Streamlining the browsing tree & multiple configs

[simoncn]

(21-09-2013 22:23)haggis999 Wrote:  Some further experimenting with the MinimServer configuration I displayed a couple of posts ago, has shown up an issue with classical albums that contain single track works (similar to a pop album). Because I am browsing in the classical genre I am expecting to be able to use my custom Work tag, whether or not that work occupies one track or 40 tracks. I also have aliasTags = Work:Group.

However, for a single track work the Work tag and the Track tag would be the same and the 'Group' would be a group of one. The result is a redundant extra step in the selection process but that is a relatively minor problem. My primary issue is that there is no quick way to select all the tracks in, for example, a Chopin piano recital CD. You can only drill down to a single track at a time on the album.

Is there any way to change this behaviour?

David

This is a problem with foobar2000, not with MinimServer or your tagging. If you use another control point such as Kinsky or BubbleUPnP/BubbleDS, viewing the album will allow you to select the complete contents of the album, whether the album contains tracks directly, tracks within groups, or a mixture of these. When using foobar2000, only tracks contained directly in the album are visible for selection.

Quote:EDIT: One solution might be for me to have an empty Work tag for single track works. That fixes the immediate problem in MinimServer but I don't yet know if it messes things up elsewhere.

It would mean these tracks aren't visible when you browse the index for the names of your works. I'm not sure whether you've currently got indexTags set up to use your Work tag values for this.

Quote:I have created a calculated custom tag in JRMC snappily called WorkOrTrackTitle. The value of this tag comes from the expression if(!isempty([work]),[work],[name]), which returns the Work tag if available and the Name tag (what JRMC calls the Track title) if Work is empty. Using WorkOrTrackTitle where previously I would have used Work may be a viable solution in all apps that support custom tags. Obviously, I would have to save the WorkOrTrackTitle tag into all the FLAC files.

This wouldn't help if you use WorkOrTrackTitle:Group in aliasTags, because you would get the same problem as you're seeing now. You would need to put Work:Group in aliasTags and put WorkOrTrackTitle in indexTags. This is similar to my own approach of using Composition for what you are calling WorkOrTrackTitle.

A simpler solution would be to use Kinsky or BubbleUPnP/BubbleDS as a control point instead of foobar2000. Kinsky runs on various platforms including Windows, and BubblePnP/BubbleDS run on Android only. This would require you have a UPnP renderer, which could be either be a separate piece of hardware or some software running on your Windows PC. Is this a possibility?