Author Topic: Is it possible to have "Various Artists" sort differently? Virtual Tag?  (Read 3902 times)

theta_wave

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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
Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 07:06:56 AM by ssri

psychoadept

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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.
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theta_wave

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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.
Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 08:31:22 AM by ssri

psychoadept

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I'm not sure why you're using the $Group function instead of the whole tag.

If I understand correctly now, you want Various Artists sorted together (under V in your library), you just want them in album order, not date order?  Try this:

SortVA = $If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",,<Year><Custom Date>)

Then sort by: Album Artist / Sort VA / Album (MB usually assumes Track # sorting for albums but you can add it if needed)
Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 06:19:34 PM by psychoadept
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theta_wave

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SortVA = $If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Album>,<Year><Custom Date>) worked (made a small correction to your suggestion).  Also, the implied track# sorting from <album> is a helpful tip.

Thanks for your help!

psychoadept

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Great, glad it worked!
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orbittwz

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Had trouble also with this VA issue.
i.e I have a VA album called - the hunger games catching fire - without artist/album artist tag.
so i got to here and saw the fix for this and it worked, didn't changed the verification check (SFV) hash at all, because it didn't wrote metadata to the songs files.
I ticked in sorting/grouping "itunes compilation..." and wrote "Various Artists".
edit album tag and in settings ticked itunes compilation "yes"
the album artist changed from the first song artist to "Various Artists" and I'm glad it worked (OCD), had to be perfect library.

thanks!