Scan fails, time and again

[jstraw]

Andy, are you following this conversation?

[Phil Leigh]

As a quick (ish) test, why don't you open everything in MP3Tag and then set all the tracks with a blank Album to "unknown"... ?
This might be the workaround that fixes your artwork problem.
I just downloaded an album and stripped off the Album tag, but it seems to work as expected - But I'm using 7.6 which might be very different in this respect.

[jstraw]

As a quick (ish) test, why don't you open everything in MP3Tag and then set all the tracks with a blank Album to "unknown"... ?
This might be the workaround that fixes your artwork problem.
I just downloaded an album and stripped off the Album tag, but it seems to work as expected - But I'm using 7.6 which might be very different in this respect.

Opening a directory tree with 130,000 files in it in MP3Tag seems ridiculous to me, to be honest.

And to be honest, I absolutely do not want an album called "unknown" with 10,000 tracks in it. Many of this tracks will simply be found in an album based folder, one that may well have a folder.jpg file in it...and just not be thoroughly tagged with an album tag.

This suggestion is a kludge to workaround a software problem so I'm going to pass. Even if MP3Tag could handle it...altering all my files to trick Squeezebox Server into behaving in a way it should on it's own is the wrong way to go.

I'll consider doing it to a small batch of files as an experiment but I'm not running my whole library through that gauntlet. I'm not even going to do it if the experiment works.

[Phil Leigh]

Opening a directory tree with 130,000 files in it in MP3Tag seems ridiculous to me, to be honest.

And to be honest, I absolutely do not want an album called "unknown" with 10,000 tracks in it. Many of this tracks will simply be found in an album based folder, one that may well have a folder.jpg file in it...and just not be thoroughly tagged with an album tag.

This suggestion is a kludge to workaround a software problem so I'm going to pass. Even if MP3Tag could handle it...altering all my files to trick Squeezebox Server into behaving in a way it should on it's own is the wrong way to go.

I'll consider doing it to a small batch of files as an experiment but I'm not running my whole library through that gauntlet. I'm not even going to do it if the experiment works.

There's no problem opening the tree in MP3Tag. It just takes a while.

It would NOT lump all the tracks together into a single album! Each track would become its own album.. It might try and collect tracks from thesame artist together...

If you have folder.jpg's in the track folders - why don't you have proper album tags set?

IMO you are creating a situation that SBS is not designed to handle very well.

[jstraw]

There's no problem opening the tree in MP3Tag. It just takes a while.

It would NOT lump all the tracks together into a single album! Each track would become its own album.. It might try and collect tracks from thesame artist together...

If you have folder.jpg's in the track folders - why don't you have proper album tags set?

IMO you are creating a situation that SBS is not designed to handle very well.

I'm saying that some tracks might be in a folder for an album and that particular folder my have an image file but that the tracks in that folder might have an empty album tag. My expectation is in that circumstance, SBC would ideally use the image file in the folder...or use no image file at all. There is no reasonable basis I can conceive of where some other image file should be used.

Software needs to fail gracefully. If it requires album tags to associate album art, that's fine. In the absence of an album tag...make NO association.

Frankly, since errant album art is not appearing in the web UI but is in the Touch/Squeezeplay interface, I have to believe that something else is going on here. The errant art is the same as used to appear in the web UI before that database and cache was discarded and the library was rescanned. Somehow these devices appear to have not gotten that update.

I don't see how setting the album tag to "unknown" for all the tracks with empty album tags isn't creating one enormous album for them. "Unknown" is a string of characters. It's a name...it's not a status. Setting an album tag to "unknown" is no different than setting it to "Meet the Beatles."

I don't know what situation you think I'm creating.

[garym]

As I mentioned, I use "unknown" for tracks that are not from an album (or at least I don't know the album). I think I started doing this years ago because of some quirk in ipods that needed an album name. But I did want to point out that this does NOT cause SbS to group all these unrelated singles together in a single album. (no different than all the "Greatest Hits" album names I have.....these don't show up as one single album either.)

p.s. I do think I'll load these up in mp3tag and change all the album names to track names....I like this idea.

edit: just checked and I only have 269 tracks with Unknown album (out of over 60k). That's good! (I do in fact use the album name for a track, if I know it, even if I only have a single track from that album).

[Phil Leigh]

I'm saying that some tracks might be in a folder for an album and that particular folder my have an image file but that the tracks in that folder might have an empty album tag. My expectation is in that circumstance, SBC would ideally use the image file in the folder...or use no image file at all. There is no reasonable basis I can conceive of where some other image file should be used.

Software needs to fail gracefully. If it requires album tags to associate album art, that's fine. In the absence of an album tag...make NO association.

Frankly, since errant album art is not appearing in the web UI but is in the Touch/Squeezeplay interface, I have to believe that something else is going on here. The errant art is the same as used to appear in the web UI before that database and cache was discarded and the library was rescanned. Somehow these devices appear to have not gotten that update.

I don't see how setting the album tag to "unknown" for all the tracks with empty album tags isn't creating one enormous album for them. "Unknown" is a string of characters. It's a name...it's not a status. Setting an album tag to "unknown" is no different than setting it to "Meet the Beatles."

I don't know what situation you think I'm creating.

The "situation" is having tracks with no ALBUM tag... if those tracks sit in the same folder as other tracks that do have album tags...and artwork...

SBS will ( I believe ) connect any track in a folder to the folder.jpg in the same folder, regardless of its album tag. That's its default behaviour - tags don't control artwork. But I think SBS is getting confused (?) by the way your files, folders and tags are set up. I'm fairly certain you have a somewhat unconventional setup...



And once again, setting the ALBUM tags to "unknown" (or "banana"!) does not create one big album...
You could (IMO) fix this in a few minutes with MP3Tag.

[jstraw]

The "situation" is having tracks with no ALBUM tag... if those tracks sit in the same folder as other tracks that do have album tags...and artwork...

SBS will ( I believe ) connect any track in a folder to the folder.jpg in the same folder, regardless of its album tag. That's its default behaviour - tags don't control artwork. But I think SBS is getting confused (?) by the way your files, folders and tags are set up. I'm fairly certain you have a somewhat unconventional setup...



And once again, setting the ALBUM tags to "unknown" (or "banana"!) does not create one big album...
You could (IMO) fix this in a few minutes with MP3Tag.

An album tag doesn't create an album? Then what does make a set of songs an album?

And where is "no album" coming from? It's not in the file...this is a programmed SBC behavior. It's not pulling that string of characters out of thin air.

These files in question are NOT in a folder with a cover.jpg or folder.jpg file. It's pulling art that's embedded in another file. It makes no sense.

[Phil Leigh]

An album tag doesn't create an album? Then what does make a set of songs an album?

And where is "no album" coming from? It's not in the file...this is a programmed SBC behavior. It's not pulling that string of characters out of thin air.

These files in question are NOT in a folder with a cover.jpg or folder.jpg file. It's pulling art that's embedded in another file. It makes no sense.

"no album" is a screen literal that SBS displays when no ALBUM tag is present on a track.

The ALBUM tag on its own does not define an album. It is used in conjunction with other tags such as DISC/DISCNUMBER and MusicBrainz album tags (if present). If these other tags are not present, the track file locations are taken into account. This is why you don't NECESSARILY end up with all tracks from various "Greatest Hits" albums in one big "album".

You have a fairly complex folder structure. In your case, without tweaking the "Guess Tags" setting (see below) would indeed lump all of your tracks together in SBS under the "no album" banner.

If your folder structure was one that Guess Tags could recognise or be told to recognise (for example: /ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACKNUM - TITLE) it would work.

I believe this would also fix your artwork issue, but...

If you have a large number of standalone tracks, I'm not sure there is a perfect solution. Some compromise is required. If you leave them all loose they will get lumped inder "no album" - which would be a very long list to display. If you change the Album tag to match the song title they will all individually appear as album entries.

What I did was to group loose songs together into pseudo-compilation folders based on genre and year - and then tagged them accordingly. That way all lists remain manageable in size. This would be a lot of work for you though...


EDIT: Seems "guess tags" isn't used if there is an ARTIST tag present... but Guess Tags IS used if there is an ALBUM tag but no ARTIST tag...

[jstraw]

"no album" is a screen literal that SBS displays when no ALBUM tag is present on a track.

The ALBUM tag on its own does not define an album. It is used in conjunction with other tags such as DISC/DISCNUMBER and MusicBrainz album tags (if present). If these other tags are not present, the track file locations are taken into account. This is why you don't NECESSARILY end up with all tracks from various "Greatest Hits" albums in one big "album".

You have a fairly complex folder structure. In your case, without tweaking the "Guess Tags" setting (see below) would indeed lump all of your tracks together in SBS under the "no album" banner.

If your folder structure was one that Guess Tags could recognise or be told to recognise (for example: /ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACKNUM - TITLE) it would work.

I believe this would also fix your artwork issue, but...

If you have a large number of standalone tracks, I'm not sure there is a perfect solution. Some compromise is required. If you leave them all loose they will get lumped inder "no album" - which would be a very long list to display. If you change the Album tag to match the song title they will all individually appear as album entries.

What I did was to group loose songs together into pseudo-compilation folders based on genre and year - and then tagged them accordingly. That way all lists remain manageable in size. This would be a lot of work for you though...


EDIT: Seems "guess tags" isn't used if there is an ARTIST tag present... but Guess Tags IS used if there is an ALBUM tag but no ARTIST tag...

I don't have that autocomplete artwork thing.

Pretty much all these tracks have an artist tag. One of the reasons many of them don't have an album tag is that they're really not off an album. I can see that I'm going to have to either tag them or live with bad artwork.

Or what about this...does embedded artwork supersede folder artwork? If I put in a folder.jpg file will it be employed only for files without embedded art?