Involved People Node v1.4

[SimonORorke]

Description:
The Involved People Node add-on adds an Involved People node to MediaMonkey's tree, based on the contents of the Involved People field. The Involved People field must be in format "Role1: Name1; Role2: Name2" OR "Role1:Name1;Role2:Name2".

There seems to be no official definition of the format of the Involved People field/tag. What looks like the official definition of the field at http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0 does not specify the format. However, the format supported by the Involved People Node add-on is the one that can be found the at the http://www.discogs.com/ web site and imported from there into MediaMonkey by the Discogs Tagger add-on.

Download:
Version 1.4.0.0
InvolvedPeopleNode1.4.0.0.mmip

What is new:
v1.4: March 5, 2011 by SimonORorke
- Fixed: Error handling. When there in an invalid Involved People field,
- instead of showing a "subscript out of range" message,
- a more meaningful "Invalid Involved People" message is shown,
- including the contents of the offending Involved People field together with
- the artist, album, track number and title of the track it applies to.

v1.3: September 1, 2009 by k_r_eriksson
- Added support for filters.
- Fixed: Problem with sql.

v1.2: August 31, 2009 by k_r_eriksson
- Fixed: Error handling. The script doesn't quit if an involved people field uses the incorrect mask.
- Fixed: Showing tracks from names that are part of another name, for example "Contrabass" and "Bass".
- Changed: Involvement and Involvee to Role and Person.

v1.1: August 29, 2009 by k_r_eriksson
- Added: "By involvement" and "by involvee"
- Fixed: Mask needed less strict.

v1.0: August 29, 2009 by k_r_eriksson
- Added Involved People Node
- Created MMIP Installation Pack

Installation:
Just double click on the InvolvedPeopleNode1.4.0.0.mmip file; if you are on Vista make sure you have MM3 set to "Run as Administrator"; if you downloaded the installation package with IE7 and it changed its extension to a .zip, you should first change it back to a .mmip.

[k_r_eriksson]

Nice work Simon

[Peke]

Can someone tell me if IE7 still Renames file to ZIP it should be MMIP as reported by Host Server?

[PatMcQ]

I was about to suggest to the MM folks to support the ";" separator for the Involved People tag but this is better as I can include the "role", too. Pretty dang cool! This should be integrated into MM. Now my social life is going to be negatively impacted even more, having to enter/maintain all this new data.

Any plans on maintaining this plugin? Suggestions...

1. The plugin doesn't support the new MM4 filtering... AKA: Collections. "Involved People" only appears in the "Entire Library" node.

2. Configuarable ini file (or something) for order/format. I think the Person's name should have priority over their Role.

3. A way to have multiple roles for same artist rather than listing the artist multiple times. Examples...

Vocals:Piano:Harmonica: John Mayall; Vocals:Guitar: Peter Green

John Mayall: Vocals:Piano:Harmonica; Peter Green: Vocals:Guitar

[Mizery_Made]

The MagicNodes script has the ability to create nodes like this. It's a lot more flexible and is still maintained, so you may want to look into using it instead.

[SimonORorke]

Any plans on maintaining this plugin? Suggestions...

I took over maintenance of this plugin to make the latest version, which was really just a bug fix. In principal, I'm interested in making a new version in response to new ideas, thoough I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of the plugin's code. So thanks for your suggestions.

1. The plugin doesn't support the new MM4 filtering... AKA: Collections. "Involved People" only appears in the "Entire Library" node.

I've only upgraded my copy of MM to MM4 just now, having read your post. I can see the problem and, with the proviso that I've only just started investigating MM's new Collections feature a few minutes ago, I'd say it's an excellent suggestion to allow the Involved People node to be shown in collections. I'll see what I can do. By the way, I can see that "Involved People" appears in the "Music" node as well as the "Entire Library" node.

2. Configuarable ini file (or something) for order/format. I think the Person's name should have priority over their Role.

I'm unlikely to implement this. This Involved People Node plug-in is designed to be compatible with Discogs-format Involve People tags, as explained in the introductiory post of this thread. As Mizery_Made suggests, for something more flexible, try the MagicNodes plugin.

3. A way to have multiple roles for same artist rather than listing the artist multiple times. Examples...

Vocals:Piano:Harmonica: John Mayall; Vocals:Guitar: Peter Green

John Mayall: Vocals:Piano:Harmonica; Peter Green: Vocals:Guitar

Good idea. I might have a go at implementing that one too. You can already do this, sort of. Like this:

Vocals, Piano, Harmonica: John Mayall; Vocals, Guitar: Peter Green

But, by this existing method, you would end up with a "Vocals, Piano, Harmonica" node within Roles. I don't think that is what you want. To get John Mayall into three separate Vocals, Piano and Harmonica nodes without having to write his name thrice does sound good.

Simon

[PatMcQ]

Cool! Glad to see someone's willing to tweak it and that my suggestions may help.

I already have the "/" where you suggested the "," because some of these musicicans have six different roles. Not as sweet as seeing separate list of all of the Harmonica players. And sheez... I can't even play one instrument.

I'm not a developer so excuse my dreamy ignorance. Ideally, since formatting that long tag can get pretty ugly, a simple mini-spreadsheet GUI would be better. Ya fill it in and it formats/inserts the data into the tag. A customizable matrix such as...

Role Person1 Person2 Person3
----------------------------------------------------------------
Vocals John Mayall Peter Green
Guitar Peter Green
Piano John Mayall
Harmonica John Mayall


Or better yet...

Person Role1 Role2 Role3
----------------------------------------------------
John Mayall Vocals Piano Harmonica
Peter Green Vocals Guitar


The columns/rows thing won't look so good here but you get the idea.

Thanks.

[PatMcQ]

Oh, and do you know how to flush the "Involved People" plugin's cache? I've been cleaning up that tag throughout my library but a lot of the old data is still listed in the Involved People media tree even though the data doesn't actually exist in the track files. It appears to repopulate the list when you double-click on it but the baggage remains.

Thanks,
Pat

----------------------------

Never mind. Pilot error. Had some artists hiding in the tag. The list refreshes nicely.

[paddymcq]

Wondering what happened to the Invovled People Node. It doesn't work in MM4.

[SimonORorke]

Sorry, I know that Involved People Node is well overdue an upgrade. Unfortunately I've got other priorities now and have no plans to do it. If anyone else would like to take over maintenance of the node, as I did from k_r_eriksson, that would be great.