Director Tag Linked w/ Artist Tag [#21566]

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

Hello! It seems that when I input or change the name of the value in the director field, the artist field is also overwritten with the value entered. I have experienced this with multiple versions over the years and finally tested the behavior on v5 and it remains.

Overall quite happy to see many of the small issues I've had addressed in the new version, I hope there is an easy fix for this issue. Thanks for all the development! By far my favorite media mgr.

[Peke]

Hi,
Director Tag is used in Videos as Artist just like Album is used as Series for TV Episodes, Disk is uses for Seasons.

You can easily see what Fields map to each other by Selecting one track -> Properties and then Change Type of track (without clicking on OK) and MM will show which ones are mapped to which.

If you have better suggestion (based on your usage) on mapping we are here to listen?

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

Thanks for the quick response and consideration. It seems when Director is changed, the artist field is changed as well. Would Artist be able to be linked to the actor tag instead, If not able to be an independent tag? Currently, I need to set the actor and director field to the same value, otherwise it overwrites the artist with the director value rather than being set by the actor field.

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

any thoughts?

[Peke]

Thanks for the quick response and consideration. It seems when Director is changed, the artist field is changed as well. Would Artist be able to be linked to the actor tag instead, If not able to be an independent tag? Currently, I need to set the actor and director field to the same value, otherwise it overwrites the artist with the director value rather than being set by the actor field.

any thoughts?

It is really hard to change mapped fields globally. Some needs to be mapped and some have own tags. Maybe in future major versions of MM when we do reviews and work on design/functions improvements.

Meantime I think it can be made in addon.

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

Would the director field be made to allow manual user replacement values which could be globally referenced to rather than over writing the artist field, as if I understand correctly that is more or less why these fields appear to be linked?

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

I would love some help understanding why this is not an issue which warrants review as it seems like some functionality is broken. I wouldn't change a thing as far as how MM imports. Overall, it's excellent. If changes could be made to allow manual corrections, that would be a huge win.
As of now I am forced to decide which field I wish to be true.

[rusty]

This is a decision that was made some time ago. To explain MM's philosophy: we generally want to be able to rely on file tags so that if files are transferred or if a user wants to use another app with them, they associated metadata can be included with the files. The complication is that different a/v file formats support different tags, and so we've taken the approach of:
- generally supporting those fields that are all supported across different formats
- using fields for the purpose that they weren't originally meant for when no equivalent existed at the time the decision was made (e.g. for Audiobooks using the Artist field for Narrator and Album Artist field for Author).

I haven't reviewed this carefully recently (and MM probably could use a top-to-bottom review of its tag mappings), but when this decision was originally taken, Director wasn't a standard field across all video file formats so the decision was taken to re-use a different field. It's probably time to review that decision

Tracked at: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=21566

Thanks for the feedback!

-Rusty

[tmf]

I haven't reviewed this carefully recently (and MM probably could use a top-to-bottom review of its tag mappings), but when this decision was originally taken, Director wasn't a standard field across all video file formats so the decision was taken to re-use a different field. It's probably time to review that decision

While you all are reviewing the Artist/Director field, could you also consider splitting up the Album/Series tag? Many 'Music' items are also part of a 'Series' like the Videos. Would be a nice way to keep track of the volumes in the series, especially if they are titled differently. Discogs lists many related titles as a Series and it would be nice to be able add this info in MMW using the correct field as it is intended to be used instead of mis-using another field or using a custom field.

[Lowlander]

I use Grouping add Albums to a series. Series is not a music tag as far as I know, which means it's not a good candidate.

In other words, we look at the underlying tagging standards for which tags can be made available.

[tmf]

My thoughts were that since Series was already being swapped with Album it was a possibility, not knowing Series wasn't a Music tag. In that case I would agree it's probably not a good idea. The idea came about from using Discogs, which was long after I started using MM (v2 I think it was).

Unfortunately, I have already used Grouping for other things and use those to define other collections. I started 'mis-using' Conductor (I have no Classical) for the Series, but I'm on the fence whether this is working out as I had hoped? There's definitely some quirks with this method!

Anyway, thanks for the reply Lowlander.

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

This is a decision that was made some time ago. To explain MM's philosophy: we generally want to be able to rely on file tags so that if files are transferred or if a user wants to use another app with them, they associated metadata can be included with the files. The complication is that different a/v file formats support different tags, and so we've taken the approach of:
- generally supporting those fields that are all supported across different formats
- using fields for the purpose that they weren't originally meant for when no equivalent existed at the time the decision was made (e.g. for Audiobooks using the Artist field for Narrator and Album Artist field for Author).

I haven't reviewed this carefully recently (and MM probably could use a top-to-bottom review of its tag mappings), but when this decision was originally taken, Director wasn't a standard field across all video file formats so the decision was taken to re-use a different field. It's probably time to review that decision

Tracked at: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=21566

Thanks for the feedback!

-Rusty

Thank you very much Rusty! <3

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

Any updates on this? Thanks so much!

[Lowlander]

No, this would be a while if implemented as it's a big change (so MediaMonkey 2026 would likely the first release for which this will be considered).

[MarioWhoLikesFood]

I guess that is what it is. I do hope it will be included. Is there a field which I would be able to safely use to store the director value in safely (ie not risk overwriting correct tags, which is not so fun)?

While manual input would be tedious, for the time being, would conductors be a good candidate if one is not interested in the conductor field?
Thoughts are this will provide a temp work around and should this issue be addressed, it would be possible to copy the field over to director and everything will be wonderful.

Lots of great changes in the last release and look forward to it's evolution. I'm happy to wait, but while I do, would this work? Or any suggestions so that the Director tag is able to be searchable in the interim? Thanks again for the communication on this item