Multi disc albums: mergeFolderAlbums and additional tags

[wilbert-vb]

I have been staring at the documentation for a while now and I find myself struggling with the options as suggested.

I have a mult-disc album with DISCNUMBER tags and tracks stored in separate disc folders.
In my control point I can browse to the album and queue all tracks of all CD's to the playlist in one click.
But I cannot drill down to a single CD and then queue that single CD to the playlist.

If I disable renumbering of the tracks with the 'mergeFolderAlbums = false' directive, I still have the the same user interactions available: select all tracks.

Now to be able to select a single CD, this is not enough. there is no Minimserver property that I can set in minimserver.config that enables the desired CD drill down in a multi-disc album.
For that I must retag my entire library by appending '[disc ##]' to the album tag.
Which has an effect on folder names if I decide to rename or restructure my library.

Quote:The simplest way to do this is to tag the album tracks with the album title suffixed by a disc identifier in the form [disc <n>], (disc <n>) or , disc <n> [NEW],

To me the simplest way is to toggle a property in the config file, does that not make sense?

Anyway, dealing with this retagging job that I face now, does anyone know which tagging sofware supports a script that functions like:

Code:

modify $album = $album + ' [disc' $discnumber']'

[Andre Gosselin]

(05-11-2016 14:22)wilbert-vb Wrote:  I have been staring at the documentation for a while now and I find myself struggling with the options as suggested.

I have a mult-disc album with DISCNUMBER tags and tracks stored in separate disc folders.
In my control point I can browse to the album and queue all tracks of all CD's to the playlist in one click.
But I cannot drill down to a single CD and then queue that single CD to the playlist.

If I disable renumbering of the tracks with the 'mergeFolderAlbums = false' directive, I still have the the same user interactions available: select all tracks.

Now to be able to select a single CD, this is not enough. there is no Minimserver property that I can set in minimserver.config that enables the desired CD drill down in a multi-disc album.
For that I must retag my entire library by appending '[disc ##]' to the album tag.
Which has an effect on folder names if I decide to rename or restructure my library.

Quote:The simplest way to do this is to tag the album tracks with the album title suffixed by a disc identifier in the form [disc <n>], (disc <n>) or , disc <n> [NEW],

To me the simplest way is to toggle a property in the config file, does that not make sense?

Anyway, dealing with this retagging job that I face now, does anyone know which tagging sofware supports a script that functions like:

Code:

modify $album = $album + ' [disc' $discnumber']'

Try setting DISCSUBTITLE tag to a given value for the tracks of each disc, eg "Disc 1" for the tracks of 1st disc, "Disc 2" for tracks of second disc, etc

[simoncn]

Multidisc albums are merged across folders automatically if the album name and artist information is the same, whether or not the mergeFolderAlbums property is true.

The tag-based approach for selecting whether or not to merge the album's discs and renumber the tracks was chosen to provide flexibility in allowing some albums to have their discs merged (where the disc boundaries are not meaningful musically) and other albums not to have their discs merged (where the disc boundaries are meaningful musically).

Mp3tag should be able to do the retagging you have described. You need to be careful about single-disc albums that have DISCNUMBER=1 tags because you would not want these albums to be renamed to "album name [disc 1]".

An alternative approach that doesn't require the album name to be changed is to add DISCSUBTITLE tags in addition to DISCNUMBER tags. For example, if DISCNUMBER is 2, you could set DISCSUBTITLE to 'Disc 2'.

There is a way to set "virtual" DISCSUBTITLE tags automatically using MinimServer configuration properties without any retagging, as follows:

1) In the itemTags property, add: DiscNumber
2) In the tagValue property, add: DiscSubtitle.default={DiscNumber}

This causes each disc to be shown separately as '>> 1', '>> 2', etc. It does not change the tags in your files.

[wilbert-vb]

Thank you Simon, I understand the approach for flexibility.

Imagine a 55 CD box set like Bach: The Complete Sacred Cantatas and appending a sequential number to each and every CD title seems daunting, I prefer a separate tag like "COMMENT = SplitMulti" that doesn't require additional numbering of individual CD's aside from DISCNUMBER. That still offers the desired flexibility.

Also, Imagine this same box set, scrolling down how many tracks to reach to CD 54 in my control point is... well, not great. Or finding CD 21.
I would prefer a multi-disc album be represented in my control point like following picture, I get this in folder view. Perhaps the current presentation should be available as item called ">>All Tracks" like there also is an "All Artists" item.

Folder View

What do you think?

[simoncn]

(05-11-2016 21:15)wilbert-vb Wrote:  Thank you Simon, I understand the approach for flexibility.

Imagine a 55 CD box set like Bach: The Complete Sacred Cantatas and appending a sequential number to each and every CD title seems daunting, I prefer a separate tag like "COMMENT = SplitMulti" that doesn't require additional numbering of individual CD's aside from DISCNUMBER. That still offers the desired flexibility.

Also, Imagine this same box set, scrolling down how many tracks to reach to CD 54 in my control point is... well, not great. Or finding CD 21.
I would prefer a multi-disc album be represented in my control point like following picture, I get this in folder view. Perhaps the current presentation should be available as item called ">>All Tracks" like there also is an "All Artists" item.

Folder View

What do you think?

I think the requirements for a 54-disc box set are not the same as a multidisc album that typically has 2 or at most 3 discs. See this thread for a discussion on how box sets should be handled by MinimServer.