PictureFlow same album name?

[bitchkat]

I have a few albums with duplicate names.  For example The Violent Femmes and The Butchies both released an album entitled "3".  In this cases, PictureFlow is only picking up and displaying one of them.  Is there any way to get it to realize that they are separate albums?

[epithetless]

It is actually picking up all of the albums, but it lists all the files for those albums together under the single album-name heading. I'd say this qualifies as a bug, but unless/until it gets posted to the Flyspray tracker and changed by a dev (who agrees that it's worth changing), I believe the only way to get the albums to display separately is to differentiate them in the files' tags. This is a problem not just with PictureFlow, but with the database in general (which PictureFlow draws its data from).

[Llorean]

There's no way to distinguish "two albums with the same name" from "one album with two artists for the tracks" based on existing tags in use. Until a separate "album sort" tag is used to invisibly have more unique identifiers, there's just nothing to be done.

If you want albums to show up uniquely, give them unique names.

[soap]

There's no way to distinguish "two albums with the same name" from "one album with two artists for the tracks" based on existing tags in use.

Rather than use the rare album sort tags, the more common Album Artist tag would solve this. 
Each of the two albums named "3" in the original post would have the same name in the Track Artist as well as the Album Artist tag (though obviously different from the other album) and a compilation album named "3" would have non-matching Track Artist and Album Artist tags.

The only place where this solution breaks down as far as I can see is if two conditions are met:
1 - you use a common Album Artist tag for compilation albums - "Various" for example
and
2 - you have two compilation albums with identical album names.

I think the collision rate would be quite low, though.

On the other hand:
The advantage of using an album sort tag is that it would also solve the (rare) problem of when an artist releases multiple untitled or eponymous albums.  I, personally, distinguish these cases by release year, but that is something the database (and therefore pictureflow) currently can not handle.

Something like musicbrainz's unique album ID would work as well.  I'm not sure what field it populates with that.

[Avalon]

I like PictureFlow as well and have often thought that it would work much better if it displayed the Artist and Album in separate lines with the Album Art. 

If it did, it should address the problem you are seeing and also get away from having to modify the ID3 tags.

I have editted the ID3 tags to include the artist and album in the album tag so that the Picture Flow groups each Artist's Albums, but this complicates other uses.

[Avalon]

I have been using the hotkey approach to toggle between Pictureflow and wps and found it to be a great solution.  Thks for the feature!

I would like to make a further point on the Picturefow album/artist discussion.

Since artists do not reuse the same album name, Pictureflow sorting by artist/album would separate the albums with the same names such as "Best Of" "Greatest Hits" "Essential" etc.  I usually think of an artist I would like to hear and then select from his/her albums.  To have them grouped by artist in Pictureflow would be a logical approach (at least for me).

If the artist/album sort order is used and the ability to display artist and album info in Pictureflow is provided, Pictureflow would be greatly improved.  This would provide everything I need. 

This display change could be as simple as just using the same setting menu in Pictureflow to display artist/album info on 2 lines rather then the single line display of album.  The same "Show album title" function could be used to "Show artist album" with the same submenu "Hide" "Bottom" and "Top" selections.

I understand that some do not wish this.  To allow user preference functionality, the submenu could be expanded to include "Hide" "Hide artist" "Hide album" "Bottom" "Top".  I haven't coded in RockBox, but this may be a case of duplicating existing code with minor mods.

I use a Fuze and there is ample display space top and bottom for this change.

Thks again!

[pondlife]

When determining what comprises an album, the database/Pictureflow/whatever ought always to consider both Album Artist and Album Name.   This is only when grouping/sorting, not necessarily for display.

This would then give you two albums, both named "3".

For the database, this might be possible by correct use of tagnavi.config, but I'm no expert there.
Pictureflow ought (ultimately) to be based on tagnavi.config strings too (if it isn't already).

Displaying the Album Artist in Pictureflow would be a seperate issue (but less important, I'd think).

pondlife

[GooD Ol TarviS]

That's how the iPod worked. It sorted by Sort Artist (special tag, could use Album Artist instead) and then displayed the artist and album art of the first track in the album.

[soap]

Since artists do not reuse the same album name, Pictureflow sorting by artist/album would separate the albums with the same names such as "Best Of" "Greatest Hits" "Essential" etc. 

(Late to the discussion...)
But they do.

As I mentioned before, it is not uncommon for an artist to release multiple eponymous albums.

[Avalon]

My main point here is that many people think of an artist and then the album.  It would seem to be logical to sort albums by artist and then by album title.  That way all albums by the same artist would be grouped together.

If PictureFlow did this and displayed the artist name and album title, the display would be much more meaningful (to me).  If that was done, it wouldn't make much difference if two albums had the same title since the album art would undoubtedly differentiate the two.  At least they could be easily found and displayed concurrently so that the desired album could be selected.

I have a lot of albums on my Fuze V1 (24GB).  The way PictureFlow sorts now has an artist's albums scattered all over the list.  If you do not know the albums well, it is difficult to find them.  Also, you have to remember the album titles by an artist in order to choose one to play.  If sorted by artist/title you need only go to the artist and you have a grouping of albums to choose from.  I find this a much easier approach and would use PictureFlow more if it did this.



 

[Progweed]

I couldn't agree more with Avalon. I always thought that albums grouped by artist would make the PictureFlow plugin much, much more useful. Perhaps there could be an option to toggle this behaviour on and off?

[Avalon]

I have a work around that I use if you are interested.

1. In the ID3 tags copy the "Album Tag" to the "Album Artist" tag.

2. Modify the "Album" ID3 tag to contain Artist Album.

3. Edit the theme to access the "Album Artist" (%iA and %IA) rather then the "Album" (%id and %Id).

This way, Pictureflow displays the Album and Artist sorted by Artist and then by Album.  The theme displays the normal album title.

If you don't mind the theme displaying the Artist Album for the Album display, just leave out 1 &3 above.

I know that this takes a little effort, but when it is done, the result is great.  Software such as Tag&Rename can do this very quickly.  I usually check the ID3 tags and apply Replay Gain before putting on my player anyway, so this is not a great inconvenience for me.

Hope this is helpful until someone modifies PictureFlow.

[crookadile]

Sorry to bump an old thread but can anyone tell me how to edit the theme as in step 3.

Any help would be appreciated.

[LambdaCalculus]

Sorry to bump an old thread but can anyone tell me how to edit the theme as in step 3.

Any help would be appreciated.

Just open the .wps file in a text editor and replace the "Album" tag as shown above.

[crookadile]

Sorry to be a pain but I am using the ArboxWidgets theme.

I have opened up the ArboxWidgets.wps and cannot see any "Album" tag.

Anybody know where this is ( what line number ) ?

Thanks in advance.