[unclefester]

Hello.
Thanks for the great job put into Kodi 18!
I've just updated a few days ago to Leia 18 on OSMC on Raspberry PI3.
One of the main feature I was waiting for was the possibility to sort by Artist Sortname, mostly for individual singer, so to get [Last Name, First Name] in the Artist List.
I flagged the sortname option under Settings -> Media -> Music, but I got no change in my artist order list. Do I have maybe to erase and rescan all the DB? If so could you remind me the correct procedure, considering I'm using MySQL Music DB locally on the same Raspberry?

Thanks in advance and kind regards
Alex

[jjd-uk]

Your files are actually tagged with an ARTISTSORT property?

[jjd-uk]

Just realised it was only added in Leia (code was added over 2 years ago so had forgotten it was new for the stable v18 releases), see https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/11738 in particular,

To see the use you need to (re)scan music files into the library that have at least some of these tags embedded

If you have upgraded from a previous version of Kodi and haven't scanned your music into the Library since moving to v18 then your database will not contain the necessary entries. You can add

<promptfulltagscan>true</promptfulltagscan>

to an advancesettings.xml to prompt for a full rescan of your tags to add the newly supported tags to the existing database, see https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings....siclibrary

[unclefester]

OK thanks, at the end it seems the most important thing to do is to drop MyMusic72 and get it reconstructed. Infact now I can see the new list in the correct way, for example after a few minutes Oren Ambarchi is already in the list under the "A".
Now I'd like to read on the video (and on Yatse artist list consequently, I hope) not [Oren Ambarchi], but [Ambarchi, Oren], exactly as I can read in the field strSortName, and in the Artist sort tag in every file loaded on my system.
Is it possible to get that?

Thanks again!
Alex

[scott967]

If I understand your issue, Kodi 18 now has a new infolabel that skins can use, ListItem.Property(artist_sortname).  That property is available in containers having content of "artists" and in the song info dialog (except not available for songs in m3u playlists).  Separately, for Containers with content "artists", the "use sortname" setting results in the standard ListItem.Label to be filled with the sortname rather than name in artist sortorders.  That way skin doesn't need to add new code for the sortname in this case.

I don't know how Yatse, Kore or Chorus pulls the data (it's a bit different from how skins do it).

scott s.
.

[unclefester]

Thanks a lot!
But I'm not so expert in strong customization.
It seems that I have to work modifying the default skin, but where?
Do I have to put those statements in some xml files?

 

If I understand your issue, Kodi 18 now has a new infolabel that skins can use, ListItem.Property(artist_sortname).  That property is available in containers having content of "artists" and in the song info dialog (except not available for songs in m3u playlists).  Separately, for Containers with content "artists", the "use sortname" setting results in the standard ListItem.Label to be filled with the sortname rather than name in artist sortorders.  That way skin doesn't need to add new code for the sortname in this case.

I don't know how Yatse, Kore or Chorus pulls the data (it's a bit different from how skins do it).

scott s.
.

[scott967]

Need to know exactly where you want to see the artist sortname such as providing a screenshot with a circle or arrow of where you expect the sortname.

scott s.
.

[unclefester]

At the very end I'd need it on Yatse artist list (I use OSMC-Kodi as a pure stereo player, with TV off). To get it there I hope Yatse to copy the list from OSMC main menu -> Music -> Artist -> Artist list to choose from. At least with the last DB reconstruction that is what seemed to be happened.
Usually I pick an album or a song passing by the artist. Text search work perfectly with my about 8000 releases, but anyway I'd really appreciate to browse the list in an alphabetical perfect order.

Thanks again
Alex

[EctoOne]

All I had to do was adding the ARTISTSORTNAME tag to my music files with the name I wanted. Example, I had 'Weird Al' Yankovic and added Weird Al Yankovic as new tag. Before it was first in my artists list because of the ' now it is listed under W.

I don't know if you have to update your database because I did a fresh install of OSMC and also don't use MySQL.

​​​​​But there was no need to edit my Skin (Quartz).

From what I've seen so far neither Yatse nor Kore support the new tag (yet).

[DaveBlake]

One of the main feature I was waiting for was the possibility to sort by Artist Sortname, mostly for individual singer, so to get [Last Name, First Name] in the Artist List.
I flagged the sortname option under Settings -> Media -> Music, but I got no change in my artist order list. Do I have maybe to erase and rescan all the DB? If so could you remind me the correct procedure, considering I'm using MySQL Music DB locally on the same Raspberry?

I am guessing that your music files were scanned into the library using an earlier version of Kodi that did not process the ARTISTSORTNAME tags (assuming that they were present in your tags). In that case yes you do need to rescan to read and apply those tags, however that no longer requires you to erase anything or drop the source. Nor does it require additions to the advancedsettings.xml (@jjd-uk you are behind the times). If you view your music sources in file view mode, select the source and then on the context menu click on "scan item to library", if it has been scanned into the library already then you will be prompted "Do a full tag scan even when music files are unchanged?", answer yes. The new sortnames will be fetched, but none of your scraped art or additional info, ro music playback history will be lost (what happens when you drop the source).
 

Now I'd like to read on the video (and on Yatse artist list consequently, I hope) not [Oren Ambarchi], but [Ambarchi, Oren], exactly as I can read in the field strSortName, and in the Artist sort tag in every file loaded on my system.
Is it possible to get that?

The artists will appear in sortname order, but generally most skins show artist name not sort name. That is up to the skinners (or users to customise). It means that "Oren Ambarchi" will be displayed up with the As like "ABBA".

The video library does not have this feature (up to some interested dev to implement it, and that is not me).

Yes, I'm happy to say Yatse does support this artist sort feature too. If Kodi has use of artist sortname enabled then that is the order you will see when using Yatse too. You need to have "Ignore article" enabled in your Yatse settings. Simply resync your library and it will both pick up the new sortname data and use it when sorting artists.

A small caviat JSON API only exposes visible settings, so if you set "useartistsortname" via advancedsettings.xml (something that early v18 alpha users of this feature may have done as the GUI setting was added later in the development) then it hides the setting from the GUI and prevents Yatse or any other JSONAPI consumer from reading it.

[EctoOne]

Yes, I'm happy to say Yatse does support this artist sort feature too. If Kodi has use of artist sortname enabled then that is the order you will see when using Yatse too. You need to have "Ignore article" enabled in your Yatse settings. Simply resync your library and it will both pick up the new sortname data and use it when sorting artists.

Ohh, thanks for the info.

[unclefester]

Thanks DaveBlake, all clear.
As I wrote, now I can browse Artists in the correct way and I can see for instance Tori Amos and Laurie Anderson in the first positions.
Anyway, I'd really like to learn how to do this little skin customization that should lead to have [Last Name, First Name] in the Artists list (and I'm quite sure Yatse will copy from this list, after a music data reload), but I really don't understand where to start: which files to change, which statements to insert.
I'm not a professional programmer, but I've been a business system administrator and it's not the first time I do a soft customization on an application; anyway this time the manuals are not helping me enough and I'm not getting any result.
The same thing is happening any time I try to build a custom node with the purpose to separate the multiple discs in an album, or better, in a CD box (I'd like to get into an album and see the separate discs before the tracks; once got into one of the disc, start the first or another track... I've got a John Martyn's box composed by more than 20 discs - almost complete discography plus tons of bonus tracks - and with the default mode it's a total mess): I don't understand from the manual where to start... maybe now that I'm in my 50's I got completely dumb. [emoji849][emoji849]
Is there anybody out there willing to drive me a little?[emoji16]

[DaveBlake]

Anyway, I'd really like to learn how to do this little skin customization that should lead to have [Last Name, First Name] in the Artists list (and I'm quite sure Yatse will copy from this list, after a music data reload), but I really don't understand where to start: which files to change, which statements to insert.

How to do this will depend on what skin you want to customise, but you need a skinner to advise (not my thing).

But it sounds like you think Yatse copies from the Kodi list, that isn't how it works. Yatse gets the data from the database and current settings using JSON API, and then uses it how it wants. It does not matter what the Kodi skin displays, Yatse is designed to display its own things for artist. AFAIK it only shows artist name, not sort name, even when sorting in sortname order (which it reads from Kodi settings).
 

The same thing is happening any time I try to build a custom node with the purpose to separate the multiple discs in an album, or better, in a CD box (I'd like to get into an album and see the separate discs before the tracks; once got into one of the disc, start the first or another track... I've got a John Martyn's box composed by more than 20 discs - almost complete discography plus tons of bonus tracks - and with the default mode it's a total mess): I don't understand from the manual where to start... maybe now that I'm in my 50's I got completely dumb. [emoji849][emoji849]

Current music library support for disc sets is almost non-existent. I thought my 13 disc set LoTR radio play was bad (I don't have it in my music library because it is unmanageable, just play from file view), but 20 discs, yikes!

There is no way to create a custom node that generally separates the multiple discs of an album - nothing to do with your age or mine (also in my 50s).

But disc set handling is a topic for a separate thread.

[unclefester]

For anyone interested in correct artist sorting:
SOLVED! Using DB updates.
Several months ago I was lucky to decide to switch from normal DB to MySQL/MariaDB installed directly on local Raspberry 3/OSMC.
In this way I've been able to access the Artist table in MyMusic72 DB from outside (MS Access passing through MySQL ODBC).
The update query I run is more or less:
UPDATE Artist SET strArtist = strSortName WHERE strSortName Is Not Null
Et voilà: artists list is now as I wanted, both in Kodi interface and above all in Yatse after a data reload.
For safety reasons I did a backup of the DB (a simple copy) with the DB Copy function in PHPMyAdmin interface.
The last step I need now is to build a tagging script in Picard that writes the ARTISTSORT tag in the ARTIST one during saving, to obtain the same result in the day by day library addition.

Thanks again and keep up the good work![emoji16][emoji16]

[DaveBlake]

For anyone interested in artist sorting by sortname I just want to repeat v18 can do this without any changes to your music database or to your tagging just by using the Settings -> Media -> Music "sort by artist sortname" setting. Yatse also supports the chosen artist sorting.

If you also want to see the sortname not the artist then make a small mod to the skin (or ask your freindly skinner).