MiP hassle

[gutted]

I love my Squeezebox - I truly do. But each and every single time I try to change something (from something as 'simple' to an upgrade of SC, to something 'complicated' like adding a new plugin) it drives me mad :(

My current madness has been brought about by MusicIP. I followed THIS fantastic wiki article (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Integrating_MusicIP_with_SqueezeCenter#Genpuid_syn tax) on how to get SC and MiP talking, after letting MiP take nearly 4 days to scan/analyse my music library. I followed the wiki, and all seemed ok - but I don't see the "m" icon, and holding down the play button doesn't give me any mixes.

But even worse is now that SC is reading the music library only from MiP, all my compilations are duplicated where previously they'd been grouped properly. It looks like for each "Disc 1" or "Disc 2" etc I now see a shed load of individual tracks. Previously this worked (after a fashion) and I didn't used to have as many dupes as this.

It's annoying that I can't get MiP to talk to SC. But its REALLY annoying that SC appears to be treating the album (and other?) tags differently when it reads them from MiP.

Anyone know
(a) what I can look for to get SC and MiP to talk to each other?; and
(b) what's going on with compilation/VA album tags??

Cheers,
Dan.

[epoch1970]

If you do not see the m symbol it probably means that the SB server did not load the plugin. It will not load the plugin if it can't contact the MIP daemon when starting up.
Which means you have to make sure MIP starts before SBS (or restart SBS when you've verified MIP is up.)

Regarding compilations grouping I am not sure what to say. I used to import all information from the MIP db.
Some time ago I opted to simply load MIP info and get other tags from SBS scanning.
I don't remember what prompted the change, but as of now, I can use MIP and have to particular issue with albums grouping. Perhaps you want to limit MIP import to music analysis and rely on SBS for tags.

[gutted]

Hi epoch,

Good thinking about restarting SBS - even though I'm using Windows, I rarely restart the server (and so rarely restart SBS). I'll test before I go to work - thanks. *EDIT* Yep, that cracked it: thanks ;)

Regarding grouping? Yeah, also a good call. Reading your post, it seems to suggest that you might have had problems with grouping prior to making the change - is that right? If so, then that'll be the answer I'm looking for (and I shall indeed try that this evening).

Cheers!
Dan.

PS - while I sometimes get frustrated with my Squeezebox (or the software that it talks to) I'm always extremely glad for the friendly help that this forum offers :)

[epoch1970]

Regarding grouping? Yeah, also a good call. Reading your post, it seems to suggest that you might have had problems with grouping prior to making the change - is that right?
Right. I did change settings, but I don't remember what the prob was...
Maybe MIP/MIP plugin's awkward handling of filesystem paths including accentuated characters (e.g. "/music/Rudy Trouvé/" "/music/Björk/"…), making files unavailable ?
That's the biggest issue I've had to cope with --and what I did is rename all files to 7-bit ascii. Since the issue was with file names and not with tags, renaming was an annoyance but not a problem: SBS and my players still show accentuated strings.
If you're missing files in albums when using MIP mixes, check server.log for issues when the plugin tries importing MIP information.

Anyways I'd recommend trying in SBS:
>>>
1) Settings>Advanced>MusicIP:
Use MusicIP [Only read mixable status from MusicIP (faster)]
2) Settings>Basic Settings:
Music Folder [path to your audio files]
Rescan Music Library [Clear library and rescan everything]
>>>
That will cost you an SBS rescan but I think it should work, as it does for me.

[gutted]

Legendary - thanks again for your advice. I'll reconfigure, and let it do another rescan, but it'll be a small price to pay if I can get this working.

I'm a little worried about the accented characters, though - I'd not considered that, so will review the server logs and see whether stuff is missing...

Again - cheers for such comprehensive help & advice :)