Multivalue tag support

[cloudyweather]

I'm running TwonkyMedia Server 4.4.17 (latest version available for QNAP).
I have over 9,000 flac tracks all tagged accurately using dbPoweramp.
Classical music almost always has multiple Artists for which the Artist tag looks something like this 'Nigel Kennedy; English Chamber Orchestra'. Note the semicolon delimiter.

Problem: 'Nigel Kennedy' doesn't exist as an Artist in Twonky, only 'English Chamber Orchestra'.

I've also seen some great uses of multiple Genre values. E.g. 'Classical; Sonata' or 'Classical; Concerto'. I'd love to tag this way but will Twonky support it?

Can anybody shedd some light on this? As things stand at the moment, I can't use a product that fails to offer up multiple artists. I'm using Linn's Kinsky Desktop to browse Twonky (I doubt the problem is there but you never know).

Thanks in advance,
Sean

[lex]

I forget where but I think somebody found that multi genre support is available when you seperate the genres by a "," (komma) instead of the ";" (semicolon)

Might be worth a try, havenn't tried myself.

Oops just found it a couple posts below topic "Multi Value Tag", credit goes to poster there

[cloudyweather]

Thanks for the information about the Genre tag. Does anybody know about the Artist tag? and why Twonky doesn't recognise "Artist A; Artist B"? It only finds "Artist B".

Many thanks,
Sean

[Groovy]

I forget where but I think somebody found that multi genre support is available when you seperate the genres by a "," (komma) instead of the ";" (semicolon)

I tried it with "," and ";" with the twonky version 4.4.17 (NAS) and 5.0.64 and it didn't worked!
Do I have to enable the multivalue tag support? Any Ideas?

Erich

[Briain]

FLAC tags (Vorbis comments)

I haven't tried using commas etc, but I have tried the below. Also below, is some info on tagging in general:

From memory, using MP3TAG with back slashes between the entries creates multiple Vorbis comments. For example, if you enter Crosby\\Stills into MP3TAG, it will actually create two Vorbis comments as below:

Artist=Crosby
Artist=Stills

The issue is that Twonky will only pick up the first of these tags so you will only get an entry under Crosby and not a second one under Stills.

Incidentally, Twonky 4 does not pick up any composer information from the Vorbis comments (it's a bug that's never been fixed) but this has been fixed in Twonky 5. I can't remember if I tried the multiple entries in Twonky 5; I think I did (a while back) and it didn't pick them up.

FYI I've tagged a track as Crosby\\Stills (and added albumartist and composer entries) just to let you see what it does (note the two artist entries); below is the screen dump showing the Vorbis comments:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\testalbum>tag 02.flac
Tag - Automatic Tag from filename
Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Case. Minor additions by Neil Popham, 2004-2007
Version 2.0.52, Compiled 2007-05-04

C:\testalbum\02.flac
Format: FLAC
Details: 44100 Hz Stereo, 647 kbps, playtime 02:51
Tag: FLAC
Title: Cool tune
Artist: Crosby
Album: Hippy Stuff
Year: 2006
Track: 02
Genre: Whatever you want
Comment: Test track for tagging demo purposes only
REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS=89.0 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN=-1.74 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK=0.51443481
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN=-1.74 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK=0.51443481
Artist=Stills
ALBUMARTIST=CSNY
DISCNUMBER=1
TOTALDISCS=1
COMPOSER=Neil Young

Note that Twonky (4 and 5) do correctly pick up the albumartist tags but that you have to manually add these fields to MP3TAG (use %albumartist% for the new fields and columns). dBpoweramp does bring the albumartist field up on the interface so as long as you check there's something in that field (it's not always populated; it depends on the meta it gets from the internet) then it will add the albumartist tag as shown above.

I don't use Relpaygain; it was added by dBpoweramp (but it can be turned off in dBpoweramp). It makes no difference to me as it would be the media rendered that acted on this information; my one doesn't have that facility but things like Sonos can be made to adjust the volume based on these tags.

Note that the other tags were populated using MP3TAG; nothing was added to the text above; that's exactly what you see by writing the above entries into MP3TAG. By that, what I mean is that in MP3TAG's genre field, I typed 'Whatever you want' and this created the above comment under Genre. When you look at your control point, there will be a new genre called 'Whatever you want'. It follows that you can create anything you like for these tags; for example, you could use something like the below:

Classical - Piano
Classical - Opera
Classical - Chamber Music
Rock - Very Loud Stuff
Rock - Really Very Loud Stuff
Rock - ASBO Material



Bri