Music Albums II V0.5

[LilY0da]

Is there any way in the next release we can have the artist name shown before the album name?
I usually sort all my albums by artists, so I'm lost there.... It's a really nice plugin otherwise

Also, any reason why on some albums, the song list is not in the correct order?

[tieke]

Strange - mine is listing by artist name:

Are you using directory or m3u lists as your source?

[tkgafs]

This simply depends on the structure you file you albums under

I use

Artist1
Abum1title
Album2title
Album3title
Cd1
Cd2
Album4
Artist2
Album1title
Album2title
Cd1
Cd1
etc etc

using this structure I get displays
like

Album1title
Album1title
Album2title
Album2title
Abum3title
Album3title
CD1
CD1
CD2
CD2

in the attached pic you will see problem

the eno album is in the following directory structure position

Q:\music\include\eno\instrumental box\cd3\tracks...

but what is displayed on the left hand side is simply CD3 with no indication of artist or cd title

as we all probably file things differently it would be hard for the plugin in author to cater for every possiblity, but one possible scheme would be if we could define in the settings how our music was structured

for example Artist - Album title - Track num - Song Title if everything was on one level

or in my own case Top level is Artist, 2nd Level is Album, Third level if present is CD number, and either 3rd or 4th level is Track number - Song Title

Or simply try and extract tags from tracks into a database
in this case the whole thing should be done as a seperate stand alone program which builds database when the user tells it to, this would avoid the lengthy startup problems many of the music plugins experience.

just my thoughts

tkgafs

[LilY0da]

Are you using directory or m3u lists as your source?

I'm using directories
My structure is Artist\Album Name\Artist - TrackNumber - Trackname.mp3
The other popular structure I saw used is
Artist\Album Name\TrackNumber - Trackname.mp3 I'll try it again later, but I doub't it'll change anything...

Tieke, are you sure that your folder name isn't "Artist - AlbumName"

I did reorder everything with the structure above, so if the plugin would sort alphabetically when entering a directory, they should all be ordered by track #. However, some folders do, and some don't...

[tieke]

Hi Lilyoda - unfortunately I am solely using .m3u playlists rather than directories, so the examples obviously weren't comparable. My directory layout is:
artist name
-album name
--track name - artist name

I don't have track numbers in any of the album track names, I rely on good ID tags, and an m3u list in each folder. (I don't use directory recursion, because I use the plugin purely for albums, and don't want to skip through my dozens of various/junk music directories).

I'm recording something at the moment, but will try it tomorrow with directory recursion instead of playlists, and see if I can replicate your problems.

cheers,

tieke

[LilY0da]

Thanks Tieke. You think that incorrect ordering when I enter an album could be due to bad or missing ID tags?

Also, what name do you give to your m3u file? "Albumname.m3u", or "artist - album.m3u"?

[paulg]

Hi all, thanks for the input. I was visiting my mother in-law this weekend so not much progress. At this point I am continuing to move more into the skin.xml file so you can customize the view. I will make the help images gifs. I will fix the ordering problem on the song list and some other fixes.

Thanks for your input.

Paulg

[tieke]

what name do you give to your m3u file? "Albumname.m3u", or "artist - album.m3u"?

lilyoda - I use the "artist - album.m3u" format.

I will fix the ordering problem on the song list

paulg - that's great: do you already have an idea of what caused lilyoda's ordering problem?

I will make the help images gifs

thanks

tieke

[LilY0da]

lilyoda - I use the "artist - album.m3u" format.

OK, I'll try that, it should fix my need to have the artist name before the album name, then
Thanks Tieke

[paulg]

The ordering problem has to do with the order that Windows returns the files. I am not sure if its the create time or the name in alphabetical order. The code pre-pends the track number if it comes from a valid MP3 file. I will make sure that the songs are sorted in track order.

I have converted to gifs and made the help images part of the skin so you can easily change them and their location.

MusicAlbums does nothing fancy on the albums. It just uses the file name or the MP3 title for the song list. I will try to make it as consistant as possible.

Paul