How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Support questions for Neutron Player only.
blaubär
Posts: 3312
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by blaubär » Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:51 pm

The smallest unit of music that Neutron knows is the track/song. Which tracks constitute an album isn't always obvious. A common problem are "Greatest Hits" albums by multiple artists.

You can influence the criteria which Neutron uses to define the albums in your collection of tracks. This is done in Settings > Media Library.

album-1.jpg
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As you see the criteria that are used to decide this are the location in the file system ("Path") and certain metadata fields ( "Album Artist", "Artist", "Album", "Disc", etc ), the so-called "tags". You can switch on the things that you think should be relevant for your library.

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It may become necessary to maintain the tags or reorder the directories and files. Generally it is a good idea to keep things properly maintained both on the file system ( e.g. by a directory structure like artist / album / tracks ) and in the tags ( with a properly maintained album artist tag ).

The album art can be included in the tags, and/or there may be image files in the directory where the album tracks are located. The switch "Prefer Metadata Album Art" tells Neutron what to use if both are present.

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Changes in the directory or the tags may be detected automatically, or they may need a manual refresh of the source, or sometimes the source has to be completely rescanned.

If no album art is found some default image is shown. If more than one is present you can switch between the images with the small and sometimes barely visible arrows on the right side of the playing now screen.

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album-6.jpg
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There's another (kind of) button in the lower left corner (also often barely visible) which switches the display from album art, to an RMS and waveform widget, to a blank screen, to album art and so forth.

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album-9.jpg
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album-10.jpg
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111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Fri Aug 19, 2022 7:35 am

Hi blaubär, thanks for providing this Neutron Manual, which is as good as it gets now.

I have a Digital Audio Player with Android 9 as OS, latest Neutron version 2.21.0.
I have a 1 TB SD card in the player, and I have a 4 TB network drive on a PC (Linux, but irrelevant) in my home network. Both are defined as Media Library Sources.

My point of concern:
Many albums are duplicated on the network drive and on the SD card. In fact, everything on the SD card is also present on the network drive.
Positively, the directory structure on both locations is defined meticulously, in my case like
"Album Artist" / ["Some general information like e.g. tour information in case of live recordings"] / "Album Title" / ["Some more general information like resolution"] / ["Disc #"] or ["Set #" in case of live recordings] / "Tracks".
Unfortunately, the task of editing all metadata on all albums and tracks in a consistent manner is tedious and almost undoable.

My questions are:
In order to see the Media Library in a proper way, I should select the "Split album by path" - correct?
Maybe add some of the "Group by ..." and "Split by ..." settings as deemed appropriate?
The essential question: With the "Split album by path" setting selected, does "path" contain the SD card and network location up front? Would identical albums on the SD card and on the network drive show up as two albums then, even if the directory structure underneath the drive info is identical?

I am still experimenting with the Neutron settings, so please bear with me asking beforehand. Thanks a lot!

blaubär
Posts: 3312
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by blaubär » Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:35 am

111MilesToGo wrote:
Fri Aug 19, 2022 7:35 am
My questions are:
In order to see the Media Library in a proper way, I should select the "Split album by path" - correct?
Maybe add some of the "Group by ..." and "Split by ..." settings as deemed appropriate?
The essential question: With the "Split album by path" setting selected, does "path" contain the SD card and network location up front? Would identical albums on the SD card and on the network drive show up as two albums then, even if the directory structure underneath the drive info is identical?
You're welcome ! I would expect "path" to mean the complete path including its root, so I would expect Neutron to split albums which are duplicated across cards / disks / networks etc. But I never tried this out.

111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Mon Aug 22, 2022 4:20 pm

I would like to share my findings on cover art handling in Neutron Player. I like my album art to be multiple images per album, and I like them to be stored in the metadata of e.g. the flac files. So our software involved for most of us is MP3tag to set metadata including the images, foobar2000 as player on Windows, Neutron MP as player on Android; at least that's the state of the art for me.

My findings are:
  • MP3tag can insert multiple images into the metadata. The are sequenced in the order of insertion, and each image can be given a "cover type". There are many cover types, e.g. Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Media, Leaflet, and quite a bunch more. There is also a cover type called Icon, which however seems to be special as inferred from comparing MP3tag, foobar2000, and Neutron.
  • foobar2000 understands four cover types only, Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Disc. Discis identical to what MP3tag calls Meddia. There is also the Icon, which is the same as MP3tag's Icon, but it's a special type of cover.
  • Neutron is very nicely designed in that it can handle multiple cover art. It displays the images in the sequence built by MP3tag (use the shaded grey down and up arrows overlayed at the right edge of the cover display on the Now Playing screen). It understands many cover types; I checked that for about a dozen of the MP3tag cover types. However, it does NOT understand an image of cover type Icon; it simply doesn't show it. That's why I called Icon a special type of image.
So, these are my two ways of handling multiple cover art:
  • For maximum compatability between all three apps MP3tag, foobar2000, Neutron, I use cover types Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Media = Disc only.
  • For the beauty of more images in Neutron, I use whatever MP3tag has on offer, but I NEVER use Icon. foobar2000 will not show the additional images beyond those four mentioned above.

111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:56 am

111MilesToGo wrote:
Mon Aug 22, 2022 4:20 pm
I would like to share my findings on cover art handling in Neutron Player. I like my album art to be multiple images per album, and I like them to be stored in the metadata of e.g. the flac files. So our software involved for most of us is MP3tag to set metadata including the images, foobar2000 as player on Windows, Neutron MP as player on Android; at least that's the state of the art for me.

My findings are:
  • MP3tag can insert multiple images into the metadata. The are sequenced in the order of insertion, and each image can be given a "cover type". There are many cover types, e.g. Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Media, Leaflet, and quite a bunch more. There is also a cover type called Icon, which however seems to be special as inferred from comparing MP3tag, foobar2000, and Neutron.
  • foobar2000 understands four cover types only, Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Disc. Discis identical to what MP3tag calls Meddia. There is also the Icon, which is the same as MP3tag's Icon, but it's a special type of cover.
  • Neutron is very nicely designed in that it can handle multiple cover art. It displays the images in the sequence built by MP3tag (use the shaded grey down and up arrows overlayed at the right edge of the cover display on the Now Playing screen). It understands many cover types; I checked that for about a dozen of the MP3tag cover types. However, it does NOT understand an image of cover type Icon; it simply doesn't show it. That's why I called Icon a special type of image.
So, these are my two ways of handling multiple cover art:
  • For maximum compatability between all three apps MP3tag, foobar2000, Neutron, I use cover types Front Cover, Back Cover, Artist, Media = Disc only.
  • For the beauty of more images in Neutron, I use whatever MP3tag has on offer, but I NEVER use Icon. foobar2000 will not show the additional images beyond those four mentioned above.
Sorry, I was a little bit mistaken about the way Neutron (on Android) orders the multiple cover images when showing them with the shaded grey down and up arrows at the left edge of the image on the Now Playing Screen. When there are images with cover type Front Cover, Neutron shows them first, independent of how they were sequenced in MP3tag. All other cover types are shown thereafter, ordered according to the sequencing of insertion in MP3tag. Quite a well designed way of doing it, isn't it.

blaubär
Posts: 3312
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by blaubär » Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:08 pm

Yes, indeed. Have you tried out what happens if different tracks of an album contain different images in their metadata ?

111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:22 pm

Yes, I tried it now following your suggestion. It sort of works like I would expect it to work: For each track, only the cover art images in its particur metadata are shown. So yes, when an album has tracks with differing artwork in the metadata, Neutron understands that.

I have one more observation in that case, which is related to the shady grey overlaid down/up arrows. Normally, for an album where all tracks have one cover art only, Neutron does not show the arrows - fine. I went through my test album with different images and number of images per track, and the question came up: How does Neutron determine whether to show the arrows or not? My experiments show that it takes the number of images from the first track being played succesively. In other words: When the first track that I play has no images, no arrows are shown, not even when Neutron moves to another track with images - then you wouldn't see neither the arrows nor the other images. Only when I stop and start playing a track with several images, then the arrows show up.

So your question leads us to discover a bug, albeit a minor one: Neutron should determine whether to display the up/down image switcher arrows from the particular track that is being played at any one time. The decision "show/don't show arrows" should be refreshed at every change of tracks.

Blaubär, since your experience with Dmitry is much greater than mine, and you know better how to write a concise bug report that gets attention, would you like to report this little bug?

111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:32 pm

No, I wasn't 100% correct in finding out when Neutron decides upon "show/don't show arrows". Anyway, the current way is incomplete. The bug report should just say "decide whether to show/don't show the arrows at every change of track, be that an automatic or manual track change".

111MilesToGo
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:26 am

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by 111MilesToGo » Wed Aug 24, 2022 7:00 am

Hi Blaubär, I posted a bug report regarding the "show/do not show the grey arrows" here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6637&sid=315cc767a6 ... 2b5#p18612
Thanks for your question that lead me to investigate the special case mentioned right above.

MotleyG
Posts: 160
Joined: Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:19 pm

Re: How is an album defined and what art is displayed

Post by MotleyG » Fri Aug 26, 2022 4:20 pm

I am having some troubles myself with files that have multiple covers. Perhaps somebody else can confirm.

If I use a browser to add FLAC files with multiple covers to my device’s Music folder, the arrows on the Now Playing screen appear and I can scroll through these covers whether it is an Android, IOS, or Windows platform. However if I look at the same files added this way that are in ALAC format, they do not have the arrows. But on IOS devices, if I use the iTunes method to transfer these same ALAC files, then the arrows appear and work as expected. Of course this doesn’t work for the Android or Windows versions of Neutron.

Typically I only use ALAC, as I have both IOS and Android devices to support in my case. So only the ALAC lossless format is ideal for me at this point.

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