Baffled by sorting

[Biggsy]

Hi all,
Hope this isn't a really stupid question, but I can't make head nor tail of the sorting options.

If I set the "Artist Sort Handling" to anything other than "Ignore", the I get Bruno Mars and Kate Bush both sorted under [B]
With "Artist Sort Handling" set to "Ignore", I get Bruno Mars under [B] and Kate Bush under [K], but *all* the "The..." artists sort under [T] (the "'The' Artist and Album Handling" is set to "Smart")

What I'd like is for the "The..." artists to sort ignoring the "The", and all the others to sort under first names. I know I *may* be able to get around it by setting all the sort ID3 tags, but with 12,700 tracks I'd rather not take the risk that it may not work.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers

[Spoon]

Re: Baffled by sorting

You have to have sorting enabled for the option to ignore the 'The' work.

That said, the artists which are sorted such as Kate Bush must have a id sort tag of 'Bush, Kate', it need editing for all the tracks, then rescan the database (a full refresh all).

[Biggsy]

Re: Baffled by sorting

Thanks for the quick response. So if I understand correctly, I can't get Bruno Mars *only* under [B], and Kate Bush *only* under [K] without supplying sort tags?

Without the sort tags the best I can get is Bruno Mars under [B] & [M] and Kate Bush under [B] and [K] - correct?

[Spoon]

Re: Baffled by sorting

Your music files have these extra sorting tags, if you do not want them sorted by that, you must locate these tags (in the files) and remove.

Without sort tags then the first character of the name is used.

[Biggsy]

Re: Baffled by sorting

Hmmm...but I don't think that's true. I have removed the sort tags from the files (and I've checked that they've gone with the ID editor that installed with the converter), and I've set the sort option to "tags only", but even so I'm still getting a mixture of first and last names being sorted together.

It can't be right that in order to get Bruce Springsteen under [B] and Kate Bush under [K] I have to supply sort tags of "Bruce Springsteen" and "Kate Bush", or am I missing something?

[Spoon]

Re: Baffled by sorting

Asset by default will do no name changing, unless there is a sort tag, it just has to be present on a compilation album for it to be used.

If you run the uMediaLibrary-dumpdb.exe program, save the file and load into excel, it shows what asset can see in your files.

[Biggsy]

Re: Baffled by sorting

Bit confused now - I ran the "dumpdb" program, but got an empty Notepad file. I then turned on debug output log, and forced a rescan. Then re-ran the "dumpdb" but got the same blank Notepad file.

I'm running the dump program from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Illustrate\dBpoweramp", by double-clicking the .exe file in Explorer. A DOS window appears followed pretty much immediately by the blank Notepad window. After waiting a few moments, the DOS window closes but there's still no output in Notepad.

The output from the debug log has details of what's been combined with what etc, but nothing about sorting. However...having forced the refresh all, everything is now as I expect and Bruno Mars and Kate Bush are sorting under [B] and [K] respectively (I should point out here that I don't actually like Bruno Mars - the tracks are my daughter's, I just used them for illustration purposes, honestly...).

Having said all that, I'd still like to know how to make the dump option work so that I can do my own debugging in future should the need arise. I realise the OP has been answered (thanks!), but any pointers to what I'm doing wrong with the dump option would still be most welcome.

Fantastic support btw - much appreciated.