Foobar2000 - User Interface Gallery

No probs, If you follow general recommended Foobar tagging conventions , you only use the tag %album artist% for multiple artist albums e.g. Various,  and you use %Artist name% for the group name  for all your  albums.

This allows you to sort  by artist  or Album  e.g. %album artist% - %album%  would give you Various - then track artist. reverse if you want to search by group.

Check your in Foobar tags for a complete album by right clicking on the album then selecting  preferences.  Expand album to show a track view to see/alter  an  individual tracks tag.  

example

And my artist/album sort string..(swapprefix just puts the at the end)  , square brackets mean don't display if not exist.

$swapprefix(%album artist%) - ['['%date%']' ]%album%|[[%discnumber%.]%tracknumber%. ][%track artist% - ]%title%
 

 

Hope this helps..

Checked console log - Hadn't noticed before I get that as well   you can exclude by adding *.JPG  to exclusions in Media Library settings or any other ext you don't want scanned eg.  *.txt;*.lrc ( If using lyric plugin),

I get the general idea of what you are saying but I think I need to read the scripting document I downloaded a while ago. All a bit beyond me for the moment! Thanks very much for the help.

The sort string goes in Album List/Album List Panel in general settings under media library. Lots of tips etc. on site that hosts Foobar tho some of the guides a bit out of date.  Are you using version 1,  If not  you might as  well upgrade to it now before you start tinkering probably make things easier. Well certainly if you post a query here  for Foobar users.

 Good luck

To sort out Chronoflow, do the following

1) File | Preferences
2) Expand the node Display and click the Chronoflow node
3) Click the Album Source tab
4) Change the string in the Group By text box from to %artist%|%date%|%album%
5) Change the string in the Sort By text box to %artist%|%date%|%album%
6) Click the Display tab
7) Change the string in the only text box available to %artist% - %date% - %album%
Click the Apply button.
9) Click the Album Source tab.
10) Click the Reload Sources button.
11) Click OK

Hope this helps.

For smart playlists, take a look at my configuration primer (which is the place for all of your questions above). You can find the primer here. It's about halfway down the page and was included as a reminder to myself!

PJPro:

To sort out Chronoflow, do the following

1) File | Preferences
2) Expand the node Display and click the Chronoflow node
3) Click the Album Source tab
4) Change the string in the Group By text box from to %artist%|%date%|%album%
5) Change the string in the Sort By text box to %artist%|%date%|%album%
6) Click the Display tab
7) Change the string in the only text box available to %artist% - %date% - %album%
Click the Apply button.
9) Click the Album Source tab.
10) Click the Reload Sources button.
11) Click OK

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. I'm afraid that didn't work. I still see all the compilation albums as I move through the album display in Chronoflow. I only want to see those albums once in the display. Is this something to do with the structure of my music in the folder? I had no idea how to rip a compilation album so I just let dBpoweramp rip them by artist/album as it did all the others. Is this my mistake?

Whats your  music folder structure  .. Is it a folder  for artist and folder for album  i.e.  Folder The Beatles  containing  2 folders  Let it Be  & Abbey Road  ??? and  whats the  track file name ... The Beatles - Let it Be.FLAC

kena:

Whats your  music folder structure  .. Is it a folder  for artist and folder for album  i.e.  Folder The Beatles  containing  2 folders  Let it Be  & Abbey Road  ??? and  whats the  track file name ... The Beatles - Let it Be.FLAC

Yes, it's exactly that although I include the track number in the name so that when I look at the directory structure I'm seeing the tracks in the right order.

Could someone please tell me what I need to do to get Foobar2000 and Chronoflow to recognise changes that I make in my music library? I have merged some double albums into a single directory and yet both Foobar2000 and Chronoflow still list them separately. If I tell Chronoflow to reload it still displays a place for the albums even though it no longer can find the album cover. I've tried telling Foobar2000 to remove my library and re-add it, but it still remembers all the information as it was. I can't seem to find where Foobar2000 stores it's library information and although it says it is monitoring the library it appears never to be up to date. I'd rather not uninstall Foobar2000 as I assume this will result in all the customisations being lost, although I've no idea where it stores this information either?

LeoL:

Thanks for the reply. I'm afraid that didn't work. I still see all the compilation albums as I move through the album display in Chronoflow. I only want to see those albums once in the display. Is this something to do with the structure of my music in the folder? I had no idea how to rip a compilation album so I just let dBpoweramp rip them by artist/album as it did all the others. Is this my mistake?

Then, I don't understand what you are after. I thought you had compliation albums with various artists and you wanted to see this subdivided by artist....so all tracks by The Beatles would appear under The Beatles rather than under Various.

I don't think this is an issue of structure as the sort/display routines I defined above are based on the file tags not folders.

LeoL:

Could someone please tell me what I need to do to get Foobar2000 and Chronoflow to recognise changes that I make in my music library? I have merged some double albums into a single directory and yet both Foobar2000 and Chronoflow still list them separately. If I tell Chronoflow to reload it still displays a place for the albums even though it no longer can find the album cover. I've tried telling Foobar2000 to remove my library and re-add it, but it still remembers all the information as it was. I can't seem to find where Foobar2000 stores it's library information and although it says it is monitoring the library it appears never to be up to date. I'd rather not uninstall Foobar2000 as I assume this will result in all the customisations being lost, although I've no idea where it stores this information either?

You shouldn't need to do anything. FB2K monitors the library file structure for change events and reloads the files as changes are made.

I suspect the issue lies with the tags within the files themselves. Try right clicking one of the tracks in foobar and selecting properties. This will show you the tags and what the data they hold. Remember, the way the files are displayed in the GUI is more to do with the tags than underlying folder structure.

You should not need to uninstall foobar.

The information that foobar holds for a user are things like playlists and GUI configurations. You'll find them (in Vista) at

C:Users\App DataRoamingfoobar2000

You may need to change the folder settings in Explorer to allow you to see system folders and files. My recommendation? Don't mess with these system folders and/or files unless you know what you're doing or a reinstall (or worse) could be the outcome.

File preferences General,  user profile folder or application install folder depending on whether your install was for  default  separate info for each user account or application  config can be transferred between computers.   If using V1 there will be a configuration folder containing a cfg file for setting for each component - if on an earlier ver only a foobar.cfg file.  

Recommend a download of foo_jesus -  creates a backup of config files at defined times useful if you are doing a lot of changes to tweak/tune your config.

Regards your double albums as PJ says and i mentioned earlier right click on the track and ensure that you have set disk number & total disk tags.  If its a various compilation double,  album artist should be VARIOUS with artist name tag being the group/artist performing that track

PJPro:

LeoL:

Thanks for the reply. I'm afraid that didn't work. I still see all the compilation albums as I move through the album display in Chronoflow. I only want to see those albums once in the display. Is this something to do with the structure of my music in the folder? I had no idea how to rip a compilation album so I just let dBpoweramp rip them by artist/album as it did all the others. Is this my mistake?

Then, I don't understand what you are after. I thought you had compliation albums with various artists and you wanted to see this subdivided by artist....so all tracks by The Beatles would appear under The Beatles rather than under Various.

I don't think this is an issue of structure as the sort/display routines I defined above are based on the file tags not folders.

I want all albums by the Beatles to appear together but I want any Beatles tracks that are part of a compilation to appear only when the compilation album appears. As things are, because I have a large number of compilation albums, with a large number of tracks on them, I'm seeing the compilation albums appear so many times that scanning through the albums in Chronflow means going through many more album covers than I actually have albums. So for example, some of my compilation albums are tripple albums with over 50 tracks. So that album is appearing over 50 times but usually with only one track each time.

I'm sure this is because I didn't treat compilation albums differently than normal albums and I now realise this was a mistake. But I'm still not sure what I should have done or how to sort it out. Your last comment about "Various" I assume is the key. Should I set the album artist of compilation albums to various? dBpoweramp identified most of my compilation albums correctly so I just assumed it would deal with them in the way they should be dealt with, but only a small proportion of my compilation albums are filed under the directory "various artists". Most have appeared under the artists name.

I'm also not really sure what information Foobar2000 is picking up from the directory structure and what it is picking up from the Tag information. For example, I thought Chronflow displayed the cover art from the Folder.jpg file in the directory, but when I went through the Tag info for a number of albums it actually showed different cover art for different tracks within the same album. As I used dBpoweramp to do the ripping, and it got the cover art, I don't see how this could be. But I'm also lost as to where the cover art is actually held. Is it just in the directory or is the jpg held in the Tag as well? I'm using MP3TAG to go through the albums and it is the program that is sometimes showing different cover art for different tracks within the same album. Chronflow is also not always displaying the cover art for a particular album even though there is a jpg in the directory.

Sorry if this is all rather basic but I'm new to all this and my only guidance is the various forum postings.

PJPro:

The information that foobar holds for a user are things like playlists and GUI configurations. You'll find them (in Vista) at

C:Users\App DataRoamingfoobar2000

That's the place I was looking but I couldn't find any files that looked like they were database files holding the library information. I assume Foobar has a database of what music it thinks is in the library but I didn't see anything that seemed a likely candidate. I was going to rename the database in the hope that Foobar would recreate it and load my music into it's library again. In the end I removed my music folder from Foobar, restarted, re-entered it, and restarted. That made it reflect the changes I had made in the file structure. Prior to that it was still displaying albums I had deleted.