Further Compilation Album Various Artist Issues MM3 RC-1

[cmx]

I continue having issues with compilation albums.

I have not really contributed since alpha, as each beta has had changes that seem to have affected this issue and I was concerned about generating the type of problems I have today while things were changing....things seemed to be progressing in a very positive way.

I originally clean scanned my current library db with B1 and have been using that scan thru to here on B4.

The scan has seemed very good and it has seemed to operate well with my files....for the most part things seem to be working well...there are certain compilation albums that seem to be scanned or handled differently from others ...or seem to be displayed differently for no apparent reason I can see. Both mp3 and m4a show inconsistencies between various albums.

I have not been able to find or have I received any clear explanation as to the logic of how the compilation/various artist scanning/display functionality is intended to work...


CURRENT PROBLEM/ERROR:

Today I searched the library for the artist "Jo Stafford".

All songs that Stafford appears on were found correctly and displayed in the main window.

I selected a song on which she is an artist and is on a compilation album.

I used the "find more from same album" function.

The compilation album "Your Hit Parade -1945" was properly retreived and displayed in the main window, and in the NAV TREE album node.

All songs on the album were displayed in the main window...artist and album artists fields were the same for each song.

The Album appeared in the Nav tree as a single entry in the album node as "Your Hit Parade -1945 (Various)"

So far everything worked perfectly, exactly as I would expect it to.

The songs did not have any album art so I selected all the songs and did an amazon auto-tag.

I had to manually enter a "your hit parade" search at amazon and select the correct album art from the retrieved selections....

I then deselected everything to change but the album cover itself and had it complete the auto-tag....I selected "add to folder" AND "tag to file if possible"....these are m4a tracks.

This is where the problem seems to occur....

As it tagged each track, a new album node was created on the NAV TREE for each individual track artist....

NOW there is an album node for each song and the original "Your Hit Parade- 1945" node is still there, but when it is selected there is now nothing displayed in the main window.




Now it is impossible to select the album as a whole for playing, viewing or any other function such as sending to a playlist.

WHY DID MM CHANGE THE WAY IT DISPLAYED AND HANDLED THIS ALBUM?

I have a huge selection of compilation albums and this behavior by MM is seemingly erratic and confusing.

I really do not have a clear idea as to how MM is supposed to function in this case...there is no clear explaination as to how MM will or should handle these multiple artist compilations. There was much argument and misunderstanding in previous discussions concerning this aspect of MM function.

PLEASE, make clear how MM is expected to function regarding multiple artist and complilation/various artist albums. (It seemed to be working logically and as would be expected by the user for this type of album, PRIOR to my changing the album art.)

PLEASE advise on how to return the "Your Hit Parade - 1945" album back to the proper display functionality before the tagging issue. (Hopefully it is just an issue with m4a tags that can be resolved.)

Thanks for any help on this.

Please advise if there is anything I could do or provide to help understand and resolve this issue.

Please excuse the length of the post ...but I wanted to present things as clearly as I could.

[cmx]

NOTE- I removed all the songs from the Library and rescanned the album folder on my drive. This did not return it to the original state. Each song is displayed as a seperate album....AND the "Your Hit Parade -1945(Various)" album , as displayed in the above screenshot is NOT there.

Evidently MM changed something in the files while attaching the album art that causes MM to display it in this odd/incorrect manner.

This is concerning....I do not know how to return my files to their original state.

This is also important to me because there are MANY of my compilation albums THAT I HAVE NOT CHANGED, that exhibit these odd display characteristics by individual tracks, ...from my simple examination of the properties windows in MM of these oddly displayed tracks/albums, they do not appear to be any different than other compilation albums that display "correctly" as a single "album".

As they are now presented in MM, it is impossible to group the songs together as an album, and/or make use of the many functions that rely on this organization, (send to, find more, play now, etc...)

[cmx]

Tested another compilation composed of MP3 tracks instead of m4a.... same erratic behavior.

Original album had a single "(various)" album node entry, when selected all songs shown in main window. Working perfectly.

When album art was added by MM, the album was SPLIT into individual albums per artist.

[cmx]

I decided to attempt a test to show the issue "before and after".....
Here it is....

The Watermelon Sampler...

In first screen shot the album is selected from the album node...it has a single entry with the "(Various)" MM designation...everything is fine. All tracks show up grouped under the album title...everything works and appears as it should.



I then did and auto-tag from amazon and selected ONLY the Album Art...

-Note in the second screen shot....each artist now has a seperate "album" appearing in the Album Node....and the original "(Various)" is now empty...
-There is now no way to access the album as a whole other than doing a search for the album name....
-The properties of each track appear to be no different than before the auto-tag....



I hope this makes the issue clear.

This issue exists for many of my compilation albums that I HAVE NOT auto-tagged or changed in MM...they simply appear with this unique album per artist issue....I cannot see a pattern and do not notice any differences in the visible properties...mp3 and m4a exhibit the behavior.

Please advise if further info is needed. thanks for any response concerning this problem.

[ZPrime]

It looks (to me) like your albums are tagged incorrectly.

The "Album Artist" tag on a Various Artist compilation disc is usually put as "Various Artists" or something else similar.

Most intelligent apps (including MM) will see that a file HAS an Album Artist tag, and it then prefers to sort/group by that tag instead of the typical "Artist." It understands that the Artist tag represents the artist of an individual song, while the entire album shares an Album Artist.

Judging from your columns, all of your VA/compilation albums have "Album Artist" tagged with the track artist. this is going to cause all sorts of problems with a VA album.

I'm guessing that when MM is adding the art and re-writing the tag, it is re-scanning the file and then updating its DB to match what your tags show. I'm looking at your Album Artist column here to make this guess.

[cmx]

What is incorrect? LOL....Something is "incorrect", but I certainly hope it is not my files. I have literally thousands of compilation albums...ripped using various software from many sources. To my knowledge none of them actually had the album artist "tag" explicitly defined in the file tag itself when ripped. Some may have odd tags applied by other players...and that could be a reason for "some" inconsistencies across my library...BUT that does not seem to be the issue here.

I tried to make it clear that MM3 had been functioning differently(note I didn't say "correctly"...lol) prior to this....this is not an isolated issue concerning this functionality connected to album artist/tagging/etc....

Here is another example: The Tijiuana Sessions...a multiple artist album...originally it appeared as a single entry in the Album Node of the Nav Tree...as "The Tijuana Sessions Vol. 1 (Various)"


...upon adding album art I got the individual album per artist behavior as described and shown above with "Your Hit Parade -1945"...





MM3 ITSELFseems to have placed the "artist" data in "album artist" the field. In contrast, MM2 placed "Various" in the library db "album artist" field for the very same files presented above.



and here is same album after adding album art with amazon auto-tag....there are no erroneous albums for each individual artist on the compilation and everything seems to function normally as you would expect it to.



From these examples...it does not appear as if there is a problem with my original files.

MM3 did the original scan, with the same files, nothing has changed in the files or tags. Why does it NOW decide to change the organizational structure of the library when album art is added....

ZPrime do you have any files/ compilation albums etc... that exhibit or corroborate this behavior in MM3?
Do you have compilation albums in which MM3 places the artist in the album artist field?
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?
What software was used to rip the original files? What was the original source of the scanned files?

[callmetom]

I had this Problem too.

I resolved this by renaming the 'Album Artist' of an
multiple artist album to 'Various'. The 'Artist' stays like it is.

You can do this by using the Node 'Multiple artist album'.

After that all things will be fine

Don't know if that is the 'normal Way' but it worked for me.

Hope it helps

Greets
Tom

[Guest]

I resolved this by renaming the 'Album Artist' of an
multiple artist album to 'Various'. The 'Artist' stays like it is.

Yeah, I'm not sure how your albums are originally set up (I can't see the images), but all my various artist comps have "Various" as the Album Artist. An easy way to fix this is to search on album for the name of the comp, select them all, enter the properties dialog, and change the Album Artist name to Various.

They should all snap back. I'd be curious see then what happens if you manipulate them as you were mentioning above. Do they splinter in to separate albums? Or stay the same?

Because, if the Album Artist is getting reset to match the normal Artist, it'll splinter the comps.

Peter

[cmx]

Thanks for the response tom.

Yes, if you manually change the album artist designation for each track to the same value for all tracks on the same album, the album is then grouped together again correctly in the album node.

Thanks for pointing out the Multiple Artists Album Node...I forgot about it...it does make it somewhat easier to repair the problem.

In my library I have about 300 albums in the "Files to Edit", "Multiple Artist Album" node....in the past I actually thought about going in and fixing all of them....thing is it does not address the reason MM3 makes the changes in the first place AND with the differences between how MM2 and MM3 dealt with the "album artist" I was not sure if all the work would be compromised anyway as the MM3 alphas and betas progressed.

I always assumed it was something set wrong or corrupted in my files that caused them to be put in the "Files to edit"....but here- any set of files that initially seem to work fine are placed in the "files to edit" only AFTER I try to add the album art. MM3 itself appears to be causing the problem.

[cmx]

Peter...not sure if you are only referring to tom in your post....

Do you mean you cannot see the screenshots I posted above?

In my library MM3 itself puts the "artist" name in the "album artist" field instead of "Various". I do not.

As for the "manipulation"....MM3 itself is "splintering" the albums into individual albums per artist...that is the point of the original post.

My library is huge. There would be no way I could go in and change all of the tracks in all of the compilation albums to various...that is what I need MM for.

[callmetom]

As you can see at your screen shots in MM2 the Album artists are all
set to 'Various'. Not in the screen-Shots from MM3.

So i think MM2 and MM3 handle the Album-Artist Field equal
in relation to Multiple Artists Albums.

Hope i don't miss something

[cmx]

Not sure if I understand you correctly tom....

Yes, it is apparent that MM2 and MM3 are different in the way they handle this issue....they are NOT the same as the screenshots show.

I used the examples of the same files in MM2 to try to make clear the problematic change that spontaneously occurs in MM3 with these albums.

(Funny, I tried to access the Files to Edit/Multiple Artist Album node in MM2. I wanted to compare it's list to MM3's....but, it locks MM2 up when I try to expand it....lol)

[Teknojnky]

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.

[callmetom]

Ahh - ok - sorry - missed something

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 ...

[callmetom]

@Teknojnky

* started with albums already properly tagged as Various Artist in the album artist field

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