Bug 6424 - browse genres not working on Various Artists or All Albums under some conditions
: browse genres not working on Various Artists or All Albums under some conditions
Status: NEW
Product: Logitech Media Server
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Database
: 7.4.0
: All Debian Linux
: P5 normal with 1 vote (vote)
: New Schema
Assigned To: Brandon Black
: new_schema
Depends on: 8303
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2007-12-20 06:38 UTC by Ken
Modified: 2011-04-08 00:45 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Category: ---


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Description Ken 2007-12-20 06:38:47 UTC
If the setting for "Filter genres at the album & track level" is set to "Show any tracks and albums for an artist," and you browse by genre (ie, Music Library >> Genres >> [pick a genre]) and *any* Various Artists albums have a track in that genre, the display lists *all* Various Artists albums in the library, regardless of genre. That is, Music Library >> Genres >> [pick a genre] >> Various Artists lists all VA albums, even those with no tracks in the selected genre.

Similarly, if there is more than artist in the genre, doing Music Library >> Genres >> [pick a genre] >> All Albums shows *all* albums in the collection, regardless of genre. 

In other words, in both the Various Artists case and the All Albums case SC forgets that it is supposed to be browsing within a particular genre. For non-VA albums it behaves fine, showing only those artists who have at least one track with the selected genre.

If "Filter genres at the album & track level" is set to "Only show tracks or albums matching the selected genre for an artist" then SC behaves as it should, including for Various Artists and All Albums.

Additional details at http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41143
Comment 1 Blackketter Dean 2007-12-28 05:47:47 UTC
Andy, are you the right person for this?
Comment 2 Andy Grundman 2007-12-28 07:06:46 UTC
Unfortunately yes. :)
Comment 3 Andy Grundman 2008-01-21 07:32:34 UTC
Isn't that the point of this setting?  If you set it to 'Show any tracks' it's going to show you everything.  I think all you need to do is change the setting to get your desired filtering.
Comment 4 Andy Grundman 2008-01-21 21:23:04 UTC
According to http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=261329#post261329 this bug is fixed!
Comment 5 Simon Turner 2008-01-26 15:26:03 UTC
I don't think this is fixed and there is another aspect that has been missed too. Please look at posts 21 and 22 of this thread http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41143 for clarification.

Two main points:

1) The results for A Genre > Various Artists differs depending upon whether you view the web gui or a players display
2) A setting that returns every single album tagged as Various Artists (Compilation=1) held in a collection when A Genre > Various Artists is selected is superfluous and required by no-one sensible (or it doesn't do what it was designed to do.....).

I'm running XP not Debian.

Sorry Andy.
Comment 6 Andy Grundman 2008-01-28 14:59:17 UTC
Yep, it's broken for player UI.  It's unfortunate but the player UI and web UI use completely different database code, leading to bugs like this one.
Comment 7 Andy Grundman 2008-01-29 07:37:17 UTC
I take that back, the player UI actually appears to work fine for me.

With "Filter genres at the album & track level" set to "Only show tracks...", browsing to Genres -> Ambient -> Various Artists in my library only shows the proper albums.  The result is the same as it is on the web UI.

I think the actual issue here is that when you change this setting to "Show any tracks..." the web UI does *not* show all albums while the player UI does.

Does this sound like what you're seeing?
Comment 8 Simon Turner 2008-01-29 08:00:03 UTC
The player ui shows every Various Artist album in my library from whichever Genre the Various Artist sub-mnu item id picked from, yes. Unlike the web ui which shows only the various Artist albums form the genre selected.
I have a horrible feeling you might be saying that player's behaviour is the correct behaviour. If so, how can it be? The artists/albums it returns bear no relationship whatsoever to the genre selected. Surely it should only be returning tracks or albums by (or including) artists that have at least one track tagged as the selected genre? Returning every Various Atrtists album in a collection makes no sense. Why would anyone want that to happen?
Comment 9 Andy Grundman 2008-01-29 08:03:13 UTC
What is your "Filter genres" setting?
Comment 10 Andy Grundman 2008-01-29 09:25:46 UTC
OK, change 16906 makes the display consistent between player and web UIs.  Whether or not this setting has any value is another issue, I assume it was added for a reason.  The good news is the default setting works the way you would expect.  Marking fixed.
Comment 11 Ken 2008-02-04 20:10:50 UTC
Sorry, but I think you "fixed" the wrong thing. The previous web ui behavior made sense with what the setting says, not the player ui. The setting doesn't say "Show any tracks", it says "Show any tracks & albums _for_an_artist_". What's the difference? The difference is that if you are browsing within Genre A, you only get taken out of Genre A (say, to Genre B or C) for tracks by _an_artist_ who has tracks/albums in Genre A and some other genre. If the artist doesn't have any tracks in Genre A, you never see that artist or those tracks because you are still filtering in Genre A.

If you interpret it as simply "Show any tracks", then of course the setting doesn't have any value. It did have value the way the player ui worked previously. 

Could you please fix things the other way, and have the web ui and player ui work the way the web ui used to.

Comment 12 Andy Grundman 2008-02-04 20:30:40 UTC
It works just as you described:

With the filter setting enabled:
Browse Genres -> Ambient -> Various Artists (lists all VA albums with Ambient genre)

With the filter setting disabled:
Browse Genres -> Ambient -> Various Artists (lists all VA albums)

I'd like to hear more about why you think the current behavior is broken before we reopen this bug.
Comment 13 Simon Turner 2008-02-04 22:49:03 UTC
I'm sorry Andy but it doesn't work as either Ken or myself have described. I'll have another go at describing it but I'm going to have a bit of trouble making it any clearer than either of us have already done above.

Filter genres at the album & track level.

1) With "Only show tracks or albums matching the selected genre for an artist" we expect to be returned:
Only those tracks and albums that are tagged with the genre selected

2) With "Show any tracks for Album or Artist" selected we expect to be returned:
All of 1) plus those tracks and albums by any artist returned in 1) that are tagged as a genre other than the one that has been selected.

Currently 1) works perfectly whilst 2) does not... and in addition erroneously returns every single album tagged as Various Artists in a library, irrespective of which genre has been chosen.

I hope Ken, that we are singing from the same hymn book. Could you confirm?
Comment 14 Ken 2008-02-05 06:06:36 UTC
Yes Simon, I can confirm that we are expecting the same behavior. Like you, it's hard to know what else to say to make it clearer to Andy, because it's clear to you and me.

How's this: for non-VA albums, setting "Show any tracks for Album or Artist" doesn't return all albums. It only returns exactly what Simon describes (case 2). But for VA albums, it returns all VA albums. Doesn't that seem inconsistent? It would only make logical sense if "Various Artists" were treated as a single artist (like that band "The Original Artists" that does all those greatest hits covers on the K-Tel label...). I thought that's what we were stuck with, but the previous web ui behavior showed that SC can indeed be more intelligent that treating "Various Artists" as a single artist.

Or to turn the question back to you Andy, what is it about the former web ui behavior that seemed broken? I'm not saying that to be snotty, honest. I just think it might help me understand why you don't think the current behavior is broken, especially when you've don't see any value in having the setting as it is at present. Get VA to work the same as non-VA and I think you'll see the value, even if it is only small.
Comment 15 Andy Grundman 2008-02-05 07:30:36 UTC
Will revisit for 7.0.1.
Comment 16 Stefan 2009-01-21 11:25:01 UTC
we're at 7.3.4:
Artist x has albums in genres A and B
sort by B
both albums listed
press play -> nothing happens if you selected the Album in the A Genre

at least a message why nothing is happening on the display? or play it anyways? or not list the album from the other genre? 

I changed to show [...] only matching selected genre after this experience

-> plays now what it lets me choose from and wont let me stand before a silent box
Comment 18 Mike Walsh 2011-04-08 00:45:30 UTC
Alan, i thought this might be inside the scope of onebrowser