Manually select "specific" discs of the same album to merge into one via Rclick

[SonicRings]

I sort my music by path via virtual tag "$Split(<Path>,\,4)" and use Album Cover view. This works exactly how I want, as it displays my music in the exact order that they exist as in my folders.

The way it sorts my library also splits discs into their own entities.

I'm looking for a method in which I can manually select specific discs to "merge" into a single entity.

Below I've tried visualizing how I want to combine the following albums:


The red square outlines indicate the parent directory, and the red circle outlines cover the specific discs I want to have combined into a single entity.

For example, Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire includes all 4 discs within the square outline, however I only want the first 2 discs to be combined, with the latter 2 remaining as separate discs. I only want the first two entities of Pokemon HeartGold to be combined, with the third disc being separate. And, I want all 4 entities of Pokemon Black & White to be combined into one.

I'd like to be able to highlight the specific discs and right-click > edit and select "merge (internally)" for them to merge (WITHOUT MODIFYING ANY FILES IN MY LIBRARY), with the ability to unmerge/reset that setting. Or perhaps a "set target" setting I click for the first album I want to act as the "host" which makes a "merge to target" setting become visible, which will continue to display the target's album art once merged. (Or just display the album art of whichever one sorts first).

I know I can go in and get rid of the Disc folders, instead naming the files with disc (ie. 1-01, 1-02) but I'd like to not have to modify the files and instead set an internal rule for MusicBee to follow. I hope what I'm asking makes sense. It would be quite odd to combine only 2 out of 4 discs into the same Disc 1+2 folder, and then having separate Disc 3 and Disc 4 folders. Not to mention, I wouldn't be able to display separate album art during playback via Cover.jpg/Cover.png files for the discs I physically merge into the same folder.

I'm guessing this can be implemented by introducing a new type of flagging system that assigns a sequential value to each "merge" to keep track of merged discs/albums. So the first 2 discs I merge will be assigned the flag "1", for example, with the next unique merge being assigned "2".

Thank you!

I'm on 3.5.8056 P

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Why not use the <Grouping> tag?

[SonicRings]

Why not use the <Grouping> tag?

Can you explain how I can use it to do what I want here?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Can you explain how I can use it to do what I want here?

You just want some files to that belong to an album to not be separated by their folder paths, right?
You should be able to combine the ones you want with the <Grouping> tag and then add <Grouping> to the "grouping" setting in the sorting/grouping panel in the Preferences.

[SonicRings]

Can you explain how I can use it to do what I want here?

You just want some files to that belong to an album to not be separated by their folder paths, right?
You should be able to combine the ones you want with the <Grouping> tag and then add <Grouping> to the "grouping" setting in the sorting/grouping panel in the Preferences.

So for example I group the 2 discs in Pokemon ruby as "Pokemon ruby"? Does this modify the file's tags?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

So for example I group the 2 discs in Pokemon ruby as "Pokemon ruby"? Does this modify the file's tags?

Yes.
You could use a Custom Tag and set it to save to the database only, but grouping items together is (obviously) what the <Grouping> tag is, but it's up to you.

[SonicRings]

So for example I group the 2 discs in Pokemon ruby as "Pokemon ruby"? Does this modify the file's tags?

Yes.
You could use a Custom Tag and set it to save to the database only, but grouping items together is (obviously) what the <Grouping> tag is, but it's up to you.

I don't think the grouping tag is what I want. Grouping introduces headers from what I see. I just want there to be fewer albums in that screenshots. I want the 24 albums to go down to 16 in this case.

An idea that was suggested to me was to make an If-statement in the virtual tag I use to sort my library in the form of

Code

$If(<customtag>="grouptest"),alternativegroupingmethod,$Split(<Path>,\,4))

But I have no idea what to make the alternative grouping method. I can't do a variation of $Split(<Path>,\,4) with like 5 instead of 4 because my albums are in various numbers of subfolders. In this case, they're in a subfolder. But I have other albums that are just in the root of my library folder.

Any ideas?

[frankz]

The least complicated and most solid way to get what you want (like perfectly collated albums) and not get what you don't want (like headers etc) is to organize everything you want to be an album - everything in your entire library - into their own folders by album and then set "files for each album are organized in their own folder" in the Sorting/Grouping preferences. 

Why screw with all of these tags and virtual tags and worry about unintended consequences and creating other problems in the process when a clean simple solution like this exists?

Music library management software is really geared for normal albums in the traditional sense.  Any work-around you create in order to shoehorn these non-albums into that paradigm is going to involve trade-offs.  I think this solution gets you closest to what you want in the least destructive manner with the fewest future complications.

[SonicRings]

The least complicated and most solid way to get what you want (like perfectly collated albums) and not get what you don't want (like headers etc) is to organize everything you want to be an album - everything in your entire library - into their own folders by album and then set "files for each album are organized in their own folder" in the Sorting/Grouping preferences.  

Why screw with all of these tags and virtual tags and worry about unintended consequences and creating other problems in the process when a clean simple solution like this exists?

Music library management software is really geared for normal albums in the traditional sense.  Any work-around you create in order to shoehorn these non-albums into that paradigm is going to involve trade-offs.  I think this solution gets you closest to what you want in the least destructive manner with the fewest future complications.

I'm already doing that. Like I said, my library is sorted exactly how the folders appear in explorer. Hence why I'd need to get rid of the disc folders in this instance if I want to combine the albums. Which I don't want to do if there's another way to combine them.

But looks like it's not possible? It's odd that musicbee cannot combine discs into the same album with this setting. In which case I'll sadly have to get rid of the disc folders of the few I want combined, and redundantly embed the different artwork each disc currently has into the files themselves, bloating each track by about 1MB each...

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

I don't think the grouping tag is what I want. Grouping introduces headers from what I see. I just want there to be fewer albums in that screenshots. I want the 24 albums to go down to 16 in this case.

I'm confused... Adding information to the <Grouping> tag alone wouldn't do anything display-wise unless you have it set somewhere in the Preferences to do so.
Can you post a screenshot of how it looks with the "headers" + the settings for the View?

When I first (re-)started delving into MB, I too tried grouping albums by folder path, then realizing split disc albums would also be separated.
The way I solved it was by adding <Album Gain> to specify how files are grouped to an album. Using the <Grouping> tag shouldn't be any different.

[SonicRings]

I don't think the grouping tag is what I want. Grouping introduces headers from what I see. I just want there to be fewer albums in that screenshots. I want the 24 albums to go down to 16 in this case.

I'm confused... Adding information to the <Grouping> tag alone wouldn't do anything display-wise unless you have it set somewhere in the Preferences to do so.
Can you post a screenshot of how it looks with the "headers" + the settings for the View?

When I first (re-)started delving into MB, I too tried grouping albums by folder path, then realizing split disc albums would also be separated.
The way I solved it was by adding <Album Gain> to specify how files are grouped to an album. Using the <Grouping> tag shouldn't be any different.

Can you please send a couple screenshots of how your settings look? I must have done something wrong. I'll give it another try with the help of your pictures next time I get on. Thanks in advance!

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

[SonicRings]

Ah, see, this is my issue. I need to use the "files for each album are organised in their own folder" setting so that my music appears exactly how they do in explorer. Not using that setting results in my music being sorted alphabetically, with folders which contain a bunch of singles that I want to appear as a single "album" to be split into their own separate entries, and causes any album without an album artist tag to be split into separate albums for each artist.

So I'm back to the only solution I can think of, which is getting rid of the disc folders and just embedding the same artwork in each disc's music files selecting specific tracks to display alternate artwork within MusicBee and hoping my wishlist request gets implemented.