Split Albums?

[mrtaber]

After scanning my music collection (well, the part of the collection I'm ripping and encoding into FLAC), many of the albums are coming out in multiple parts...same album title, but 1 song in the first section, songs 2-7 in the second part, song 8 in the third part, songs 8-12 in the fourth part...you get the idea.

What can be causing this? I tried deleting the slimserversql.db; the problem remains.

Thanks, Mark :)

[Siduhe]

After scanning my music collection (well, the part of the collection I'm ripping and encoding into FLAC), many of the albums are coming out in multiple parts...same album title, but 1 song in the first section, songs 2-7 in the second part, song 8 in the third part, songs 8-12 in the fourth part...you get the idea.

What can be causing this? I tried deleting the slimserversql.db; the problem remains.

Thanks, Mark :)

It sounds like your album tags. How are you tagging your files ? Even though the album tags look the same, they sometimes can be subtly different. Try selecting all the files in your tagger, and forcing the album tag (so resave just the album tag), then do a full rescan - not just look for new and changed music.

If you don't have a program to do your tags, Windows Media Player will do it, and there are lots of other programs out there. Tag & Rename is one of the most powerful and you get a 30 day free trial. Look in the wiki for other suggestions.

HTH

[mrtaber]

Thanks so much for your help. I tried that, but it made no change. Let me explain what I did, and perhaps this can shed some light on what is happening now.

1) Ripped about 20 CDs using EAC and encoded using FLAC 1.1.2 on my F: drive (160Gb SATA). At this point in time, all the albums were displaying correctly in SlimServer.

2) Since Fedora Core 5 is coming out Monday (20th), I decided to move my music files to my C: drive (160Gb SATA). That's when the problems began. I changed the music and playlist folder location, told Slimserver to clear and rescan, and that's when the multiple titles began, each with part of the album.

3) I then uninstalled and reinstalled the SlimServer software after trying your suggestion (no joy), and it's still doing the same thing: but *only* on the albums that were originally ripped to my F: drive. Do you think the copy operation could have done something?

Thanks for your help,
Mark

[mrtaber]

A little further oddness: after the reinstall, and "cleaning up" the titles, Lucinda William's album shows up as "Essence (Disc 1)"...but it doesn't show up that way in the tag editor or in any other music players (because there is no disc 2 of Essence...it's a single album). And I moved out all of the "split" albums, and moved them in one by one...they come in split...sometimes, for example, like "Station to Station," "Station to Station," and then "Station to Station (Disc 1)." Is it possible that some file got saved, or something is being pointed to in the registry (I'm running XP Pro)? This is after a album retitle in the tag editor, and after a clean reinstall of Slimserver, and after a "Clear Library and Rescan" for the server. I'm stumped.

Mark :)

[Siduhe]

Hmm...Which tag editor ?

I wonder, could it be something to do with the IDv1 and the IDv2 tags being different in the files (although I'm at a loss why this should happen on a file move) ?

Is your tag editor set to write both types of tag ?

[mrtaber]

Actually, because they are FLAC files, I can only write Ogg/Flac tags. The playlists show up perfectly (of course)--they are created at the time of ripping by EAC. And why it's appending '(Disc 1)' to certain album titles (neither rhyme nor reason, seemingly) is beyond me. This time around, it's split Sting's "Fields of Gold" into 5 parts instead of 4.

Oh, to answer your question, I downloaded Tag&Rename. Nice program; thanks for the recommendation :)

The album titles show up in Tag&Rename just fine. I choose Ogg/Flac, and type in the album name (after selecting all tracks). Then I save. All looks well. But it doesn't change anything in Slimserver. The workaround is just to use the playlists, but this makes me nervous, because the files have at least one more move in their future: to a NAS that I'll be putting together in the next month or so.

Hmmmm. This is a poser. I appreciate the help. I'd like to get this worked out *before* I actually buy the unit (tax refund time, oh yeah!).

Thanks again,
Mark :-D

[ceejay]

A couple of thoughts.

First, just because you are using FLAC it doesn't mean there aren't ID3 tags as well. Some taggers will do this and slimserver really doesn't like it. I don't use Tag&Rename, but I do know that mp3tag can be configured to show you all the tag types there are in a file.

Second - you mentioned playlists - if the playlists contain references to files in their old location then again slimserver will get confused. I suggest you park all your playlists out of the way where slimserver can't see them, delete the database and start again.

The Windows Registry shouldn't be relevant here.

HTH

Ceejay

[mrtaber]

Ceejay,

Thanks for your thoughtful post. I'm awake this morning, unlike last night, after a long day at work. I went out and checked (in Tag&Name), and indeed, it lists only Ogg/Flac tags--there are no ID3 tags on the file in question. I use an external encoder (FLAC) with EAC, and have the Flac tags added from the command line rather than having EAC create the tags. So this we now know--no ID3 tags.

And, as you indicated (and as common sense should have told me), I did a Find on the registry last night, and found nothing of interest under 'slim.'

I also went out with Metaflac utility and checked what it said the tags were on the files in question; all had the same (correct) albums title. I don't know where this '(Disc 1)' is coming from, but it appears on many of the split albums in question.

Next, I removed all the .m3u playlists from the album directories and saved them off into a separate directory, and blanked out Slimserver's playlist folder. Then I deleted the db and rebuilt. Amazingly, the problems were still there.

Now, just for giggles, I am re-ripping and encoding one of the albums in question. I'll see if that makes a difference. All keep everyone (who is interested) informed.

Thanks again, to you Ceejay and Siduhe, for your time and help.

Mark :)

[mrtaber]

OK, just to put this to bed, re-ripping and re-encoding the albums in question fixed the problem. What exactly happened to them we may never know, but this saga is now ended.

Thanks for all your help. I am really impressed by the community here. And by the Linux support, too.

Cheers,
Mark :)