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Topic: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior (Read 1710 times) previous topic - next topic
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1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

If the field ITUNESCOMPILATION is present and has any value the properties dialogue will automatically set an unremovable (but changeable) "Various Artists" value for the ALBUM ARTIST field. This (automatically added) field will also affect file ops etc.

I'm not exactly sure when this was added, I stumbled upon this behavior only today.

Now obviously one can just remove the ITUNESCOMPILATION field and move on (assuming one makes the connection between the two fields).
*edit*
Now this has gotten even more serious, I removed the ITUNESCOMPILATION field alright, but the "Various Artists" value for the ALBUM ARTIST field remained. Again, a field I have never set. Leaving a huge mess behind. The only way to fix this is to run file ops for my automated album sorting and see which albums foobar wants to move around and fix them one by one. I expected this kind of thing from iTunes but not foobar.
*/edit*

Also, the fact that the ALBUM ARTISTS field was literally unremovable is a big no-go for the properties dialogue, which I expect to have full control over. Fields should not be linked like this, plus who knows how many more fields behave like this. I do not want foobar to think for me in any way, if there is no album artist set, then foobar should not mess with that.

Cheers

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #1 –
What are you expecting to do with the itunescompilation tag? It has been supported this way to get album grouping since 1.1.6.

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #2 –
Preferably an option or warning. Something like "Enable iTunes tag compability" in the advanced options maybe. I do not want or need automatic fallback to random iTunes tags. I'm still quite shocked that foobar out of all programs changed my tags without useraction or consent.

I'm sure this behavior is convenient for some people but I don't think it should be implemented in this manner. I've been using foobar for over a decade now and this is the first time I felt like I'm not in control over what it does with my music and tags. Again, I don't even know if there are more tags that behave in this manner (?).

It's one thing to have a fallback from e.g. ALBUM ARTIST to ARTIST for display purposes and such, but actually filling out tags because foobar thinks it knows better is frankly something I never thought I'd see this program do.

cheers

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #3 –
Your outburst is the reason I asked what you expect the compilation tag to do. People had complained that albums flagged with it aren't treated properly and since the change (which happened in 2011) everyone has been happy.

Note that foobar2000 itself never changes tags in your files on its own. One official component has option to do that but enabling it requires going to advanced preferences and there's a mention that it's not recommended.

If you do edit tags in files with the compilation setting enabled, you can clear the album artist field before tag save and it won't get written to the files. Or, if you rather have some other string in place of "Various Artists" you can use that. When proper album artist is present the compilation tag won't use its virtual grouping helping.

I'm still curious what you want to achieve with the compilation setting if you use it with albums that aren't compilations. If you have good suggestions there would still be time to get changes in foobar2000 v1.4.

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #4 –
Quote from: smkk on
If the field ITUNESCOMPILATION is present and has any value the properties dialogue will automatically set an unremovable (but changeable) "Various Artists" value for the ALBUM ARTIST field. This (automatically added) field will also affect file ops etc.

Note: it is not a tag, although it looks like it.
Caveat: at the bottom.

If I use Windows Explorer to tag an mp3, changing "Part of a compilation" to "Yes", foobar2000 will start displaying "Various Artists" in the ALBUM ARTIST field provided the tag does not exist. It will not write to the tag.
(And foobar2000 will also show ITUNESCOMPILATION equal to 1. MP3Tag will show "COMPILATION" equal to 1, I am too lazy to dig up what the ID3 field name is.)

Caveat, then: If you open file properties in fb2k and delete the ITUNESCOMPILATION tag and hit OK, then it will save. And it will save the Various Artists value to the ALBUM ARTIST field, presumably because when you hit OK, then reasonably you think that what is there is supposed to be what you OK'ed. If you do not want that to happen, drag it over to MP3Tag and delete the COMPILATION tag. Or let foobar2000 delete ALBUM ARTIST too.

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Case on
I'm still curious what you want to achieve with the compilation setting if you use it with albums that aren't compilations.

It is not "obvious" (but maybe "true for close enough to everyone who uses it") that a compilation field means it is a "Various artists" compilation and not a "Best of this artist" compilation?

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #6 –
Thanks everyone for the clarifications. I had no idea this was introduced so long ago, I've been using some v0.9x version for way too long it seems. In any case I still believe this is bad implementation.

  • The properties dialogue is displaying a tag value that factually is not present in the file
  • Trying to delete the value of this tag (and then pressing apply) will simply add it back again with no explanation why
  • Since the Various Artists value was caused by the presence of the ITUNESCOMPLIATION field, removing the ITUNESCOMPILATION field should also remove the Various Artists value (If A causes B then getting rid of A should also get rid of B)

I'm assuming the reason behind this feature was to make the transition from iTunes to foobar easier. My issue is that it's not simply a fallback like the ALBUM ARTIST -> ARTIST case, but that two arbitrary fields are forcefully linked in a way that even affects the properties dialogue, which, and maybe I'm alone on this one, should be a reliable display of the present tags of a file.

If people want to group by the ITUNESCOMPILATION field then surely there is a better implementation. First of all there is always a way to manually set it up via titleformatting. If we want to avoid titleformatting and make things work out of the box then it could be handled in the preferences. Since I don't know how many more fields act this way I can't really make a suggestion on how exactly. A simple "Enable iTunes tag compatibility" as previously suggested could work. We already have the "Map TPE2 to Album Artist" option, which iirc arose from a similar iTunes related situation, I don't see why this can't be handled in the same manner.

Two further inconsistencies I found whilst playing around (kind of a bug report, even though I'd much rather see this feature gone entirely  ;) )
  • Adding the ITUNESCOMPILATION field to an FLAC file does absolutely nothing to the album artist field
  • The value of the ITUNESCOMPLIATION field does not matter at all. Presumably it should have either value 1 or 0 but you can put literally anything and foobar will add the Various Artist value to the album artist field

Quote from: Case on
I'm still curious what you want to achieve with the compilation setting if you use it with albums that aren't compilations.
I don't want to achieve anything, the tag is/was simply present in some of my files. So some of my non-compilation albums started displaying as VA. I had no idea why and I was unable to remove the VA via the properties dialogue.

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #7 –
Just a couple of considerations:

Quote from: smkk on
The properties dialogue is displaying a tag value that factually is not present in the file
Well ... there are a lot of tag remappings going on in most players: id3 tags are four-letter codes, right? And Publisher stored as Organization and ...

Quote from: smkk on
Trying to delete the value of this tag (and then pressing apply) will simply add it back again

It isn't a tag. It is displaying it when there is no tag.

Quote from: smkk on
with no explanation why

That is certainly a valid point. Would anyone be harmed if fb2k popped up a brief explanation pointing the user to an advanced setting?


Quote from: smkk on
Since the Various Artists value was caused by the presence of the ITUNESCOMPLIATION field, removing the ITUNESCOMPILATION field should also remove the Various Artists value (If A causes B then getting rid of A should also get rid of B)

Surely a valid point too, but the alternative - not writing what the user hits "OK" to - could very well be worse.

(My solution? No "ITUNESCOMPILATION". Ever.)

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #8 –
This behavior affects only files with "compilation" set but no "album artist" set. If they are not VA, simply set the album artist to the correct value and you will never see the VA again.
This was indeed added to deal with iTunes VA tagging.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.
 

Re: 1.4b17 Field ITUNESCOMPILATION causes unexpected behavior

Reply #9 –
Thanks for the reply. I see the point, but what initially caused my confusion was the opposite case. The album artist was set correctly (empty, since single artist album) but the files mistakenly had the iTunes compilation setting. Thus a bunch of albums wrongly got set to VA. The whole behavior is based on the assumption that (a) the compilation field is correct and (b) that you know about the connection of these two fields.

In any case, it's probably a pretty rare scenario and noone else seems to be bothered by this, plus I know what to look for next time.

Cheers