Inconsistency in displaying album composer and performer for classical music
#1
With Picard, in the `albumartist` tag, composer and performers are usually separated by a semicolon for classical music: `albumartist=composer; performer1, performer2`

For albums which aren't in the Musicbrainz database, I do this by hand with another tagging tool.

Now I notice that in Kodi, for those albums which I tagged by hand the semicolon is replaced by a slash ('/'), whereas for the ones tagged by Picard the semicolon stays (which, I think, looks less nice).

Does anyone know why they are treated differently? Is it an inconsistency in Kodi, or should I change the way I tag?

Info: I am using the `albumartists` tag as described here.
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#2
Actually Picard does not necessarily separate multiple album artists (or artists) with a semicolon, it just displays tags that have multiple values as a single line using semicolons on its UI. The actual metadata values may not have any semicolons at all, it all depends on the tag format. Formats like ID3 v2.4 (mp3 files) or Vorbis comments (FLAC files) support multi-value tags, and Kodi has no problem in reading and storing the separate values. However older ID3 v2.3 format is single frame, and the standard is to use " / " as a separator, but it sounds like that isn't what you have.

When you tag using Picard it provides:
a single string value for  ALBUMARTIST = "Composer: Conductor; Orchestra; Soloist"
but multiple values for ALBUMARTISTS = "Composer",  "Conductor", "Orchestra", "Soloist"
which is displays on the screen as a line of values separated by semicolons.

Kodi reads both lots of data, shows ALBUMARTIST string as the album artist display, but lists the individual artists (from ALBUMARTISTS) in the artist node.

Assuming that the music files that you manually tag are using the same format, then it sounds like the tagging tool is either not providing an ALBUMARTIST value or is converting the separate ALBUMARTISTS values into ALBUMARTIST "Composer / Conductor / Orchestra / Soloist". What tagging tool are you using, and what format of tagging?

If you provide an example of a manually tagged classical music file then I can tell you why you are seeing what you are seeing.
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#3
Just in case, also check the documentation at https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings....siclibrary on <itemsepararator> as your issue may well be purely cosmetical.
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#4
(2021-05-04, 18:38)DaveBlake Wrote: Actually Picard does not necessarily separate multiple album artists (or artists) with a semicolon, it just displays tags that have multiple values as a single line using semicolons on its UI. The actual metadata values may not have any semicolons at all, it all depends on the tag format. Formats like ID3 v2.4 (mp3 files) or Vorbis comments (FLAC files) support multi-value tags, and Kodi has no problem in reading and storing the separate values. However older ID3 v2.3 format is single frame, and the standard is to use " / " as a separator, but it sounds like that isn't what you have.

When you tag using Picard it provides:
a single string value for  ALBUMARTIST = "Composer: Conductor; Orchestra; Soloist"
but multiple values for ALBUMARTISTS = "Composer",  "Conductor", "Orchestra", "Soloist"
which is displays on the screen as a line of values separated by semicolons.

Kodi reads both lots of data, shows ALBUMARTIST string as the album artist display, but lists the individual artists (from ALBUMARTISTS) in the artist node.

Assuming that the music files that you manually tag are using the same format, then it sounds like the tagging tool is either not providing an ALBUMARTIST value or is converting the separate ALBUMARTISTS values into ALBUMARTIST "Composer / Conductor / Orchestra / Soloist". What tagging tool are you using, and what format of tagging?

If you provide an example of a manually tagged classical music file then I can tell you why you are seeing what you are seeing.
I'm posting (partial) outputs of `metaflac --list filename.flac`
First file (tagged by Picard):
    comment[0]: MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID=dd7c3b33-d6af-4b47-b84e-a2819628f2ae
    comment[1]: ORIGINALDATE=2016-04-29
    comment[2]: ORIGINALYEAR=2016
    comment[3]: RELEASETYPE=album
    comment[4]: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID=7b689f15-f25d-4a78-91a9-a0719626572e
    comment[5]: ASIN=B01DC8N3XW
    comment[6]: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID=1f9df192-a621-4f54-8850-2c5373b7eac9
    comment[7]: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID=dea28aa9-1086-4ffa-8739-0ccc759de1ce
    comment[8]: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID=80c3bce9-0b54-409c-aa10-3b0c7dbbc597
    comment[9]: ALBUMARTIST=Beethoven; Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle
    comment[10]: ALBUMARTISTSORT=Beethoven, Ludwig van; Berliner Philharmoniker, Rattle, Simon
    comment[11]: LABEL=Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings
    comment[12]: CATALOGNUMBER=BPHR 160091
    comment[13]: DATE=2016
    comment[14]: ALBUM=Symphonien 1-9
    comment[15]: BARCODE=4260306180912
    comment[16]: RELEASESTATUS=official
    comment[17]: TOTALDISCS=5
    comment[18]: MEDIA=CD
    comment[19]: DISCNUMBER=1
    comment[20]: TOTALTRACKS=8
    comment[21]: DISCSUBTITLE=Symphonien Nr. 1 & 3
    comment[22]: MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID=034d6e1d-a45f-4587-b2bf-484fc4b15faa
    comment[23]: MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID=1f9df192-a621-4f54-8850-2c5373b7eac9
    comment[24]: ARTIST=Ludwig van Beethoven
    comment[25]: ARTISTSORT=Beethoven, Ludwig van
    comment[26]: ARTISTS=Ludwig van Beethoven
    comment[27]: TITLE=Symphony no. 1 in C major, op. 21: I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
    comment[28]: CONDUCTOR=Simon Rattle
    comment[29]: PERFORMER=Berliner Philharmoniker (orchestra)
    comment[30]: PRODUCER=Christoph Franke
    comment[31]: ENGINEER=René Möller
    comment[32]: MUSICBRAINZ_WORKID=80297632-7cf5-3dae-b36e-230c87ef8c30
    comment[33]: LANGUAGE=zxx
    comment[34]: WORK=Symphony no. 1 in C major, op. 21: I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
    comment[35]: COMPOSER=Ludwig van Beethoven
    comment[36]: COMPOSERSORT=Beethoven, Ludwig van
    comment[37]: MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASETRACKID=af706a7f-ce80-4892-8475-d459abd190c9
    comment[38]: TRACKNUMBER=1
    comment[39]: ALBUMARTISTS=Beethoven
    comment[40]: ALBUMARTISTS=Berliner Philharmoniker
    comment[41]: ALBUMARTISTS=Sir Simon Rattle
    comment[42]: ACOUSTID_ID=7e12735d-71db-463f-bafa-1f141168aa0f
    comment[43]: GENRE=Classical
    comment[44]: TRACKTOTAL=8
    comment[45]: DISCTOTAL=5

Second file (tagged by hand using Puddletag, some data might be from freedb, some data by the ripper)
    comment[0]: album=Pianoforte 8
    comment[1]: artist=Ludwig van Beethoven
    comment[2]: musicbrainz_discid=k7HZ2KxQFGRK.MVc7NzQMusd6PA-
    comment[3]: title=Concerto no. 3 in C minor: Allegro con Brio
    comment[4]: tracknumber=1
    comment[5]: genre=Classical
    comment[6]: freedb_disc_id=240cf804
    comment[7]: freedb_category=classical
    comment[8]: date=1994
    comment[9]: albumartist=Beethoven; Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli

In Kodi, when I list all albums, in the first case it shows `Beethoven; ...`, whereas in the second case, it shows `Beethoven / ...`
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#5
I vaguely remember PuddleTag having problems creating multi-value tags correctly, you may want to investigate using other tools for your manual tagging. You could even use Picard for this, you don't have to do a Musicbrainz look-up just edit tags manually. My other favorite tagging tool is Mp3Tag.

You said "Info: I am using the `albumartists` tag as described", but that manually tagged example does not have and ALBUMARTISTS tag. It just has
ALBUMARTIST =  "Beethoven; Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli"

When Kodi processes ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST values it applied both the default item separator " / " (that is also appled to other tags like genre) , and also by default ";", " feat. ", and  " ft. " as artist separators. Older tagging often has tag values like "Artist A feat. Artist B",  or users have used ";" as a separator for some other media player "ArtistA; ArtistB", and that set of vaues enables Kodi to split it into individual artists "Artist A" and "Artist B". All of these settings can be changed via advancedsettings.xml if you want, but beware adding things that are in artist names e.g. "&" or "," in "Earth, Wind & Fire".

Hence, in absence of an ALBUMARTISTS  tag, "Beethoven; Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli" gets split into just 2 artists: "Beethoven" and  "Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli". The second is an ugly thing to have as an artist in the artists node! Also since ARTIST = "Ludwig van Beethoven" you will have a both "Ludwig van Beethoven" as well as "Beethoven" in the artists node.

Finally when Kodi displays the albumartist for an album or song, say in the albums node, it builds a string from the separate artists using the default item separator hence a slash appears  - "Beethoven / Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli".

This is the maual tagging I suggest you use for FLAC (which supports multi-value tags):

ALBUMARTIST = "Beethoven; Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philharmoniker, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Lili Kraus, Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Gianfranco Rivoli" (or whatever you want to see displayed)

ALBUMARTISTS = "Ludvig van Beethoven",  "Wilhelm Backhaus"," Wiener Philharmoniker", "Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt", "Lili Kraus", "Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra", "Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus", "Gianfranco Rivoli"
(Mutiple values. The tagging tool UI will display this is various ways as a single line,  but their editors will let you enter values separately ).
Notice how I give the full name of each individual artist including the chorus as separate from the orchestra.

The alternative if you are tagging mp3 files using the limited ID3 v2.3 format (instead of v2.4) is a single value for ALBUMARTISTS with slash-space-slash separators
ALBUMARTISTS = "Ludvig van Beethoven / Wilhelm Backhaus /  Wiener Philharmoniker / Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt / Lili Kraus / Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra / Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus / Gianfranco Rivoli"

Of course if you are happy to also see that displayed in the album node, rather than a pretty string, then you could just set ALBUMARTIST to that value instead.
 
Quote:Is it an inconsistency in Kodi, or should I change the way I tag?
Change the way you tag Smile 
And probably don't use PuddleTag if I am remembering the bug correctly.
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#6
Thanks for your detailed reply. Sorry for my inaccurate information, you are right, I was using the albumartists tag only with Picard.

So, in summary, even though the albumartist tags had the same format, my initial observation was due to the fact that one of them has the albumartists tag, and the other one not?

I see that there are also artist and artists flags, does it work the same for them? I.e. the artist tag will be displayed, but if I want to have them separately in the artists node, I should use the artists tag?

You suggested to separate multiple album artists in the albumartists tag by comma, wheras Picard has created multiple albumartists tags. Is that equivalent?
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#7
BTW no need to quote previous posts in full at the top of your posts, it just bloats the thread. Just use the quick reply box at the bottom of the screen rather than the reply button, or edit out the quote.

(2021-05-08, 16:48)schubeda Wrote: So, in summary, even though the albumartist tags had the same format, my initial observation was due to the fact that one of them has the albumartists tag, and the other one not?
Yes. Without ALBUMARTISTS tag Kodi was doing its best to find individual artists.

(2021-05-08, 16:48)schubeda Wrote: I see that there are also artist and artists flags, does it work the same for them? I.e. the artist tag will be displayed, but if I want to have them separately in the artists node, I should use the artists tag?
Yes (or the other alternatives I listed if using ID3 v2.3).

(2021-05-08, 16:48)schubeda Wrote: You suggested to separate multiple album artists in the albumartists tag by comma, wheras Picard has created multiple albumartists tags. Is that equivalent?
No. Different tagging tools show users those tags with multiple values in different ways on their UI or output, and that is confusing you. I did not mean to suggest you separeate anything using commas, I simply displayed the separate values in a list here in this thread for convenience. Also Picard does not create multiple albumartists tags, it creates multiple values for the one tag named ALBUMARTISTS. It just happens that Metaflac, the command-line .flac file tag editor, lists multiple values for a given tag on separate lines.

You want to enter multiple values for ALBUMARTISTS or ARTISTS tags in whatever way your tagging tool allows that.

Doing this for your tagging will hugely clean-up what you see in your artists node, especially if you show song artists.
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#8
(2021-05-04, 11:20)schubeda Wrote: For albums which aren't in the Musicbrainz database, I do this by hand with another tagging tool.

Beside talking about technical details …

Wouldn't it be the easiest and best way to add you album to MusicBrainz? Then you could tag it in the common way with Picard.
If not: You can also use Picard to tag you files manually, without being in MusicBrainz. But note: Don't add the semicolon as separator in a single-frame field. You have to use the Edit-Window (context menu or Alt+Shift+E) and "Add value" for multiple values!
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#9
(2021-05-06, 19:37)schubeda Wrote: ...
Second file (tagged by hand using Puddletag, some data might be from freedb, some data by the ripper)
    comment[0]: album=Pianoforte 8
    comment[1]: artist=Ludwig van Beethoven
    comment[2]: musicbrainz_discid=k7HZ2KxQFGRK.MVc7NzQMusd6PA-

Just one note (but it doesn't affect you issue directly): Be aware of the letter case of the metadata tags! MusicBrainz uses upper case, you have lower case.
Picard is doing it in da different way for different metadata formats (and in a different way for standard tags and individual tags).

Kodi might although be somehow sensitive if a file has just some MusicBrainz tags. Kodi works best with all standard tags from Picard (incl. albumartists) – all or nothing (maybe Dave disagrees with this).

DaveBlake EDIT: Easiest to comment as a edit than way down the thread.
All mbid tags or none is the best approach. Currently if Kodi sees a MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID value is assumes all the other mbid tags it needs are there too. Yes something I guess I should make more robust, but thank fully most users either tag with Picard and have them all or don't have any. I didn't comment about the random musicbrainz_discid tag because Kodi doesn't use that tag at all.

Case does not matter for FLAC (vorbic comments), it is tagging mp4 files that is particularly case sensitive (something @"NeroRome" brought to my attention).
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#10
Thanks a lot, very helpful explanations!
 
(2021-05-10, 23:18)NeroRome Wrote: Kodi might although be somehow sensitive if a file has just some MusicBrainz tags.

I thought Vorbis comment is not case sensitive. Does anyone know more precisely where that's not the case for Kodi?
 
(2021-05-10, 23:03)NeroRome Wrote: Don't add the semicolon as separator in a single-frame field.

This applies to ALBUMARTSTS, but it's ok to have a semicolon in ALBUMARTIST, correct?
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#11
(2021-05-11, 10:43)schubeda Wrote: I thought Vorbis comment is not case sensitive. Does anyone know more precisely where that's not the case for Kodi?
You are right. Vorbis comment is specified as case-insensitive.
Maybe it is working well for Vorbis comment but I don't know it in detail. I don't how it is implemented in detail in Kodi and in the used library TagLib (or in other libs used for other products).
Maybe you run into a problem later if you use a different tool (and don't clean existing tags). E.g. you might get two tags, one in lower case, one in upper case.
Basically all tags in Vorbis comment can exists multiple times. Only the systematic of the tagging software (e.g. Picard) determines if a tag is a single-value entity (i.e. tag exists just once) or a multiple-values entity (i.e. tag exists multiple times in case of Vorbis comment).

Code:
C:\_tmp\Music>C:\Portable\flac-1.3.2-win\win64\metaflac.exe --set-tag=ALBUM="Best of All" silence.flac
C:\_tmp\Music>C:\Portable\flac-1.3.2-win\win64\metaflac.exe --set-tag=album="Best of All" silence.flac


C:\_tmp\Music>C:\Portable\flac-1.3.2-win\win64\metaflac.exe --list silence.flac
METADATA block #0
type: 0 (STREAMINFO)
is last: false
length: 34
minimum blocksize: 4096 samples
maximum blocksize: 4096 samples
minimum framesize: 118 bytes
maximum framesize: 1266 bytes
sample_rate: 44100 Hz
channels: 1
bits-per-sample: 16
total samples: 4410
MD5 signature: 49521a666d6ecf9ccbe0bd35c84c76ce
METADATA block #1
type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
is last: true
length: 82
vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.3.1 20141125
comments: 2
comment[0]: ALBUM=Best of All
comment[1]: album=Best of All


C:\_tmp\Music>C:\Portable\flac-1.3.2-win\win64\metaflac.exe --show-tag=Album silence.flac
ALBUM=Best of All
album=Best of All



 
(2021-05-11, 10:43)schubeda Wrote: This applies to ALBUMARTSTS, but it's ok to have a semicolon in ALBUMARTIST, correct?
Yes, that is basically correct.
"ALBUMARTISTS" or "albumartists" (it's a user-defined tag for Picard, typically set with a script) has multiple values. Based on the used metadata container there are several tags (like for Vorbis) or the values are concatenated into a single entity (e.g. ID3 v2.3).
"ALBUMARTIST" is a single-value entity for MusicBrainz/Picard. You can use semicolons or whatever you want; or set it based on the Style Guides (e.g. of MusicBrainz); or just set it how you want to see the album-artist(s) displayed in Kodi.
In case you have a correct "ALBUMARTISTS"-tag in your files (and Kodi can read it correctly) it's somehow irrelevant what separator you use for the tag "ALBUMARTIST". However, it is the field shown as artist(s) on album-level.
Just in case you don't have a correct "albumartists"-tag (or Kodi can not read it) and it is a multiple-artists-release (multiple MusicBrainz Release Artist ID values) Kodi tries to find the individual artists in the tag "ALBUMARTST" (using the
defined artistseparators).

N.b.: "albumartists" is a user-defined tag for Picard and it is written in different style, depending on the used metadata container, into the files, e.g. in upper case for Vorbis comment and in lower case (i.e. in the style it was named) for APEv2 (.m4a files). See thread M4A files with ALBUMARTISTS tag MBID Shown as Artist Name.


P.S.: The tag mapping for Picard is well documented but sadly without info if single or multiple values.
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Inconsistency in displaying album composer and performer for classical music0