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msfc · (This post was last modified: 2017-02-22, 20:35 by DaveBlake.)

ENSEMBLE tags in my .flac files are being displayed in Kodi as "Orchestra". I filed a bug about this which was closed as invalid because this behavior is by design. I was encouraged to open this discussion.

I agree with the comments in the bug that this tag is for classical music and its use for, e.g, singers or rock bands is inappropriate. But even in classical music an ensemble is often not an orchestra: trios, quartets, quintets, schola cantora, etc. Whereas the generic "ensemble" can be applied to all of these and to orchestras, "orchestra" does not reasonably apply to anything else.

I suggest changing the display to "Ensemble".

**DaveBlake** · (This post was last modified: 2016-12-21, 20:50 by DaveBlake.)

Thanks for posting here @mfsc where more people can see it and express their views than happens on Trac.

The question arises in the first place because Vorbis comments (the tags used in Flac files) do not have a defined standard. Unlike ID3 tags where there the standard tags are documented (although the use of TPE2 as album artist is common usage but not in the standrad), with Vorbis a tag could be called anything so we are left to establish what is the most common practice.

When I implemented additional tag processing to improve how Kodi handled classical music (that was my initial motive, I actually did far more than that) I took either BAND or ENSEMBLE as the tag for the orchestra or other instrumental group (trio, quintet etc.) performing the classical recording. ENSEMBLE was already a tag in general use, although exactly how it was used does vary more than I realised at the time, and commented out in Kodi code. As a role I gave this tag the text display value of "Orchestra" because this is what made most sense to me and fitted the data that I found. It also tied in nicely with those that use PERFORMER tag (with role "orchestra" in brackets). It is so useful with a classical collection to be able to split a mixed list of artists into the composers, conductors, and orchestras (and choosing what to play starts mostly with composer). While I would be comfortable having quartets etc. in my list of "orchestras", if an album was performed by say "The Lindsey Quartet", I probably wouldn't tag them as the ENSEMBLE at all.

In the dictionary an ensemble is just a group of musicians who perform together, so strictly rock bands are ensembles too! Maybe my take on this has been all wrong? I can see that it seems inconsistent.

For those that tag using PERFORMER = "London Philharmonic (orchestra)" the role of "orchestra" will be applied. My guess is that this will be how many users that have any classical music will have it tagged - it is how Picard does it. Maybe in v18 Kodi should change to process BAND, ENSEMBLE and ORCHESTRA (new) tags as separate roles "band", "ensemble", "orchestra", and then users can have custom nodes for "band" or "ensemble" if they want.

**scott967** · 2016-12-23, 00:53

This is something where I just for convenience use ENSEMBLE for Orchestra node regardless. For example I have choral works that typ credit orchestra, choir, and soloists (for these last I use TIPL).

When I rip with EAC and use the GD3 metadata database to tag it seems to fill the ENSEMBLE tag for pretty much every track. I just remove ENSEMBLE for non-classical, so it's sort of a "flag" for classical in my music library nodes.

scott s.
.

**DaveBlake** · 2017-02-22, 20:30

Had a think about this and I agree with the OP, so I have put in a change for v18

In FLAC (Vorbis comments) and APE format tags, BAND and ENSEMBLE will be processed into roles of "Band" and "Ensemble" respectlvely. To give something the role of "orchestra" in these formats add a PERFORMER tag with value "London Philharmonic(Orchestra)".

Hope that is OK Scott, on;y a bit of retagging Smile

I suspect that most users will already have used the PERFORMER tag for orchestra anyway as it id what Picard does.

graham-h · 2017-02-22, 21:12

(2017-02-22, 20:30)DaveBlake Wrote: Had a think about this and I agree with the OP, so I have put in a change for v18

In FLAC (Vorbis comments) and APE format tags, BAND and ENSEMBLE will be processed into roles of "Band" and "Ensemble" respectlvely. To give something the role of "orchestra" in these formats add a PERFORMER tag with value "London Philharmonic(Orchestra)".

Hope that is OK Scott, on;y a bit of retagging

I suspect that most users will already have used the PERFORMER tag for orchestra anyway as it id what Picard does.

+1

**scott967** · 2017-02-22, 21:24

(2017-02-22, 20:30)DaveBlake Wrote: Had a think about this and I agree with the OP, so I have put in a change for v18

In FLAC (Vorbis comments) and APE format tags, BAND and ENSEMBLE will be processed into roles of "Band" and "Ensemble" respectlvely. To give something the role of "orchestra" in these formats add a PERFORMER tag with value "London Philharmonic(Orchestra)".

Hope that is OK Scott, on;y a bit of retagging

I suspect that most users will already have used the PERFORMER tag for orchestra anyway as it id what Picard does.

That makes some sense, though now I am kind of lost as to what the intended difference is between BAND, ENSEMBLE, and ARTIST?

scott s.
.

graham-h · (This post was last modified: 2017-02-23, 13:55 by graham-h.)

(2017-02-22, 21:24)scott967 Wrote: That makes some sense, though now I am kind of lost as to what the intended difference is between BAND, ENSEMBLE, and ARTIST?

As I understand it, Artist/Albumartist is intended for the principal performers only. Only those will show up under the Artists 'folder'. If a Band is the main player, it would be an Artist and no need for a BAND tag. If a backing band not specified as an Artist, BAND might be appropriate.

I say might because there is a slight issue in that Roles are not an attribute of a person/group but intended to specify what that person/group does on this track/album. The Shadows is always a Band and the Royal Philharmonic is always an Orchestra. Kodi treats all these tags as Roles but other media players may not. This doesn't affect what you see on the screen, just might niggle people who are anal about database design Wink

**DaveBlake** · 2017-02-23, 20:28

(2017-02-22, 21:24)scott967 Wrote: That makes some sense, though now I am kind of lost as to what the intended difference is between BAND, ENSEMBLE, and ARTIST?

I think it is historic, a Vorbis comment used to match TPE2 before it became commonly used as album artist. But no standard, so use was unclear, and when I wanted a tag for orchestra (to help divide orchestras from conductors and composers) I made use of it. In retrospect that was a mistake, I know so much more now. I was unaware at the time of using the PERFORMER tag, and initially I was not looking to implement processing for as many tags as I did.

How it gets used in v18, well by interpreting BAND and ENSEMBLE as roles I feel it gives users the most flexibilty.

msfc · 2017-03-04, 04:53

(2017-02-22, 20:30)DaveBlake Wrote: Had a think about this and I agree with the OP, so I have put in a change for v18

Thanks.

beedaddy · 2017-03-10, 10:11

(2017-02-22, 20:30)DaveBlake Wrote: In FLAC (Vorbis comments) and APE format tags, BAND and ENSEMBLE will be processed into roles of "Band" and "Ensemble" respectlvely. To give something the role of "orchestra" in these formats add a PERFORMER tag with value "London Philharmonic(Orchestra)".

Sorry for the stupid question, but the English "Orchestra" should be used, right? Not a translation of it, like "Orchester" (German)?
And a space between the name of the performer and the paranthesis is allowed?

**DaveBlake** · 2017-03-10, 10:30

Actually you can use whatever word you want in any language Smile

Some roles have a standard tag of their own e.g. composer (TCOM), conductor (TPE3) or lyricist (TPE4) etc., and Kodi uses the English for those, matching the Vorbis (Flac) and APE tag name. But other roles, including orchestra come from the PERFORMER or TIPL and TMCL tags, with those the role name is whatever you use when you tag. If you want to consistently tag all orchestras as "Orchester" that is fine. The orchestra node deployed with Kodi as an example can easily be changed to use "Orchester", just as you can easily add a "Drums" node if you are really interested in listing drummers, or whatever.

There could be a slight confusion in that there are standard Vorbis (Flac), APE and ASF format tags for Arranger, Engineer, Producer, DJMixer or Mixer, but with ID3 tags (mp3 files) these are dealt with under the TIPL tag.

And yes a space is handled.

This stuff is far harder to write about than it is to do. Test it out with an album or 2 and see how it works.