Some bugs in this area were recently found and fixed (discussed in another thread here). It will be ok in the next release. It's definitely better to rescan to a clean DB then.

Jiri

To avoid confusion could responses be limited to facts, and avoid assumptions and guesses. Personal experiences and solutions are very much appreciated.

I say this because of the previous post and the allusion to "properly tagged" tracks or "correct" tags etc...this issue seems to generate confusion. I do not presume to know what is "correct" or "proper"...I am simply presenting the inconsistent and problematic behavior exhibited by MM3 with my files. These files have been collected over a long period of time using a variety of softwares for the original ripping. Many have been catalogued with iTunes, many with WMP, many with other softwares(including foobar2000)...some have been originally ripped with MM3. I am presenting issues that have obvious repeatable problematic behavior over a wide selection of files and that have, for the most part, operated without these problem issues in MM2 and other softwares.

It would also be great if the devs could respond here to clear up some questions and definitions regarding these issues or advise how else to contact for further infromation.

Forgive my lack of detailed knowledge and understanding of the techinical aspects of "tagging". I am only concerned from the perspective of a basic user of MM and have not taken it any further than that. I am not even sure that "tagging is at the root of my confusion on this issue.

**1.)A fundamental question. With the introduction of the "Artist & Album Artist" node, could a definition of "Album Artist" be given here? Logically, I would assume that every "Album Artist" would be included in the "Artist" node...please clarify definitions.

**2.)What ID3v2 field is used for the "Album Artist" in MM3? I would like to try to examine this field outside of MM3, to verify its content.


For this example of the confusing behavior in MM3, I will use "The Big Chill"...which is actually used in the MM3 Help files as an example of a multiple artist album. The behavior of MM3 seems contradictory to the help file explanation.

Here is the MM3 help entry concerning multiple artist albums:
[img]http://i17.tinypic.com/4kvf7ea.png[/img]

I deleted the previous MM3 db and did a clean scan of my entire library with MM3 RC-1.....120k+ files.
(Perfect scan the first time I might add....very fast and complete...this is the first time it has gone smoothly the first time around...Thanks for the great work!!)

This is the resulting album node display for The Big Chill:
[img]http://i13.tinypic.com/4pe5iza.png[/img]
Note the Artist is displayed in the Album Artist field. There is NO entry on the Various node for this album.


For this example, in MM2, I removed from the library and rescanned the "The Big Chill" files. This is the album node display.
[img]http://i18.tinypic.com/63u772g.png[/img]
Note the "Various" that has been placed in the "Album Artist" field in the display. The album DOES appear in the "Various" node of the album node.
This is the behavior described in the above help file.


Now I attempeted to autotag with amazon and add the album art only...when I slected add to file only...nothing happened...if i selected add to folder then the bahavior described in previous posts occurred...MULTIPLE ALBUM ENTRIES FOR EACH ARTIST...and in this instance the album art does not showup.

[img]http://i9.tinypic.com/624p6l5.png[/img]


Same attempt with MM2....no apparent issues....
[img]http://i6.tinypic.com/52ljzmu.png[/img]

PLEASE NOTE...another odd thing is...the number of selection choices returned from the MM2 "Amazon Auto-Tag" was consistently more than the MM3 search...MM2 returned 7 choices from amazon, MM3 returned 2....this was consistent over every try.

There are other confusing behaviors from MM3 that seem to be related to this core issue. I am only focusing on this one clear simple and repeatable inconsistency in the name of producive clarity.

I hope this is of some help in clearing up these issues. While it may seem insignificant to some, I am talking about being able to search, browse and manage thousands of compilation albums. I look forward to being able to use MM to organize and manage my library effortlessly. Thanks for the great work and the great product!

[quote="cmx"]ZPrime do you have any files/ compilation albums etc... that exhibit or corroborate this behavior in MM3?[/quote]Only the ones that I have accidentally tagged like your library (Album Artist == Artist, which isn't correct).
[quote]Do you have compilation albums in which MM3 places the artist in the album artist field? [/quote]Not anything that MM3 did. All of my multiple-artist collections have a proper Album Artist tag that is shared across the entire album. For most it is "Various Artists" but not always. I have one or two that I just discovered were mis-tagged thanks to MM's display of them.
[quote]What does MM3 place in the album artist field of your compilation albums? Do your compilation albums actually have the album artist "tag" defined in the file itself before MM3 scans?[/quote]It is displaying what I have tagged in the files, yes.
[quote]What software was used to rip the original files? What was the original source of the scanned files?[/quote]I rip using EAC and encode to FLAC. Any missing tags or updates were (historically) performed using foobar2000.

I had been "playing" with MM in the 2.x versions but I didn't need it because I was using an older iPod and it worked with foobar. I have a new 160G Classic and while the newest version of foobar can deal with it, the configuration is more than slightly annoying, so I jumped on the MM bandwagon "for real."

I'm guessing that the reason MM2 was displaying it OK was because either (a) the files had conflicting ID3 tags (v1 or v2) or (b) there was some other method in MM2 to mark a compilation.

I'm guessing that when you go to MM3, it pulled some information from the old database for MM2 (rather than rescanning the files) and so it displayed OK until you did something that caused a re-read of the tags.

Perhaps it has something to do with the 'grouping' field (a new field for MM 3) conflicting with the album artist field.

I duno, but yea there seems to be issues still with compilations.

Teckno...one specific point about your last post I think needs to be clarified and seems to be pertinent...

[quote]And since it appears that once MM 3 updates the art (or any tags perhaps), that the album artist gets reset to the artist (meaning you lose the "various" album artist which MM uses to group said album.
[/quote]

Look at the the screen shots....in the "Watermelon" example, in MM3 BEFORE anything is done to the files, the tracks are properly grouped together in ONE ENTRY in the Album Node with the (Various) designation....AND NOTE the Album Artist for each track is the same as the Artist...it is NOT "Various".

This is specific behavior to MM3... this is not how MM2 behaves....I think this difference between how the versions operate might be causing some confusion....I think it has in past discussions.

I am using only MM3 here and am focused on its operation, I only used the MM2 example as a reference as to the integrity of the files.

No I did not/am not re-create the issue, I'm not actively using mm3 at the moment, I was just trying to distill down the information.

Whether or not you specificied the 'various' to the album artist, or that MM2 did it automatically does not really matter.

What matter is, that mm2 properly groups the compilation album.

And since it appears that once MM 3 updates the art (or any tags perhaps), that the album artist gets reset to the artist (meaning you lose the "various" album artist which MM uses to group said album.

Also, you should not wait for a specific request for debug log, simply create the log and add any example screenshots/database/mp3 files and email it to the support email. You can also link to this thread (or any other you feel appropriate).

You can zip it all up (the debug log + mm.db + example file(s)) and if still too big for email you can use 'you send it' or some other file share/transfer site.

I've done this before there is no problem, and in fact is what they want (see the bug forum for details on the debug log creation).

Tom....

As I hoped would be apparent in the screen shots:

*Yes, MM2 scans my library files and sets the "album artist" field to "Various" for multiple artist albums.

*MM3 scans my library files and sets the "album artist" field to the same as the "artist"...this behavior is specific to MM3...and to my knowledge it has never been explained why this occurs.

*MM2 does NOT exhibit the "splintering" into individual albums for each artist that happens in MM3 when the album art is added to a multiple artist album.

I used the screenshots from MM2 to try to make clear that the same files that are involved in the problems with MM3 are not corrupt or "improperly tagged"...and that they in fact work properly and as expected in MM2.


Sorry for any confusion. Does this make the issue clear?

Tekno,...I'm kinda unclear on your post...
[quote]To break this down into simplist terms:

* started with albums already properly tagged as Various Artist in the album artist field
* used auto-tag from amazon to add album art
* MM 3 breaks down the various artists into the individual artists
[/quote]

Do you mean this is what you did...could you re-create the issue?

I started with the albums as shown in my posts...exactly as MM2 and MM3 scanned/interpreted and displayed them. I have never specifically designated any "album artist" tag. To my knowledge only MM has made any modifications to this tag. Not sure what "properly tagged" refers to.

I stayed with the one simple auto-tag album art function because this is one specific function and I re-created the same exact behavior with the same files and function upon: clearing the album artist field in MM, removing all album tracks and graphic files from library, and rescanning...I was trying to keep it simple and precise as to how I recreated. I believe this has produced the same behavior as re-creating an individual database would.

Actually, it seems any tag that is changed seems to cause the problematic behavior here with these multiple artist albums. Curiously, in an earlier alpha of MM3, if I simply "selected" a multiple artist album from the Album node with the mouse click the "splintering" or creation of an individual album in the album node for each artist on a given album would spontaneously occur...I mentioned this in a thread concerning similar issues but did not have the time to pursue a detailed testing.

In my original posts I offered any and all assitance and additional info if requested...there has been no request, or any response from devs, so I will not send unsolicited files. I am assuming- and hopefully this is something that they are aware of...in my searches of the forum for similar issues, rusty seems to intimate there are ongoing issues in these areas.

So in MM2 you scanned the songs to the library and MM2
sets the Album Artist Field to 'Various' ???

Or did that happened after adding album art ?

Damn - im confused

:o

[quote="callmetom"]@Teknojnky

The screen shots indicate that in MM2 the album artist
was the same - and it works with adding album art.

In the screen shots from MM3 the album artist was not the same
- and it didn't work.

So why in MM2 the album artist where set to 'various' ??[/quote]

Because the files are tagged properly in MM 2 and work, and when taged by MM 3 they get changed to be wrong.

@Teknojnky

The screen shots indicate that in MM2 the album artist
was the same - and it works with adding album art.

In the screen shots from MM3 the album artist was not the same
- and it didn't work.

So why in MM2 the album artist where set to 'various' ??

tom the screen shots already indicate that the album artist was the same. (in the example shots, the Album artist = "Various")

it is only after adding the album art via amazon where the album artist gets changed.

@Teknojnky


[quote]* started with albums already properly tagged as Various Artist in the album artist field [/quote]


I think if the album artist field of an multi artist album contains all the same
there is no Problem with adding album art.

Ahh - ok - sorry - missed something :lol:

I wonder how MM2 should 'know' that the 'Album Artist' is 'Various' ??

Its more 'natural' for me if MM sets Artist=Album Artist ....

Maybe someone wants to have an entry for each Artist ...

:-?

To break this down into simplist terms:

* started with albums already properly tagged as Various Artist in the album artist field
* used auto-tag from amazon to add album art
* MM 3 breaks down the various artists into the individual artists

What needs to be determined is this specific to the auto-tag from amazon function/update or does it happen with any album art update (to various artist albums).

To CMX and anyone else having the problem, it might be easiest to temporarily rename your database file and scan ONLY a few various artist compilation albums to experiment on.

Then you can send a before and after copy of each of this small db files to the support email so they can properly analyze it.

Also, I am sure a debug log would be helpful as well.