Questions re Database and Indexing

[Andre Gosselin]

(21-12-2013 17:32)magister Wrote:  Andre,

Are you sure that Media Monkey is actually writing one tag with multiple entries? I use mp3tag, in which you can enter multiple values separated by double backslashes (e.g., in the Artist field, something like "Smith, Robert [piano]\\Jones, Alice [soprano]" -- without the quotes, of course). The double backslash is mp3tag's shorthand that tells the program write two separate artist tags. I wonder if MM is doing likewise but using a semicolon rather than backslashes.

FWIW, I use multiple tags (particularly for artists) with MinimServer and have had no problem.

Magister,
You indeed raised some doubt in my mind. I loaded some multiple artist tracks (mp3 320 kbs tagged with MediaMonkey) inside mp3tag to look at how the Artist tag was displayed by mp3tag, compared to MediaMonkey. I then browsed the "All Artists" index of MinimServer, to see how the artists names appeared in the control point (BubbleUPnP). Here are some observations.
1- Inside MediaMonkey, all multiple artists are shown as a a semicolon separated list of names.
2- Inside mp3tag, the ARTIST tag is shown as a *single*" string, with artist names separated by a slash (alt-T shows only one ARTIST value).
3- When browsing with MinimServer the "All Artists" index, *some* multiple artist strings are listed as one value (eg. mp3tag shows "Lemieux, Marie-Nicole; Lis, François; Orchestre national de France" as the ARTIST value, and I find the same entry in the minimserver "All Artists" index.
4- However, for *some* others, the multiple artist string is clearly splitted along artist names when browsing the "All Artists" index. For ex., mp3tag shows the single string "Montreal Symphony Orchestra/Chung, Kyung Wha" as the artist tag value (again, alt-T shows only *one" ARTIST tag for this track), and I get in the minimserver "All Artists" index one entry each for "Montreal Symphony Orchestra" and "Chung, Kyung Wha").

5-When looking at FLAC files, the situation is much clearer. Every semicolon separated list as shown by MediaMonkey is displayed as a "\\" separated list by mp3tag (alt-T displaying *multiple* ARTIST tags).

Observation 5 seems to confirm your point that MediaMonkey is creating multiple ARTIST tags as mp3tag does, and displays them in its UI separated by ";" instead of "\\", and that MinimServer does no splitting whatsoever on the artist tag value.

Observations 3 and 4 however get me confused about what is doing what. Among multiple artist strings which are *all* seen as a single value by mp3tag, some reach the "All Artists" MinimServer index untouched, and some splitted along each artist name. I never noticed this discrepancy before, as I very rarely resort to mp3 encoded files.

If MinimServer never does any splitting (this is a question Simon could throw light on for sure), this may indicate that mp3tag is sometimes wrong when it reports a single artist tag, and that mediamonkey sometimes does not produce correct multiple artist tags when handling semicolon separated lists.

Is there any system tool which would clearly display the tag structure of a music track ?

Regards