Dynamic (not written to file) Album Rating display - how to nowadays ?

[alec.tron]

Heya,
seeing this is a few years old:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=5103.msg28405#msg28405

And I can not find explicit information about it in the plugin pages:
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Additional_Tagging_and_Reporting_Tools

And I fail to see anything else in the references other than "auto-calculate album ratings" tickbox, which I would assume does write it as a static value to all files of an album, which I would not want...

Does anyone know from the top of their heads if this is still possible - and how to with MB3 ?

Cheers.
c.

[alec.tron]

Turns out I'm blind and I didn't see nor find the "Calculate average album ratings" section on there when writing the above :/
On a third attempt, when looking for something else I did see it though..

Now, as for best-/recommended-usage... since I do not want the album rating to be written to file-metadata, what's my options here ?
Setting "Album Ratings are stored in: " to " "Null" "  ?
And having
"Auto calculate Album Rating on start up" enabled ?

This seemed most appropriate for my case... but upon testing on a sub-section of files, and it scanning and reporting 'Album Rating 100% calculated' or somesuch, I fail to see where the album rating would sit, and how to display it (i.e. which view) and how to sort by it - any chance to do the 2 with an Album centric view when not storing the album-rating in metadata ? I though MB's virtual Tags could be a way out here, but I could not see the option in the field drop-down, only custom fields, which are in-file again.

Cheers.
c.

[boroda]

if i understood you correctly, just untick all options in 'calculate album rating' command and enable 'dynamic album rating' calculation in mb itself. its default plugin behavior (not sure about mb default behavior).

[alec.tron]

Hey boroda74,
thanks for the reply!

That's where my confusion comes from  I think... In MusicBee - Preferences -> Tags (1), there's 2 settings:

[X] Store Ratings In The Music File

[  ] Auto Calculate Album Ratings

The first I'd want, to store the track rating in the file directly, the later - due to wording and context - I do not want, as it sounds as if it would write the Album Rating into the files metadata as well.
That's where I thought your plugin comes in - i.e. that it allows to dynamically calculate the Album Rating, and displaying it in the MB GUI, without writing it into the files' metadata...?

Might be I got a wrong end of the stick here...
Or, in case it does exist in MB - where would I find the "enable 'dynamic album rating' " setting ?

Churs.
c.

[Bee-liever]

That's where my confusion comes from  I think... In MusicBee - Preferences -> Tags (1), there's 2 settings:

[X] Store Ratings In The Music File

[  ] Auto Calculate Album Ratings

Even when you turn both of those options on, MB does not write an "Album Rating" tag to the tracks.
(I think because there is no ID3 specification for an album rating tag)

Album Rating should be available in any 'Set Displayed Fields' panel accessed from the drop down menus

I have it set to display under the artwork in Album and Tracks view

[boroda]

i think Bee-liever is right. as for my plugin:

That's where I thought your plugin comes in - i.e. that it allows to dynamically calculate the Album Rating, and displaying it in the MB GUI, without writing it into the files' metadata...?

no, plugin can't dynamically calculate album rating (not stored in some tag) at all. just disable this plugin functionality.

[alec.tron]

So MB's album rating is indeed derived dynamically and not written to files, but display wise, it is handled like metadata on files (as you can set a 'Set Dispplayed FIeld' for it)...?
Interesting.
Thanks for the insight!
I'll try that at home tonight.
Cheers.
c.

[boroda]

treat album rating as some pseudo 'virtual tag'

[alec.tron]

Hey,
that sort-of-works.

If anyone doesn't mind answering more question regarding this...
How come an album with 10 tracks, and 2 tracks of the 10 rated with (let's say) 3 stars (and 8 tracks then being 0 rated), the album rating displayed is 3 stars no matter if 'exclude zero rated tracks' is ticked or not in preferences...?
Is there a way to have it respect the 0-rating setting / make this more accurate ? i.e. actually taking each zero rated track rating of the album into account and having an 'exact' representation ? i.e. :
(0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+3+3) / 10 (tracks) = 0.6 (of 5 = album rating) ?

Churs.
c.

[boroda]

maybe your several tracks are not rated, rather then zero-rated?

[alec.tron]

True. I assumed unrated is equal to 0 rated.
Thanks for the help boroda74!
c.

[alec.tron]

After thinking about this... and I would prefer it this way - Is there a way to treat non-rated tracks of an album as 0 rated for MB's dynamic album calculation ?
Cheers.
c.

[Bee-liever]

As I said here

There is no ID3 standard for the values used for a rating.

Technically there is for one part, but everyone ignores it.
Ratings start at 1 not 0
Rating = 0 means rating is unknown
0 rating is not equal to being banned

so, even though you're technically correct to use zero for being unrated, Steven has set MB for compatibility with the majority of players and taggers that use 0-255 for the ratings levels, rather than the ID3 standard of 1-255

[alec.tron]

Thanks for the info Bee-liever!
c.

[alec.tron]

...album rating...display wise...is handled like metadata on files (as you can set a 'Set Dispplayed FIeld' for it)...

This came up recently now that I have ratings on my files (which I never bothered with, and it's become a huge & time intensive task :/ )... and now that I have some, I'd want more exact info...

I assume not, as there's no math/arithmetic functions for (virtual/real) tags afaik - is it somehow possible to display the dynamically calculated 'Album Rating' value as a float (rounded ar 2nd/3rd decimal or so) recalculated into a scale of 0-10...?

If anyone has an idea on how I could achieve this as is, that would be neat

Cheers.
c.