Author Topic: Setting to use Sort Artist/Album/etc  (Read 16148 times)

psychoadept

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One thing that isn't working quite as expected on the Sorting tab is that Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are not showing the value defined in Sorting/Grouping under "detect iTunes compilations and treat as Album Artist", when appropriate.
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Steven

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Edit: Ok, one thing not changed by the conversion was grouping by Sort Composer in one of my custom views.  But that's easily fixed.
i see i havent done custom views or playlists, so i will do them for the next update but it will be too late for anyone who has already run the latest version

psychoadept

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Never mind my last post about iTunes Compilations, I think I hadn't got all my tags sorted out yet.  I'll report back later.
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Steven

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Before I jump in, join the pool party, and revise my tagging scheme:
Should I assume that my proposal for the other tags I was wishing for to become regular tags is off the table for the near future?

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20494.0
i wont make any further changes for now but i wont rule out making the tag editor completely customisable as a separate project at a later date


Steven

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One thing that isn't working quite as expected on the Sorting tab is that Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are not showing the value defined in Sorting/Grouping under "detect iTunes compilations and treat as Album Artist", when appropriate.
i have tweaked how info is displayed for the album artist in the sorting tab so the effective sort value is now always displayed. It doesnt affect in any way the actual sorting results

Steven

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Did you change how <Year> is handled for sorting? It looks like it normalizes the date format before sorting, perhaps like this:

Code
$Date(<Year>,yyyy-MM-dd)

If so, thank you very much!

My chronological sorting was broken by this update until I tried it without using the above virtual tag formula I had previously set to account for the differences in date format in my files. Now it works as I intended without the virtual tag no matter what format is in the metadata.

In case anyone is wondering: my mp3 files have dates stored as M/d/yyyy and my flac files use yyyy-MM-dd.
to be honest, needing to use $Date(<Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) made no sense in the first place as MB would still have needed to parse the <Year> field into a valid date in order for the $Date to work. When sorting by date, MB uses the same date parsing.
In any case, one thing i would like to know is have you defined the virtual tag as a Date datatype in Tags(2)/ Fields ?

CritterMan

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to be honest, needing to use $Date(<Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) made no sense in the first place as MB would still have needed to parse the <Year> field into a valid date in order for the $Date to work. When sorting by date, MB uses the same date parsing.
In any case, one thing i would like to know is have you defined the virtual tag as a Date datatype in Tags(2)/ Fields ?

No, it was left as a string.

Dates would be sorted previously, but MM/dd/yyyy would be sorted first and then yyyy-MM-dd would be sorted after those values. Now, for <Year> at least, dates are sorted chronologically without need of a virtual tag. Here's the kicker in case you're curious: I still need to use a virtual tag to sort by the custom tag <Original Year>: $Date(<Original Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) which is currently defined as a string in my settings. Here's how the results are different:

Album Artist/ Sort Original Year (my virtual tag defined above, string)/ Year /Album
-Album covers are sorted first by album artist or sort album artist as expected, then <Original Year> in chronological order regardless of date format, then by <Year> in chronological order regardless of date format, then by album title.


Album Artist/ Original Year/ Year /Album
-Album covers are sorted first by album artist (or sort album artist if present), then the original release year where the date format is MM/dd/yyyy in chronological order, then the original release year where the date format is yyyy-MM-dd in chronological order, then by <Year> in chronological order regardless of format, then by album title.

Make sense? This should be reproducible with dummy files, so here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101342440/Test.zip

The above files only have the four tags necessary for the sorting I outlined above. The tags were created using only the MB editor and match the differences in my files regarding date format (required by the flac/mp3 tag differences). When sorted chronologically, they should end up arranged alphabetically. Any change in the alphabetical order of the album names will show an error in chronological sorting.
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Steven

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to sort as a date, any custom or virtual tags need to be configured as Dates in Tags(2)/ Fields

CritterMan

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to sort as a date, any custom or virtual tags need to be configured as Dates in Tags(2)/ Fields

I can confirm that this in not the case with yyyy-MM-dd specifically. yyyy-MM-dd sorts very well as a string because it's designed to work in exactly that way. The virtual tag I outlined, configured as a string, corrects the issue I see when sorting by <Original Year>. I haven't bothered to test my virtual tag as a date because there has been no need. But, for giggles, let's see what happens when I change my virtual tag to a date...

...and nothing changes. Sorting by my virtual tag <Sort Original Year> still fixes the problem, and sorting by <Original Year> still has the problem.

I get why it's hard to understand what I'm saying is happening, that's why I provided files so others can reproduce the issue. Here are the steps, you will need to have the custom tag <Original Year> set up in Tags (1):

1) Place all eight files in your library.
2) Set custom sorting on the Albums view: Album Artist/ Original Year/ Year/ Album
3) Observe they are sorted EFGHABCD
4) Set custom sorting: Album Artist/ $Date(<Original Year>,yyyy-MM-dd)/ Year/ Album where the underlined text is a virtual tag you create (string, date, doesn't matter how it's configured).
5) Observe that the albums are now sorted to ABCDEFGH as they should be based on the dates entered into the <Year> and <Original Year> tags.

There is a problem with how MB sorts by dates that have different but supported formats. Before 3.1.6216, this same issue affected the <Year> tags, but not anymore. Another workaround would be for me to find a date format that my flac and mp3 files could both use, but I'm fine with my fix and don't want to put in the unnecessary work.
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Steven

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i am saying you need to configure your custom tag <Original Year> as a date field otherwise it will sort as a string. Its not clear to me that you have done that

As you say, for the virtual tag you are using, it will also work with string sorting because of the date conversion function and format used

CritterMan

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i am saying you need to configure your custom tag <Original Year> as a date field otherwise it will sort as a string. Its not clear to me that you have done that

As you say, for the virtual tag you are using, it will also work with string sorting because of the date conversion function and format used

Yes, I have configured my virtual tag as a date, not a string. I want to make sure I'm being clear, the virtual tag is not the problem. It solves the problem. Effectively.

The problem existed, then I made the virtual tag and used it to sort instead of using <Original Year>, then the problem went away. Clear?
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psychoadept

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If you're displaying the tag editor docked in the main panel, and you have multiple tracks selected, the Sorting tab is partially cut off at the top (the first line of fields don't display).
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CritterMan

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If you're displaying the tag editor docked in the main panel, and you have multiple tracks selected, the Sorting tab is partially cut off at the top (the first line of fields don't display).

Reproduced.
Home Desk ~ MB 3.3 Portable • Questyle CMA400i (ASIO) • Sennheiser HD 660S (balanced) / Audeze EL-8 Closed Back / Fostex TR-X00 Ebony • Teac AI-101DA • Jamo C93 + Dayton Audio SUB-1000
Work Desk ~ MB 3.3 Portable / Tidal • SMSL SU-8 v2 • Nobsound NS-05P • THX AAA 789 • Sennheiser HD 58X (balanced)
OTG ~ FiiO M11 • Audiofly AF180 / B&O H6