Bugzilla – Bug 8214
Album appears multiple times if tracks are split within multiple directories
Last modified: 2010-08-03 14:31:04 UTC
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #4459 +++ See the "feature request" cloned here (mentioned above). The repercussions of this change create what any user would perceive as a bug since the functionality was in place in versions of Slim Server prior to 7. I am seeing a few instances of albums duplicated in the web interface because I have their tracks split within multiple folders (under one main album folder for each actual album however). If this change was implemented to fix the problem where multiple albums with the same name by different artists (example: "Greatest Hits") got lumped together, then a more sophisticated approach needs to be implemented so that this functionality is not lost. If sorting and database display are going to be meta-data based, then folder structure should not affect the results.
If you were wondering if we're aware that we don't do everything based on tag data alone, then the answer is 'yes'. :) Andy proposes a preference to select whether the user wants to segregate Greatest Hits albums by folder or by tag data alone. A workaround using tag data can usually be developed, but it doesn't feel very clean. The strangest corner case may be where the same artist has more than one Greatest Hits album.
note the info in this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=50611 the salient point, is that the behavior doesn't appear consistent across file formats. i would also like to add, that i think this shows that SC "AI" as it were, should be optional. greatest hits logic, VA logic, etc... you should be able to opt out. it also highlight another issue beyond the scope of this bug, of making the scanner process itself modular, as a plugin, so users could create a scanner to fit their needs. and that gets to the idea of making a clear distinction between "prescanning" options, and "postscan" options, a situation which is currently hopelessly muddled.
Adding new_schema keyword for future discussion.
There really should be an option to honor all tags and ignore the directory structure. I spent way too much time trying to figure out why my albums weren't in the database correctly. I finally realized that it's matching the directory structure, which I hardly ever look at. For anyone that has a clean tag database, I'd think they'd want the scanner to just look at the tags and not try to make inferences based on some random file system structure.