Search the Community

I am a heavy MusicBrainz user and I have two issues with how MBS is populating metadata for music albums: It is not using the MusicBrainz ID from the ID3 tag information in the local files which are accurate because I have checked them. It is querying the MusicBrainz database based on the directory name and pulling the wrong information. I have a lot of albums which are not in MusicBrainz and have not imported them into MBS for fear of what it will do. The artist metadata works really well so I would like to leave that running but I would like MBS to collect all information on albums and tracks from the local files. So is it possible to turn off "download metadata from the internet" for music albums only?

MBS doesn't separate multiple contributing artists in the artist path: eg. Music\Above & Beyond and tyDi\Ministry of Sound - Trance Nation\ It displays as "Above & Beyond and tyDi" instead of separating the two artists. There is no primary contributing artist for this album as Above & Beyond mixed disc one and tyDi mixed disc two. It would be good if there was a delimiter that could be used in the directory name that MBS would use to separate multiple contributing artists. eg. Above & Beyond, tyDi

MBServer: Version 3.0.5083.27698 MBClassic: Version 3.0.100.0 B12-4.1 MBTheater: Not installed PC Server OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1 Codecs: Nothing other than installed with Win7 out of the box and MBServer Extender: HP MediaSmart Connect x280n I would appreciate some guidance on the MB3 preferred library structure for multi-disc music CD's to avoid multiple album/CD entries. I have just gone through a retagging exercise (thanks Luke) with Media Monkey which has greatly improved the information pulled from the tags in recent versions of MB3 Server. I did have the CD's stored as... \Music \Artist Name \Album Name - Disc 1 1- Song.mp3 2- Song.mp3 \Album Name - Disc 2 1- Song.mp3 2- Song.mp3 ...which resulted in multiple entries per album/CD and doesn't always automatically display Disc 1/Disc 2 in the name from the folder structure. Now I have renamed the physical file tracks on the discs to reflect their respective discs, tagged them as disc 1, disc 2, and combined folders as below... \Music \Artist Name \Album Name 101- Song.mp3 102- Song.mp3 201- Song.mp3 202- Song.mp3 ...but this results in duplicated track numbers and straight album play would then jump back and forth from disc/track 101 to disc/track 201, 102, 202, 103, 203, etc. Is there a track file naming convention that will let me combine disc folders and get me to the sequential track order from disc1, then disc 2 to disc x? Or, am I going about it all wrong? Thanks, Tanamur

Server, version 3.0.5083.27698 running on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 machine. I have been testing out Mediabrowser 3 with a selection of different music tracks. There are a few problems I have come across relating to how Album Artists/Artists are handled. Both the Album Artist and Artist tags for tracks by "Weird Al" Yankovic are written as "Weird Al" Yankovic for each track. The artist folder that contains the album folders and metadata is written as 'Weird Al' Yankovic since " cannot be used in file and folder names in Windows. Both the Album Artist and Artist tags for tracks by AC/DC are written as AC/DC for each track. The artist folder that contains the album folders and metadata is written as AC-DC since / cannot be used in file and folder names in Windows. In the Album Artists view: 'Weird Al' Yankovic - The artist image is not shown and neither are the numbers of albums or songs. AC-DC - The numbers of albums and songs are not shown, but the artist image is. This indicates to me that the folder name is being used instead of the information in the Album Artist tags which is not ideal in situations where different characters are used like these. In the Artists View: AC - shows one extra album and one extra song AC/DC - does not include extra album or extra song DC - shows one extra album and one extra song (the extra album and song it refers to is a track from the Last Action Hero soundtrack which has Various Artists written in the Album Artist tag) This indicates to me that the / in the Album Artist/Artist tags are confusing things somehow as entries called AC and DC are being created even though they do not exist at all in the music collection. They still point to the AC/DC albums, with the addition of the Last Action Hero track, but in the case of the AC entry, it has filled in a artist thumbnail image and description. Additionally, an entry for Various Artists shows up in the Artists view even though it is only used in the Album Artist tags of tracks for certain albums. There are 2 tracks from the Batman Forever soundtrack album in my music collection for testing. Browsing to Various Artists from the Artists view shows two versions of the album. Each one goes to one of the tracks which are both by different artists. The album is also duplicated like this in the Albums view. The file and folder naming convention I use is: D:\Music\Album Artist\Album\Disc 1/2/etc (if more than one disc)\Track Title.mp3 All tracks are tagged with Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Track Number, Album Artist and Disc Number (if more than one disc).

That's correct. It currently does not split album artists. for artsits - preference is to use the one in the artist folder first, before IBN.

I understand that there is still a lot of work to be done with regards to music in MB3, but I wanted to submit some of the requests I have been looking for, but never found all at the same time in a media player. Hopefully all of these can be implemented at some point in the future as it would definitely satisfy all of my needs with regards to music playback. Crossfader Media Browser definitely needs a crossfader with options for amount of time to crossfade and whether to fade out when stopping playback or not. Also the option to cross fade only tracks within the same albums or artist might be useful too. Playback options Play modes - Alphabetical (plays tracks in order of track name) Numerical (plays tracks in order of track number) Random (plays tracks in a random order) Repeat (plays tracks again after finishing) Play from - All Genre Album Artist Artist Album Year Playlist If currently browsing a specific Genre/Artist/Album/etc., the play mode should only play music from that Genre/Artist/Album/etc. Otherwise, MB should request for the source to be chosen. Mutiple Genres/Artists/Albums/etc. should be able to be selected from a simple folder tree view of the entire library. When using Random, tracks should be played only from the chosen Genre/Artist/Album/etc. and can play from multiple Genres/Artists/Albums/etc. if they are also selected. The Repeat mode should be able to be combined with other play modes. Should also be able to use Repeat when only playing single tracks. Party Mode There should be an option to prevent people from exiting Media Browser, the Music library or the Music Now Playing screen without using some kind of remote/keyboard shortcut with a PIN/Password to unlock it. This could allow for other people to add songs from the library to the playlist themselves, or stop anyone from messing with it at all during a party or something like that. Now Playing Visualisations It would be great to have a variety of visualisation options for the Now Playing screen built-in, with the ability to add more via plug-ins (WinAmp style). Options should include whether the Album Art is displayed, what size it is displayed at, the screen position it is displayed and whether it is always displayed or only during the beginning/middle/end of the song or not at all. The same would go for other track details such as Artist, Album, Track number, Track title, Year, Genre, Rating or other comments if applicable. Things like the font, font size and font colour should also be customisable, even when a Theme is being used. There should be various background options such as something like the Album Art waterfall in Windows Media Center. It should be possible to tell it how fast to flow, whether to flow up/down/left/right, the size of the images, and whether or not it uses album art images from the entire library, or the current Genre/Artist/Year/Playlist/etc. ReplayGain Support Support for ReplayGain tags definitely needs to be included for both track and album gain. Using track gain values over album gain values can result in more consistent volume levels when playing random tracks from different albums. On the other hand album gain values are more recommended for listening to whole albums straight through. An option to use either track or album gain for different playback modes would be great.

Hi All General question with the excellent Android App... How are you guys handling individual tracks, favourite tracks, playlists etc cheers Doddsie

New Release (1.0.2.1) In the latest release of the TV and Movie Theme Video/Song Plugins, a new filter has been added to prevent the download of a theme if its not wanted it in your collection. When the plugin downloads a theme in the future, a new filter item will automatically be added to the plugins configuration page. If that theme is then deleted from your collection, the theme will never be downloaded again. If you change your mind, simply enter the plugins configuration page and delete the filter from the list, and run the scheduled task again. You can also add filters manually by clicking the + icon and entering the Movie/TV Show name in the box (this must be written exactly the same was as displayed in the items details screen)

I have an xbox music pass for my music needs at the moment. Their app is sorely lacking in functionality and I would rather use MB. Can MB retrieve the drm usage rights to allow playback of tracks downloaded using xbox music pass? - This may apply to spotify users etc... Would also like this to work using remote play options. So browse music collection using tablet and then play drm music on htpc (hooked up to proper stereo).

From where collects mbs metadata for music albums? The reason I ask is that the release date and year is wrong ... but on the http://musicbrainz.org/release/51ee119d-40b3-3b5e-b0a5-1a33ab051ef3, Release date and year the correct.

Server Version 3.0.5061.25570 Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit Following the recommended folder structure for music is Artist\Album\Song \Music \Artist Name \Album Name 1- Song.mp3 2- Song.mp3 Summary I have decided to rerip my music collection in FLAC format while keeping the previous lossless WMA folders to compare quality for a while. I have noticed a difference in the meta data display of artist/album in the web client over the last few beta server releases and wonder if it is me or a change in XML direction for display purposes. Setup I have a single Music entry in the Media Library with both the old WMA folders and the new FLAC folders so there will be a duplication of artists and albums for the time being. I have noticed when I select a particular artist that the old folder meta data displays both the artist and album while the new folder meta data displays only the album (see image). Question Is this displaying correctly when only displaying the album title after selecting a particular artist/band? I have deleted the *.xml and *.jpg & *.png files from the new FLAC structure and re-fetched the meta data after the Server Version 3.0.5061.25570 release but notice that it is only displaying the album. Thanks in advance, Advance

Does anyone have a good source of Movie Theme Songs? Johnny M

Would it be possible to have some sort of advanced option where one could specify their own musicbrainz mirror & apikey?

Regarding MBT and music. I'm only able to play single tracks. Or have I missed something? I would like to be able: Play a full album Play a playlist Play now que Is this on to do list?

Hi, I've just rebuilt both my media systems using MB3. Both are functionally stand-alone systems as the media library is on a Linux server via smb, configured using UNC paths in MB. Both are WIn 7 ultimate, one 32 bit & one 64 bit. LAV codecs on both. Both use the basic theme, no plugins & everything set to Coverflow display format. The video side (TV & Movies etc) seems to work pretty well. The only oddities are: Scrolling through collections is a bit 'jumpy' - the side to side scroll is nowhere near as smooth as the older version & does not seem to be dependant on CPU / Graphics capability. After a video finishing or being stopped, it seems to take a few seconds after the collection has appeared before it can be scrolled again. Going to the 'actor' tab within movie info screen seems to cause a temporary lockup, there is a long delay. It was near enough instant in MB2 with the same imagesbyname folder. The music side - which is more important to me - is virtually unusable. [You typically select TV/Movies every hour or two; you need to locate dozens of music tracks to fill an evening]. I have two collections set up, Albums & Years. All files are properly tagged 320K MP3s. The basic display of Albums sorts by album title and does not show the artist name. I can understand metadata being used while displaying tracks, but it appears to be using metadata from a random(?) track with a folder to attempt to display a name rather than use the folder name, which I always have in artist-title format for albums. This is not that good for single artists albums, but considering roughly half my album collection is 'various artists' compilations it effectively makes the whole thing pretty much unusable. When viewing the tracks within an album folder, the Artist name is not shown for the track, just the track title. Again, bad enough when the albums don't have artist shown & complete nonsense in Various Artist albums. The other half of my audio collection is singles arranged in decade/year folders, many thousands of tracks from the UK Top Twenty. (CD singles are a penny each on Amazon UK..) Effectively, each year is a giant 'various artists' album. Again the folder names are not used for sorting, it picks out random info from files within and the resulting 'sort' is completely nonsensical - the years within a decade can appear in any order & the tracks within a year (which can have 200 - 300+ singles) are approximately by track title. I have all extra sort / grouping options turned off, I just want folder names unless I'm looking at tracks. The original music plugin on MB2 worked perfectly & the displayed info was fully configurable by metadata field names. I've been using this as my main system until a recent hard drive failure forced a rebuild. The second version of the plugin did not do this, but apparently due to limitations in available metadata. Looking through the developer wiki, MB3 definitely has all required data & metadata available - please make the displayed info fully configurable at both folder and file level, it's pretty much useless to any serious music collector as it stands. [i have often several and occasionally thirty or more versions of some tracks - all different from different studio/live/album/single releases; I don't want any form of automated grouping, I want to be able to select which album or year/single I'm playing. I would consider a moderate bounty on the properly configurable setup]. There is one oddity in the music playing side; when a track finishes or is stopped, the album or folder content re-appear - but the scrolling does not work for a few seconds then jumps erratically with long delays. Exiting the folder & re-selecting it cures this. After trying it while checking log files this morning, I discovered that this only happens if the WMC window is above a certain size... Running in a small window it's perfect, but when the window is stretched beyond a certain point (or maximised) it goes jerky-mode again after stopping a file. Possibly a memory buffer too small somewhere? Software versions: Server 3.0.5031.21343 Client 3.0.78.0 B10-17.2 Both machines are uses as dedicated HTPCs, the 32 bit one has 4GB RAM & the 64 bit 8 GB RAM. Both have HDMI connections to 1080p TVs, via 7.1 amps. All metadata fetching is turned off in MB3, media management is done from another machine & using Media Centre Master for movie & TV metadata. Re. the Linux server being developed - I'm a long time Linux user & my main media collection is accessed via a Linux machine (it's on iSCSI arrays behind a Centos system). If I can be of help testing, or programming when time permits, please let me know.

Now that I'm using MBC for playing my music I've noticed a few things, I'm only able to play single tracks. I would like to be able: The ability to play a full album The ability to add to play now que The ability to play a playlist cheers Jason

Perhaps I'm really picky about the way that I organize my media, and if that's the case, then feel free to call me out on it. I like to keep multi-disc albums organized into their own sub-folders though: ArtistAlbumDisc 1 Disc 2 It would seem as though MediaBrowser doesn't support this type of organization. Would love to see this kind of support added.

The Details section for an individual song has an Embedded Image section that contains specs on the embedded image file. However, it also has a duplicate entry for the song's bitrate which already appears in the Audio section. In addition, can you explain the last entry in the Embedded Image section which contains the value "90000" in every song? Thanks! Screenshot: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45569607/Embedded%20Image%20Details.jpg MB Server Version: 3.0.5301.21343

Just as the title says I would like music sorting by album name in Media Browser Classic and I will pay $50 to the first developer to make it happen. I'm so sick of using Windows Media Player/MCE for music play back and really want to be able to use Media Browser Classic As seen in the picture below. In Media Browser Server you can sort by albums when in the web view, but there is no way to sort by albums in Media Browers Classic. Cheers Jason