Qute/Twonky: Why one album under "Various"?

Posted by: M_B on 24 February 2011

Hi - I run a Qute with WD MyBook Live NAS (which includes Twonky). FLACs only.

On the Qute I sort my music by album/artist. All is fine, except one single compilation album is stored under "Various" but I want it to be stored under its artists name. Tags:

Artist: "Rock Sampler"
Album: "Rock Sampler"
Songs: "The Who - Pinball Wizard" (etc for the other songs from other artists on it)

Looking into the tags with MP3tag or dbpoweramp I see there are NO tags for "Compilation", "Band", Album-Artist" or whatsoever. Also "Various" is NOT mentioned anywhere in the tags as far as I can see. And I have never created a "Various" folder manually anywhere. And, I have several other compilation albums which are sorted as desired (ie under artist "Pop Sampler", same for album).

I heard this Various thing can be nasty but I just have no clue where the error is.
Not even sure if Twonky or the original ripping is responsible for this, or the Qute.

Any idea how I can sort this compilation correctly (and no, I don't have the original CD anymore for re-ripping)? Curious on your thoughts.
Posted on: 24 February 2011 by okli
Hi,

I'm struggling with the opposite problem on Twonky on my NAS - I'm trying to bring my Various Artists CDs under VA and after that to use Artist / Album tree to navigate the albums beneath VA artist. No matter what I do, I can only force twonky to show them under VA if I set the ARTIST tag to VA, but this way I'm loosing the real artist information, which I'd like to be shown during the playback. I thought I can accomplish this by setting ALBUMARTIST tag to VA, COMPILATION tag to 1 and then fill in the ARTIST and / or PERFORMER tag with the actual artist name(s). Unfortunately, I couldn't get this to work for me, even if I played with the view configuration file and replaced upnp:artist with upnp:albumartist, which according to the docs should be the value I'm looking for.
If it helps, you can configure the views in twonky - either by using its web interface, if available on your NAS, or more tricky - by editing the xml files in <twonky_install_dir>/resources/view - view-definitions.xml is the view configuration. More useful information can be found on the QNAP forums - I even found sample configuration files there - perhaps this could help you. Following link describes the view configuration in Twonky 5.1:

http://www.twonkyforum.com/med...tom_Navigation_Trees

Not real help - sorry, but perhaps this can get you further.
Posted on: 01 May 2011 by Juanis

Hi Olki... im trying to do the same as you.. I will try configuring the Twonky media as at the moment is not reading the Album Artist when i play on Unity. Its really a pain... otherwise I would have to think on changin the NAS for one with better software  ? Thanks

Posted on: 01 May 2011 by Juanis

Were you able to access the XML files of Twonky Media ? How to access them on Myworldbook ? 

I am not a programmer, but Ill try my best

Thanks, 

Posted on: 01 May 2011 by DQ

Hey,

 

I also have a WD NAS and gave up on the Western Digital Twonky and disabled it. For now I am pointing a PC at it and using Asset UPNP. I have a Asset NAS with Asset UPNP on order.

 

Cheers

Posted on: 23 July 2012 by sjbabbey

Hi, don't know whether this issue is still current but I had the same problem but managed to solve it. I think the problem is caused by using the word "sampler" in the album title/filename. What I did was to copy the offending folder over to my internal HD then delete the folder on the NAS drive checking the NAS drive's mediabrowser to ensure that it had disappeared from there. I then removed all references to the word "sampler" from folder/filenames and the tag/metadata (using mp3tag) before copying the folder back to the NAS drive. The artist info then showed as the correct artist entered on the tag data rather than "various". Hope this helps. 

Posted on: 23 July 2012 by Iver van de Zand

Dear M_B,

 

What works for me is the following: I tag my music initiatlly with dBPoweramp. When I rip a compilation CD, I leave the artists as suggested, and replace AlbumArtist with "Various Artist". I do NOT set the compilation tag. When ripped, I copy the folder with the CD tracks, as a sub-folder under Various Artists on my Nas.

 

What I also use is Media Monkey. If I afterwards want to tag a CD as compilation, I select all songs, leave the artists as is and replace AlbumArtist with "Various Artists". Again, I do not set any compilation-flag.

 

Using nStream, all my compilation albums pop-up under the AlbumArtist "Various Artists" just like I want. The individual artists can be found when I search through the Artist section of nStream. It just refers to the compilation album than.

 

Twonky does the same thing as above. However, please be aware to do a re-start-Twonky-services from time to time ensuring Twonky re-indexes everything again.

 

Hope this helps

Iver