Music Library scanning - only use ID3 tag info

[der.supertusse]

Hi

I'm having some problems scanning my rather neatly organized (with Media Monkey) music library into XBMC. Specifically, it seems that the scanner is picking up some database field values from the file names / paths, when I would like it to only read from the ID3 v2 tags embedded in the files (in most cases, using path / file name would be ok, but keep reading).

In particular, I am having trouble scanning VA / Various Artists / Compilation albums in, and having them appear as Compilations, and not as regular albums. I have tried several things including, setting Album Artist = "", setting Album Artist = "Various Artists", removing ID3 v1 tags to ensure that only v2 tags are being read, and still it doesn't work. XBMC seems to pick up "VA" as the Album Artist (and in a few rare cases "Various Artists"), and the albums show up as regular albums, not as compilations, except for perhaps 1% of the compilations.

This, in turn, greatly increases the size of the "Artists" listing, as compilation-only artists are not being excluded from this list, even though I ticked this off in the settings.

Please advice.

Tusse.

[sho]

XBMC does not use file information for the library or invent tags.

You could try to Synchronize Tags in MediaMonkey, that has worked for me in the past. (also XBMC will not consider VA in the Album Artist field as a compilation)

[der.supertusse]

Originally Posted by sho

XBMC does not use file information for the library or invent tags.

You could try to Synchronize Tags in MediaMonkey, that has worked for me in the past. (also XBMC will not consider VA in the Album Artist field as a compilation)

Thanks Sho

I did try synchrinize tags, too, without success. I did, however, solve my problem. For some reason, Windows had flipped the permissions to Read Only for the folders containing the music files, and for yet another reason, Media Monkey did not report that it was unable to write to these files, so even tho I removed ID3 v1 and synced v2 tags in MM, nothing actually happened to the files. Weird huh?

I changed the permissions, synced tags, rescanned to xbmc and now it's all working as it should. (With Album Artist = "Various Artists") :-)

Mostly, anyway.

Is there a way to prevent Compilations from showing up in the regular "Albums" listing? I thought the point of the compilations-list were to be able to move compilations away from albums?

Tusse

[jmarshall]

The albums listing shows all albums, including compilations, correct.

[der.supertusse]

Would it be possible to get a view with only albums that are not compilations?

And in addition, an artist view which excludes:
- Artists which only appears on compilations (we have this already) AND artists which only have singles in the library

I.e

All albums
Single artist albums
Compilation albums / Various Artists albums

All Artists
Album Artists
Singles Artists

Tusse

[jmarshall]

You could do a smartplaylist for that, yes.

[der.supertusse]

Great, I'll look into that. Will the smartplaylists be mixed in with the standard queries, or do I have to go to the playlist view to access those?

Tusse

[jmarshall]

The latter.