Custom tagging & library navigation - how can browsing be improved?
#37
Well, I can see how these posts got so involved. I'll try to give my bit on your queries, but the TL/DR (as I think the kids call it) is that when Dave first made composer tags available I asked in the skinning forum if I could somehow create a link from the song info xml to create a search of other songs composed by that person. Ronie just shut me down with a "that's not possible in Kodi" reply, and implying it never would be, With the push from Kodi to make TV, movies, PVR and music all behave in the exactly the same way I wonder whether this is just an academic discussion or if you are actually thinking of altering the Kodi code, or just the music DB. Anyway, with that in mind:

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: what are the benefits of having a DB right now?
Being able to create smart playlists based on a number of criteria, for me it's normally rating >4 out of 5 (or 8 out of 10) and genre = whatever. I understand Nodes to be just saving the smart playlists you access very frequently in a form you can add to your menu rather than just favourites.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: I would expect to be able to use it for what it is made for: querying, sorting, filtering and searching... but I can't...
Why not? This is what I don't really understand. How do you want to search or filter that you can't do now. I know it's a problem that not all attributes are available in all option boxes, and that's a pain in smart playlist creation, but it's a lot better than it used to be, and presumably missing options can be added if they're requested.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: I've got my music sorted on file level and I'm able to find what I want to listen to with just a few clicks without the need of a DB.
I don't understand how you can have a directory structure that allows you to drill down by year, genre, rating, publisher, colour of hair, or whatever other thing you want. That was why I thought we had a library in the first place.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: Only if I have multiple tables/sheets with additional information, like a publishers table with addresses, owner, etc or a manufacturer sheet with electrical and nonelectrical tools, product numbers, etc, I would benefit from a DB.
But isn't that what the attributes of songs, albums and artists are?

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: So here are my questions for to distract you from having to watch Trump (btw, there's one good reason to do: know your enemy :-):
What do you think DBs are made for?
Sadly, inauguration turned out only to mean getting the keys to the office while some girl sang out of tune. I thought it was going to be much more Game of Thrones than that.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: What are the advantages of having a DB for music right now?
As above.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: Do you think that's all a DB can offer and do you think kodi makes good use of it?

I don't really know, but I bet if you give people the ability to select things on the basis of 5 different criteria the next day someone will say they need 6. It seems to me the first priority is to be able to get information out from the data you put in. Therefore, ensuring that all the columns in the database are available to select in searches, playlists, and filters is the main thing.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: Give me a hint on how I'm able to listen to music I've copied from a friend with using a DB?
If you've copied it then it's surely no different to the stuff you had already, you scan it to your library and play it as you would any other. Or am I missing something.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: Tell me why kodi is awful slow when it comes to DB queries?
Isn't that a function of the size of your collection and the spec of your hardware. The angle of the dangle and all that. I find mine remarkably quick considering I'm using a Fire TV connected wirelessly to a Synology NAS. But it probably depends where you're coming from and what you're comparing to.

(2017-01-21, 11:24)Rusendusen Wrote: if a DB is the answer to all questions regarding music, why do all these audiophile people owning a huge collection of CDs or Vinyl sort them in a shelf?
My Dad was a jazz buff and had filing cabinets full of old 78s and things. It was only when he died that we found all these typed cards with lists of which records such and such a saxophonist played on, and which drawer of which cabinet they were in. He obviously hadn't bought into the Dewey-Decimal system. The reason they had them on shelves was partly so they could put them on the player quickly, and partly so people like me could superciliously snigger at their collection at parties. A DB may not be the complete answer but it is easier than typing up a load of cards, that you then forget where you put.

(2017-01-21, 14:56)DaveBlake Wrote: First part of this thread is all about support for user defined properties of songs, albums and artists - both from custom tags within music files or NFO files, and a user "hash tag" facility to mark items (songs, albums or artists) in some way. I have taken that idea onboard, just need to find time to flesh out the details and do it.
Yes, I'd like custom tags. One thing I've not worked out is how to store biography and song information for singles collections. We have nfo files or you can scrape album artists, but I don't want directories full of files and artwork for a one-hit wonder. This is why I use the comment and unsynced lyric tags to store this info, which I then display in my musicviz xml. You can't have artist info for every singles artist, and a single album nfo for say an Assorted 90's single collection won't tell you about every song. Custom tags may make this easier. I may well be very out of date on this, as I do still live in the 90s and Dave may well have enabled some sort of singles scraping by now.

(2017-01-21, 14:56)DaveBlake Wrote: sorting - letting the user have more control over multiple field sorts rather than the limited hard coded ones be have now.
As I said above however much control you give people they'll still want more and still mess it up. How else do you explain Nigel Farage. As I said above I think the main thing is being able to get out what goes in by ensuring all database columns have an info tag available to skinners and all selection boxes have all possible options.

(2017-01-21, 14:56)DaveBlake Wrote: navigation - Current navigation is very prescribed
It seems to me prescription is the way Kodi's going. It's getting more and more complicated for a novice to tailor Kodi to their personal taste. To me the beauty of Kodi was the you could pretty much make yours a unique system, particularly if you learned a minimum of skinning. The direction of travel for Kodi over the last few years has certainly been away from that, with some wanting pretty much a one-click set-up for newbies. Wouldn't the way around this be to enable some kind of hyperlinking within Kodi, but then that's probably beyond the scope of both this forum and my brain.

(2017-01-21, 14:56)DaveBlake Wrote: On song info you can see who composed it, from there go to all the other things they composed and or the albums they are on.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.


Sorry, added to the information overload and probably completely missed the point. But I do love the work you're doing Dave and thanks Rusendusen for taking the time to clarify the discussion.
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Messages In This Thread
Visual Browsing feature - by Pazzoppe - 2016-12-15, 11:58
RE: Custom tagging & library navigation - how can browsing be improved? - by WelshPaul - 2017-01-21, 22:29
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