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Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?

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Author Topic: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?  (Read 3556 times)

rikkardo

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Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« on: January 02, 2011, 11:34:58 am »

Hallo,
I have just downloaded JRiver demo and looks quite interesting and comprehensive media center application.

I need help about albums display mode, currently, if I have 3 albums by Anastacia, JRiver displays the cover of the 1st one, unless I do a mouseover or click on the cover - then I get the list of the 3 albums separately.

My current setting in customize view is: Album Artist (auto) / Album

I would to:
- display the 3 album as separate items (covers)
- display Album name / Artist name under each cover

Your help will be appreciated, since I am a beginner, thank you :-)
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rick.ca

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2011, 06:00:34 pm »

Welcome, rikkardo.

It is indeed a comprehensive application. There are a few fundamentally different types of views, and each can be configured in many different ways. From your comments, it seems you're using a Categories View. That provides a "drill-down" method of navigating through categories (e.g., Genre - Artist - Album—although the categories could be anything). It's a split view, where the top pane shows all unique values for the level you're at. For example, having selected a Genre, it will show all the Artists with files in that genre. They can be represented in two different Styles—a stack of album thumbnails or a list. The style is set from the view tab drop-down menu, and can be set separately for each level (e.g., a list for Genre, then thumbnails for Artists, etc.). The bottom pane is for displaying the details of whatever is selected in the top pane. It normally opens only at the lowest category level (e.g., at the Album level, it will open and show the track details), but can be set (in Customize View) to be always open.

Now, to answer your question...The top pane will show separate thumbnails for each album only when at the Album level (e.g., after double-clicking and artist album stack). By design, thumbnail captions will show only what the thumbnail or stack represents—an album or artist name, not both. If you're not interested in details, you could set the style of the bottom pane to "album thumbnails." You would then see the album covers for any artist(s) selected in the top pane.

While a Categories View is "pretty," it's navigation method is somewhat restrictive. A Panes View allows any values in any category to be selected in any order. The files that match whatever values have been selected in the panes are then displayed in the lower pane. As with the Categories View, the lower pane can be configured with different styles, grouping and sorting. A Panes View can be used in the same manner as Categories View, selecting a genre and then an artist and then an album, but it's particularly useful if you wish to select as well by other criteria—like Year, Rating, Quality, Keywords, etc.

I prefer a Panes View, use a rather detailed one for my primary Audio view, and use that 95% of the time. But MC doesn't does force you to choose. You can create as many different views as you like, and use whichever one is appropriate in the circumstances. You could, for example, have one Categories view for browsing and playing pop albums, another for classical, and a Panes view for making more detailed selections and for importing and tagging.
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rikkardo

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2011, 06:34:36 am »

Thank you Rick for detailed explanation, for sure now I better understand the basic concepts of sorting / viewing etc. offered by the software.
I confirm I am using the categories view for the top pane, while yes you indeed, using the lower pane for showing the stack is a good idea.

Basically my question was, how do I replicate the exact behaviour of browsing my "physical" CDs into the living room shelf....
looking to each and only one individually though there may be 10 CDs per artist, it seems this is not possible as I can understand.

That may be the simplest way of browsing, so maybe JRiver developers would accept these 2 suggestions?
1) Browsing by artist / album name with individual covers (without having the albums as separate stack), as explained
2) Showing artist / album name at the same time in the details below

Thank you for reading, your opinion appreciated
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substrate001

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2011, 07:45:31 am »

rick.ca:

Many thanks for the detailed info on views in your post. It helped me as well as the OP. I was more concerned with the audiophile features of MC15 at first, and now I'm finding it can perform many other awesome feats also.
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rick.ca

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2011, 02:30:18 pm »

...it seems this is not possible as I can understand.

Yes, the greatest pitfall of MC is that it's almost impossible to determine what is not possible. There are a few things it can't do. This isn't one of them. ;D

If you really want the view to show Artist and Album name, simply customize it to do so. The first screen shot illustrates how this can be done. I've retained the Artist category so albums can still be selected by Artist. If you'd rather see all albums at once, just remove the preceding categories. The second screen shot is a Cover View of my Alternative Rock albums displayed as [Artist] • [Album].

Note that it's also possible to create an "expression field" using an expression like this, and the result used like any other field.
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rikkardo

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2011, 01:58:57 pm »

great :-D
this was my intended behaviour for now it's just great - and I can spend some nice time playing with expressions *grin*
until I will be fully satisfied !
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Alex B

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2011, 02:37:57 pm »

... Basically my question was, how do I replicate the exact behaviour of browsing my "physical" CDs into the living room shelf...

In addition to what Rick said I have posted some quite comprehensive instructions about three years ago:

...

Here is a special view that I like very much. It shows my albums in the date imported order. Just like a physical CD shelf would contain them if you always just add the new CDs without reordering them.


Click to enlarge.


...

You can find detailed instructions for my "CD shelf" and some other views in the complete thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=44356

Some settings in MC's user interface may have changed places, but the functionality has not changed considerably.
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Alex B

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2011, 02:48:27 pm »

Currently I have also the "Year" values included in the captions:


Click to enlarge.
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rick.ca

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Re: Help: How to display single albums for each artist ?
« Reply #8 on: January 12, 2011, 05:11:07 pm »

Thanks, Alex. I did forget the thumbnail text can be customized using the tab drop-down menu (Thumbnails > Thumbnail text). By default it's [Name] where that's the value of the current category, but it could be anything.
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