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[marko]

5. NEW: Very simple (at this point) file stack feature enabled.

Barely keeping up with the new toys here!!
This is going to oh so simplify my image tagging workflow, so let's bring it on...

1st Impressions
Tags are applied to every image in a stack. Brilliant.

Lose the stack contents in the tooltip... if there are a lot of files, the image preview becomes smaller than the thumbnail its previewing.

"Search for stack files" should show the results exploded, without activating the "Explode all stacks" option

The "Stacks > Stack" option is not being added to the 'right click MRU'

When creating a stack, the image that's right clicked on to start the stacking operation should be set as the top image. This way we can stack files and choose the top image in one operation.

The "Stack" icon is not quite right. Too big and distracting with larger thumbs.

========

Thank you for this surprise addition. Wonderful stuff going on this week. Keep it up!!!

-marko.

[Mr ChriZ]

I can't seem to see what you do with this... what is it, and how do you use it?
I see the exploding stacks option...

[marko]

For a year or so now I've been doing this the hard way...
1st, have a look at this screenshot...


This is a list of files that I've chosen to 'stack', viewed grouped by stack number.
In normal image browsing, all of these images are hidden from view except the one labelled as the 'top image'

Now, the 'MC' way...
Select two or more images in MC, then right click and look in the 'Stack' options...
have fun!

[Mr ChriZ]

hehe I'm sure it's me, but still a complete mystery to me i'm afraid!

I think I'll just add this to the list of clever things that MC can do,
that I'll probably need when I suddenly need to do what ever it is
that stacking allows you to do.  I'll probably come here to find
 out how to do it. 

Thanks for the explanation anyhow 

[gappie]

i like it. 
dont know if ill use it with pictures but it works nice with sound files also. one of those features i missed for years, if i had known that something like that excisted. 
one small thing while testing is that it is really easy to unstack when i actualy wanted to explode the stack.

very nice new feature.
thanks a lot.
 
gab

[dcwebman]

I think I finally figured out how to use stacks for images and yes, this will be useful. After editing an original file, you usually end up with one or more variations, so now you can simply see the best one.

Can't quite figure out the purpose with audio though.

[gappie]

I think I finally figured out how to use stacks for images and yes, this will be useful. After editing an original file, you usually end up with one or more variations, so now you can simply see the best one.

Can't quite figure out the purpose with audio though.

for the same reason. i make my own recordings and end up with several versions/mixes, of the same recording. 
i even think it might be usefull for people making home movies. the edited version on top, the original takes stacked underneath it.
yeah, nice.

[dcwebman]

That makes sense then for audio and video. I tried it with regular CD rips and stacking didn't seem to make sense there.

[Jaguu]

Great feature! Nicely implemented!

I tried it with regular CD rips and stacking didn't seem to make sense there

What about stacking different rips such as .ape and .mp3?

[hit_ny]

That makes sense then for audio and video. I tried it with regular CD rips and stacking didn't seem to make sense there.

Agreed, i see the most use for this feature with photos, its what Elements has.

[Alex B]

Probably someone will soon ask if this feature can be used for playing all "Dark Side Of The Moon" tracks in the correct order and as a single item in a shuffled playlist -- or maybe keeping a certain image sequence together when a randomized  "funny pictures" smartlist is played.

 

[hit_ny]

You know... someone just might 

But this is display only, how to translate that to Playing now ?

[Alex B]

5. NEW: Very simple (at this point) file stack feature enabled.

I hope they will add playback features in the future.

[DarkPenguin]

At this point I don't do MF_NAME.  So if you rename your top files the rest will not follow.

If you want to individually tag files you need to explode the stack and tag them one by one.

Stack implode/explode is global right now.  This will take care of the search for stacks thing once I figure out what on earth I'm doing with that.

I'll just mention the stack top in the tool tip.

The current icon is a placeholder.  Suggestions are welcome.

There was also the idea that the icon that is right clicked should be the top of the stack.  Still looking into what can be done with that.

Barely keeping up with the new toys here!!
This is going to oh so simplify my image tagging workflow, so let's bring it on...

1st Impressions
Tags are applied to every image in a stack. Brilliant.

Lose the stack contents in the tooltip... if there are a lot of files, the image preview becomes smaller than the thumbnail its previewing.

"Search for stack files" should show the results exploded, without activating the "Explode all stacks" option

The "Stacks > Stack" option is not being added to the 'right click MRU'

When creating a stack, the image that's right clicked on to start the stacking operation should be set as the top image. This way we can stack files and choose the top image in one operation.

The "Stack" icon is not quite right. Too big and distracting with larger thumbs.

========

Thank you for this surprise addition. Wonderful stuff going on this week. Keep it up!!!

-marko.

[DarkPenguin]

You want a "Do you really want to unstack these things?" dialog or just a separator in the menu?

i like it. 
dont know if ill use it with pictures but it works nice with sound files also. one of those features i missed for years, if i had known that something like that excisted. 
one small thing while testing is that it is really easy to unstack when i actualy wanted to explode the stack.

very nice new feature.
thanks a lot.
 
gab

[DarkPenguin]

Well, one of the plans is to stack audio files.  The idea with audio files would be that there really isn't a top file.  Let usage decide.  So if you dump em down to a handheld we would look for an associated MP3.  Just playing a file we use the ape file.  etc.

(For the most part this would be a nice replacement for the loosely coupled HH cache.  Just stuff the files in the library and hide them.)

hehe I'm sure it's me, but still a complete mystery to me i'm afraid!

I think I'll just add this to the list of clever things that MC can do,
that I'll probably need when I suddenly need to do what ever it is
that stacking allows you to do.  I'll probably come here to find
 out how to do it. 

Thanks for the explanation anyhow 

[DarkPenguin]

Probably someone will soon ask if this feature can be used for playing all "Dark Side Of The Moon" tracks in the correct order and as a single item in a shuffled playlist -- or maybe keeping a certain image sequence together when a randomized  "funny pictures" smartlist is played.

 

Well, that's a frightening use I hadn't thought of.  I'll try to keep it in mind but no guarantees.

[Jaguu]

I think I would like to cycle through the stack! With every click display the next picture.

[John Gateley]

Probably someone will soon ask if this feature can be used for playing all "Dark Side Of The Moon" tracks in the correct order and as a single item in a shuffled playlist -- or maybe keeping a certain image sequence together when a randomized  "funny pictures" smartlist is played.

Soon followed by someone asking for this feature to be used for playing "Dark Side of the Moon" at the same time as watching "The Wizard of Oz".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Rainbow

 

j

[gappie]

You want a "Do you really want to unstack these things?" dialog or just a separator in the menu?

i think there are two different states. when the stacks are exploded then a seperator would be nice. but when they are imploded and you choose unstack, maybe a seperator would not be enough. if the files come from different places it can be a pain to get them together again. and when the two menu items are so close together a wrong click is just a few pixels away. 

also wondered if it would be nice to have a bit more clearer difference in the pictograms to see if the files are imploded or exploded.

thanks for this feature Mr Penguin

 
gab

[dcwebman]

Soon followed by someone asking for this feature to be used for playing "Dark Side of the Moon" at the same time as watching "The Wizard of Oz".

That was the first thought I had when it was brought up.

You want a "Do you really want to unstack these things?" dialog or just a separator in the menu?

Without reinstalling the previous version, I think you added separator lines in there and that makes it much better. I'm happy with that.


The one thing I have a "concern" about, and probably everybody will disagree, are the words explode/implode. I just couldn't understand what they were going to do until I took a chance and tried them. Seems expand/collapse would be clearer to the user.

[DarkPenguin]

That was the first thought I had when it was brought up.
Without reinstalling the previous version, I think you added separator lines in there and that makes it much better. I'm happy with that.

The one thing I have a "concern" about, and probably everybody will disagree, are the words explode/implode. I just couldn't understand what they were going to do until I took a chance and tried them. Seems expand/collapse would be clearer to the user.

But those names aren't violent.  Yeah, expand/collapse is probably better.

And I did add a separator or two.  No yes/no dialog tho.

[park]

I have had a good chance to play aorund with the stacks and I must say that they are very convenient. I also played with adobe bridge's stacks just for the comparison. I liked the fact that the stacks icon on the thumbnails was a link to "implode/explode" the stack in bridge. Something like that for MC would be good too.
Something else I liked about Bridge was that you could just drag and drop files into existing stacks.

One thing that both Bridge and MC lack (as far as I could tell) was an easy way to stack something. Going through the library and stacking every few photos got tiresome quickly using the menus in MC. It was a bit easier in Bridge because you could stack something just by clicking ctrl+G. My best idea would be for there to be a context sensitive action in the action window; multiply selecting files would cause the "Stack" action to appear in the action window, or tagging action window.

Looks like I might now be able to start importing my camera raw files to MC and hiding them away in stacks until they're needed.

Could stacking possibly be a way to group subtitle files and their movies together? Perhaps have the subtitles as a "video" data type and the ability to import all known subtitle file types into the library. This would be really good. Then you could safely rename movies without worrying about unlinking the subtitle files.

[pank2002]

I will be useful for me at some point. Thanks for implying this feature.
Maybe files should be imploded automatically stacked. 
-Rasmus

Edit: Actually, I will use it sooner than I though. My University docs consists of several files and it will be useful to stack them. It would be super if MC will be able to do some stacking semiautomatic.
An example: at the moment I have a macroeconmics class. For each presentation I have slides and my own notes. Each of them are pdf files. The name is the same. The only difference is the genre and the author tag. It would be nice if MC automatically stacks these files.
It will also be useful for different "builds"/"versions" of papers.
Super useful! Thanks!

[park]

I agree with pank. For example, with the previously mentioned subtitle and video files, or with camra raw and the exported tiffs/jpegs, the name of all the fiiles would always be the same. Only the extension would be different. So, even if it werent automatic, it would be cool if there were a way to select all your files and run an "auto stack" tool on them.

[)p(]

I think I would like to cycle through the stack! With every click display the next picture.

+1

Also dropping images on the stack to add them would be cool.

Thanks for adding stacks so fast, after the addition of nestable keywords I switched to mc for image mgt. But this is the icing on the cake as I used to use stacks a lot

peter

[AoXoMoXoA]

OK I give up  ?

Where do I find the instructions? How do you get this to work? What views types?
I have tried a bunch of stuff that I thought was obvious but could not get anything that resembles what you all are talking about.

[leezer3]

How about an option for stacking per different viewscheme levels?
I put this forward a while back, but I'd envisage it working something like this:
Top Level Viewscheme- Artist
Star Trek
Babylon 5
... etc.
Each separate artist is rolled into a single level stack- Useful for visually navigating around a large number of different top level artists.
Second Level viewscheme- Series (Album)
Star Trek TNG Series 1
Star Trek TNG Series 2
... etc.
Now unstack each artist into its component albums. Induvidual tracks are not visible at this point. With TV series, each set (artist) can often have 6 or 7 series, each at the moment showing all 25 odd episodes. Again not particularly handy for visual browsing- This leads to using the top viewscheme pane instead.
Bottom Level Viewscheme
Star Trek TNG Series 1, Episode 1
Star Trek TNG Series 1, Episode 2
... etc.
Finally unstack the single selected album into its component tracks.

The user should be able to choose whether files are stacked at each level of the viewscheme, and these stacks should be customisable around the tags.
I will get some mockups of the sort of thing I'm thinking of done if anyones interested.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[ThoBar]

Probably someone will soon ask if this feature can be used for playing all "Dark Side Of The Moon" tracks in the correct order and as a single item in a shuffled playlist -- or maybe keeping a certain image sequence together when a randomized  "funny pictures" smartlist is played.

 

Instead of calling these associated files "Stacks" they could possibly be called "Sets" or "Sequences". This would help to distinguish the different uses of the associated files for the user. In my eyes (while related in function) the Stack serves a rather different purpose to a Set/Sequence.

Oh, and yes, I'd like to see this

(oh!, to be able to randomise a classical collection and have all the pieces stay whole.....)
C.

[park]

It's nice how we can now work with stacks individually rather than just globally.
It's tiring using the menu to do everything though. Here's still hoping that those stack icons on the thumbnails can be put to good use. (click once on the icon to expand stack. double click to collapse stack). A keyboard shortcut, or a tool in the toolbar to stack the images would also save lots of hassle.

[BartMan01]

Well, one of the plans is to stack audio files.  The idea with audio files would be that there really isn't a top file.  Let usage decide.  So if you dump em down to a handheld we would look for an associated MP3.  Just playing a file we use the ape file.  etc.

(For the most part this would be a nice replacement for the loosely coupled HH cache.  Just stuff the files in the library and hide them.)

This is (for me at least) a huge feature.
Have all of my stuff ripped both lossless, and lossy.
When the device supports my preferred lossless format (for UPnP or local playback) the system would use that.
When syncing to a portable device (where I have set the option to have files converted) or streaming to a UPnP device that does not recognize my lossy files - use the lossless.

One feature that would be really nice here might be some type of user defined 'device' tag for each file to guide MC on which version to use.
Say you have the following (and yes this is an extreme example):
APE lossless version (set the device tag to 'Lossless')
CBR version (set the device to 'CBR')
VBR high-bitrate version (set the device to 'Large Portable')
VBR low-bitrate version (set the device to 'Small Portable')

For players you have:
PC (define device option as 'Lossless')
UPnP box (define device option as 'Lossless')
Older device that does not handle VBR well. (define device option as 'CBR')
Portable with lots of memory. (define device option as 'Large Portable')
Portable with low memory. (define device option as 'Small Portable')

Then MC could use the following when determining which file to use:
Prefer device settings, but if that track is not supported by the device due to file extension then use the 'best' file that MC can determine.

[park]

• I'm finding it hard to distinguish one stack from another when more than one is expanded. How about greying out (grey background) the whole range of one stack's files, when the user has clicked on a file that is in a stack. That way, you'd be able to see which files belong to the stack that you are currently interested in.
• Also, the stack options in the "view" menu, should apply globally. That way the user can quickly expand or collapse all stacks. We already have the right click menu for dealing with individual ones.
• Finally, how would others feel about the highest rated file in a stack auto becoming the top item in a stack, for photos? For me, I find that rating my files, and then stacking them often puts one of the bad photos at the top, so i have to go through the following process:
  1.Stack the files.
  2.Expand the stack.
  3.Find the best photo in the stack, and rate it higher.
  4. Set that photo to be the top in the stack.
  
  It'd be better if I could just:
  1. Rate a photo highly
  2. Stack the group of files
  
  And then the highest rated file would automatically be the top.