Custom Scan problems

[Philip Meyer]

I seem to be having some problems with custom scan:

1. Scanning custom tags
Over the years, I have used mp3Tag to enter artist names in a tag called "ORIGARTIST". I think this is a normal mp3 tag, as it was one of the default tag names in the list that mp3Tag provides. I have entered customtags=ORIGARTIST in the custom scan settings and done a full rescan, but custom browse doesn't list anything in the custom tags menu.

2. Amazon scanning
I have enabled writeamazonrating=1, entered an amazonaccesskey, and added amazon menus in custom browse. After a full rescan, I haven't seen any new ratings, and no entries in the Amazon Genres or Ratings menus.

3. LastFM Tags
I have items in my LastFM Tags custom browse menu, and it generally works well. However, some of the tags (not many) produce no entries. I believe I had a similar problem with LastFM Similar Artists, which you fixed. I haven't found any artist in the list that has 0 similar artists so far.

Phil

[erland]

1. Scanning custom tags
Over the years, I have used mp3Tag to enter artist names in a tag called "ORIGARTIST". I think this is a normal mp3 tag, as it was one of the default tag names in the list that mp3Tag provides. I have entered customtags=ORIGARTIST in the custom scan settings and done a full rescan, but custom browse doesn't list anything in the custom tags menu.

Unfortunately it seems like the slimserver tag reading method doesn't read some of the custom tags which are part of the MP3 standard. The ORIGARTIST is one of the tags that aren't read. The good idea is the MP3 library which slimserver uses is able to read all the tags if used with some other in-parameters. I will add it as a point on the wish list for a future Custom Scan version to use the MP3 library directly instead of/besides the slimserver wrapper.
I think this is a problem only with MP3, with FLAC files I think all tags can be used already today.

2. Amazon scanning
I have enabled writeamazonrating=1, entered an amazonaccesskey, and added amazon menus in custom browse. After a full rescan, I haven't seen any new ratings, and no entries in the Amazon Genres or Ratings menus.

Could you enable the debug flag in Custom Scan, click clear on the Amazon scanning module and finaly click Scan again. If you look in the log it should display the actual amazon URL's called. If you don't see any descriptive error directly in the log try to paste the url in a web browser and see if you get any error message. The Amazon scanning module will not fetch ratings on already scanned albums, so you will have to click the Clear link if you want to perform a rescan.

3. LastFM Tags
I have items in my LastFM Tags custom browse menu, and it generally works well. However, some of the tags (not many) produce no entries. I believe I had a similar problem with LastFM Similar Artists, which you fixed. I haven't found any artist in the list that has 0 similar artists so far.

It's the same problem as the previous you had with similar artists, I'll correct it in the next Custom Browse version.

[Philip Meyer]

>Unfortunately it seems like the slimserver tag reading method doesn't
>read some of the custom tags which are part of the MP3 standard. The
>ORIGARTIST is one of the tags that aren't read. The good idea is the
>MP3 library which slimserver uses is able to read all the tags if used
>with some other in-parameters. I will add it as a point on the wish
>list for a future Custom Scan version to use the MP3 library directly
>instead of/besides the slimserver wrapper.
>
Do you consider this a bug with the slimserver wrapper? Perhaps a bug should be raised to make the slimserver code more useful?

>Could you enable the debug flag in Custom Scan, click clear on the
>Amazon scanning module and finaly click Scan again.
Where is the option to clear the Amazon scanning module?

>It's the same problem as the previous you had with similar artists, I'll
>correct it in the next Custom Browse version.
Thankyou.

Phil

[erland]

>Unfortunately it seems like the slimserver tag reading method doesn't
>read some of the custom tags which are part of the MP3 standard. The
>ORIGARTIST is one of the tags that aren't read. The good idea is the
>MP3 library which slimserver uses is able to read all the tags if used
>with some other in-parameters. I will add it as a point on the wish
>list for a future Custom Scan version to use the MP3 library directly
>instead of/besides the slimserver wrapper.
>
Do you consider this a bug with the slimserver wrapper? Perhaps a bug should be raised to make the slimserver code more useful?

Not a bug, maybe a feature request. The problem is that it's easier to use it the way slimserver does, because then the MP3 library does some additional parsing of the different tag to make them more user friendly. To get the extra tag one must use the MP3 library in raw mode which requires additional parsing by the caller. Due to this I think it's probably better to leave slimserver as it is as long as it doesn't also implement storing of custom tags. I think there is a feature request that describes that slimserver should store custom tags (approximately the same functionality as the Custom Scan plugin provides).

>Could you enable the debug flag in Custom Scan, click clear on the
>Amazon scanning module and finaly click Scan again.
Where is the option to clear the Amazon scanning module?

In the Plugins/Custom Scan page in the web interface beside the Amazon scanning module.

[Philip Meyer]

> Not a bug, maybe a feature request.
>I think there is a feature request that describes that slimserver should store custom tags
>(approximately the same functionality as the Custom Scan plugin provides).
>
I am wondering if I should perhaps enter a feature request for slimserver to handle ORIGARTIST, as it is similar to COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, BAND, etc?

Ideally what I am looking for is a custom browse mode where I see artist->album heirarchy, but only for songs that have an ORIGARTIST. I would call this custom mode "Cover Songs". But obviously it would be nice to see who the original artist was (and be able to navigate to that original artist/album/song if I have it somewhere in my collection).

I was thinking that at the moment I can write a script that looks for all ORIGARTIST tags in my library and adds the info as a comment. I can then set up a custom browse mode based on the comment tag, and I can see the comment tag in slimserver, and then manually navigate to that original artist if I want to.

>In the Plugins/Custom Scan page in the web interface beside the Amazon
>scanning module.
Do you mean Server Settings -> Plugins -> Custom Scan? If so, I can't see any Amazon scanning module on that page.

Phil

[erland]

>In the Plugins/Custom Scan page in the web interface beside the Amazon
>scanning module.
Do you mean Server Settings -> Plugins -> Custom Scan? If so, I can't see any Amazon scanning module on that page.

No, not in server settings, there is a Custom Scan entry in the standard Plugins section on the home page in the web interface where all the other plugins are. In the Custom Scan page all scanning modules are listed and besides each scanning module there is a Clear and Scan link.

[Philip Meyer]

>No, not in server settings, there is a Custom Scan entry in the standard
>Plugins section on the home page in the web interface where all the
>other plugins are. In the Custom Scan page all scanning modules are
>listed and besides each scanning module there is a Clear and Scan link.

Ah. Sorry for my incompetence. I use the Custom Browse option in the home page, and didn't see the Custom Scan option initially (it's way down further in the list, but it toally makes sense now).

When I viewed that page, I saw:

Amazon (disabled)
Custom Tag
LastFM (disabled)
Rating Tag (disabled)

I clicked clear and then scan on the Amazon module and it does appear to be doing the scan now.

I'm a bit confused why the modules are disabled - are they disabled by default? The confusion is that LastFM seems to be working when I start a rescan in slimserver, but even that module is listed here as disabled.

Phil

[erland]

I'm a bit confused why the modules are disabled - are they disabled by default? The confusion is that LastFM seems to be working when I start a rescan in slimserver, but even that module is listed here as disabled.

Disabled = The scanning module does not perform an automatic rescan due to slimserver rescan.

The Custom Tag module is enabled by default the rest is disabled by default.

The reason Amazon/LastFM is disabled is that they will almost make slimserver unusable during scanning and the scan can take some time. So I figured that it is better to perform these manually the first time and then the user can choose to enable them after the initial scan. The next time they will only scan new artists/albums that wasn't part of the scanning the last time so then it will go a lot faster.

The Rating Tag module is also disabled by default since it will overwrite ratings and I figured some users doesn't want this so it is better that the user that actually wants it have to enable it.

Note, the data scanned by Custom Scan modules Amazon/LastFM will not be cleared automatically due to a slimserver rescan, it is only cleared by clicking the Clear links on the Custom Scan page. I suspect this is the case in your setup, you probably performed a scan in an earlier release with LastFM when it was enabled by default. This data will still be in your database so thats probably why you think it scans automatically even if it actually doesn't.

[Philip Meyer]

I have got the amazon information for my collection now. A couple of points:

1. Within Custom Browse / Amazon Genres, my first entry is:

"16 delicate miniatures of melancholy and longing, steadied by piano and pedal steel and liberated by Sally Ellyson's warm September morning of a voice." TIME OUT LONDON (UK).

If I click this entry, I get a script error. The page loads though and displays artist "Hem". I guess the genre entry shouldn't be there though :-)

2. I also enabled the option to set my missing track stats from the amazon stats. This has resulted in the majority of my albums achieving 4 or 5* ratings. I guess that most people only bother to rate an album in Amazon if they like it.

I'd like to remove the ratings received from Amazon. I have a backup of my track stats before I used the Amazon custom scan, so I assume I can restore that, but I don't really want to lose the amazon fetched info used for browsing my Amazon Genre and Amazon Rating and wait ages to fetch the data again. What's the best thing to do? I don't actually mind losing my original ratings that much.

Phil

[erland]

1. Within Custom Browse / Amazon Genres, my first entry is:

"16 delicate miniatures of melancholy and longing, steadied by piano and pedal steel and liberated by Sally Ellyson's warm September morning of a voice." TIME OUT LONDON (UK).

If I click this entry, I get a script error. The page loads though and displays artist "Hem". I guess the genre entry shouldn't be there though :-)

Well according to the Amazon Web service it actually should be there, but I can agree that it looks very wrong. It might be a good idea if the plugin ignored genres longer than 30 characters or something.

I'd like to remove the ratings received from Amazon. I have a backup of my track stats before I used the Amazon custom scan, so I assume I can restore that, but I don't really want to lose the amazon fetched info used for browsing my Amazon Genre and Amazon Rating and wait ages to fetch the data again. What's the best thing to do? I don't actually mind losing my original ratings that much.

No problem, do as follows:
1. Goto the TrackStat settings page and hit the "Remove all data" button.
2. Goto the TrackStat settings and make sure the "Backup file" option points to the TrackStat backup file you have which you like to restore
3. Goto the TrackStat settings page and hit the "Restore from file" button.

The Amazon/LastFM data will ONLY be cleared in one of the following situations:
1. You uninstall slimserver or removes the database files manually from the disk.
2. You hit the "Clear" or "Clear all" buttons on the Custom Scan page.