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[sbsp2]

How about a forum where only new MC 12 topics are posted and the ones JRiver likes get flagged and/or JRiver updates a 'top requests' post (locked at the top too) that everybody can see and review and doesn't get lost in all the other support questions.  Seems like lots of good ideas are posted here, but there is no real confidence that topics/requests discussed today will be remembered tomorrow, next week, next month, etc.  (my observation anyways).

So, what do others and JRiver think?

[Mastiff]

I think that my only request, a resume playback function for all file types, would be a good idea! 

[risingdamp]

The number one thing I'd like to see in 12 is a mode that will allow MC to run 2 playing nows, essentially for use at parties. 

When you add tracks to the second playing now list they play when the currently playing track is finished.  If the second playing now list is empty MC reverts back to the first list and continues until something is added to the second list.  This will allow you to play your selected playlist but still allow others to add tracks in between adhoc.  The current method of using 'Add as next to play' doesn't really work for this as the last one to be added always jumps to the top of the queue so the requests are not played in the order they were selected.

[dcwebman]

I would like to see a separate forum for version 12. This forum in the middle of 11 beta testing got very confusing if a person was asking about 10 or 11. Trying to handle 3 versions in one forum would be very difficult.

[GHammer]

I would like to see a separate forum for version 12. This forum in the middle of 11 beta testing got very confusing if a person was asking about 10 or 11. Trying to handle 3 versions in one forum would be very difficult.

No, it's good. Trust me, it's been said before.

[LonWar]

I'd like to see the tree replaced with something else... Tabs maybe?

The tree design just seems outdated compared to the rest of MC.

[hit_ny]

No, it's good. Trust me, it's been said before.

Exactly, it will become a v11 - v12 forum and v10 will get relegated to an older forum.

Why ?

...cos v12 will be in alpha stage so any new users will be trying v11. They will have the benefit of experienced users helping them out all in one space.

Nice idea about the requests thread, but they don't work that way. We had the same with v11. They got a list of what they want to do, then they try to address what people want. If you're lucky you get what you want else wait for the next version.

They don't have sticky request list threads as it makes it easier for us to bully them about pending requests. If it's a really burning issue it will take on a life of its own. Helps them concentrate on the really important issues. The idea is request in a seprate thread, see how much traction it gets, figure out if its worth their time to implement.

This is the order it works in.

[JONCAT]

For now we could each list our want lists in this thread and number them at put your username at the top; then we could reference the lists and make a master list.

I have a list already saved. What do you guys think; I doubt we are going to see a new forum dedicated to MC12 but...IT"S A GREAT IDEA

JC

[trott]

I don't know about anybody else, but one of my first problems with media center still exists to date...the inability to play aac files natively.
Quicktime plays them allright, but say what you want, playback feels slightly 'delayed' when comparing to eg mp3. Also, no cover art, no visualisations...
Though I recently saw a post by Matt which hinted at the possibility that MC will play them natively in the future.
Of course, what kept me on media center is that it's the only program which allows me to use a big library (and I mean really USE it) and supports my ipod as well as other players I might buy. Besides, once you get used to the user interface (which took me a while) I feel that other applications are somewhat lacking in ease of use 

[risingdamp]

I wish to see Album Handling, where an album is treated as a single unit as I often play only entire albums (play each completely, in track order as per the CD) and would love the ability to handle them as such
i.e., if you sent 5 complete albums to Playing Now, then click on Shuffle . . . .  it would shuffle the order the Albums were played, but NOT the track order within the album. There are other instances besides Playing Now where this would be helpful to those of us who like the Album-Based concept as opposed to Track-based as it is now.

Nice idea Lisa.  This fits in with the shuffle modes on the iPod (i.e. Albums, Songs or Off) so if Albums is selected it will always keep full albums together in track number order but it will shuffle the albums.  It would be nice to have this as a feature of MC's shuffle mode (an option like on iPod) as well as a random sort parameter for view schemes (e.g. sort=[Random (albums)] or sort=[Random (Songs)]  ).  Great idea Lisa!

[interbeat]

I wish to see Album Handling, where an album is treated as a single unit as I often play only entire albums (play each completely, in track order as per the CD) and would love the ability to handle them as such
i.e., if you sent 5 complete albums to Playing Now, then click on Shuffle . . . .  it would shuffle the order the Albums were played, but NOT the track order within the album. There are other instances besides Playing Now where this would be helpful to those of us who like the Album-Based concept as opposed to Track-based as it is now.

I too would like to see this - but for slightly different reasons:

I have many CD singles in my music collection, and most singles include tracks that are also on an album. In order for my MC library to resemble my CD collection, I have the album field data type set as a list, and tracks that are on both a single and an album have both listed. So, view schemes show the correct tracks on both the single and album without the need to have duplicate copies of tracks. However, as there's only one track, there can only be one track number and one cover art file, so it's far from a perfect solution.

An album / playlist based library (like Sony's SonicStage software) would solve this problem. For each album or playlist you could then define the tracks, order of tracks, cover art etc. It would be very easy to define tracks as belonging to multiple albums / singles / compilations etc without the need to have duplicates.

This would also enable a view I'd really like to see instead of the View Scheme, Library Browser and most importantly the Theatre View file lists: An Album View. By this I envisage the album cover art on the left with the tracks on the right.

Anyone else feel the same?

Ed.

[JONCAT]

Ed,

Can we see some screenshots? I'm interested.

I was out by the pool, before reading your post, thinking about my duplicate tracks that come mostly from various artist albums.

I have some need to keep dups because it's interesting to here the difference in the different releases & mastering styles.

But, even though storage is cheap I would like to get rid of some every now and then

So......when you delete a file externally, MC shows a red X. I was wondering if MC would try to play these on shuffle mode or simply avoid them. Then I could leave the deleted entries in MC so as to know which tracks albums I care to burn are missing. I guess I could just enter into the comment field all the albums that the track can be found on, but I think your on to something. We are coming at it from different angles.

MC should develop some way to enhance the organization of singles and albums. I'm archiving 45's and when someone collects a genre usually these various artist comp. albums can provide a lot of overlap, but for posterity sake it's good to know the original sources, however many there may be.

JC

[Krazykanuck]

I would like to see MC handle ripped DVD's as easily as it handles CD's

[interbeat]

Can we see some screenshots? I'm interested.

Ok:

http://www.interbeat.co.uk/studios/mc/mc1.gif
http://www.interbeat.co.uk/studios/mc/mc2.gif

The first screen shot shows the tracklisting of "Hopes And Fears" by Keane. Note track 4 (selected) called "Everybody's Changing", and the contents of the custom tag "CD" which is "Everybody's Changing;Hopes And Fears".

The second shot shows what happens when you click "Everybody's Changing" in the CD list (top right of view scheme). You get the tracklisting of the single, "Everybody's Changing" which includes the track "Everybody's Changing" and two b-sides. The "Everybody's Changing" file is the same file in both, which is why it is track 4 in both. This is where the problems start and why an album / playlist approach is needed, so that a album / playlist can be allocated tracks in an order that applies only to that album.

So......when you delete a file externally, MC shows a red X. I was wondering if MC would try to play these on shuffle mode or simply avoid them. Then I could leave the deleted entries in MC so as to know which tracks albums I care to burn are missing. I guess I could just enter into the comment field all the albums that the track can be found on, but I think your on to something. We are coming at it from different angles.

I'm not sure what happens when MC encounters a deleted file. I think it just skips it and moves to the next. I don't like having duplicates because I like the "Last Played" and "Number of Plays" tags which aren't accurate if you have multiple versions of the same file.

MC should develop some way to enhance the organization of singles and albums. I'm archiving 45's and when someone collects a genre usually these various artist comp. albums can provide a lot of overlap, but for posterity sake it's good to know the original sources, however many there may be.

Yes, exactly. When I used Sony's SonicStage and ripped a CD, the tracks went into the library, and a playlist was automatically created with the tracklist of the ripped tracks. The playlist also held genre, artist, sleeve etc tags. Playlists were organised and navigated like a library and offered ultimate flexibility in this respect - you could have an individual track (file) on unlimited playlists which in turn could have different genres etc - this made storing compilations albums very easy amongst other things. Of course it was also possible to navigate the library in track / file mode like MC so you had the best of both worlds (albeit only with ATRAC format files, hence the reason I soon gave up with SonicStage!).

Ed.

[JONCAT]

This is very interesting. I think we could also tie in the aspect I have been hoping to have changed. All of this is pretty abstract but it's basically how MC associates files w/ albums. When you view Album Thumbnails and select one, the red checks come up in your panes; you don't get a track list. The Album View plugin is desirable because of this feature. I think this idea might very well integrate with exactly what type of "association" we are hoping for.

Your naming your singles by the title of the song, in the Album field?, so they get attached into the "real" album track list. If MC would allow playlists for each album you could have multiple thumbnails of same title (when single title ends up being an album title) and then click the EP or single and see it's tracks or slect the album thumbnail etc.


EDIT- So the Hopes & Fears album tracks 4,5, & 6 are tracks 1,2, & 3 on the EP right? I thinking what happens when the EP and album title end up being the same. I guess you could simply use EP at the end, but...

    You don't want dups, but you want the single isolated. When you select an album/cd iin the pane it will list the tracks for you. MC does not do the same in reverse; it should but stop at tracks and not shift the all the panes to the selected GENRE/ARTIST/CD etc. ....integrate that with a more organized way to handle dups or "removed" dups and we'll be all set.

    MC should move backwards in the panes. By this I mean that if you browse your NAME pane and click on a song...all the  albums (in Album Thumbnail view) that that song is found on will pop up below (in Automatic view you get a detailed list of where the songs can be found).

     My proposal: Click on an album in the ALBUM THUMBNAIL VIEW, the NAME pane is replaced w/ all the names/tracks on that album (like album view plugin). The ARTIST pane would then be selected & represent that particular artist and the rest of their albums would be listed in the ALBUM pane for even more access to other albums by the same artist.

    If it happnes to be a Various Artist album, then the ARTIST pane could just list all of the artists on that compilation and the tracks/names of the album would be displayed in NAME.

Sounds confusing, but it is all about the flow (and the vibe ; )
We need to sort this all out. I think there are a lot of great ideas for MC that aren't simply personal quirks or shortcuts. This idea here is very intuitive imo.

JC

[EpF]

This topic has strayed from the title into the same territory as this:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=27592.0

Looks like popular stuff!

[hit_ny]

Ok:

http://www.interbeat.co.uk/studios/mc/mc1.gif
http://www.interbeat.co.uk/studios/mc/mc2.gif

The first screen shot shows the tracklisting of "Hopes And Fears" by Keane. Note track 4 (selected) called "Everybody's Changing", and the contents of the custom tag "CD" which is "Everybody's Changing;Hopes And Fears".

The second shot shows what happens when you click "Everybody's Changing" in the CD list (top right of view scheme). You get the tracklisting of the single, "Everybody's Changing" which includes the track "Everybody's Changing" and two b-sides. The "Everybody's Changing" file is the same file in both, which is why it is track 4 in both. This is where the problems start and why an album / playlist approach is needed, so that a album / playlist can be allocated tracks in an order that applies only to that album.

I have a simpler solution to this albums , singles problem.

i put singles in a separate directory. All singles of any genre get put in this directory.

I have a view scheme that looks at singles only and sorts them accordingly. The single title is the album name.

[interbeat]

EDIT- So the Hopes & Fears album tracks 4,5, & 6 are tracks 1,2, & 3 on the EP right? I thinking what happens when the EP and album title end up being the same. I guess you could simply use EP at the end, but...

Not quite. Tracks 5 & 6 are only on the album. Tracks 2 & 3 on the EP are unique to the EP (they're not on the album). Only track 4 on the album and 1 on the EP are the same.

You're right about when an album and EP have the same name and I do exactly what you suggest - I simple add "[album]" to the album name.

---

Thinking more about the album playlist approach, it could offer some very nice possibilities; for example, how about adding images to the playlist - the booklet pages for example. These could do a slideshow in a special "album info" display plugin that could also display the usual track info at the same time. In fact, an album playlist could include a tag for which display plugin to use - how about setting all your U2 albums to use a U2 themed display for example??

Ed.

[interbeat]

I have a simpler solution to this albums , singles problem.

i put singles in a separate directory. All singles of any genre get put in this directory.

I have a view scheme that looks at singles only and sorts them accordingly. The single title is the album name.

Hi,

Could you explain this in more detail please - does it get round the issue of not having duplicate files?

Ed.

[hit_ny]

Could you explain this in more detail please - does it get round the issue of not having duplicate files?

Ed.

No it does not.

That will have to wait till v12

[Mr ChriZ]

I'd like to see a system like Nero Burning Rom
where by when you buy, you get the current version + 1.
So in My case bought license for 11, and free upgrade to version 12....
 

[bytestar]

A function desire if it is feasible. 
RESUME FOR DVD PLAYBACK as with Powerdvd etc..

[edbro]

Better file conversion options for handhelds. As it is now for me it is totally inflexible.

My player can handle mp3 and/or wma at 128 or less. My library is a mixture of mp3, wma, and ape at different bitrates. The "one size is supposed to fit all" solution of convert if necessary or no conversion is useless to me. If I set it to convert to wma, my mp3s get converted when I don't want, or need them to. If I set it to "Convert if necessary", MC does not downsample my higher bitrate files of the same type.  So, I have to sort by filetypes, transfer some with conversion, go into options and change settings, then transfer more without conversion. What a hassle.

[edbro]

It would be nice to have profiles for ripping preferences. For example; I rip audiobooks differently than I do music and different yet again than ripping for storage on a handheld. I use different encoders and even use different disk locations as I don't want audiobooks ripped into my music directory. It is a pain to have to go into options and change all these settings each time.  It would make it so much easier to just select a profile that I set up in advance.

[JONCAT]

Great idea EDbro; I do the same. I hadn't thought of that. It woul dbr great to see that added.

JC

[pank2002]

I wish to see Album Handling, where an album is treated as a single unit as I often play only entire albums (play each completely, in track order as per the CD) and would love the ability to handle them as such
i.e., if you sent 5 complete albums to Playing Now, then click on Shuffle . . . .  it would shuffle the order the Albums were played, but NOT the track order within the album. There are other instances besides Playing Now where this would be helpful to those of us who like the Album-Based concept as opposed to Track-based as it is now.

Amen !
Something like the Columns UI for f2k (obviously improved)
http://columns.outerspase.net/uploads/plisk_v014.png

Preferably the album view would be something like this:


edit: Also, does MC finalize CD's? For music CD's I prefer to have them finalized, but I don't think it's an option in MC (but I'm probably wrong)

[Zoom]

Well Id like to see this in V 11, but having the song name/artist be scrolled in the taskbar instead of "Media Center".

also, V 11 isnt even complete - when is version 12 planned for release?  I just bought the beta upgrade!

[hit_ny]

also, V 11 isnt even complete - when is version 12 planned for release?  I just bought the beta upgrade!

v11 is nearly over, just a few bugfixes. The so called incompletness of v11 will be handled in v12

Matt goes on vacation soon and the Hula girls are waiting

v12 will be released shortly in very early beta ie alpha stage. v12 will be ready a year from now.

[dcwebman]

Please include this post (keep action window minimized state between sessions) in version 12:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=27671.0

[atb]

- Resume
- Command for Start TV --> "Media Editor.exe  -TV" for example
- Click in Full Screen View --> Pause
- in Handheld Player , button for Examinate Folder and Files directly
- TV teletext , Tv Order for Number
- Pad or joystick control media center
- change key shortcurts

sorry for my english  , and Thx for this amazing program

[Neville]

I would like to see thumbnails for PDF files like in windows explorer:

[kwake]

An A-B loop would be nice. 

[JustinChase]

Some sort of 'beat-matching' for automating trance/techno crossovers would make me happy.

[WinoOutWest]

It would be nice to have profiles for ripping preferences. For example; I rip audiobooks differently than I do music and different yet again than ripping for storage on a handheld. I use different encoders and even use different disk locations as I don't want audiobooks ripped into my music directory. It is a pain to have to go into options and change all these settings each time.  It would make it so much easier to just select a profile that I set up in advance.

Taking this one step further how about having a way to save all your setup options to a config/profile file that could be used when we need to re-install or upgrade etc?
 

[pank2002]

Actually, as pointed out by somebody els, the tree needs to be replaced with something els. It's not really all to great, as it is now. Tabs is an idea, but I'm not sure that's the definitive answer

[Mr ChriZ]

I'd like an option to right click on a file, and add it's album to currently playing list.
I could go through the library browser, but usually when i start browsing i have no idea what i want to play until i see a specific track.  If i could tell it to play that particular album... that would be funky :-)

[pank2002]

Chris, are you aware of the Locate → Album feature in the right-click menu? This might do what you want.

[Mr ChriZ]

Chris, are you aware of the Locate → Album feature in the right-click menu? This might do what you want.

Nope! 
I'm getting to the point where the more I think I know about Media Center the more I realise I know Sweet * A :-)

[edbro]

I would love to see Web Radio untied from the JRiver central database. I want to be able to save stations as favorites without it being in the JRiver database. I have found the database to be out of date and unresponsive to requests for it to be updated (Radio Paradise).

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=26250.0
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=25832.0
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=25633.msg178057#msg178057

[ban]

As I use to burn my albums sometimes to audio-cd's I'd like use the original cd-cover-files as front and back cover.
In cd-labeler it's not possible to use a background-image for the back-cover, only for front and label.
Would be great to add this option.

[glynor]

I thought I'd wait to comment on this until we have a more final build of 11.  I think the last one, if not it, is darn close, so...

Glynor's Wishlist (roughly in order of importance to me):

0) Media Library Server improvements.  I, and many other users, can't realistically use the Media Library Server because of it's current limitations.  I feel that the database needs to be able to accept changes from the "client" systems simultaneously.  As I and others have mentioned, I would even be willing to pay for this functionality separately (as part of some kind of Media Server Pro product).

1) Improved TV Tuner and PVR support.  A system similar to what Beyond TV provides would be devine.  Including:  the ability to control DirecTV boxes, Cable TV boxes, etc; a built-in program guide; vastly improved "pausing live TV" functionality; integrated recording scheduling.

2) Image management improvements.  The problems here have been discussed in detail in previous threads.

3) Toolbar Redesign.  I'd still like the Toolbar to be improved.  A system similar to what Adobe uses (with movable and dockable toolbars) would be splendid, along with the option to create buttons for basically all of the current automation functions.

4) A multi-computer network "distribution" system similar to ATI's EasyShare/EasyConnect product.  This would solve many of the Multi-Zone sync issues that Mastiff and others have dealt with.  If you could simply "stream" what is playing on the "server" system to multiple "client" machines (including Video and Audio) then syncing multiple zones and multiple machines wouldn't be a problem anymore!

There are other little things I'd like as well (exportable Smartlists/ViewSchemes, unified Edit View Scheme/Customize Current View settings, etc), but we'll get to that later.

[Mastiff]

Sorry, Glynor, that wouldn't solve any of my problems. That means that there would have to be a running computer in every room that should use the system, and I don't want that. Most people want to live in a house, not a computer shop...all though my house probably comes close to the latter...

Anywa, the best way to do that is to have cables from a master zone to the regular zones and mute and unmute the line in.

[JustinChase]

I would like to see MC have the ability to cut/trim mp3 files internally WITHOUT converting to wav and back.  Many other programs can do this, it shouldn't be too hard (what do I know).

[glynor]

Sorry, Glynor, that wouldn't solve any of my problems. That means that there would have to be a running computer in every room that should use the system, and I don't want that. Most people want to live in a house, not a computer shop...all though my house probably comes close to the latter...

Anywa, the best way to do that is to have cables from a master zone to the regular zones and mute and unmute the line in.

Come on!  Everyone wants to live in a computer shop.  (Just don't ask my wife.)   

More seriously though, you're right.  It wouldn't help in those cases, but when you DO have another machine in the room, it would be fabulous.  I still think the feature would be very valuable, though there was a reason I put it last on my list.

[Temeryx]

For Version 12, I would love to see some impovements made to the Theater View.  I think the Theater View interface is lacking a bit when compared to programs like Meedio, Media Portal, and Beyond Media.  However, those programs can not even begin to compete with Media Centers ability to organize, tag, and play your media.  Basically, I think Media Center would be the ultimate Home Theater front end if theater view was improved.  More specifically, an interface that more closely resembles other HTPC frontends, the ability to rate your music from the theater view, support for 3rd party plug-ins for things like weather, movie showtimes, ect.., ability to move songs around in Playing now, simplfy how music is added to playing now, like one button press to select a song instead of having to open a submenu to select a song, the ability to size theater view to fit on the tv,  Built in DVD support, instead of needing to have PowerDVD or another program installed, and a DVD player that supports advance features like VRM9, and though I have not played with yet, but it sounds like improvents to the DVR functions would be great too.  And probably a few more things that I can't think of right now.

Reading through the forums, this does not seem to be very high on the list of improvements most people would like to see in MC12.  I am not sure how many people are using MC for an HTPC frontend, but in my opinon the only thing the other programs have over MC is the interface.  What MC has under the hood though is just leaps and bounds better then anyone else.  It seems like a market MC could really make a big impact in.

I hope some focus can be put on this, but even if that is not the direction where JRiver is heading , I am sure I will still be using Media Center for a long time for all it's other great abilities.   

[Tanguero]

I would like to see MC have the ability to cut/trim mp3 files internally WITHOUT converting to wav and back.  Many other programs can do this, it shouldn't be too hard (what do I know).

I agree. That would be really nice.

[Berto]

1) Improved TV Tuner and PVR support.  A system similar to what Beyond TV provides would be devine.  Including:  the ability to control DirecTV boxes, Cable TV boxes, etc; a built-in program guide; vastly improved "pausing live TV" functionality; integrated recording scheduling.

I fully agree on this. I'm playing around now with the open source project MediaPortal. It lacks many of the abilities of MC when it comes to music, but I love the TV-part of it with all its abilities concerning scheduled recording of TV-pograms with an electronic program guide.
   

[LonWar]

I agree. That would be really nice.

Can't Media Editor (Inside the JRiver folder) already do this?

[Omni]

Considering the concept of media modes (audio, images, video, everything) has been implemented in MC for a long while now, it would be nice if that concept could also be extended to the Import Media function as well.


Update:

Or better yet, add the ability to create multiple, user-defined "profiles" to select from when importing.  Yeah, that'd be cool. 

[datdude]

Considering the concept of media modes (audio, images, video, everything) has been implemented in MC for a long while now, it would be nice if that concept could also be extended to the Import Media function as well.


Update:

Or better yet, add the ability to create multiple, user-defined "profiles" to select from when importing.  Yeah, that'd be cool. 

I'd like a way to link all content(audio, video, image, tex) of a particular artist into a encylopedia type of interface.  The first thing MC needs is a relational database, and then someone needs to come up with a html scheme that takes all of that data and formats into a cool layout.  This could be done now with a playing now feature and put all media types in artist folders but if JRiver could do this that would be dandy.