Announce: Album Catalog Creator v3

[Rick B.]

Hi Rick,

I've created a version of ACC with date filter but I would like you to test it. A direct link is in your forum mailbox.

Regards,

Frank

Hi, Frank. It worked fine, but I can't figure out why some albums that I ripped long ago have recent file dates on the songs. The folder dates are corect but the song dates are not.

I guess you are using the dates on the songs for your filter? From my perspective, it would be better to use the folder date rather than the individual song dates. Not sure if that works for others if they don't store their songs in album folders. Perhaps you could add a tickbox for using Song or Folder dates for the filter?

Thanks for this.

[SilverRS8]

Hi, Frank. It worked fine, but I can't figure out why some albums that I ripped long ago have recent file dates on the songs. The folder dates are corect but the song dates are not.

I guess you are using the dates on the songs for your filter? From my perspective, it would be better to use the folder date rather than the individual song dates. Not sure if that works for others if they don't store their songs in album folders. Perhaps you could add a tickbox for using Song or Folder dates for the filter?

Thanks for this.

Thx for the feedback. ACC performs a database query and uses the timestamp track column to filter by creation date. The timestamp field is also used by SBS for the New songs menu.

For ACC to filter by folder date ACC would have to traverse the complete folder structure and map the folder dates to the actual tracks in them which would increase the catalog generation time but most importantly could become confusing since folder dates do not match the dates in SBS.

The file dates are probably changed by tagging software which appears to be the default setting for most of the software around. First thing I do is change the configuration to not alter the file date when modifying tags.

Frank

[Gilles2]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for quick answer. Looking at your points :

1. Do you run ACC from the server or from a remote computer? If you run it directly from the server do not configure any remote server settings. In this scenario you don't even have to edit the my.tt file as the server is not being accessed remotely.

If you already did made configuration settings while running ACC from the server, remove all ACC settings which are stored in the registry and than try again by removing HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ACC (run regedit.exe to edit the registry)

I do run ACC for a computer connected to the server, not the server itself (actually I tried 2 computers... same issue

2. Did you install version 5.1 of the ODBC driver? (EDIT: I saw you did in your posting. Skip this one ;-)

Confirmed :-)

3. The ODBC driver must be installed on the machine you run ACC from. So if you run ACC from a remote computer, install it on that computer. No need to install it on the server here.

Installed on computer, not server

4. Did you restart SBS or the server after you modified the my.tt file? It will become active only after restart of MySql and hence a SBS or server restart is required.

I had restarted SBS, but not the server. I gave this a try... but no change. I still get the same error after restarting the Server

5. Do you have a firewall configured on the server that my be blocking traffic. Try disabling it. If it resolves the issue add port 9092 to be allowed

Windows Firewall was actually running on the Server by default. Opening the 9092 did solve the problem

Well... as a conclusion, Thanks a lot for your support.
Maybe this can be added to the help page as I guess I won't be alone in this case.

Thanks again

[Rick B.]

The file dates are probably changed by tagging software which appears to be the default setting for most of the software around. First thing I do is change the configuration to not alter the file date when modifying tags.

Frank

Right! I recently did a lot of tag work so that is it. I can now say that your new filter works fine as it is. Thanks again.

[SilverRS8]

Posted version v3.1 which has the new Date filter included and a few important bug fixes. New features won't be implemented for a while as I await the upcoming coding work required to support the next major version of SBS.

Of course if you find a bug, post it here and I'll fix it...

Frank

[fphredd]

Hi Frank,

Giving another go with the new version, same track count issues...

Music stored on ReadyNAS.

ReadyNAS built-in SBS 7.42:
Total Tracks: 43,202

Windows XP Desktop Running SBS 7.42:
Total Tracks: 43,202

Media Monkey:
43,202 Files

ACC on Windows XP desktop (not really sure how to set it up on ReadyNAS):
Total tracks: 41707

Hmmmmmm...

[SilverRS8]

Hi Frank,

Giving another go with the new version, same track count issues...

Music stored on ReadyNAS.

ReadyNAS built-in SBS 7.42:
Total Tracks: 43,202

Windows XP Desktop Running SBS 7.42:
Total Tracks: 43,202

Media Monkey:
43,202 Files

ACC on Windows XP desktop (not really sure how to set it up on ReadyNAS):
Total tracks: 41707

Hmmmmmm...

I thought you'd do some investigation on a smaller subset to see if there are differences and where they actually are?

ACC performs a query with the following joins:

join contributors AS album_artist on albums.contributor=album_artist.id
left join tracks on tracks.album=albums.id
left join genre_track on genre_track.track=tracks.id
left join genres on genre_track.genre=genres.id
join contributor_track ON tracks.id = contributor_track.track and contributor_track.role in (1,6)
join contributors AS track_artist on contributor_track.contributor = track_artist.id

So this also means that if certain tags are not used, they will not be included in the query results. So I suspect that you have a number of tracks (43,202 minus 41707 to be exactly) which are not tagged fully.

Frank

[fphredd]

I thought you'd do some investigation on a smaller subset to see if there are differences and where they actually are?

ACC performs a query with the following joins:

join contributors AS album_artist on albums.contributor=album_artist.id
left join tracks on tracks.album=albums.id
left join genre_track on genre_track.track=tracks.id
left join genres on genre_track.genre=genres.id
join contributor_track ON tracks.id = contributor_track.track and contributor_track.role in (1,6)
join contributors AS track_artist on contributor_track.contributor = track_artist.id

So this also means that if certain tags are not used, they will not be included in the query results. So I suspect that you have a number of tracks (43,202 minus 41707 to be exactly) which are not tagged fully.

Frank

Oops, my bad, I will try narrowing it down in smaller groups.

Not sure what all the coding is, but I will say every track has an ARTIST tag. Individuals (and those with guests) use ARTISTSORT as well. Does any of that mean anything to you as we try to track it down?

...thanks for the willingness to dig into this - it will be a Perfect tool for me once we get it sorted out. :-)

[venus light]

Frank,

As always, thanks for all your hard work with ACC.

Quick question re: printing. I've left the setting at default. I'm using large artwork and can get 4 album rows per page no problem. Unfortunately, on occasion, I get some extra text lines that carry onto the next page or sometimes, just the artwork will carry on to the next page if there isn't room for a fourth album row.

I've tried reducing the Maximum Track rows per page and that doesn't seem to help with the overflow. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[andrek]

I thought I'd give version 3.1 a try (useful idea this Date-option).
However I get a failure message :
- Error while creating ACC database
- Error number -2147217887
- Error Description: Het ODBC stuurprogramma ondersteunt de gewenste eigenschappen niet.
(my translation: ODBC driver doesn't support the requested features)
- Unable to continue. Click OK to quit ACC.

When I clear the "From Date"-field everything is fine. (MySQL ODBC 5.1 is working OK it seems). I tried various dates formats already.

I did some further digging in the code and tried some extras:
when I add an exclusion for comment "Dummy" all of a sudden it works, but when I keep the Comment-field empty it does not work.


On the topic of Exclusion:
I noticed that when I want to exclude all albums with Comment "whatever" , also albums with an empty comment-field are excluded.
That is not what I would expect for an "exclude". (Another issue ?)

I see in the last line log file (of the failure-case):
STATUS : <....> AND tracks.timestamp > unix_timestamp('20090101') WHERE tracks.timestamp > unix_timestamp('20090101') GROUP BY AlbumID, AlbumName, Disc, TrackNum ORDER BY album_artist.name, albums.titlesort, ABS(tracks.disc), tracks.tracknum, track_artist.name, tracks.url;

In the working-case this same line reads:
STATUS : <....> AND (comments.value != 'DUMMY' ) AND tracks.timestamp > unix_timestamp('20090101') and tracks.timestamp > unix_timestamp('20090101') GROUP BY AlbumID, AlbumName, Disc, TrackNum ORDER BY album_artist.name, albums.titlesort, ABS(tracks.disc), tracks.tracknum, track_artist.name, tracks.url;

I see some differences here:
- obviously the cmment exclusion;
- 'WHERE' is now 'and'

Hope this helps to find this bug


BTW: I also noted that when I select a comment to Exclude, also all albums with empty Comment-field are excluded.
This is not what I would expect.