>>>>> Dan Sully <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Isn't there an albumid tag? Seems you could support that as an
>> alternative to using the directory. Would be so much cleaner.
> There is - but that's the Greatest Hits problem.
Hi Dan,
The "compilation" and "Greatest Hits" problems are different
manifestations of the same issue: which songs belong with which
albums?
> We do try and match by directory first - the heuristics get pretty
> messy very fast. See Slim/DataStores/DBI/DBIStore.pm - and sub
> _postAttributeCheck for more info.
Yep, pretty difficult to understand by reading the code and the
comments don't really inspire confidence that it's doing the right
thing.
If I understand correctly, you use the directory as follows: two songs
with the same directory, album title, and disc# (if grouping discs)
are put in the same album. This seems reasonable.
Then various other conditions may also result in putting two songs in
the same album: you look for an existing album that has the same title
(and possibly disc#) and
- if the COMPILATION tag is set, the existing album must also be a
compilation. [Q: what happens if I have 2 "Greatest Hits of the
70s" albums from different record labels? Seems the compilation
tag does not help you then.]
- if the album title is "common", the existing album must have the
same contributor.
> It may be a "non-standard" tag, but nothing about ID3 is standard.
I agree ID3 is a mess, but TCMP is much worse than non-standard: I see
no software for Linux that supports it. Someone mentioned Tag&Rename
which is Windows-only, and apparently iTunes supports it. I'm going
to have to WRITE CODE so I can add tags just to get slimserver to work
right (and I'm skeptical it will even then).
> All it requires is the addition of the compilation flag, if that
> album is a compilation.
Well, the compilation flag certainly does not solve the common album
title half of the problem.
Out of the box, slimserver has these defaults:
commonAlbumTitlesToggle => 0
variousArtistAutoIdentification => 0
If an average consumer installs it as is, they (like me) get 10,000
Maniacs' "MTV Unplugged" and Bob Dylan's "MTV Unplugged" combined into
a single album, and any compilation (since I highly doubt they'll have
the TCMP tag set) will have been dispersed across their library into
"single song" albums, and browse by artist will be polluted with lots
of artists with a single song. Will they be happy? Doubtful. I
would never recommend a SB to my dad, even thought he's relatively
computer savvy. Don't get me wrong, I love my SB, and I just got my
second yesterday. I'd just like it to do the right thing out of the
box for a non- technical user.
I'd argue even having commonAlbumTitlesToggle on by default doesn't
really help, as most of my common titles are not in your list. It's a
band-aid, not a solution.
Then there's the reason this thread started -- Jeremy found that
variousArtistAutoIdentification only works if you don't also turn on
commonAlbumTitlesToggle, unless you use TCMP. It's all very much not
intuitive.
The right thing IMO is:
1. if a song has an albumid tag, then that is definitive, group with
other songs that have the same albumid.
2. otherwise, group all songs that have the same directory, album
title, and possibly disc# (based on parameter) into albums.
3. get rid of variousArtistAutoIdentification,
commonAlbumTitlesToggle, etc and a bunch of cryptic logic.
Easy to understand for both developers and end users, and works right.
greg
Should I have moved this over to beta or developers?
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