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CD Recognition and Loan Process

ptrubey

Well-known member
I'm curious what people think of the CD recognition process and Kaleidescape's loan process to get your unrecognized CDs into the system. I haven't been terribly impressed with the hit ratio on my CDs - frankly the hit ratio on DVDs seems much higher. And after sending all my unrecognized CDs up to Kaleidescape over a month ago, there are still a few unrecognized CDs. Is Kaleidescape having some issues with their recognition algorithms?
 
You're right - recognition on CDs is not nearly as good as DVDs, but of course the music data is much more complex. Discs have been reissued many times, sometimes with different ID#s, sometimes with new ones, box sets are sometimes unique SKUs, sometimes just literally a cardboard box around discs that were previously released... so recognition isn't perfect.

It actually seemed to get much better with the last release... and now at least there's a manual over-ride function, so I've been able to fix up the discs that I have that still had recognition errors.

But I have to say it's INCREDIBLY annoying that when you over-ride the metadata that comes from Kscape, you can't just fix one erroneous field... you have to retype/reenter every field from scratch. I hope they get that fixed so it works more like the movie thing - I can just over-ride one field if I like without starting over.

Like you, I've noticed some CDs I sent in still haven't been fixed... I think that's due to Kaleidescape needing to send requests over to their data provider (AMG) for fixes in the master set of data. It seems like Kscape can fix some errors on their end, others have to go to AMG which apparently takes a lot of time. That's what I was told anyway...

--josh
 
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AMG vs Gracenote

I wonder why Kscape chose AMG rather than the Gracenote (commercial version of the IMDB, I think) database for CD recognition. Frankly, I think the reviews of the CDs that AMG provides are kinda superfluous.
 
I think the reason behind AMG was the quality of the data. Most of use have come across metadata from Gracenote that is a little off and sometimes very wrong. For instance, I was re-ripping some CDs to lossless in iTunes yesterday and had Michael Jackson's Dangerous come back with 2/3 of the track names in Japanese! After all, Gracenote data is user-submitted vs professionally maintained by AMG.

That being said, I haven't been all that impressed with AMG either. The hit rate is lower than I would hope for (AMG doesn't like Dave Matthews - I've had 2 of their albums come back unrecognized!). I've also had weird cover art issues where the art that comes back doesn't match the imported album because of version differences, etc. The manual entry process, as Josh says, is tedious and is a departure from the rest of how the system works. I suggested to K that they should have Gracenote as a fallback option if AMG doesn't find an album or retrieve the right album.

One specific problem I've had is unavailability of UPCs. Long ago I started ditching CD cases in favor of sleeves for CD storage. So, if a disc comes up unrecognized, I don't have access to the UPC. I have suggested to K that in addition to the UPC, there be a field for the AMG catalog #. This is a unique indentifier that AMG uses to denote an entry within their database. You can go to AMG's website and look up any album in their database and see it's catalog number.

AMG site homepage

An example of a Dave Matthews Album that the K won't recognize even though it's obviously in the AMG database

Notice on the Dave Matthews example page the catalog numbers appear at the bottom. I could use this and never have to bother with UPCs and know in advance that the album info was ready and available.

Truth be told, I don't use the Music feature all that much. I have several solutions for music (Roku Soundbridge, Sonos, Airport Express, etc) and the K isn't always my first choice. It's a combination of these import hassles, having a huge digital collection that I don't want to re-rip, the K system having a more limiting control interface than other options, etc. I've made various suggestions to improve things and I'm sure they will over time.

Jeff
 
josh said:
.
But I have to say it's INCREDIBLY annoying that when you over-ride the metadata that comes from Kscape, you can't just fix one erroneous field... you have to retype/reenter every field from scratch. I hope they get that fixed so it works more like the movie thing - I can just over-ride one field if I like without starting over.

I Hate That!! I sure hope they fix that soon.
 
I haven't seen any music databases that were overly impressive with their hit ratio. One problem is the sheer volume of CDs that are out there and there are lots of promo ones and such that just are too difficult to track down.

Kaleidescape just doesn't have the budget to do the data inhouse like they did for DVD. Plus, there is way too much stuff out of print to get anyway.
 
AMG as a source database is fine. As long as you have good tools to correct missed albums or incorrectly identified albums, it doesn't matter too much to me what the source is. I certainly wouldn't expect them to create an in-house database for music though. I'm sure they'll give us better tools over time as they tweak Music functionality.

Jeff
 
josh said:
But I have to say it's INCREDIBLY annoying that when you over-ride the metadata that comes from Kscape, you can't just fix one erroneous field... you have to retype/reenter every field from scratch. I hope they get that fixed so it works more like the movie thing - I can just over-ride one field if I like without starting over.
--josh

I have several CD's that import everything except for the cover art. I decided that it is not worth the effort to retype all titles, descriptions, etc.. just to see the cover.

Obviously this is a flaw. Anyone know when they expect to fix this since it gets boring looking at the "no cover available" sign on the TV/touchpanel
 
I've got about 10 of those also... and I agree it's a pain. I've had some of these slowly resolve themselves over the past 6 months as KScape improves its database, but I think the 10 or so remaining seem destined to stay "generic" forever.

If it really bothers you, then i'd encourage you to send in those albums... then they'll be fixed for you (and others who may have those albums). the company makes the process as easy as possible...

just email "movieguide-data@kaleidescape.com" and request a mailing box...
no cost to you, very little hassle, and your data will be fixed.

--josh
 
How long is the process usually for the "unrecognized albums" to become recognized after you fill out all the information (including the SKU)? I have 5 albums that literally have all the data filled out and they still come back as unrecognized, even though they sit in there for a few weeks now. I don't mind so much, as it's only 4 discs thus far, but i'm still curious.
 
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