Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: CUI: How do I group compilations together, not by each track’s artist? (Read 2304 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

CUI: How do I group compilations together, not by each track’s artist?

I've read countless threads where users had the same problem as me.
Split albums and compilations are getting grouped by artist (it seems).


Compilations and splits are tagged like this...

Album artist = V.A.
Artist = the actual band that played it

This is the grouping script I have in ColumnsUI
Code: [Select]
$if2(%album artist%,%artist%)[ / %album%]


And the splits and compilations are still not getting grouped.
Help please.
Thank you.

CUI: How do I group compilations together, not by each track’s artist?

Reply #1 –
If you open "Help > Title formatting help" you will notice that %album artist% also covers the artist tag AND the composer tag AND the performer tag.

Therefore your current grouping pattern is actually saying this:
$if2(album artist OR artist OR composer OR performer, ELSE TRY artist OR album artist OR composer OR performer)[ / %album%]
As you can see, it is redundant nonsense.

If you want to single out only one tag, then use $meta(tag_name).
Therefore to eliminate the redundancy of your grouping script, you could use:
$if2($meta(album artist),$meta(artist))[ / %album%]

Me personally, I don't bother using %artist% in my playlist viewer grouping script, since %album artist% already covers it; it is really a choice between two priorities;
do you prefer the artist or album artist tag to take precedence? . . . choose one . . . I prefer album artist .

This is the grouping synatx for displaying album artist in my foobar2000:
$ifequal($len(%album artist%),0,'%album artist%',$if2($trim(%album artist%),'%album artist%'))

If I was to imitate your grouping display preference using my grouping syntax preference, then we have:
$ifequal($len(%album artist%),0,'%album artist%',$if2($trim(%album artist%),'%album artist%')) / $ifequal($len(%album%),0,'%album%',$if2($trim(%album%),'%album%'))

As you can see, where you and I differ is that I ALWAYS want some text displayed, and I want the 'bad or null' tags to be obvious when I look at the strings in the display.

CUI: How do I group compilations together, not by each track’s artist?

Reply #2 –
The problem probably isn't grouping but sorting. Go to Preferences > Display > Columns UI > Filter tab and enter the sort pattern you want in the Sort incoming files by: box. You might want to also enter that sort pattern in the identically named box under Shell Integration.

A commonly used sort pattern is:
Code: [Select]
%album artist% - %date% - %album% - %discnumber% - %tracknumber% - %title%

CUI: How do I group compilations together, not by each track’s artist?

Reply #3 –
Thank you BenB. It did what I wanted

@derty2:
I was aware of how %album artist% worked in fb2k however albums that were not splits or compilations had an empty Album artist tag I only use it for V.A. albums.
I hope I was clear.