlist is not what I call performance. I would expect a speed bonus for db in comparison to filesystem. Adding 3K lines of text into a playlist is a simple copy paste. Could having the playlist be a db file or a table itself enhance this in regards to performance as it's only a query? I don't have to fear missing tracks within a playlist as I keep the db up2date.
Is there a db query for kodis musicdb that's able to measure system's performance and make it comparable? A benchmark?
I've used Kodi a lot the last week in regards to music as I wanted to have some more background :-)
I'm missing (kodi's 10ft concept) a way to have track infos when listening to music show up in a size, I'm able to read from 10ft away. I always feel like compared to movies, it like watching the movie only in a preview window instead of fullscreen.
When using artist slideshow, etc, the Infos in a corner are sufficient as I focus on the slideshow, but it could also be the opposite way, having the infos large enough to read from afar and the slideshow somewhere aside.
(I know that's skinning!)
So far for first day in 2017 :-)
Quote:Quote:Music isn't database friendly.
Oh yes it is!!!
Coming back to this...
First of all, yes, music is database friendly, agreed, but...
Music, first of all is art and a release, album, concert, whatsoever is the piece of art the focus has to be on. No one would ever dearrange the Mona Lisa into background, foreground, colors, paint thickness, etc. A catalog may do this, to find art using same color or paint thickness or show all paintings showing women, but the main focus has to stay on the piece of art.
There's a reason why Vinyl is up on the rise again... people don't like the "cluttered" way but prefer the piece of art as to what it is, a piece of art. (For instance taken the Beastie Boys "Paul's boutique"... it's an artwork altogether, not a collection of single artworks)
A must, in my way of thinking is to put the piece of art back into focus. That's mainly the artist, it's releases/albums and the tracks being presented on it.
For movies it is done this way. The piece of art is the movie and Kodi shows piece by piece, while additionally being able to use the catalog for 'relations' (actors, regisseur, studio, etc...)
So, what to do with this way of view on music? :-)
Is music database friendly? Yes, it is, but within kodi it's cluttered from the very beginning. Why would I want to have a list of all my albums (not talking about a list of albums by a specific artist, but the all-albums list? Only 2 reasons I can think of: a) search for a specific album I know the title or b) get inspired.
Why a list with all artists? 2 reasons, same as above.
But both get the user distracted from the piece of art itself. If I want to look at the Mona Lisa, I don't want to reach it via a huge list of painters...
So all in all it's nice, handy and useful to have a database containing all kind of infos and more, as long as it is centered around the artwork itself.
As I've sorted my music on file level I'm able, like poster in OP is, to find the music I'm looking for by location (it's like a donkey bridge to find the path).
So, what to do? How to make use of the massive infos and tags available within the database without losing orientation or loose focus on the art itself?
If I get the use of databases correctly, it's advantage lies in the ability to create 'views' and to be able to manage 'relations'. There's definitely not that one single 'view' working for all users or for all kind of musical art. A view working for Classic music isn't working for Riddims (one tune but multiple artists, Sean Paul's "Get Busy" is a good example here as it is quite popular. It's the Diwali Riddim voiced by many others). So it's a matter of filling up the database correctly and being able to create views. Classical music maybe has its view created as Orchestra->Composer->Title or Maestro->Year->Composer whereas Riddims need Albuminterpret being the Riddim (Diwali) creating a view like Albuminterpret->Artist->Title or Artist->Albuminterpret (to see what Riddims the artist has voiced)
A lot more 'views' come to mind when cluttering the piece of art itself into a collection of data being able to be put together again by the user... fast, fluid and on the fly.
A design concept which puts the artwork itself in the main focus (a standard view so to speak kodi starts with). This main view is adjustable as how the user like it to be (be it a replica of the filesystem structure or a only random albums or or or)
Together with this main view one could offer the possibility to click together views by providing the available infos/tags
It could use lists of available tags, the user can choose of. Every choice could offer another list with remaining Tags or a 'end here' making it easy to create a view like Albuminterpret->year or Year or TagG-TagZ-TagE-TagF
Navigation within the views itself could be hierarchical following the given Tag-Chain created.
One could also define as many predefined Views as one likes (Nodes, but dynamically)
So we have the standard view (needs to be discussed hows that defined as a default, but I would suggest simply using the filesystem replica as a new user directly recognizes his music... nevertheless, it's customizable), the on-the-fly views and predefined Views (schemes?).
Flagging could be done quite easily then! Just create a View (or a filter as to speak) and give ability to flag multiple results at once or only a few or only one, as the view is hierarchical and the filter could be set finer or broader (the best place to store this flag is within the Tags)
That's my suggestion for Media browsing part of Music within Kodi
The other suggestions regarding relations between music still keeps valid. Why can't I, even when using my tablet, use yatse and am able to open the song or album infos and jump directly to artist, album, year, genre, etc?
A non destructive playlist, things like play music, view movie, continue music once movie is finished...
Lastly, I've some remarks regarding database. I've got a huge collection speaking of a 125MB database file within mysql. It's slow, although connected with gigabit lan. I make use of 'similar tracks' for last.fm a lot having the possibility to find similar music to the one that is playing just now within my own collection. It takes quite a time with local db but with mysql it's slow. Is there a way to fasten db queries by doing some indexing? Even adding huge genres (3k files) into a playlist is not what I call performance. I would expect a speed bonus for db in comparison to filesystem. Adding 3K lines of text into a playlist is a simple copy paste. Could having the playlist be a db file or a table itself enhance this in regards to performance as it's only a query? I don't have to fear missing tracks within a playlist as I keep the db up2date.
Is there a db query for kodis musicdb that's able to measure system's performance and make it comparable? A benchmark?
I've used Kodi a lot the last week in regards to music as I wanted to have some more background :-)
I'm missing (kodi's 10ft concept) a way to have track infos when listening to music show up in a size, I'm able to read from 10ft away. I always feel like compared to movies, it like watching the movie only in a preview window instead of fullscreen.
When using artist slideshow, etc, the Infos in a corner are sufficient as I focus on the slideshow, but it could also be the opposite way, having the infos large enough to read from afar and the slideshow somewhere aside.
(I know that's skinning!)
So far for first day in 2017 :-)
