Hi all!

I just tried to migrate my music collection from 1.4 to 2.2.2. It seems that (unfortunately) 'Various Artists' compilations sometimes are split up in separate artists.

My music is organized to have one directory per album. An album can also contain two or more CDs.
All directories containing compliations are named 'Various Artists - Compilation Name', the mp3 files inside are named 'Track Artist - Title.mp3'. Usually all the files of one compilation have the same album tag, a few have different album information (eg. if the CDs I ripped had separate CD titles).
On the other hand songs of one album could have different artists information (eg. some tracks with additional artists) without being a compilation.

I'm aware that compilations with different album tags won't show up as one album under 'Various Artists', but files from one compilation having the same album information should be grouped together.

But regardless whether a directory contains only files with the same album tag or not, some of my compilations do not show up under 'Various Artists', but as separate artists. This affects about one fifth of all my compilations.
As I usually want to hear the whole album (especially for compilations or soundtracks) it is rather hard to add such a splitted album to the playlist.

Although it is possible to make them appear under 'Various Artists' manually by using the context menu entry this is not really usable as my music collection is rather large and each (splitted) album needs to be changed separately. Additionally rescanning the collection 'restores' the original (splitted) situation again.

Before I was using 1.4.10 on KDE 4.3.1, which perfectly (at least for me ) distinguished between compilations and albums with differnt artists, always showing (only) compilations grouped by their album information.

I have also checked and compared the tags of my mp3 files, but could not find any reasonable difference which would explain the behaviour.

As I really liked the way 1.4 was working it would be great to have the same in 2.x.
Is there a way (maybe by modifying/adding tag information) to force compilations to show (properly grouped) under 'Various Artists'?

I'm currently using Amarok 2.2.2 (backport from opensuse repo) running on OpenSuSE 11.2/KDE 4.3.1 with an external MySQL Server and Phonon. Please let me know if additional information is required.
I also realized that there are some closed tickets for this issue (#202360, #192029), but after trying all things mentioned (removing ~/.kde4/share/config/amarok* and ~/.kde4/share/apps/amarok, rescanning collection) the problem still persists.

Could somebody please help me as this unfortunately prevents me from switching to 2.x?

-markus

Rewrite your tags of one of your compilations with an external tagger.
Sometimes the AlbumArtist tag is incorrectly the same as TrackArtist, which is confusing A2.
Don't think, there should be another fault existent. This splitting issue normally has been solved.
I'm on 2.2.3-GIT here with a lot of split-CDs and don't have any trouble.

Regards
m0nk

I've tried a couple of different external taggers (juk, easytag, jTagger, kde4-pinkytagger, id3v2, id3tag) to rewrite the tags, I've restarted A2 and rescanned the collection each time, but the compilation still did not show up under 'Various Artists'.

Could you recommend a differnet external tagger? All taggers I tried did not offer to set the album artist.

Searching the internet for information on album artist tags I found that some programms use the TPE2 frame to store the album artist. So I tried to set the TPE2 to 'Various Artists' with id3v2, but this also makes no difference.

Do I need to modify any other tags?
Which tags are used by A2 for compilations?
What exact information is required for compiliations?

Many thanks,

-markus

While I can't answer many of your questions, I see that you left out two of the major taggers I've used, Picard and Kid3.

entity wrote:Do I need to modify any other tags?
Which tags are used by A2 for compilations?
What exact information is required for compiliations?

I think Dieter already told you which tag you should change, didn't he? Read again

entity wrote:Could you recommend a differnet external tagger? All taggers I tried did not offer to set the album artist.

Searching the internet for information on album artist tags I found that some programms use the TPE2 frame to store the album artist. So I tried to set the TPE2 to 'Various Artists' with id3v2, but this also makes no difference.

I didn't miss that information, but so far Kid3 (thanks @ valoriez] is the only tagger who offered a possibility to add album artist information.
So I set album artist to 'Various Artists' trying both, idv2 2.3 and idv2 2.4 tags, removed all amarok files (~/.kde4/share/..) before (re)scanning that folder, but the Collection Browser still shows a splitted collection.
I also tried Picard, but still the same.

When I used id3v2 2.3 tags I could see (using id3v2 0.1.11 command line tool) that album artists (Various Artists in my case) goes to TPE2 tag (which somehow confirms the information I found so far).

Anything else I could try?

-markus

Did you try a full collection rescan, then restart Amarok? It might be a display problem of the CollectionBrowser

Yes, additionally I deleted ~/.kde4/share/apps/amarok and ~/.kde4/share/config/amarok* between stopping and starting it to make sure it's starting from scratch without any previously stored information.
In the shell I started amarok I could see that the (embedded) database was re-initialized each time.

Could you please provide output of mp3info/id3tag or any console output of 2 or more tracks from one compilation, where this error occurs.
And describe the structure of this album.
There was an issue with folders containing more than 60+ tracks. But this is solved ages ago, isn't it? This is really strange, haven't heard about this issue for a long time.
By the way current KDE on openSUSE is 4.3.4.
Which version of mysql are you using? Current is 5.1.42
I've never used a precompiled version of Amarok, resulting in less trouble.

Regards
m0nk

I did all my testings so far with just two directories (compilations) to save time. One compilation (17 files) is treated properly, it shows up under 'Various Artists', the other (45 files) is split up into single artists. Below you can find the requested information for both, working files and non-working ones.

All my music is stored in one directory, containing 3700+ directories, each containing the files of one album/compilation/box. These directories are named 'Albumartist - Albumtitle', compilations have 'Various Artists' as album artist. The files inside are named 'Track artist - Track Title.mp3'

Beside KDE 4.3.1 I'm using MySQL 5.1.36. I know that there are minor updates available, but so far I didn't thought about this as a possible reason.

Below you can find the console output from three files each (grouped and splitted).
If you need more information or examples, please let me know


Best regards,

-markus



Here the information for files of a splitted compiliation:

#> file Clara\ Luzia\ -\ Morning\ Light.mp3 Feist\ -\ My\ Moon\ My\ Man.mp3 LCD\ Soundsystem\ -\ North\ American\ Scum.mp3
Clara Luzia - Morning Light.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
Feist - My Moon My Man.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo


#> mp3info -x Clara\ Luzia\ -\ Morning\ Light.mp3 Feist\ -\ My\ Moon\ My\ Man.mp3 LCD\ Soundsystem\ -\ North\ American\ Scum.mp3
File: Clara Luzia - Morning Light.mp3
Title: Morning Light Track: 38
Artist: Clara Luzia
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:2 Year: 2007
Comment: Genre: Electronic [52]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: Yes
Length: 3:31

File: Feist - My Moon My Man.mp3
Title: My Moon My Man Track: 18
Artist: Feist
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:1 Year: 2007
Comment: Genre: Electronic [52]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: No
Length: 3:20

File: LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum.mp3
Title: North American Scum Track: 7
Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:1 Year: 2007
Comment: Genre: Electronic [52]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: Yes
Length: 3:45


#> id3tag Clara\ Luzia\ -\ Morning\ Light.mp3 Feist\ -\ My\ Moon\ My\ Man.mp3 LCD\ Soundsystem\ -\ North\ American\ Scum.mp3
Tagging Clara Luzia - Morning Light.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2
Tagging Feist - My Moon My Man.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2
Tagging LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2


#> id3v2 -l Clara\ Luzia\ -\ Morning\ Light.mp3 Feist\ -\ My\ Moon\ My\ Man.mp3 LCD\ Soundsystem\ -\ North\ American\ Scum.mp3
id3v1 tag info for Clara Luzia - Morning Light.mp3:
Title : Morning Light Artist: Clara Luzia
Album : FM4 Soundselection 16:2 Year: 2007, Genre: Alt. Rock (40)
Comment: Track: 38
id3v2 tag info for Clara Luzia - Morning Light.mp3:
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): Morning Light
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Clara Luzia
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): FM4 Soundselection 16:2
TYER (Year): 2007
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 38
TCON (Content type): Alt. Rock (40)
id3v1 tag info for Feist - My Moon My Man.mp3:
Title : My Moon My Man Artist: Feist
Album : FM4 Soundselection 16:1 Year: 2007, Genre: Alt. Rock (40)
Comment: Track: 18
id3v2 tag info for Feist - My Moon My Man.mp3:
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): My Moon My Man
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Feist
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): FM4 Soundselection 16:1
TYER (Year): 2007
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 18
TCON (Content type): Alt. Rock (40)
id3v1 tag info for LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum.mp3:
Title : North American Scum Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Album : FM4 Soundselection 16:1 Year: 2007, Genre: Alt. Rock (40)
Comment: Track: 7
id3v2 tag info for LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum.mp3:
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): North American Scum
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): LCD Soundsystem
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): FM4 Soundselection 16:1
TYER (Year): 2007
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 7
TCON (Content type): Alt. Rock (40)



This is the info from my working reference:

#> file Jane\ Siberry\ -\ Calling\ All\ Angels.mp3 Lou\ Reed\ -\ What\'s\ Good.mp3 Nick\ Cave\ and\ The\ Bad\ Seeds\ -\ \(I\'ll\ Love\ You\)\ Till\ The\ End\ Of\ The\ World.mp3
Jane Siberry - Calling All Angels.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
Lou Reed - What's Good.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo


#> mp3info -x Jane\ Siberry\ -\ Calling\ All\ Angels.mp3 Lou\ Reed\ -\ What\'s\ Good.mp3 Nick\ Cave\ and\ The\ Bad\ Seeds\ -\ \(I\'ll\ Love\ You\)\ Till\ The\ End\ Of\ The\ World.mp3
File: Jane Siberry - Calling All Angels.mp3
Title: Calling All Angels Track: 13
Artist: Jane Siberry
Album: Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991
Comment: Genre: Soundtrack [24]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: Yes
Length: 5:14

File: Lou Reed - What's Good.mp3
Title: What's Good Track: 4
Artist: Lou Reed
Album: Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991
Comment: Genre: Soundtrack [24]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: Yes
Length: 5:10

File: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.mp3
Title: (I'll Love You) Till The End O Track: 9
Artist: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
Album: Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991
Comment: Genre: [255]
Media Type: MPEG 1.0 Layer III
Audio: 256 KB/s, 44KHz (joint stereo)
Emphasis: none
CRC: No
Copyright: No
Original: Yes
Padding: Yes
Length: 4:41


#> id3tag Jane\ Siberry\ -\ Calling\ All\ Angels.mp3 Lou\ Reed\ -\ What\'s\ Good.mp3 Nick\ Cave\ and\ The\ Bad\ Seeds\ -\ \(I\'ll\ Love\ You\)\ Till\ The\ End\ Of\ The\ World.mp3
Tagging Jane Siberry - Calling All Angels.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2
Tagging Lou Reed - What's Good.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2
Tagging Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.mp3: attempting v1 and v2, tagged v1 and v2


#> id3v2 -l Jane\ Siberry\ -\ Calling\ All\ Angels.mp3 Lou\ Reed\ -\ What\'s\ Good.mp3 Nick\ Cave\ and\ The\ Bad\ Seeds\ -\ \(I\'ll\ Love\ You\)\ Till\ The\ End\ Of\ The\ World.mp3
id3v1 tag info for Jane Siberry - Calling All Angels.mp3:
Title : Calling All Angels Artist: Jane Siberry
Album : Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991, Genre: Soundtrack (24)
Comment: Track: 13
id3v2 tag info for Jane Siberry - Calling All Angels.mp3:
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): Calling All Angels
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Jane Siberry
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): Bis ans Ende der Welt OST
TYER (Year): 1991
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 13
TCON (Content type): Soundtrack (24)
id3v1 tag info for Lou Reed - What's Good.mp3:
Title : What's Good Artist: Lou Reed
Album : Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991, Genre: Soundtrack (24)
Comment: Track: 4
id3v2 tag info for Lou Reed - What's Good.mp3:
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): What's Good
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Lou Reed
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): Bis ans Ende der Welt OST
TYER (Year): 1991
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 4
TCON (Content type): Soundtrack (24)
id3v1 tag info for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.mp3:
Title : (I'll Love You) Till The End O Artist: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
Album : Bis ans Ende der Welt OST Year: 1991, Genre: Unknown (255)
Comment: Track: 9
id3v2 tag info for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World.mp3:
TSSE (Software/Hardware and settings used for encoding): LAME 64bits version 3.98 (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): (I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): Bis ans Ende der Welt OST
TYER (Year): 1991
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 09
TCON (Content type): Soundtrack (24)
TLEN (Length): 280800

After playing around a little bit I guess I found the reason for the splitted compilation. It seems that in case the album tag is not the same for all files in a directory Amarok splits the compiliation into single artists

I'm not sure whether this is really a bug, but I'd really like to have the compilations treated like in Amarok 1.4 because sometimes the discs of a multi-disc-compiliation have differnt 'sub-names' and I'd like to keep that (extra) information in the album information.

Does anybody know a workaround to avoid this?
If not .. what's the best way to address this? Opening a ticket at bugs.kde.org?

Regards,
markus

entity wrote:After playing around a little bit I guess I found the reason for the splitted compilation. It seems that in case the album tag is not the same for all files in a directory Amarok splits the compiliation into single artists

I'm not sure whether this is really a bug, but I'd really like to have the compilations treated like in Amarok 1.4 because sometimes the discs of a multi-disc-compiliation have differnt 'sub-names' and I'd like to keep that (extra) information in the album information.

Does anybody know a workaround to avoid this?
If not .. what's the best way to address this? Opening a ticket at bugs.kde.org?

Regards,
markus

Markus, have you run the splitted-out albums through a dedicated tagger, such as Picard, EasyTag, or Kid3? That ensures that all the tags fields that need to be identical, ARE identical.

HTH,

Valorie

The album tags are different, as far as I can see:
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:2 for the track from Clara Luzia
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:1 for the track from Feist
It's better to set the CD number in the correct field.
Kid3 should do that.

Regards
m0nk

valoriez wrote:Markus, have you run the splitted-out albums through a dedicated tagger, such as Picard, EasyTag, or Kid3? That ensures that all the tags fields that need to be identical, ARE identical.

This time I used mp3diags, but I tested a lot of different programs before (eg. Picard, EasyTag, Kid3, Entagged, Cantus, jTagger and a couple of command line tools) .. but the result was always the same.

Im rather sure that this isn't about a difference of the various tagger tools because I tested the behavior with the splitted compilations with a working one.
I changed the album tag of one file of a working (non-splitted) compilation and after restarting (removing the amarok files below ~/.kde4 before) the same compilation also showed up splitted into different artists.
On the other hand the the splitted collection get grouped correctly as soon as all the album tags in that folder are identical.

Dieter Schroeder wrote:The album tags are different, as far as I can see:
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:2 for the track from Clara Luzia
Album: FM4 Soundselection 16:1 for the track from Feist
It's better to set the CD number in the correct field.
Kid3 should do that.

In this case it would be suitable to set the CD number, but I also have compilations (eg. A Night out with Verve, containing four different discs) where the discs have "different" names (for that box these are 'Winning', 'Dinning', 'Dancing', 'Romantic').
I also thought about moving that information to a different tag. Comments are not suitable as I already store information there, beside that I like to see that "information" (disc names) in the Collection Browser.
In Amarok 1.4 the same compilation is shown as four different albums, but as the first part of the album information is always the same they show up one below the other, which makes it easy to just add one CD to the current playlist.

It would be great to have more control over the way Amarok is treating such compilations (eg. filling the album artist tag (regarding information available online most likely TPE2) tag or a TCMP tag).

Although I really like the direction A2 is heading to, I miss the way A1.4 was working for compilations as this best fits my needs (one of the reasons why I was very happy when I first "discovered" Amarok).

Regards,
markus

Apart from the different album names this stays mysterious. I've a lot of split albums and compilations here and all show up correctly under 'Various artists'.
I'm really running out of ideas now. But I don't think, it is an Amarok problem, but a tagging one, because you're the only one atm here with compilations issues.
I use easytag since ages and although it doesn't allow the AlbumArtist tag to be set, everything works fine here (except the early Amarok 2.0x hickups, of course) and I still tag with id v2.3.

Regards
m0nk