Messages

676

Questions / Re: Is it possible to have "Various Artists" sort differently? Virtual Tag?

« on: January 13, 2016, 08:17:21 AM »

You might be interested in the "treat Album Artist as" setting in Preferences > Sorting/Grouping.  With that ticked, if you leave the Album Artist blank for your Various Artists albums AND tick the iTunes Compilation flag on the settings page of the Tag Editor, it will assume whatever Album Artist you define in Preferences.

Thanks for the suggestion.  That's interesting, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it is feasible in my use case with over 1,000 albums that are compilations with "Various Artists" as Album Artists (with performing Artists as <Artist>) for use in different media players.  More importantly, I have more than a few autoplaylists on those players that rely on <Album Artist> = "Various Artists".  Anyways, based on your suggestion, MB would seem to treat blank <Album Artist> fields as whatever I put down in the Sorting and Group submenu.  It suggests "Various Artists," which brings me back to the beginning of my question.  How to custom sort Various Artists using a sorting subrule embedded in the sorting role.

In other words, I'm hoping to create a virtual tag for sorting in either of the following way:

IF <Album Artist> = Various Artists, then sort these albums via <Album> and then <Track #>, ELSE sort by  <Album Artist>, then <Date>, <Custom Date>, <Album>, and finally <Track #>

-or-

IF <Album Artist> != Various Artists, then sort these albums using <Album Artist>, then <Date>, <Custom Date>, <Album>, and finally <Track #>, ELSE sort by <Album Artist> and then <Album>

EDIT:  Temporary solution (for me) is the following, use the code below as a virtual tag:

Code

SortVA = $If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",$Group($Sort(<Album>),1),$Group($Sort(<AlbumArtist>),1))

Then set up custom sorting with the following in order: <Album Artist> / <SortVA> / <Path> / <Track #>

I had to use <Path> because there were only up to 5 different sort orders.  With six, I would have done: <Album Artist> / <SortVA> / <Year> / <Custom Date> / <Track #>

My custom date is a custom field consisting of  <month.day>.  This is a hold over from mediamonkey where I would rename my directories as <Genre>\<Artist>\<Year>.<Custom Date> <Album>\etc, etc...  Thankfully, my OCD allowed <Path> to work fine in this instance.

677

Questions / Is it possible to have "Various Artists" sort differently? Virtual Tag?

« on: January 13, 2016, 07:03:26 AM »

Hi,

So, I have a custom sorting scheme that goes like this: <Album Artist>/<Year>/<custom date>/<Album>/<Track #>.  It goes great until it comes to compilations that have an <Album Artist> of "Various Artists".  Sorting "Various Artists" by year makes a mess of sorting those compilations.

Is it possible, in the same playlist, to sort albums with "Various Artists" differently than the others?  Is creating a virtual tag the answer?

For example,

Code

SortVA = $If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",$Group($Sort(<Album>),1),$Group($Sort(<AlbumArtist>),1))

leads to those Various Artists compilation to sorted by their album name only.  I'd like this to sort <Album Artist> and then <Album> under the custom sorting scheme above.  Since there's no documentation on creating these virtual tags, could someone offer me pointers?  Thanx

678

MusicBee Wishlist / [GRANTED] Track information panel: Unlimited or automatic row number (auto-wrap)

« on: January 13, 2016, 03:33:52 AM »

Hi,

I'm a long time Mediamonkey user and I've used Musicbee on and off the past few years.  Looks like it has matured nicely, but I have a feature request for this particular panel with respect to the row setting.  In Musicbee, the user has to determine the number of rows available for a particular field.  For example, for classical music oftentimes the title is rather long, so one row for the title is insufficient (three rows is sufficient for many of the classical titles).  However, for more contemporary tracks one row is often enough.  If I have <title> set to display three rows, then there's a two row gap for many of the more contemporary titles.  Is there a way to have the number of rows for a field determined automatically?  Likewise for <comment> where sometimes it gets cut off well before the 99 rows I've set for it.

I just got used to this feature because my two favorite programs for managing my music collection [Mediamonkey for Windows (monkeyrok plugin) and Cantata for linux (metadata panel)] seems to handle the metadata in this manner.

TL;DR: Allow for variable row spanning subject to the requirement by the respective field, say "-1" under "Row Span: "

679

Bug Reports / [INVALID] Import (Reading Custom Tags): COMMENT SONGS-DB_CUSTOM# doesn't show up

« on: January 13, 2016, 03:25:52 AM »

MB version 2.5.5804

Observed Issue:
When importing mp3's with <COMMENT SONGS-DB_CUSTOM#> (#'s being 1-5) and/or <INVOLVED PEOPLE> tags, MB does not read them into its database.  I thought it might have been due to the fact that the tagfields had a space " ".  However, MB successfully read in <MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID>, a tag with two spaces.

Steps:
1) Preferences > Tags (1) > Define New Tags
2) Add in COMMENT SONGS-DB_CUSTOM1,  INVOLVED PEOPLE, or MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID under the id3 column and give it the appropriate identifier.
3) Save
4) Under custom tags in the Tags (1) page menu, add in display name of choice next to "custom 1: " and select the identifier (set in step 2) to "save to music file as tag."
5) Apply and save
6) MB rescans the library in an attempt to read those custom tags into its database.

Expected result:  After MB finishes scanning and updating the mp3s, one should be able to see the appropriate values for the custom tags in the mp3's edit menu (Shift+Enter) under the "Tag (2)" tab.

680

Questions / Track information panel: Unlimited or automatic row number possible?

« on: January 13, 2016, 12:52:06 AM »

Hi,

I'm a long time Mediamonkey user and I've used Musicbee on and off the past few years.  Looks like it has matured nicely, but I have a question about this particular panel.  With Mediamonkey, I love the monkeyrok panel and it is awesome that the track information panel has several of its features.  My question deals with the row setting.  In Musicbee, the user has to determine the number of rows available for a particular field.  For example, for classical music oftentimes the title is rather long, so one row for the title is insufficient (three rows is sufficient for many of the classical titles).  However, for more recent tracks one row is often enough.  If I have <title> set to display three rows, then there's a two row gap for many of the more contemporary titles.  Is there a way to set the number of rows for a field where the number rows is determined automatically?  Likewise for <comment> where sometimes it gets cut off well before the 99 rows I've set for it.