V4 meta-data question

[smitbret]

Both are confirmed.

Sort title has been added. You can also set your own sort title keywords (The, A, An, Der, Das, Die, etc.). So a movie like "The Lego Movie" will have a Title of "The Lego Movie" and a Sort title of "Lego Movie, The". This additional metadata field lets you sort on it for your smart playlists, etc.

We have added quite a few other metadata fields - including one called Keywords to meet the needs you mention. You can add any terms you like into Keywords and use them for filtering your smart playlists, etc.

I am assuming this only works if you are letting Mezzmo populate the metadata, but not if Mezzmo is populating from an .nfo or .xml file that already has an entry in the <Sort Title> field?

[Peter]

The sort title should be populated from the Metadata Retrieval Settings on the 'Other' tab, the values here are used to create the sort title.

[smitbret]

The sort title should be populated from the Metadata Retrieval Settings on the 'Other' tab, the values here are used to create the sort title.

I think I am dense. I am not understanding the "Sort Title Keywords". Are these words supposed to be ignored when creating playlists?

[Peter]

The sort title keywords are used to trim the title when creating the sort title field, so the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' would become 'Beautiful Mind, A' and would be listed under B. http://www.mezzmo.com/wiki/doku.php?id=using_sort_titles&s[]=sort&s[]=title for more information.

[smitbret]

The sort title keywords are used to trim the title when creating the sort title field, so the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' would become 'Beautiful Mind, A' and would be listed under B. http://www.mezzmo.com/wiki/doku.php?id=using_sort_titles&s[]=sort&s[]=title for more information.

OK, that's what I thought. I guess my confusion occurs because Mezzmo doesn't seem to be consistently trimming them off. This only pertains to the <Sort Title> field, right?

Yep, I just checked. I have an active playlist that should be sorting the movies Rolodex style by Sort Title but I have several dozen movies in the 'T' folder like 'The Bourne Ultimatum' or 'The Apple Dumpling Gang'. I checked the Sort Titles and they are populated and correct but Mezzmo isn't ignoring "The".

I have changed the .nfo file to have the updated <sort title> (i.e. "Bourne Collection03, The") and run the "Update All Attributes" but that takes me to the next issue I have been having and that is Mezzmo usually stalling when updating the library. It usually takes 2 or 3 attempts of running an update, noticing the update install after several hours, using the Task Manager to close Mezzmo, then reopening Mezzmo and running another update. It is also next to impossible to update the Metadata Fields for any single item. You can go into the item and make the change but clicking 'OK' usually hangs Mezzmo.

[Peter]

An active playlist only lists the items by sort title when the sort order is set to 'Sort Title (Ascending)' or 'Sort Title (Descending)', try changing the sort order and this should list the item 'The Bourne Ultimatum' under 'b'.

For the issues where Mezzmo is hanging can you please go to the Windows Task Manager when this occurs and right-click on the Mezzmo.exe process and select to create a dump file then add it to a zip and send it to support [at] conceiva [dot] com so we can investigate to see what is locking up Mezzmo. If you are using Windows 64bit you will need to run the task manager from the c:\Windows\sysWOW64\taskmgr.exe folder so that it creates a 32bit dump file.

[smitbret]

An active playlist only lists the items by sort title when the sort order is set to 'Sort Title (Ascending)' or 'Sort Title (Descending)', try changing the sort order and this should list the item 'The Bourne Ultimatum' under 'b'.

Edit.......

[smitbret]

An active playlist only lists the items by sort title when the sort order is set to 'Sort Title (Ascending)' or 'Sort Title (Descending)', try changing the sort order and this should list the item 'The Bourne Ultimatum' under 'b'.

For the issues where Mezzmo is hanging can you please go to the Windows Task Manager when this occurs and right-click on the Mezzmo.exe process and select to create a dump file then add it to a zip and send it to support [at] conceiva [dot] com so we can investigate to see what is locking up Mezzmo. If you are using Windows 64bit you will need to run the task manager from the c:\Windows\sysWOW64\taskmgr.exe folder so that it creates a 32bit dump file.

My library has been giving me fits for a couple of years now with the random lock ups, etc. So, I cleared it out and started out fresh with a new organization yesterday. The new library is running pretty smoothly but I haven't added any audio files, yet.

Anyway, I have been messing with the <Sort Title> on my active playlists and it is strange. When I sort by <Title>, everything with "the", "a" or "an" shows up in the t's or a's as you would explain (per this post).

When I change the active playlists to sort by <sort title> everything that has an empty <sort title> field in the metadata disappears from the Active Playlist completely. Is this normal? I guess logically it might be. Everything with a, an or the is still showing up in the a's and t's like the <Title> sort. What am I missing here?

[Peter]

The active playlist has a rule that sort title must not be empty, so if a file has an empty sort title it will not be shown. Mezzmo should set a sort title for every file even if it does not have 'the', 'a' or 'an'.

[smitbret]

The active playlist has a rule that sort title must not be empty, so if a file has an empty sort title it will not be shown. Mezzmo should set a sort title for every file even if it does not have 'the', 'a' or 'an'.

Still can't get the sorting correct. I have gone through part of my library (A-F) and made sure that there is a <Sort Title> in the metadata of each title. Then I re-ran the <Maintain Library>, over writing all attributes. Still getting everything that starts with "A" or "An" showing up in the A's. Here is a screenshot showing this as well as how my Active Playlist is setup:

http://imgur.com/hCPfCPc

I have no doubt there is something I am doing wrong here, but what that is, I don't know.