LMS album definition from filename? Really.

[RonM]

I have a series of DVDs from the Scottish/American co-produced series The Transatlantic Sessions, from the 90s through 2013. These feature musicians from the celtic tradition (Scottish/Irish mainly) and American roots musicians; they share common musical roots. The series were also released as CDs but these are mostly out of stock and no longer in production, and I've never found an online source for downloading. So I've ripped the music tracks from the DVDs. Sound quality is excellent, and I've left in some of the commentary for variety.

My objective has been to have all of the tracks for each season listed as one album, e.g. Transatlantic Sessions 2, with some 45 tracks, and so on.



In doing this I've discovered what seems to me to be an oddity. I edit tags/details using MP3Tag, and identify all the tracks in a season (all in the same folder) in sequence, with track number specified, and all with the same single album name for the season identified. For several of the seasons I'd ripped so that the filenames included a reference to the episode in which the track was included. For example, the filename could be preceded by "TS6-6 - ", for Transatlantic Sessions season 6 episode 6. I had originally been renaming the files to be preceded by the track number, allowing a sort through which I could then specify track number in the tags. See below for examples of filenames done in the two different ways:



As you can see, both had track number specified. I then had the brainwave that I didn't need to edit each filename, I could just amend the track number directly, which was annoying but marginally faster than editing the filename. I thought it wouldn't make a difference.

Weirdly, from my point of view, this resulted in two different ways that LMS displayed the tracks by album. If there was no season/episode specified at the start of the track name a single album was identified with all the tracks listed in track order, as in the image above at the top. If there WAS a season/episode specified in the form "TS6-6 - ", LMS sorts them into separate "albums" according to this taxonomy. All the TS6-1 tracks are in one album, the TS6-2 in another, and so on. I can fix the problem by taking out the season/episode info at the start of the filename, which I have done, leaving only Season 6 with the season/episode info. You can see the result below, with Season 6 divided into 6 albums, but only one album showing for each of the other seasons:



I wonder if LMS is set up to sort by album based on a value at the start of a filename, perhaps with a hyphen after the "album" value and before other information?

This is not a real problem for me, as I will fix Season 6 when I get around to it by renaming all the filenames, but it is a bit tedious.

Ron

[oldfolkie]

I'm not sure I quite understand, but it's my understanding that file names are totally irrelevant to LMS. I've created separate albums for tracks that are contained within the same file and I've created albums that contain tracks that come from separate files. In each case, it's the same tag names for Album and Album Artist that made the groupings an Album, regardless where the tracks were physically located or what the file names were.

I also use MP3Tag and I've sometimes gone back to rename File Names (or the split File Names to different tags), but I usually use the Convert or Quick Action functions to do any mass changes.

By the way, I'm also a big Celtic and roots music fan.

Larry

[slartibartfast]

I have a series of DVDs from the Scottish/American co-produced series The Transatlantic Sessions, from the 90s through 2013. These feature musicians from the celtic tradition (Scottish/Irish mainly) and American roots musicians; they share common musical roots. The series were also released as CDs but these are mostly out of stock and no longer in production, and I've never found an online source for downloading. So I've ripped the music tracks from the DVDs. Sound quality is excellent, and I've left in some of the commentary for variety.

My objective has been to have all of the tracks for each season listed as one album, e.g. Transatlantic Sessions 2, with some 45 tracks, and so on.

[ATTACH]38813[/ATTACH]

In doing this I've discovered what seems to me to be an oddity. I edit tags/details using MP3Tag, and identify all the tracks in a season (all in the same folder) in sequence, with track number specified, and all with the same single album name for the season identified. For several of the seasons I'd ripped so that the filenames included a reference to the episode in which the track was included. For example, the filename could be preceded by "TS6-6 - ", for Transatlantic Sessions season 6 episode 6. I had originally been renaming the files to be preceded by the track number, allowing a sort through which I could then specify track number in the tags. See below for examples of filenames done in the two different ways:

[ATTACH]38814[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]38815[/ATTACH]

As you can see, both had track number specified. I then had the brainwave that I didn't need to edit each filename, I could just amend the track number directly, which was annoying but marginally faster than editing the filename. I thought it wouldn't make a difference.

Weirdly, from my point of view, this resulted in two different ways that LMS displayed the tracks by album. If there was no season/episode specified at the start of the track name a single album was identified with all the tracks listed in track order, as in the image above at the top. If there WAS a season/episode specified in the form "TS6-6 - ", LMS sorts them into separate "albums" according to this taxonomy. All the TS6-1 tracks are in one album, the TS6-2 in another, and so on. I can fix the problem by taking out the season/episode info at the start of the filename, which I have done, leaving only Season 6 with the season/episode info. You can see the result below, with Season 6 divided into 6 albums, but only one album showing for each of the other seasons:

[ATTACH]38816[/ATTACH]

I wonder if LMS is set up to sort by album based on a value at the start of a filename, perhaps with a hyphen after the "album" value and before other information?

This is not a real problem for me, as I will fix Season 6 when I get around to it by renaming all the filenames, but it is a bit tedious.

Ron

Is there a difference in the tags for the different behaviours? You mentioned tags in the post but didn't show any. Can you show a screenshot of the tags?

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[mrw]

I'm not sure I quite understand, but it's my understanding that file names are totally irrelevant to LMS.

Not entirely. If the file tags are not readable, then LMS can extract information from the file name. See “guess tags formats” in server settings/formats.

[RonM]

There is no difference in the tags. If I modify the filename (and only the filename) to eliminate the, for example, TS6-6, then the odd behavior stops, and all files are listed under one album. The behavior changes even though no tags are changed, only the filename. It's clear that the tags are readable, so LMS is not being forced to guess from the filename.

All the affected files are given the same album name, but if there is that preceding bit of text in the filename they will be separated into albums based on the filename. Once that text is replaced by, for instance, a sequence number than they get lumped together into one album as is the intent.

R.

[slartibartfast]

There is no difference in the tags. If I modify the filename (and only the filename) to eliminate the, for example, TS6-6, then the odd behavior stops, and all files are listed under one album. The behavior changes even though no tags are changed, only the filename. It's clear that the tags are readable, so LMS is not being forced to guess from the filename.

All the affected files are given the same album name, but if there is that preceding bit of text in the filename they will be separated into albums based on the filename. Once that text is replaced by, for instance, a sequence number than they get lumped together into one album as is the intent.

R.

No idea then. I might experiment myself to reproduce it.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[oldfolkie]

Not entirely. If the file tags are not readable, then LMS can extract information from the file name. See “guess tags formats” in server settings/formats.

Interesting. I've never used that--I've always tagged before including anything in LMS.

[RobbH]

There is no difference in the tags. If I modify the filename (and only the filename) to eliminate the, for example, TS6-6, then the odd behavior stops, and all files are listed under one album. The behavior changes even though no tags are changed, only the filename. It's clear that the tags are readable, so LMS is not being forced to guess from the filename.

All the affected files are given the same album name, but if there is that preceding bit of text in the filename they will be separated into albums based on the filename. Once that text is replaced by, for instance, a sequence number than they get lumped together into one album as is the intent.

R.

This is very much a long shot, pure speculation, not based on any actual experience or knowledge:

What's the current setting for the "Group Discs" option, under Settings/My Music?

[RonM]

To recap, it seems that LMS is taking album definition (grouping songs by album) from elements of the filename, and not just from the album name associated with the song in tags. This is an illustration of the situation, and a demonstration of the fix (which is just removing the initial filename structure and replacing it with the track number). Behold:



The screenshot above (using the LMS webpage rather than the display on my mobile) shows the album structure in New Music. Note that most albums in the Transatlantic Sessions series are represented by a single entry, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but those tagged as Transatlantic Sessions 6 have multiple entries; each of these entries have songs from a particular episode; all have the same album name specified.




After I modified the filenames to take out the episode reference (all in the form of TS6-X - ), where X is the episode, all the tracks are now included in a single listing for the album Transatlantic Sessions 6.




This is the track information BEFORE the change to the filename. Note the shaded area which is the path to the file, including the filename. It shows "TS 6-6 - " at the beginning of the filename.




This is the file information after the "TS 6-6 -" was replaced with the track number "35". Nothing else was changed, and in particular no tags were changed. When done for all tracks, this resulted in all the tracks being included in a single specified album.


Ron

[RobbH]

I will try to restate my earlier question in a more comprehensible format:

Is it possible that LMS thinks that a filename beginning " TS6-X" refers to disc number X of a multi-disc set?

For that to happen, I think (but have no actual knowledge) that the following would be necessary:

1. In Settings/My Music the "Group Discs" option is set to "Treat multi-disc sets as separate albums,"
2. The tracks in question do NOT contain a tag for Disc Number, and
3. In Settings/Advanced/Formatting the "Guess Tag Formats" templates include at least one that assigns a value to Disc Number.

This is based on an extrapolation from mrw's explanation of how LMS can use filenames to fill in missing tags, a few posts back in this thread. And my speculation is most likely wrong, but I thought it might be worth mentioning, since no other explanation has been found, so far.

[RonM]

I will try to restate my earlier question in a more comprehensible format:

Is it possible that LMS thinks that a filename beginning " TS6-X" refers to disc number X of a multi-disc set?

For that to happen, I think (but have no actual knowledge) that the following would be necessary:

1. In Settings/My Music the "Group Discs" option is set to "Treat multi-disc sets as separate albums,"
2. The tracks in question do NOT contain a tag for Disc Number, and
3. In Settings/Advanced/Formatting* the "Guess Tag Formats" templates include at least one that assigns a value to Disc Number.

This is based on an extrapolation from mrw's explanation of how LMS can use filenames to fill in missing tags, a few posts back in this thread. And my speculation is most likely wrong, but I thought it might be worth mentioning, since no other explanation has been found, so far.

I can check that, but I'm not highly incentivized to do it, having solved my problem. Sometime. I presume that disc number would be set for the tracks in question, which wasn't set as part of the rip, so that would be easy to check. If I still had the files with that naming system, which I don't.

R.

[RobbH]

I can check that, but I'm not highly incentivized to do it, having solved my problem. Sometime. I presume that disc number would be set for the tracks in question, which wasn't set as part of the rip, so that would be easy to check. If I still had the files with that naming system, which I don't.

R.

Certainly, once the problem is solved, there's no point in wasting further time on it! But if you encounter this sort of thing again, it might be worth checking this angle... even though there's a very good chance that my speculation is pure nonsense.