PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

[Hobizal]

I have some jazz compilation CD's that contain various artists. They are currently listed in the "Artist" sub-folder. This makes the Artist list too long, and hard to find other main artists.

I want all compilation CD's with multiple artists, to be grouped together in the "Artists/Various Artists" sub-folder. This would make the "Artist" folder cleaner, and easier to navigate. I want to also see "Artist - Album" in the view. So I don't have to click on each artist, to get to the individual albums. That would be easiest to find all albums by each artist.

I have to add that the PS3 GUI is awful as a media playback device. Having to switch back and forth, from Photo/Music/Video sub menus is just awful. Why they can't make something like Windows Media Center or Apple TV, where you can easily see all albums with cover art?

[Hobizal]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

I figured it out. I used "Album Artist" to get the layout I wanted. It groups everything better than just using "Artist".

[nibnis]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

I have multiple artists happily tagged in the 'Artists' field and like yourself the primary Album Artist (singular) for the majority of my CD rips in 'Album Artists' - great.

Unfortunately, where I have Compilation CD's ripped by dBP the Album Artist tag contains "Various Artists" as to me this seems like a reasonable tag value for a compilation/group especially when the Artist tag contains the Artist of the specific song.

After a long discovery process (dBPoweramp rip followed by Mediamonkey/mp3tag to find out what was going wrong) I also discovered that different tools were using both 'ALBUMARTIST' and 'Album Artist' tags i.e. I ended up with the Album Artist fields - sometimes in ALBUMARTIST; sometimes in Album Artist; and sometimes in both. This wasn't a problem for Asset upnp as I always had a full list of Album Artists but could never understand why I also had a significant number of tracks listed in [Unknown Album Artist] - hence I lived with it!

I only discovered a real pain in the btm when using dBP's Batch Conversion to m4a where I ended up with iTunes showing two or one Album Artists depending upon the populated tags described above - which was obviously not what I was expecting/wanted.

I have now used mp3tag to make sure that I only have the Album Artist tagged once in the 'Album Artist' tag. This now works a treat for iTunes m4a conversions except............

In Asset upnp all the 'Album Artist' tags with the value "Various Artists" (my compilation Cd's) are still showing up as [Unknown Album Artist]. I have doubled checked the number with mp3tag - result is 2331 tagged songs with "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag --> 2331 Unknown Album Artists songs reported in Asset upnp when browsing the Album Artist tree. Finally, my very simple question is....

Why should a value of "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag field be processed by Asset upnp as [Unknown Album Artist]? By the way, changing the value to "Various" seems to have no difference.

Any ideas why this is? Spoon is it my tagging or Asset not liking the value "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag?

Apologies for the length of this post.

[Spoon]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

I will look into it (the Various Artists tag should be removed and replaced by the compilation item, so the they can be searched through Advanced Search >> Compilation).

[ocoro02]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

In Asset upnp all the 'Album Artist' tags with the value "Various Artists" (my compilation Cd's) are still showing up as [Unknown Album Artist]. I have doubled checked the number with mp3tag - result is 2331 tagged songs with "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag --> 2331 Unknown Album Artists songs reported in Asset upnp when browsing the Album Artist tree. Finally, my very simple question is....

Why should a value of "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag field be processed by Asset upnp as [Unknown Album Artist]? By the way, changing the value to "Various" seems to have no difference.

Any ideas why this is? Spoon is it my tagging or Asset not liking the value "Various Artists" in the Album Artist tag?

Apologies for the length of this post.

Same here. I used an Album Artist called 'Various Artists' for compilations (the compilation tag is set to 'yes' for these too). I could've sworn these used to show up as an Album Artist 'Various Artists' but now are showing up in the Unknown Artists folder. Has something changed - Asset 2.0 -> 2.1 perhaps? I really can't figure what it can be that's doing this.

[Spoon]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

Nothing has changed, are they flac files? check the album artist tag as it is possible you have multiple album artist tags (ie AlbumArtist and Album Artist)

[ocoro02]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

They are flac files. I'll double-check to see if both these tags are set. Which tag does Asset use for Album Artist?

I tend to use Mediamonkey for tag editing - I do notice if I look at the id3 properties (i.e just pick a file and look at the properties directly outside of a tag editor) that the value shows up twice - i.e 'Various Artists; Various Artists'.

[ocoro02]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

I've done some experimentation and found that if the album artist is set to 'Various Artists' or 'Various', it gets lumped in the 'Unknown Album Artist' folder. If the album artist is set to anything else, all is OK and as expected. Is there some logic in the code specifically referencing these particular values?


I rip CDs from dbPoweramp and generally clean up any tag mistakes using Mediamonkey. If I view the id3 properties from Windows Explorer, the 'album artist' tag is set to 'Various Artists'. Confusingly if I use mp3tag, then I see that 3 different tags have a value of 'Various Artists' (or whatever the album artist is), and these 3 tags are ALBUMARTIST, ALBUM ARTIST, ENSEMBLE.

[Spoon]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

Asset does ignore the Various Artists or Various tags, and uses the compilation tag instead.

>ALBUMARTIST, ALBUM ARTIST, ENSEMBLE.

All 3 are read, and should all be the same if present in the same file.

[ocoro02]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

So basically -

if (compilation = true)
album_artist_in_assetdb = 'unknown' (or just null)

?


Thanks!

[Spoon]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

No, compilation can be used with any album artist as long as it is not a generic 'Various' value.

[ocoro02]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

I think I see. Sorry to be a pain and going on about this but just want to get a handle on it. Is the logic something along the lines of:

if ( (compilation = true) and ( (album artist != 'Various') and (album artist != 'Various Artists') ) ) then album_artist_in_assetdb = 'Unknown'

I'm not convinced there's any need for any hard-coded values (if this is the case) personally - I'd prefer if I could use any value for album artist.

[Spoon]

Re: PS3 - grouping various artists together in the "Artist" sub-folder?

Yes