Play in track order

[otmetrud]

This issue is making me crazy. I have 4.06.1501 installed. I have everything sorted correctly in the MM client. I have all my media auto-organized by album artist, album, disk #, track #.

On my DLNA client, everything is sorted correctly by album. But when you view by artist or by album artist and then to the album, some are sorted by track # (correct), some alphabetically and some seeming randomly. I want them all sorted by track # throughout. How can I make this happen?

[yamaha]

[quote="khelsing"]Some of you obviously haven't fully understood the concept of MediaMonkey's method of sharing media (which is UPnP-AV/DLNA).

Talk about how to win friends and influence people!

I have the same sorting problem, and a hint. I have a Yamaha rx-a1010, and apparently they have no idea how uPnP works either, since the track list comes up sorted wrong using MM. Of course, it I use Twonky media server, the track list comes up in the right order, so I guess khelsing should write to both companies and set them straight.

The sort order is not random. It is based on the filename (not the real filename but the index to the track that is used to build the url). You can see it by setting up a second MM, opening the first MM's library using it, and making sure that the "filename" column is visible. If you sort an album's tracks by this mess, the order will match the incorrect order you're seeing in the dlna client. You can do the same thing using WMP as the client. Twonky also has these indexes for the filename, but my Yamaha still gets the track order correct.

Now why would the dlna client (my Yamaha, in my case) sort by this goofy thing? I'm guessing because it can't determine the file type from the metadata that MM sends, so it doesn't think it should sort on track. Why it would try to sort on filename as a fallback is beyond me, but maybe it doesn't have anything else to work with. Perhaps in some cases, MM isn't even sending the audio object's metadata at all. This obvioulsy isn't always the case, because some clients are getting it. Perhaps it depends on the specifics of the query method.

If I open the MM library in WMP, and display the TYPE column in the track listing, I notice that sometimes the TYPE is flac, while other times this column is emtpy. I have 2 MM's installed, and one always has this column set, while the other doesn't. Perhaps there's something else I'm doing to cause this that I haven't deduced, like how I'm getting to album track listings, but I don't think so. Very confusing, and I imagine it would be to a client. However, using either server ends up with the wrong sort order.

For those of you with receivers, set up a Twonky server and see if it solves the sorting issue. I wouldn't recommend using it instead of MM (assuming this issue gets resolved), the interface is clunky compared with MM and it's not really designed well for sharing music, but at least you can reassure yourself that your $500-$5000 receiver is actually working.

For MM, if you can use MM as a dlna client and sniff the metadata, perhaps you can compare the output from Twonky versus MM. If there is a way I can do this with some logging option, I'd be happy to have a go. It would be part 1 of making MM really useful to those of us with AV receivers. (Part 2 would be to get MM media descriptors (the index url stuff) compatible with WMP. I can use WMP to see a MM library, and do a "play to", but when it tries to play, it gets an error trying to get the media (I'm guessing this has to do with a res that is slightly out of spec, but just guessing). This same setup works with Twonky, which means I can use WMP as the DMC for Twonky serverd files. It would be sweet to do that for MM as well, until you guys get around to putting DMC into MM.)

[Lowlander]

There is definitely something wonky about MediaMonkey and the order things are displayed on the client. Supposedly files are sorted on the client as they're sorted in MediaMonkey, something I've had trouble with getting right with Movies and Podcasts.

Interestingly I had issues with TV as well and just found that some files had Track# values whereas others didn't, which resulted in incorrect sort. Enabling the Track# column in the TV collection I found it was included as sort column despite never being selected for this as the column wasn't displayed. Perhaps a similar issue is plaguing other collections (although Track# didn't seem to be an issue in the Movies collection here).

[wembleykid]

My first posting, but I too am having the same issues. I've raised a ticket with MM. If they can get this sorted, it'll be in my opinion the best music library and server on the market by a country mile. I've loved MM for years and remember a couple of years emailing them to say what a great product it is and would be only bettered if it had a server as well as library option!

[ginjaninja]

I can sort you out... i have been searching high and low for a DLNA server that can sort on my TV.
MediaMonkey has the answer.

Short answer, set the title tag of your music to be '%tracknumber% - %title%' rather than just %title%. This forces all all renderers who only sort alphabetically to show tracks in order.
(im not an expert of MM yet, 1st use today, but potentially if this is possible, it might be better to setup a specific DLNA collection with this tag configuration, lest it impacts your other uses of the collection). I used auto tag from filename to set my tags for DLNA serving. (as my filename/paths are 100% organised/consistent)

Medium answer - some renderers (my samsung included) use standard upnp tags for track order (upnp:originaltracknumber) BUT this upnp tag only come into play (affects sort order on renderer) when the media server communicates some extended capabilities to the device. In my case if i use the samsung DLNA software.

Longer answer - upnp uses dc:title field to communicate titles to the renderer. The renderer(eg. tv, ps3, xbox) controls the sort order ultimately although the server can affect the conversation depending on the renderers and servers conversation on sort capabilities (and other extended upnp features eg #getfeaturelist). If you download the intel upnp tools http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... load-tools you can use the AV media controller toolkit to see the way mediamonkey is presenting dc:title to its clients.

For renderers with fussy or no support for proper sort order via the standard upnp:originaltracknumber, prefixing track number to title in dc:title sorts this. Good news is that the mediamonkey 'collection/library' title tag..becomes dc:title in mediamonkeys DLNA engine.

GL

[rovingcowboy]

First use uh? Sounds like you been at it for yr's. But first use then you might like the magic node script, it allows for lots of path way adjustments.