[nuentes]

[Split out from another thread for clarity]

And actually - while I'm here, I have one other oddity. I had a few Split albums (if you are not familiar with these, they are an album where two artists have 1-3 recordings each on the record: example). Musicbrainz Picard had sorted them into separate folders - so I had the some of the following artist folders:

Code:

_moneen_
Alexisonfire
Alexisonfire _moneen_
Classic Case
He is Legend Classic Case
He is Legend
Matchbook Romance
Matchbook Romance Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack

I hadn't created artist.nfo files for the split album artists. I was getting some weird results due to these albums: For ONLY these six artists, when I look at the artist information, the genres will not appear at all. And when I try to refresh the artist info, I get a prompt asking me to enter the artists name (this doesn't happen for any other artist, only these six). Last night I moved the split albums to a Various Artists folder, and changed the Album Artist in the tag to Various Artists rather than the weird mix of two names. I haven't had a chance to test if this worked yet, however it was a bit of an oddity.

I'm using Kodi 16.1 (directly from the google play store) on an android tablet.

[DaveBlake]

And actually - while I'm here, I have one other oddity. I had a few Split albums (if you are not familiar with these, they are an album where two artists have 1-3 recordings each on the record). Musicbrainz Picard had sorted them into separate folders - so I had the some of the following artists listed in my folder:
_moneen_
Alexisonfire
Alexisonfire _moneen_
Classic Case
He is Legend Classic Case
He is Legend
Matchbook Romance
Matchbook Romance Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack

I hadn't created artist.nfo files for the split album artists. I was getting some weird results due to these albums: For ONLY these six artists, when I look at the artist information, the genres will not appear at all. And when I try to refresh the artist info, I get a prompt asking me to enter the artists name. Last night I moved the split albums to a Various Artists folder, and edited the tags to have an Album Artist of Various Artists rather than the weird mix of two names. I haven't had a chance to test if this worked yet, however it was a bit of an oddity.

I'm really not clear on what you are saying Picard has done, can you supply mbids so I can look at the musicbrainz site for myself?

It seems that Kodi has interpreted the results to have a mis-match in artist names to mbids, or at least the mixed artist names look odd to me. This is confirmed by the prompt asking for artist name when you refresh artist info - if Kodi had an mbid for the artist then it would not do this. Picard does not tag with (song) genre unless you add the tag yourself. Also no NFO and no unique common artist folder to put one into means that there will be no genre to display.

Finally you changed ALBUMARTIST tag but did you also change the matching MUSICBRAIN_ALBUMARTIST_ID tag? Mess with one but not the other and somewhere along the line you will get odd things happening.

Show me your tags!

[nuentes]

I'm really not clear on what you are saying Picard has done, can you supply mbids so I can look at the musicbrainz site for myself?

It seems that Kodi has interpreted the results to have a mis-match in artist names to mbids, or at least the mixed artist names look odd to me. This is confirmed by the prompt asking for artist name when you refresh artist info - if Kodi had an mbid for the artist then it would not do this. Picard does not tag with (song) genre unless you add the tag yourself. Also no NFO and no unique common artist folder to put one into means that there will be no genre to display.

Finally you changed ALBUMARTIST tag but did you also change the matching MUSICBRAIN_ALBUMARTIST_ID tag? Mess with one but not the other and somewhere along the line you will get odd things happening.

Show me your tags!

Yeah - I'm certain I checked, and the MUSICBRAIN_ALBUMARTIST_ID was actually correct for each of these, so I didn't touch them. I am using a custom naming script that I can't remember where I found. It's typically pretty good, but entirely possible that is to blame. Here are the albums that created the extra folders:

http://musicbrainz.org/release/471fb63b-...9d6a378b3a
http://musicbrainz.org/release/06482edf-...9b3d174f07
http://musicbrainz.org/release/9d871200-...2ff4f87ad3

You can see that MB doesn't list them as a new artist. It shows as a release by two artists.

I'm not home at the moment, but I can provide some Picard screenshots a bit later

[nuentes]

Back to the split albums: http://i.imgur.com/dbyIsdR.png

[DaveBlake]

OK, split releases....
Kodi will see these as albums with multiple album artists much like it would a classical music album with composer, conductor and orchestra etc. If I remember correctly Kodi 16 may sometimes need a little help to ensure Picard has tagged in a way it can interpret, although in testing these tracks it was fine I may have non-default settings in Picard.

The key thing is ensuring Kodi reads as many album artists names as it does MUSICBRAINZ ALBUMARTIST ID values (and that these values match). So if you change the ALBUMARTIST tag to "Various Artists" (there is no need to do that, but say you did) you must also change the MUSICBRAINZ ALBUMARTIST ID tag (in Picard lablled MusicBrainz Release Artist Id) to the mbid for "Various Artists" e.g. 89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377

The MUSICBRAINZ ALBUMARTIST ID tag is parsed as ids have a known format, so regardless of separator used Kodi can read the multiple values. The ALBUMARTIST tag is more tricky, to separate the names Kodi 16 needs either the item separator (space-slash-space by default) or separate frame values (something ID3 v2.4 does but I can't tell which version you are using). On your screenshot it looks like space-slash-space in between the artist names, maybe you have a Picard script do that? Anyway that looks fine.

The other approach to ensuring Kodi identifies the artist names, if the ALBUMARTIST tag does not use the item separator, is to use the ALBUMARTISTS (note the S) tag. This can be added using a Picard script
$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)
But I don't think you need this particularly.

Let Picard tag these tracks, don't fiddle with "various artists" and you will get Alexisonfire, .moneen., Classic Case, He is Legend, Matchbook Romance, and Motion City Soundtrack as individual album (and song) artists in Kodi.

Where multiple album artists is going to give you difficulties if with artist NFO files. No matter how you arrange your music files the search for a "common folder" for an (album) artist NFO file to be located in will come up with the same folder for two different artists. If you have "Prefer Online Information" setting enabled then whatever you have as artist name in artist.nfo in this folder will overwrite the name of both the artists. End result is a mess in the artists node, even if the songs and album still list the correct artist name in some places. My advice is don't use NFO for these artists, Kodi can't cope yet.

I hope that is all explained clearly enough!
If it isn't doing what you want, then come back and I will see if I can describe a way around that will deliver it.

[nuentes]

So I'm a bit unclear on one thing...

What folder should these tracks be going to? Because when I just let Picard do its thing, instead of putting the alexisonfire tracks in the alexisonfire folder and the .moneen. tracks into the .moneen. folder, it creates a new folder that combines the two. This is what I had done before, and was resulting in Kodi not showing the genres for those 6 artists. And that is when I started trying things (like moving them to the various artists folder).

I didn't realize that field was called MusicBrainz Release Artist Id in Picard, and now I feel like a fool. I think the fastest way for me to be done with this is to just change that field to "89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377"... but what is the best way?

[DaveBlake]

Only one? Doing well then
No cause to feel foolish, you are far from that.

With the exception of NFOs Kodi really doesn't care about what folder songs are in, it uses the tags not the folder structure. I put my simple collaboration albums in a folder with both artist names, but that is just for my convenience. With classical music I use composer name for a folder (mostly), but I tag so that conductors, orchestra and soloists etc. to appear as album artists. But their is no "should".

Of course this doesn't work for artist NFO files. And I don't see how switching to "various artists" is going to help really? Only have one NFO for that "artist" covering all genres.

I guess you could remove the musicbrainz tags from those EPs, and separate them under different artist folder and fake album. The thing to watch is leaving mbids but changing names.

Longer term I want to fix this NFO common folder limitation, it is silly, but I suspect you want to get things working now.

[scott967]

My advice: forget artist.nfos and just combine all the nfos into a <musicdb></musicdb> element in a legal xml file and use import library to get that info into the database. (And as a feature request, allow export of only artist or album in both single or multi file exports.)

scott s.
.

[nuentes]

My advice: forget artist.nfos and just combine all the nfos into a <musicdb></musicdb> element in a legal xml file and use import library to get that info into the database. (And as a feature request, allow export of only artist or album in both single or multi file exports.)

scott s.
.

Yes, but how would I continue to manage new artists?

The point is... I want to own the data that Kodi uses. Yes, I could spend my time updating allmusic and fanart.tv, but I really don't have the time for that. I just spent weeks and weeks correcting musicbrainz, adding artists, albums, etc. I want to be in charge of the information within Kodi, and with the scrapers turned on, I feel I lose that control.

[nuentes]

Only one? Doing well then
No cause to feel foolish, you are far from that.

With the exception of NFOs Kodi really doesn't care about what folder songs are in, it uses the tags not the folder structure. I put my simple collaboration albums in a folder with both artist names, but that is just for my convenience. With classical music I use composer name for a folder (mostly), but I tag so that conductors, orchestra and soloists etc. to appear as album artists. But their is no "should".

Of course this doesn't work for artist NFO files. And I don't see how switching to "various artists" is going to help really? Only have one NFO for that "artist" covering all genres.

I guess you could remove the musicbrainz tags from those EPs, and separate them under different artist folder and fake album. The thing to watch is leaving mbids but changing names.

Longer term I want to fix this NFO common folder limitation, it is silly, but I suspect you want to get things working now.

Ok - I think I get it now. Interesting to learn that Kodi doesn't really care about folder structure for music, because it's so important for movies/tv. But I guess that's again because of the tag embedding. I get what I need to do with these albums... let Picard do it's thing, and then for each track, just make sure that the mb release artist id/etc is correct for each individual track. No need to mix it in with my various artists albums. Thanks!

[DaveBlake]

Ok - I think I get it now. Interesting to learn that Kodi doesn't really care about folder structure for music, because it's so important for movies/tv. But I guess that's again because of the tag embedding.

Exactly. Also the music library treament of artists is far in advance of how actors are handled for video.

I understand your desire for local data too. Do that better and Kodi would put much less strain on the online data servers too. Kodi scraping from NFOs just needs to be adapted better to artists - they don't necessarily have a single physical location on a drive in the way that songs and thus albums do, they could even appear on music from separate sources across multiple genres etc.

Scott's suggestion is actually a good one, and I am up for making the improvements to export to make it easier. You can have as many xml files as you like, even one per artist although that would be tedious, and just import a file for the new artists when they come along. Similar to NFO but not limited to being in the right folder, the name of the artist or artists you are providing data for is in the xml.

Of course a folder tied artist.nfo scrape for album artists will continue to be supported for backward compatibility.

I get what I need to do with these albums... let Picard do it's thing, and then for each track, just make sure that the mb release artist id/etc is correct for each individual track. No need to mix it in with my various artists albums. Thanks!

Hum..... There is still nowhere for an artist.nfo to go. If you are going to use artist mood or style in lieu of genre as discussed elsewhere then you will need to create an xml file like Scott suggests to give these artists a mood or style.

[nuentes]

Scott's suggestion is actually a good one, and I am up for making the improvements to export to make it easier. You can have as many xml files as you like, even one per artist although that would be tedious, and just import a file for the new artists when they come along. Similar to NFO but not limited to being in the right folder, the name of the artist or artists you are providing data for is in the xml.

Of course a folder tied artist.nfo scrape for album artists will continue to be supported for backward compatibility.

hm - ok, I'll consider it. Still - it seems that kodi is handling my various artists albums just fine, so I'm really unclear what you are telling me will be trouble. For example, I've got the following:
/Artist1/album1/trackname
/Various Artists/album2/Artist1 - trackname

The Various Artists album is correctly appearing when I select the artist. These albums were also tagged with picard, so the correct MBID is embedded for each artists. The artist genre is correctly appearing, as well. Everything is copacetic on that front, and that was why I wanted to follow that mold with these split albums.

Hum..... There is still nowhere for an artist.nfo to go. If you are going to use artist mood or style in lieu of genre as discussed elsewhere then you will need to create an xml file like Scott suggests to give these artists a mood or style.

I have the artist.nfo files elsewhere. In my library I have 3 split albums, including a total of 6 artists. I have the discography for all 6 of these artists in their own directories.

[DaveBlake]

I have the artist.nfo files elsewhere. In my library I have 3 split albums, including a total of 6 artists. I have the discography for all 6 of these artists in their own directories.

They may be there but Kodi is not scraping them.

To scrape an NFO for an album artist Kodi looks for a common folder. It looks at the location of all the song files with connections to that artist, and takes the common denominator and assumes that is the folder for that artist. If I have understood correctly your file arrangement will result in the joint album artists having the same common folder, while any artist.nfo located their can only be for one of them.

Are you with me?

[nuentes]

Hm - I guess I still don't. Back to one of the original examples:

/Complete/Alexisonfire/album1
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album2
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album3
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album4
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album5
/Complete/Alexisonfire _moneen_/splitAlbum
/Various Artists/Album1/

Why is it not finding the main Alexisonfire folder as the main folder? When I click on Alexisonfire, all the correct albums/tracks show up, including the split album and Various Artists albums. Kodi is using the correct fanarts and folder.jpg for the artists (although I haven't checked to confirm if it's using local or scraped). However, the nfo file doesn't seem to be respected.

[DaveBlake]

Yes, the artist, album, and song entries in the library just depend on tags, hence they all show correctly.

Now for NFO let's step through the example. What would the folder common to all the songs involving Alexisonfire be? Kodi looks at the location of every song on every album where Alexisonfire is an album artist. It would find

/Complete/Alexisonfire/album1
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album2
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album3
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album4
/Complete/Alexisonfire/album5
/Complete/Alexisonfire _moneen_/splitAlbum

Folder /Various Artists/Album1/ is skipped because despite tracks involving them may be located they are not the album artist for those tracks.

Because of the split EP in /Complete/Alexisonfire _moneen_/splitAlbum, the common location is therefore /Complete

So you could locate an artist.nfo for Alexisonfire in /Complete, but I suspect the artist from the other split EPs also resolve to the same folder. Thus any artist.nfo located there would be applied to all of them.

You don't say, so let's assume that you do not have any more albums (or singles come to that, as they are treated in Kodi as fake albums) with .moneen. as album artist, just this one EP. Then looking at the location of every song it would just find

/Complete/Alexisonfire _moneen_/splitAlbum

Hence that would be the folder it looks in to find an artist.nfo for .moneen.

Is that a little clearer?

It is a mess. It is based on the idea that all album artists have a clear simple location, once you get multiple artists then they just can't. It needs fixing, and I will get to it eventually!

Don't know about you but I could do with a swift drink