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deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?
jlynessPostDecember 27, 2017, 18:02
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January 22, 2014, 14:39
Hot topicdeleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

Hello,

sorry if I've missed this in prior posts…

All of a sudden I'm seeing a problem where, if I use Yate to delete all text in the Album Artist field for an album, when I subsequently import into JRiver Media Center, JRMC still reads the original (supposedly-deleted) text as the Album Artist. Other apps, such as iTunes and an app called Media Info, do show the Yate-edited file's Album Artist field as blank.

(For those familiar with JRMC, I am NOT talking about the Album Artist [auto] field, which I know is automatically populated by the Artist if the true Album Artist field is left blank. I am describing behavior where the Artist and Album Artist fields are different, and I intentionally delete the info in the Album Artist field, only to have it still show up in JRMC though not in Yate or iTunes.]

I'd never seen this before. I'm wondering if there was some change in a recent Yate update that might be deleting the Album Artist info in a different way. I hadn't thought this could be a Yate issue, but this series of posts at JRiver made me wonder…:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,113447.msg784396.html#msg784396

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer!
2MR2PostDecember 27, 2017, 18:47
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

Nothing has changed as to how how Yate populates the tag information in the files. However, Yate does not write empty tag fields to the files. There are currently over a hundred tag fields supported by Yate and writing empty fields would be somewhat insane. Tagging expresses what you are interested in, not everything that is possible.

If JRMC is hanging on to its library values when fields are empty you could definitely see the behaviour that you're describing. iTunes at some point introduced this "if it's empty they must not know what they want" methodology and people have been complaining about it ever since. In iTunes, Yate can get around the behaviour by setting the values through an API to ensure that the library displays what you have in the files. With every other player, even those that maintain a library, synching is typically synching.... what you see is what you get. Copying what iTunes does is not always the best approach.

I could possibly add options to allow you to write empty fields, maybe by specifying which fields, but that is somewhat distasteful. Even then they could chose to ignore empty fields that are present. iTunes, I remember correctly, will not ignore an empty field that is present unless it's the Title field.
jlynessPostDecember 27, 2017, 19:00
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January 22, 2014, 14:39
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

Thanks. Please let me give an example. A file has Artist set to Charlie Mingus and Album Artist to Charlie Mingus. I use Yate to delete Charlie Mingus from Album Artist, leaving the Album Artist tag empty, and to change the Artist tag to Charles Mingus. I save the file and then import it to JRMC and to iTunes. iTunes correctly displays Charles Mingus as the Artist and displays nothing for Album Artist. But JRMC displays Charles Mingus for Artist (so, correctly), but still shows Charlie Mingus for Album Artist! (as if I'd never deleted that text from that tag.) I'd never seen this behavior in years of tagging and importing to JRMC, but it has popped up now quite problematically.

If I deleted all text from the tag 'Album Artist' in Yate, how is JRMC finding the original (wrong) text?

Btw, I have triple-checked the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist fields and they appear to be fine (that is, to either be blank or to match the Artist tag I have modified).
jlynessPostDecember 27, 2017, 19:06
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January 22, 2014, 14:39
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

One other oddity I have noticed about this. The above only seems to happen with Apple lossless files, not with flac, mp3, or DSF files. But unfortunately for me, most of my library is Apple lossless…
2MR2PostDecember 27, 2017, 19:54
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

If JRMC is keeping previous values you will see this behaviour. When they read a file and one of their supported fields is missing, it retains the old value. When you say 'import' are you adding the track for the first time or synching a track which was previously in the library?

Regardless, the process will always work if the track is linked to iTunes as Yate manually tells iTunes that the field is empty. It does not do so for JRMC, Audirvana, etc.

So, JRMC is either not processing tags not present, or it is not cleaning the metadata in its library.

Yate treats all the file types you mentioned the same. Whatever tag would be written to one file type is written to any other. For any audio file type supported by Yate, an Album Artist field which is empty will not be written out. So... JRMC must be treating M4A (or at least ALAC) differently from the other audio types.

You can do the following: Set the Album Artist field in an M4A and MP3 file to empty. Save the files. After the Save you can do a File>Log>Raw Data. In the M4A file search for aART....it will not be there. In the MP3 file search for TPE2...it will not be there. These are the low level constructs containing the Album Artist field.

We can attempt to see how deep they go. Set the Album Artist field to a single space and save the file. In M4A files this will be written. If JRMC still does not take the 'empty' Album Artist field then there is nothing that can be done 🙁 If however, this works, I can put something together to see if they will also take an empty Album Artist field (ie. not missing). If that works, I can always add something to selectively allow you to write empty fields (arrgh!!).

Unfortunately, I cannot control what they do when they read the files.
2MR2PostDecember 27, 2017, 20:52
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

I've looked at JRMC and did a few quick tests. First off I am seeing consistent behaviour with M4A and MP3 files. In my tests setting an Album Artist field to empty and then doing an Update Library from Tags in JRMC does not erase the old Album Artist value.

Unfortunately setting Album Artist to a single space does not work either. They are trimming the field and treating it as empty.... so writing empty tags will not solve the issue. 🙁

However, I did find that while they accept Unicode characters, they do not recognize a non breaking space as a space character. They following single line action will set the Album Artist field to a non breaking space character which will cause the Album Artist field in JRMC to be visually empty (although it does contain a single character).

Set the Album Artist field to "\&00A0"

There is a backslash before the & character. The mailer strips out backslash characters.

This is hardly a perfect solution. I cannot think of anything else that would force them to accept empty values.

From the link you included above:

Way back, the common consensus was that MC should not remove data from the library when updating for external changes, so it won't delete existing data and replace it with nothing.

Of course they also say that you should only use JRMC to tag your files.

I wish I could help more.
2MR2PostDecember 27, 2017, 21:10
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Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

A zero width space 200B may be better to use than 00A0. While still a distasteful solution, 200B is intended to be displayed as 'not there'. It is treated as such by Yate but again not by JRMC when editing. 🙁
jlynessPostDecember 27, 2017, 21:47
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January 22, 2014, 14:39
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

As ever, I truly appreciate the dedication you offer your users.

To answer your initial question, I am newly importing these tracks to the JRMC library, so there should be no previous data for the library to retain. Just for the sake of it, I did try JRMC's "update library from tags" tool, without help.

Also, I don't link Yate to iTunes. I edit file tags in Yate, save them, then separately import them to iTunes. iTunes still had no problem listing the Album Artist field as blank.

When I tried pasting in the characters you provided using JRMC's tag editor -- I tried both without and with the quotation marks -- JRMC dutifully changed the Album Artist to \&00A0! When I tried pasting that into the file tags using Yate, JRMC stubbornly held on to the original, wrong Album Artist name. I looked in the log file and you are correct, there is no aART, so I don't know what JRMC is doing but it appears to not be getting it from the file or anything Yate is doing.

I should mention that it is only some albums that have this problem. Most of my albums, edited in Yate and imported in the same way, have no issues with the Album Artist field appearing blank as I'd intended. But it used to be that they all behaved well that way.
jlynessPostDecember 27, 2017, 22:01
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January 22, 2014, 14:39
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

I missed your last note while testing things and writing back -- so you're suggesting type 200B into the Album Artist field and it should display as blank? But then these albums would sort under a white space rather than under the Artist, I think, because sorting is done by Album Artist [auto] (which automatically draws from Album Artist if not blank, otherwise from Artist).

I will say I've found another workaround. If I take the problematic files, convert them to FLAC, confirm that the tags are correct in Yate, then convert back to ALAC, JRMC seems to read them properly. Distasteful, as you say, and just plain weird, but seems to work.
2MR2PostDecember 27, 2017, 22:17
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Hot topicRe: deleting Album Artist not actually blanking the field?

I meant \&200B....but I can see how that might create sorting issues.

Actually, I think they have update bugs. If I delete a track from their library and add it back I always seem to get the old Album Artist. It seems as if library associations are kept.

I wish I had a more aesthetic solution for you.

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