File Tag Best Practice - Questions

Klaus_Kammerer1 · February 7, 2017, 9:52am

Hi,

I have read the KB article, but I still have some questions… Questions are concerning albums that not have been recognised by Roon:

I see not to be able to show the album version via using the VERSION tag, although I have set the library import settings accordingly.
I do not understand how track credits are used/displayed. It seems that the PERSONNEL tag is only displayed if set to the same for the complete album? How can I set work credits individually using the PERSONNEL tag?
I fail to understand the logic how performers are displayed. In the track list of this album I see three entries for “performed by”

In the corresponding composition view, I see

Is Roon reading from the ARTIST tag and applying some additional logic? I have used the following file tags:
SOLOIST --> seems to be ignored. that’s OK
ORCHESTRA --> seems to be ignored. that’s maybe also ok
ENSEMBLE --> seems to fill the performed by in composition view but not in track view
CONDUCTOR --> seems to show in composition view but not in track view
ARTIST --> seems to fill the “featuring” in composition view and parts of it filling the “performed by” in track view

I think I just don’t get the logic if there is any…

Thanks
Klaus

joel · February 8, 2017, 7:21pm

Hi @Klaus_Kammerer1

Tag logic

The logic that Roon uses to turn an album’s metadata into text on the screen is pretty complicated. We are trying to put the important information in the right places, without being repetitive, and without being overly verbose. This logic needs to work across a wide variety of genres, conventions, data sources, data-quality-levels, and release types, so there are a lot of tradeoffs in keeping the balance–not all of which are obvious when looking at a few cases. Also, this display logic is a moving target, as we work on it on an ongoing basis, so we are hesitant to attempt to explain it in too much detail, since that will just confuse things in the future.

Instead of trying to work back from the display by asking how to populate data in a given place, I suggest coming at it from the other direction. Try to tag the files as accurately, specifically, and completely as possible, and work out how far you need to go to get results that communicate the needed information. This may require a different mindset than other software, which treats tags more literally.

If you find a case where you can’t get information that seems really important to show up, show us the tags and the resulting display and we’ll try to help. That might mean improving things on our end, or giving some advice about how the tags can be adjusted. I think only a handful of people have seriously gone down this path with Roon, especially using some of the new stuff we added in 1.3, so it’s likely that your feedback will help us make the process of tagging unidentified content more manageable for everyone.

Your specific points

Apologies: we found a problem our handling of the VERSION tag; it is being imported, but is not being displayed; this has been fixed for the next Roon 1.3.x update.
As you found, ORCHESTRA is not supported. You can add an “Orchestra” credit using the PERSONNEL tag.
We recommend using the ENSEMBLE and SOLOIST, or PERSONNEL, tags instead of the ARTIST tag if at all possible. The reason for this is that ENSEMBLE and SOLOIST map to different under-the-hood performer types, whereas with ARTIST, we have to guess. ARTIST really isn’t suitable for Classical – it’s far too general.
PERSONNEL, SOLOIST, ENSEMBLE, and CONDUCTOR are all working for me on a per-track basis, as well as being rolled-up to album-level credits. What are you referring to when you say “track view”?

FYI, I check that my tags have been read, and the credits applied to tracks, by looking at the track-level credits via the track’s 3-dot menu:

My results for track 1 of my Knowledge Base example are here (with some additional tag credits):

Please let me know if you need any assistance.

evand · February 8, 2017, 7:30pm

One thing that can quickly be remedied on your end is to stop treating albums as unidentified where your track titles match file metadata but Roon has no duration info in its metadata. In these cases, if the number of tracks and track titles match, then use that to identify the album and perhaps send the duration metadata back to Rovi.

John_Hunt · February 8, 2017, 7:55pm

@evand probably a noob question, but how does one send the duration info to Rovi?

evand · February 8, 2017, 8:12pm

We can’t, I believe Roon can.

paulgh · February 9, 2017, 4:48am

Thanks. I had been holding off reporting on this, as I was not sure whether I was doing something wrong, or Roon was. Good to hear that it is a bug that has been squashed. I also notice that, even though I have “prefer file” selected for artwork, Roon still picks what it thinks is “best quality”.

Klaus_Kammerer1 · February 9, 2017, 8:36am

Thanks a lot @Joel for your detailed reply. I’m not yet sure whether I like all the implications, but I’ll give my best

Instead of trying to work back from the display by asking how to populate data in a given place, I suggest coming at it from the other direction. Try to tag the files as accurately, specifically, and completely as possible, and work out how far you need to go to get results that communicate the needed information. This may require a different mindset than other software, which treats tags more literally.

I will certainly try, but I guess I needed some guidance. If I understand you correctly, I should use the following tags for classical:

SOLOIST, ENSEMBLE, CONDUCTOR, COMPOSER, WORK, PART, PERSONNEL

getting rid of ARTIST is ok for me, since I do not use it in my current setup anyway. It’s just not yet emptied.

I will test the credit tagging again. I had tried to set the PERSONNEL tag for a couple of separate tags of an album and they did not show up on the credits. Will try to reproduce and report.

What I’m still confused about is the behaviour on identified albums. Can it be inflluenced by tags, too? I’d like it to be consistent.

Example:

(1) Album not identified - tags maintained as per your recommendation.

Looks good to me - I see the SOLOIST tag, the ENSEMBLE and the CONDUCTOR, together with the WORK and the PART

(2) Album identified - tags maintained as per your recommendation

I have maintained Krystian Zimerman as the SOLOIST but he does not show up as “perfomed by” like in example 1

(3) Album identified - tags maintained as per your recommendation

Now here I am seeing the composer for the first time as “Composed by”. Composer is maintained for all three examples in the composer tag. So my guess would be that the 3rd party metadata only provides the composer tag in a certain way in example 3 and not in example 2. The composer is displayed in the credit section for both examples.

Apologies for being nit-picky, but these kinds of inconsistencies drive me nuts . I do understand your struggle to combine various metadata sources and musical sytles into one consistent model. But I find it frustrating if I maintain a composer but it only shows on the album page if the 3rd party metadata provides it in the proper way.
My feeling is, that I would need to have all of my albums “unidentified” in order ot have consistent behaviour. And this would then rob me of other valuable additional data, like reviews and recording information (which I most often already have in tags, but can’t map to Roon.

Maybe you could consider some of my thoughts when going ahaead with development. But maybe others have a different opionion on this.

Thanks a lot
Klaus

Thierry_M · February 9, 2017, 9:50am

I have the same kind of observations as Klaus, and the same interrogations regarding how some file tags are treated by Roon (e.g., why is the composer displayed for some albums, and it doesn’t for others?).

Thanks,
Thierry

Rainer_Muller · February 9, 2017, 3:55pm

The composer is shown if the Genre is “Classical”. That’s the case with the third album (blue bar), but not with the first and second one.

joel · February 9, 2017, 3:57pm

But you can force composers to be shown for all genres by setting Show composer credits to “Always” in Settings --> General. You need to scroll down to the bottom of the pop-up.

Rainer_Muller · February 9, 2017, 4:03pm

… but I really would like to know how to show the soloist, for example in a piano concerto. Use the SOLOIST tag for that? Or PERSONNEL: Some Guy - Featured Artist?

joel · February 9, 2017, 4:26pm

You could use both:

SOLOIST : Some Guy PERSONNEL : Some Guy - Piano

The Piano credit is specific, but doesn’t indicate the importance of the performer; SOLOIST implies a certain “weight” to the performer.

Rainer_Muller · February 9, 2017, 4:35pm

Thanks. I’ll try both and see what happens.

Klaus_Kammerer1 · February 9, 2017, 5:12pm

@joel

You could use both:

SOLOIST : Some Guy
PERSONNEL : Some Guy - Piano

The Piano credit is specific, but doesn’t indicate the importance of the performer; SOLOIST implies a certain “weight” to the performer.

Look at my example 2 above. I have Krystian Zimerman as SOLOIST, but he doesn’t show.

Regards
Klaus

Rainer_Muller · February 9, 2017, 5:57pm

Could it be that Krystian Zimerman is not shown in the “performed by” section because he is listed as an album artist next to VPO and Bernstein? This could be the logic, and it would make sense.

Klaus_Kammerer1 · February 9, 2017, 6:07pm

@Rainer_Muller

Hi Rainer,

good idea - when deleting Zimerman as Album Artist, then he shows up under “All tracks performed by” together with the Vienna Philharmonic, which btw appears whether or not Vienna Philharmonic is the Album Artist or Primary Artist…

Still a mystery to me.

regards
Klaus

Rainer_Muller · February 9, 2017, 6:46pm

Here is a specific example:

I want to know from the “performed by” section which concerto is played by Osian Ellis and which by Marisa Robles.

Originally, Roon identified the album as “Harp Concertos // Marisa Robles / Osian Ellis” <-- Album Artists
No chance of showing the names in the “performed by” section. I tried everything.

I had to change the Album Artists to “Various Artists”. Then I could add Marisa Robles and Osian Ellis to the “performed by” section via the “Add Credits” feature (with Role:Soloist).

I think this is the way it should look like.

joel · February 9, 2017, 7:46pm

Hey @Rainer_Muller. This is a really good point and we’d like to see if we can improve things here. Please can we get hold of your media for this album (as tagged)? @Eric can assist.

eric · February 9, 2017, 7:50pm

Hi @Rainer_Muller ---- Touching base with you really quick to let you know that I will be contacting you via PM momentarily with instructions on how you can send this content over to us. Many thanks!

-Eric

Klaus_Kammerer1 · February 10, 2017, 7:40am

got another question re the KB article:

@joel

you are saying in the article that the Primary Artist in the Credit section maps to the ALBUMARTIST tag.

How does that relate to what I see when I edit on album level:

Here I see what is set in my ALBUMARTIST tag but there is also a section “Primary Artist Links” which seems to be Roon specific. Does that map somehow to what’s under “credits” or is this just confusing terminology?

Thanks for clarifying.

Klaus