Enriching metadata and getting it out with nStream

Posted by: Iver van de Zand on 29 October 2013

Hello Forum members,

 

I am looking for some help and advise here lifting my nStream experience to a next level.

 

The last few years I have extensively built up my album collection. Music is my number 1 hobby and apart from listening I read a lot about it always searching for those ultimate albums that bring so much pleasure. A typical listening evening is myself on the couch with an iPad and nStream enjoying the beautiful sound of my gear, exploring the Rovi db and making notes J Anything I hear, read or experience, I try to reflect that in the metadata of my albums. My MediaMonkey library-management tool allows me to tag almost anything from genre, to sound quality, to groupings, to record labels … you name it. For the moment I thus enriched my database enormously and like to continue on it. It is very time consuming, but I like to do it in this way.

 

However it is now time to not only “getting the metadata In”, but also to “get it out”. Here is where the issues start. I use Assett as UpnP. I already created some alternative drill-paths for nStream, but want to do more with some custom fields I use within MediaMonkey. The question is what “tag-field (don’t know how to call it) to select. What I concretely like to know is how the different tag-fields in a WAV or FLAC or organized and named so I can understand which ones to select to getting the data out.

 

To give an example: in MediaMonkey I use the rating-bullets to indicate how well I like an album. Now I want to create a browsing structure in nStream based on these ratings, but do not know what fields to select in Assett.

 

Does anybody have more information on the above. Does a kind a conversion table exist mentioning the exact tag-fields in a WAV or FLAC. It would also be helpful if any technical document from nStream would exist to understand what exact data nStream collects from the UpnP Server so that I understand what tag-fields to fill. Does such a document exist and is it available for us ? The file types I use are primarily Wav (65%) or Flac uncompressed (35%)

 

Cheers,

Iver

Posted on: 29 October 2013 by Cbr600

Iver,

 

just read your post and my head has exploded !!

 

far too in depth for me, but all credit to you for such devotion to your hoppy

 

paul

Posted on: 29 October 2013 by mutterback

Ask Dan who makes Bliss.  If anyone knows, he will. 

 

I aspire to what you're doing, but seem to spend more time philosophizing about it here than doing it ;-)

 

One suggestion is to create playlists based on your metadata - I actually think MediaMonkey can do this.  Then, NStream should be able to pick up these playlists.

 

iTunes is not what you want, obviously, but its very good at this sort of thing with smart playlists. But, I think you could replicate that with a script/application to generate playlists from your metadata.  You could make them "smart" simply by running the script/app every so often to update your play lists.

Posted on: 29 October 2013 by Iver van de Zand

Hey guys,

 

.... "One suggestion is to create playlists based on your metadata - I actually think MediaMonkey can do this" ...... agree, I use "intelligent playlists" that already cover a big part of things, but not all

 

The issue I raise above is just a "nice to have" .... maintaining my library is a hobby itself, so that's why I am so interested getting a bit more out of it

Posted on: 29 October 2013 by likesmusic

Iver - I'd suggest you have a look at J River Mediacenter. It has an absolutely superb database query facility which works on your existing tags; you can also add tags of your own, and derive them programmatically. You can also use it as a UPnP server, with whatever tree structure or drill paths you like. And it's a very good tool for updating tags too. It's been awhile since I used mediamonkey -  I thought JRiver easily outperformed it at the time I switched. It's free for a month.

Posted on: 01 November 2013 by Jack

Hi Iver,

 

Definitely with you and agree about J River, very good …..what we also need (IMO) though is a mechanism to select which metadata tags are displayed along with the 'Track Name' summary page you get when you click the 'info' icon when playing a track. The information displayed there comes from your metadata not Rovi, so if we could select what we wanted displayed that would be great - that way you could get your comments and other info displayed. I asked Naim a while back but it didn't look as though they were giving it any thought.

 

Be interested to know how you get on, I suspect a lot of trial and error?

Posted on: 01 November 2013 by Dungassin

As I've said before, Rovi is a waste of space.  Before it was added, nStream used to show me year of issue and composer.   This was true whether using Twonky or Asset.

Posted on: 02 November 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi, iver, you raise a good question, and it is linked to an Nstream enhancement I have previously requested on this forum, and that is configurable Nstream metadata display.

I use extended meta data on my id3 tags within my wav files, and my FLACs, but I can only use with my upnp server for navigation. Once navigated, Nstream does not show this info. Such tags I typically use are record label, style, notes, track artist on compilations, mood, instrument.

Simon

 

Posted on: 02 November 2013 by Iver van de Zand

Hey Guys,

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

First of all, let me state that all I'm looking for is really "nice to have" and not a necessity. Personally I believe nStream is working very well as long as one ensure the providing UpnP server is working well. I am using Assett and for me that is a stable and reliable piece of kit.

 

My first step now is to sort out what data that is stored in the actual FLAC or WAV itself and which data is not. I recently found out that some tagging data is stored in my MediaMonkey database and not in the music file !! In that case it doesn't make sense getting data out with nStream. Unfortunately products like MediaMonkey are not very "open" and "documented" in sorting the exact process. So @Jack, it will be indeed a lot of trila and error :-)

 

@Wat: referring to above: what you suggest is that nStream should not only collect data from the WAV/FLAC, but also from a separate database, correct ? Wouldn't that be even more complex ? My first aim would be to be able to collect all (!) data that is in the WAV/FLAC and use it with nStream the way I like.

 

Currently - as a workaround - I work extensively with "intelligent" playlist: if a record confirms to certain criteria I request, it ends up in the playlist. However it is not very flexible

 

To really proceed I would require much more documentation that I cannot find on the web. WHat exact (!) fields can be tagged in a FLAC or WAV, what are the names, which exact fields does nStream collect and which not etc ....

 

Let me "peddle" (don't knwo the exact English word,  in Dutch it is called PRUTSEN, Bert Schurin knows what I am trying to say :-)) a bit, and keep you informed

 

Cheers,

Iver