[nesys]

Hi folks,

Leia here.

I’m wondering how to manage multiple copies of the same album but with different format.

Example: Love Over Gold
First copy: CD 16/44
Second copy: HD 24/96
Third copy: DSD

Of course I will filter out the CD copy (i.e. using my rating “10” then filets out all except 0-9)

But I would like to have both HD and DSD versions in my library.

Problem:

If I change the “Album title” tag (Love Over Gold, Love Over Gold [HD], Love Over Gold [DSD] ... I cant scrape and this is an issue. In facts everything in a tag is used for scraping, even if between brackets.

If I maintain same “Album title” tag but I use ie the “comments” tag, I will find all the tracks of the all 3 albums in the same album, and that tag is also not working for DSF files (I suspect because of ffmpeg).

Any other option? I need to see different albums, because the format is different, but with the same Infos collected via online scrapers (album description, Label, ...)

Any clue?

Thanks guys for your support. Much appreciated.

Cheers
Andrea

[scott967]

The logical approach is to enter each as a release in MusicBrainz database, which will create a unique Album (MB calls this a "release") MBID.  MusicBrainz has an attribute of "format" which is mostly geared to the physical medium format.  I'm not sure if MB format list encompasses your variations, but I think it should.  With an album MBID in each song's tag list, the songs will be associated with a unique album with the correct name in the library.  In your example of "Love Over Gold" MB has entered 21 different releases so maybe the work has already been done for you?

Unfortunately we don't capture "format" when scraping albums.  The closest we come is "album type" Though MB doesn't consider that to be a "format" as described here.  You would have to use song tags MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM TYPE (for Id3) or album.nfo file with <type></type> attribute to get custom entries that an be displayed by skins as a label or icon.

As an aside, currently the album scrapers don't provide any info to help you find the correct release when there isn't an MBID on your songs (scraper searches using the album title) so you need to tag songs rather than rely on the scrapers to search out the actual release you need.

scott s.
.

[DaveBlake]

What Scott said - use Musicbrainz Id tags, and enter the different releases in their database if they are not already there. Kodi will separate releases using the Musicbrainz release ids, and you can amend the album title to show which is which with Kodi still able to scrape additional info (uses MB id when present not names)

I am looking at v18 capturing file format during scanning (not scraping, file format is song level not album) as song data in the library. This would make it something that can be used for filtering, playlist rules etc., but still would not be part of what makes a song unique. For that you will need to use MB ids.

[nesys]

Interesting.

Thank you guys, much appreciated.

In facts MB ID is working, I've just tried with the two hi-res versions of Love Over Gold (24/96 and DSD), and it works like a charm. In Kodi I see two albums with same title. And all info scraped are there.

Now I need to find a solution to see the difference between the two albums.

@DaveBlake  I'm not sure I can amend directly the album title ID3 tag ... are we sure the online scraper will use the MB id and not the album tag to send all the additional info? My understanding is MB ids are used by Kodi to understand if two albums with same name are in facts different releases. Am I wrong?

@scott967 also MEDIA tag should be ok ... but let's use MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM TYPE ... I've already tagged all my Hi-res music, but I'm not able to see this tag populated, so maybe I need to do this piece manually. Right? Then how to associate a label or icon in the skin? is this something I can do, or I need the support of skin maintainer?

Questions about MB tags ... my 16/44 music is also source for iTunes and Sonos ... any issue if I add MB tags there? and what about WAV+cue files? Shall I add tags to the big WAV file, or I need to modify somehow the cue file?

Sorry for silly questions Thanks again for your support guys

Andrea

[docwra]

You could create smartplaylists or nodes and filter by the path such as "CD", "HD" and "DSD" nodes.

[DaveBlake]

Andrea, the presence of Musicbrainz Id tags should not adversely effect your music in other media players, they will just ignore those tags like they already ignore many others.

The Universal Album Scraper uses Musicbrainz Ids to identify the music and artists when they are present, otherwise it does a less accurate look up using names to get the Musicbrainz Id (of the first release with that name or a nearest match) before using that ID to fetch data from TADB and images from fanart.tv. Other scrapers may use name only of course.

Kodi uses MB id when present to uniquely identify albums and so the library can contain multiple releases of an album with the same name, otherwise it uses name and artist(s), nothing else, so these need to be unique.

Most tagging software will let you set the tags to whatever you want, Mp3Tag and Picard both do. Changing the album name when tagging, before you scan into Kodi, would give you a way to see the difference between releases, and would not effect scraping. But I agree it is not ideal.

Album type gets initially populated from the RELEASETYPE (Flac)/TXXX:MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM TYPE (mp3) tag, so that gives an opportunity to flag the different releases.  Picard will fill it with "album" or "album;compilation" most times but again you can edit. Album type can also be set via album.nfo files. It can be used for filtering and smart playlists, but unfortunately although an info label is available it is not shown on the albums nodes any of the skins AFAIK. It does get shown on the album info dialog, but that isn't goin to help you choosing what to play much.

There is no MEDIA tag in the ID3 standard, nor offerend by Picard, Kodi does not process such a thing and is unlikely to do so in the future. There is the possibility of supporting custom tags in some way, but that work keeps receeding into the distance.

In the end the best route is to hope I get file format into the library for v18, very likely because it is easy. But then that the skins catch-up and display it too.

[nesys]

Understood.

To clarify, my library is composed by:

- 16/44 in m4a format (apple lossless)
- 24/xxx in flac format
- DSD in dsf format
- few DTS multichannel in WAV+cue (not able to find a cue splitter for Mac to convert to multiple files multichannel; but if I well understood, even if I convert to flac, mediainfo says 2.0 channel but DTS is still there so the AVR can manage it in multichannel mode)

Idea is to find a way to filter the 16/44 version if there is a hi-res version, then decide if mantain 24 bit version, or DSD, or both.

Filter all “CD” node is not an option. The only idea I had in mind was to put 10 in myratings for 16/44 version, then filter out 0-9. Not sure if there is a more elegant solution.

Thanks
Andrea

[DaveBlake]

An after thought on how to easily see the difference between the two albums that have same title and artist(s) (but are different releases and have different mbids)....

Give them slightly different album artwork. Either embedded in the music files, or located local to the music files where Kodi will find it. OK it means that you have to deal with it, not just scrape album art, but personally I fetch the album cover art when I tag anyway.

[DaveBlake]

I'm not sure you understood the smart playlist/custom node suggestion. To clarify if all your DSD is under one folder, and the 16/44 another etc. then you can create rules that pick based on the file path.

You can also make smart playlsist that use album type if you have populated that with "DSD", "16/44".

But I suspect what you want is to be able to glance at the list of albums by an artist, showing all the releases,  and know which is the DSD, which the HD etc.

[nesys]

My understanding is filter by node means I will filter all 16/44. Or can you filter the 16/44 in case I have an hi-res version? At the moment all DSD and flac are in “hi-res” path, and the 16/44 in “iTunes” path. It would be good if I can filter out the 16/44 version if I have an hi-res version, so see only DSD and flac releases. And if I don’t have a hi-res version, I need to see the 16/44.

This would be a good first step. Then, I would be able to decide if maintain both DSD and flac, or only DSD, or only flac (depends of what is playing better for me). And maybe this should be done via myratings.

Does it make any sense?

[DaveBlake]

It sounds like what you want is Kodi to offer you just the best res when you have more than one, and I can't see a way to do that. The filtering/node approach, however you achieve it, will give you all the "16/44", no "in case" logic is available.

Sure rating could be used to flag the albums you prefer, and I can see that as something you can edit in Kodi, and something shown by skins by default, it has attractions. But again Kodi does not have a "show me the highest in my collection" option, so I don't think it will get you all you want.

I will try to have a look at the issue of COMMENT tag not being scanned from DSF files. You are probably right, the tags are scanned from DSF files using ffmpeg (most other file formats it is done using the TagLib library), and  you only get what it explcitly looks for.

[docwra]

Assuming you have this information in the album folder name, then a path node filter would work pretty well.

[nesys]

Maybe it should enough to have a flag “hide” when you like to hide an album in the library. Dunno if this is doable or not.

[DaveBlake]

I think the reason to have a library is not to hide things

Put the music you don't want to see somewhere else, and don't add that location as a music source. I have a pile of music that is not in my Kodi music library e.g. mp3 rips for the car (Kodi is all FLAC), stuff I inherited from my farther-in-law (no idea why I ripped it in the first place!), old rips where I have since ripped a higher quality release of the album, oh and the odd track I hate so much I have left out from the album. I can still get to them from file view if I really wanted, but they don't clutter my library.

Remotes like Yatse have a top level  "hide played" filter, play it then hide it.... but I don't see Kodi UI going that way. Well actually you could do that now: make a smart playlist with playcount > 1, but all very......

I think you may need to reorganise your music files.

But hey, having the file format in the library may be enough (when I get to implement it), just be patient. And remember most Kodi users do not have multiple copies of the same album, so features specifically for that are going to be low priority.

[nesys]

Of course :-) I will be patient :-)

For sure format will do the trick ... and also from “cosmetic” point of view, it will be definitely great to see album, tracks, and for each track format, bitrate, ... with “DSD” or “24 bit” logo, or something like that ... like with movies, when you see if the video is ie. VC1, and audio is ie. TrueHD :-)

Thanks for your effort on this, and let me know if I can support somehow.

Andrea