Browsing your library
Table of contents
Browsing music
Selection choices
Index tag selection
Additional item tags
Special index and item tags
List sort order
Hide Contents choice
Alphabetical grouping
Multidisc albums
Complete Album choice
Groups and works
List view and tag view
Control points
Renderers (players)
Browsing music
To browse your music collection using MinimServer, you need to do the following:
- Start MinimServer as described in the Starting MinimServer section.
- Start a UPnP AV control point (music browser). See the Control points section for information about control points that can be used with MinimServer.
- In the control point, select MinimServer as your music server.
- The control point's music browser will display the MinimServer home container with a number of selection choices representing the complete contents of your music collection. The exact appearance of this display will vary depending on which control point you're using.
Here's an example of what you might see displayed in the home container:
26 albums 241 items 3 playlists Artist Date Genre All Artists Composer [untagged] [folder view]For descriptions of these selection choices, see the next section.
Selection choices
When you browse your music collection, you're going through a series of selection steps to narrow down your selection of music from everything in your music collection to specific pieces of music that you want to play now. At each of these selection steps, the music server and music browser work together to show you the music in your current selection and give you a set of choices for your next selection step.
With MinimServer as your music server, the choices displayed at each selection step will vary according to the contents of your current selection. This is known as Intelligent Browsing, and it's a key feature that distinguishes MinimServer from other music servers.
Depending on what's in your current selection, MinimServer will display some combination of the following choices:
-
All albums list. This choice is displayed as
<n>albums, where<n>is the total number of albums that contain items in the current selection. If you select this, you'll see a list of all albums that contain items in the current selection. This list is alphabetical by default and this ordering can be changed as described in the List sort order section. -
All items list. This choice is displayed as
<n>items, where<n>is the total number of items in the current selection. If you select this, you'll see an alphabetical list of all items in the current selection. -
All playlists list. This choice is displayed as
<n>playlists, where<n>is the total number of playlists, and is shown only in the home container. If you select this, you'll see an alphabetical list of all playlists. - One or more tag choices. Each of these choices is displayed as a tag name such as Artist, Genre or Conductor. The tags displayed here are those that apply to one or more items in the current selection but don't apply to all items in the current selection. If you select one of these tags, you'll see all the values for the selected tag that are available in the current selection—for example, selecting the Artist tag will show all available artists. You can select any of these tag values to create your next selection.
-
Untagged items list. This choice is displayed as
[untagged]. If you select this, you'll see an alphabetical list of all items in the current selection that have no tags and therefore don't appear under any tag choices. -
Folder view. This choice is displayed as
[folder view]and is shown only in the home container. If you select this, you'll see each of thecontentDirdirectories (folders) as a list of subfolders followed by any playlists in the folder and any items in the folder. Selecting any subfolder shows its subfolders, playlists and items in a similar format. By default, folder items are sorted first by album name, then by track number, then by track title. This ordering can be changed as described in the List sort order section.You can see the normal tag-based selection for the contents of any folder (including its subfolders) by selecting the '
>>TagView' choice in the folder contents. See the Hide Contents choice section for more information about how to use this choice. - One or more items or albums. If none of the above choices are available for the current selection, you'll see either an alphabetical list of items or a list of albums. A list of albums is displayed if every item in the current selection is part of an album; otherwise a list of items is displayed. The list of albums is alphabetical by default and this ordering can be changed as described in the List sort order section.
Index tag selection
When MinimServer reads your audio files during startup, it reads and
indexes the following tags by default:
Artist, AlbumArtist, Date, Genre, Composer
You can customize MinimServer to read and index a different set of tags by
changing the tag names listed in the indexTags property and restarting
MinimServer.
-
The Artist index provides main artist information. It contains
AlbumArtist tag values for albums that have this tag and Artist tag values otherwise.
This index is included by default and can be excluded by removing Artist from
indexTags. -
The All Artists index provides complete artist information. It contains Artist tag values only,
not AlbumArtist tag values. This index is included by default and can be excluded by removing
All Artists from
indexTags. -
The AlbumArtist index contains AlbumArtist tag values only, not Artist tag values.
This index is excluded by default and can be included by adding AlbumArtist to
indexTags.
If you want to display an index tag with a different name than the tag name
in the audio file, you can do this by suffixing the indexTags entry for the tag
with a colon followed by the substitute name. For example, to read and index
the Composer tag and display it as Komponist, you would use Composer:Komponist
as the indexTags entry.
Some tags have only one useful value. As an example, the conventional
usage for the Compilation tag is to set its value to 1 for files that are part of a compilation album
and either omit this tag or set its value to 0 for all other files. To avoid the need for an extra
browsing step in such cases, you can configure an automatic
selection value for any tag by suffixing the indexTags entry
with the equals symbol '=' followed by the value that you want to be selected automatically.
For example, to configure an automatic selection value of 1 whenever you select the
Compilation tag, you would use Compilation=1 as the indexTags entry.
If you are using a different name (see above) as well as automatic selection,
the equals suffix must precede the colon suffix.
When browsing your library, the list of index tag choices is displayed
in the same order that the index tags appear in the indexTags property.
If you don't want to use any index tags, you can specify the special value none
in the indexTags property.
Additional item tags
The itemTags property specifies a list of additional tags that MinimServer will
read from your audio files in addition to the tags listed in the indexTags property.
These additional tags can be used for sorting (see the List sort order
section) or for tag formatting (see the Tag formatting
section).
As with the tags in the indexTags property, you can customize the sort direction
for any tag in the itemTags property by prefixing its tag name
by '+' for ascending collating sequence
and '-' for descending collating sequence. If no sort direction
is specified, the default is ascending collating sequence.
Special index and item tags
You can include some special values
in the indexTags or itemTags list.
The special value #AudioData provides the audio data for the file
(sample bit depth, sample rate and bit rate).
The special value #AudioChannels provides the number of channels
for the file (1, 2 or 5.1).
The special value #AudioDuration provides the duration for the file
in minutes and seconds.
The special value #AudioFormat provides the audio format for the file, and the
special value #AudioQuality provides the audio quality of
your files using the following categories:
HD
| lossless, High Definition |
CD+
| lossless, higher quality than CD |
CD
| lossless, CD quality |
CD-
| lossless, lower quality than CD |
LC
| Lossy Compression |
DSD64,DSD128, etc. | lossless DSD |
DXD
| lossless PCM, resolution 24/352 or higher |
HD+
| lossless PCM, resolution 24/176 or higher |
You can choose the names that appear in the index display for these choices by
suffixing the indexTags values as described in the
previous section. For example, to display audio data information in an index entry named
'Music Info', you would put #AudioData:Music Info in the indexTags property.
List sort order
By default, MinimServer sorts lists of index tag values in ascending collating sequence,
except for Date tag values, which are sorted in descending collating sequence.
You can customize this setting for each index tag by prefixing its tag name
in the indexTags property by '+' for ascending collating sequence
and '-' for descending collating sequence. For example, to sort Date tag values
in ascending collating sequence, you would use the value +Date in the
indexTags property.
The <n> albums list has additional facilities for customizing how it's
sorted. By default, MinimServer sorts this list alphabetically by
the album title in the Album tag.
You can change this sort order by
setting the sortTags option in the tagOptions property
(see the Tag options section)
to a comma-separated list of tag names that will be used for sorting
the <n> albums list. For example, you can sort by recording date by setting
Album.sortTags to 'Date',
or you can sort by artist name or composer name by setting Album.sortTags
to 'Artist' or 'Composer'.
To sort by date first and then sort by artist name if the dates are equal, you
would set Album.sortTags to 'Date, Artist'.
For each tag in the Album.sortTags list, the tag
value used for sorting is the first value of the specified tag in the album's track files
(searched in tracknumber order). If a track file contains multiple values for the same tag name,
the value that appears first in the file is used.
The sortTags option can also be used to specify an ordered list of tags to be used
for sorting the list of items within a folder in folder view or the list of items in the
<n> items list.
You can also use other settings in
the tagOptions property to change the sort order of some lists.
See the Tag options section for details.
Hide Contents choice
As you browse through the various selection choices that MinimServer provides, you'll
come across some choices prefixed with '>>'. For example, if you're
browsing a folder in the folder view, you'll see a
'>> Tag View' choice
at the top of the list. With most control points, if you select one of these '>>' choices,
you'll see two further choices with one of these choices named
'>> Hide Contents'.
Whenever you see a
'>> Hide Contents'
choice. you should ignore it and select the other choice instead. This
'>> Hide Contents'
choice isn't intended for user selection; it's
needed to ensure that a control point "play all" action from a higher-level selection doesn't add
duplicate or unwanted items to the playing queue.
These '>>' choices don't work with control points that automatically preload the
contents of the browse tree, such as PlugPlayer. To prevent confusion if you're using
one of these control points, MinimServer gives you the option of disabling the display of
all '>>' choices by setting the showExtras property to false.
With this setting, the following choices won't be available:
-
the '
>>TagView' choice when browsing a folder in the folder view (see the Selection choices section) -
the '
>>CompleteAlbum' choice in a list of album items (see the Complete Album choice section) -
the '
>>ShowAll' choice when browsing an alphabetically grouped list (see the Alphabetical grouping section) - selectable disc headings for individual discs in a multidisc album (see the Multidisc albums section)
Alphabetical grouping
You can optionally split selection lists into alphabetical groups.
To use this feature, set the alphaGroup
property to a comma-separated list of index tag names or other container names
for which alphabetical grouping should be enabled. The entries in this list can
be any combination of the following:
-
any tag from the
indexTagslist -
the special value '
albums' or '[albums]' to enable alphabetical grouping for '<n>albums' lists -
the special value '
items' or '[items]' to enable alphabetical grouping for '<n>items' lists -
the special value '
folder' or '[folder]' to enable alphabetical grouping for folder view lists -
the special value '
all' or '[all]' to enable alphabetical grouping for all lists
For example, a setting of 'albums, items, Artist'
causes the '<n> albums' list, the '<n> items' list and the Artist list to be grouped
alphabetically.
You can optionally add the suffix '=<num>' to an entry to specify a minimum list size
for which alphabetical grouping will be enabled. For example, the setting 'albums=100, Artist=200'
enables alphabetical grouping for '<n> albums' lists with 100 entries or more and
Artist lists with 200 entries or more.
The special 'all' entry controls alphabetical grouping for all list types that
aren't specifically named.
As an example, you could use a setting of 'folder=150, all=250' to enable
alphabetical grouping for folder item lists with 150 entries or more and other lists
with 250 entries or more.
When you're viewing an alphabetically grouped list with more than one choice, you'll also
see a '>> Show All' choice
which allows you to view the current selection as an ungrouped list.
See the Hide Contents choice section for more information
about how to use this choice.
Multidisc albums
Some albums contain multiple discs (physical CDs). For some multidisc albums, you might want to see a view of the album contents which includes information about which items are on which discs. For other multidisc albums, you might want to view the entire album contents as a single list in the same way as you view a single-disc album. MinimServer supports both of these options.
If the showAllDiscs option of the serverOptions property
is set to true (see this section),
all multidisc albums in your library are shown as separate discs with no disc merging.
If the showAllDiscs option is set to false or omitted,
disc merging is applied to selected albums as described in the remainder of this section.
For albums whose contents are tagged with the same album title and contain more than one DISCNUMBER tag value, MinimServer displays the album contents as a merged list of items with no disc information shown. The tracks are sorted first by disc number and then by track number. The tracks are renumbered to match the order of the merged list, so if disc 1 of the album has track numbers 1 to 10 and disc 2 has track numbers 1 to 4, the tracks from disc 2 will be displayed as track numbers 11 to 14.
If you want to see the album contents displayed as separate discs, you need to
use additional tags. The simplest way to do this is to tag the album tracks
with the album title suffixed by a disc identifier in the form
[disc <n>], (disc <n>)
or , disc <n>,
where <n> is the disc number. For example, you might tag the
tracks from the first disc of the album Ummagumma with the album title
'Ummagumma [disc 1]' and the
tracks from the second disc with the album title
'Ummagumma, disc 2'.
If you do this, MinimServer
displays the album as a list of items grouped by disc number
with selectable headings marking the start of each disc, and no track renumbering.
These disc headings are displayed as
'>> Disc <n>' choices,
where <n> is the disc number, and they
can be selected to add an individual disc to the playing queue or view the disc contents.
See the Hide Contents choice section for more information
about how to use these '>> Disc <n>' choices.
Note: You can't play a disc directly from the multidisc album contents page.
If you try to do this, the disc will appear to be empty and no tracks will be played.
Instead, you need to select '>> Disc <n>'
from the multidisc album contents page and select the disc for playing from the page that is displayed.
In some cases, an album disc may have a meaningful subtitle as well as a disc
number. If you tag the tracks from this disc with the disc subtitle by using the DISCSUBTITLE tag,
the album contents will be displayed as separate discs and the selectable heading for this disc
will be displayed with the subtitle name instead of the disc number. For example, you might tag the
tracks from the first disc of the album Ummagumma with the DISCSUBTITLE tag value
'Live' and the tracks from the second disc with the
DISCSUBTITLE tag value 'Studio'. If you do this, the selectable
disc headings for this album will be displayed as '>> Live'
and '>> Studio' instead of
'>> Disc 1' and
'>> Disc 2'.
As an alternative to adding a DISCSUBTITLE tag, the disc identifier suffix
in the album title can be specified as
[disc <n>: <subtitle>] or
(disc <n>: <subtitle>) or
, disc <n>: <subtitle>.
For information about different options for grouping the contents of multidisc albums into folders, see the Albums and folders section.
Complete Album choice
When you make a selection using tag values, this selection might include some
but not all of the items in an album. When this happens, MinimServer displays a list of
the selected album items together with a '>> Complete Album'
choice. You can select this '>> Complete Album'
choice to see the complete album contents.
See the Hide Contents choice section for more information
about how to use this choice.
Groups and works
In classical music, it's common for a musical work to have a number of movements that appear as separate tracks on a CD or download. MinimServer provides the ability to group together a sequence of related tracks (for example, the movements of a symphony) so that these can be tagged, browsed and selected as a single item. To do this, you need to tag each of the related tracks with a Group tag that identifies these tracks as belonging to the same named group.
When you display the contents of an album that contains grouped tracks, the group will appear as a single item instead of appearing as separate tracks. This also applies in any other context where a list of items is displayed. If you want to see the individual tracks within the group, you can do this by opening the group in your music browser in the same way that you would open an album to see the tracks that it contains.
If any track in the group is part of an album, all tracks in the group must be part of the same album and must have consecutive track numbers. If the album contains multiple discs and disc information is displayed (see the Multidisc albums section), a group cannot contain tracks from more than one album disc.
[NEW] From MinimServer 2 update 251, you can have
more than one group with the same name within an album or album disc. For example,
if tracks 1, 2, and 3 and tracks 6, 7 and 8 in an album are tagged with the group name Bonus Tracks,
the album contents will be displayed as follows:
- a group named Bonus Tracks containing tracks 1, 2, and 3
- tracks 4 and 5 shown individually
- another group named Bonus Tracks containing tracks 6, 7 and 8
Also, if you have a multidisc album with the last three tracks of disc 1
and the first three tracks of disc 2 all tagged with the group name Act 2,
the album will be displayed with a group named Act 2 at the end of disc 1
and another group named Act 2 at the start of disc 2.
A group of tracks might not always represent a complete musical work. For example, you might choose to tag an opera with a group for each of its acts, and a musical work such as an overture might have one track only. If a group of tracks represents a complete musical work, the tracks in the group might be tagged with a Work tag that has the same value as the Group tag. In other cases, there might be a Work tag with a different value than the Group tag, or there might be a Work tag without a Group tag. If you don't use Work tags in your library, you can have tracks with a Group tag and with no Work tag.
Although the Group and Work tags seem similar, they are used for different purposes. The Group tag is used by MinimServer to create a containment relationship with the group as the container and the tracks as the contents, in a similar way to an album and the tracks it contains. The Work tag doesn't create a containment relationship, but specifies an index value that can be used to browse your library, just as you might browse your library by other tags such as Genre, Artist and Composer. Another difference is that you need to use the specific tag name Group if you want to do grouping, but you can use any tag names for indexing and browsing.
List view and tag view
If the current selection of items includes any index tag choices that apply to some items but not all items, you'll see a selection menu with these index tag choices displayed. This is known as a tag view. If the current selection of items doesn't include any index tag choices that apply to some items but not all items, you won't see any tag choices, just a list of albums and/or items. This is known as a list view.
If you don't want to see index tag choices when they would normally be shown,
you can make MinimServer display a list view
instead of a tag view by setting the listViewAlbums property.
This will display a list view when the number of albums
in the current selection is less than or equal to the value of this property.
For example, if you set this property to 1, you'll see a list view with no index tag choices when the current selection contains items from a single album, even if these items have different index tag choices (such as a mixture of Artist or Composer tags). If you set this property to 10, you'll see a list view with no index tag choices when the current selection contains items from 10 albums or fewer.
If you always want to see a list view after the initial selection from the top-level menu,
you can set the listViewAlbums property to the special value
all [NEW].
Control points
You should be able to use any UPnP AV control point (music browser) with MinimServer. In practice, some control points have design limitations that prevent them from using some features of MinimServer. This section lists control points that have been tested with MinimServer, with notes describing any known compatibility issues. If you find any other compatibility issues with these or other control points, please report them as described on the Support page.
| Linn Kinsky | Fully compatible |
| Linn Kazoo | Fully compatible |
| Songbook Lite | Fully compatible (see note 1) |
| BubbleUPnP | Fully compatible (see note 2) |
| BubbleDS | Fully compatible (see note 2) |
| Asset Control | Fully compatible (see note 2) |
| LUMIN app | Fully compatible (see note 3) |
| Naim app | Mostly compatible (see notes 4 and 5) |
| foobar2000 | Mostly compatible (see notes 2 and 11) |
| PlugPlayer | Mostly compatible (see note 6) |
| PS Audio eLyric | Mostly compatible (see note 6) |
| ChorusDS | Mostly compatible (see note 7) |
| mconnect | Mostly compatible (see note 7) |
| Windows Media Player | Functional (see note 8) |
| JRiver Media Center | Functional (see note 12) |
| Lightning DS | Functional (see note 12) |
| Xbox 360 | Not compatible (see note 9) |
| VLC | Not compatible (see note 10) |
The following have also been reported as compatible: Onkyo, OPPO, Cyrus, Roberts, XBMC, iMediaShare, Denon/Marantz, Krell Connect and Yamaha AV Controller.
Note 1: Songbook Lite has a default sort order of 123 for album tracks. You need to change this to --- to avoid ordering problems when using groups within albums.
Note 2: BubbleUPnP, BubbleDS, foobar2000 and Asset Control have a design limitation that makes the Hide Contents setting persist until the MinimServer library is reloaded.
Note 3: The LUMIN app preloads the browse tree from the server and presents its own custom view of the library. The MinimServer browsing structure of UPnP containers can be accessed via the LUMIN folder view (which isn't the same as the MinimServer folder view).
Note 4: The Naim app has a default sort order setting of A-Z. You need to disable this setting to prevent ordering problems with multidisc albums.
Note 5: In folder view, the Naim app uses an album view for a folder container
that contains all the tracks of a single album and nothing else.
If showExtras is set to true, there is a
'>> Tag View'
selection in the folder container
and the Naim app doesn't use an album view for the folder contents.
Note 6: PlugPlayer and PS Audio eLyric preload the browse tree from the server
instead of loading each container when requested by the user. This prevents the
'>> Complete Album',
'>> Tag View' and
'>> Show All'
choices from working. This issue also means that disc headings
for individual discs in a multidisc album can't be used to select
disc contents. See the
Hide Contents choice section for further details.
Note 7: ChorusDS and mconnect have a design limitation that prevent selecting a group for playing without opening the group.
Note 8: Windows Media Player can access the files in the MinimServer library but it only allows selection by Artist, Album and Genre.
Note 9: The Xbox 360 doesn't interoperate with standard UPnP AV servers. See this page for details.
Note 10: VLC has a bug with how it handles object IDs containing some special characters. This causes problems when using VLC to browse a MinimServer library. From the user's perpective, the problem will appear to be unpredictable because object IDs are an internal mechanism and aren't visible to the user. See this bug report.
Note 11: foobar2000 with the foo_upnp plugin sorts all container lists in alphabetical order of container name and ignores the sort order that MinimServer sends to the control point.
Note 12: JRiver Media Center and Lightning DS preload the browse tree from the server and present their own custom view of the library.
Renderers (players)
You should be able to use any UPnP AV renderer (streaming player) with MinimServer.
The following have been reported as compatible: Cyrus, foobar2000, iMediaShare, Linn DS, LUMIN, Naim, Onkyo, OPPO, PlugPlayer, PS Audio, PS3, Roberts, Samsung TV, Sony BDV-E380, Sony TV and XBMC.
If you find any compatibility issues with these or other renderers, please report them as described on the Support page.