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[Rrolack]

In the content panel, albums are separated by "separators" which show this information for each album:

[Album] by [Artist]                [Year]


Is there a way to customize what's shown?  As an example: perhaps I'd like to change [Artist] to [Album Artist (auto)] in the separator.

[Rrolack]

Does the lack of response mean this isn't possible?  Or does my question not really make sense?

[JimH]

I'm not sure what you mean.

You can customize views.  Right click on one in the tree on the left to begin.

[Arindelle]

as Jim said, sure you can customize your view. and a view based on album artist is pretty standard. 


However, to get some help, people need a little more information.

If you could indicate where you want to do this (eg a standard View, a Theater View or a Remote View); if it is in the main area (standard) is it a pane view or a cateroy view.

To modify a view from the tree (in standard View) right click on it and choose customize. For theater or remote views you need to go to the appropriate section of the options.

Please read this and relevant links on the wiki if you haven't already, then you'll have at least some vocabulary and it will be easier for people to help you https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Getting_Started

[Rrolack]

This is indeed for a standard view.

As an example of what I want to do: for the Content Panel in the attached screenshot, the first album is shown under the heading "Away from the Sun by 3 Doors Down".  Presumably there is an expression somewhere which creates that phrase, and ideally I'd like to modify that expression.

As far as what I've tried: if I right click on the view name, and click "Customize View", in the Lists category, it shows that lists are customized via mousing over the header menu.  In the header menu, I didn't see anything relating to that expression.

[blgentry]

This is kind of an obscure area of MC.  You can change what's displayed there, but it's not obvious how to do so.

What you're seeing in the header is the result of the "Group By" field.  Click in the header *just* above the text you are talking about, where the down arrow is.  That will bring up a menu.  On that menu, you'll see Group By.  Group By is probably set to Album.  That text of "Album by Artist <spaces> Year" is hard coded when you select Album.  Try some of the other selections and you'll see that it changes.

So how do you customize it?  You have to make a new library field that contains the text you want.  Then set Group By to your new field.  For an example of this, try setting Group By to the field named "Artist - Album (Year)".   Then take a look at the definition of that field.

You can then make your own field, formatted any way you want.

Brian.

[Rrolack]

Thanks bigentry - now that I know the display is controlled by "Group by", this is all much easier to figure out.

Doing some additional searching on the forums, it looks like I'm not the only person to ask about changing the "Group by" behavior.  Another thread discusses the feature here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85110.msg581547#msg581547

A few takeaways from that thread:

• "the only way to get what you want is to create your own 'Group by' fields. Unfortunately, this also means you have to sacrifice some of the finer touches of the default, such as the smart sorting and the date on the right edge of the grouping."
• "The default "By album" grouping applies some clever sorting to the list that is not applied when using custom fields to group by, meaning that your results may not be to your liking, in which case, you may need to tweak the custom field a little to get what you want with regards to sorting."
• Because groups can only be sorted by their display order, "tweaking the custom field" may involve prepending text in an "invisible font"

Overall, the situation is pretty obviously suboptimal.  That said, it is also not completely disastrous - which is probably why it continues to live on as-is...

[blgentry]

I think all of your conclusions are correct.

Honestly, I barely notice that text.  Maybe I use views that are different.  I generally browse by album and that header only shows when I click on the album I want, which I've already found.

Maybe that's a better answer for you:  Make a view that shows you what you want instead.  How would you like to browse your collection?  What would you like it to show?  Is the albums view anywhere close for you?  What if we could tweak the displayed album text some?  (Hint, that's really easy to do)

Brian.

[Rrolack]

Actually, I do very much like the standard view.  To be honest, rather than using the Content Panel to browse, pretty much all of my browsing takes place in the tree.  As a result, getting the groups perfect isn't of paramount importance.  As long as the grouping is at least moderately useful, without being a visual distraction, I'm set.

That said, there are a few situations where the "Album" grouping does become visually distracting.  The situations where that happens (and my handling for each) is as follows:

• When the [artist] list is very long, as in the case of multiple artist albums, the group name becomes very conspicuous.  Using [album artist (auto)] in my "Group by" expression resolves this.
• When I have several copies of the same album.  These albums have other uniquely-identifying tags, which my tree expression uses to separate them.  However, in the "Album" grouping, tracks from these albums all appear in the same group, with their track numbers interleaved (e.g, 01, 01, 02, 02, 03, 03).  Adding the distinguishing tags to the "sort order" of the grouping resolves this.

Getting the year to be perfectly right-justified would be a nice touch, but I can live without it.

So it seems like I'm all set for the time being

[blgentry]

For whatever reason I really dislike tree browsing.  I guess it seems too much like the file system... and the whole point of a full featured media library is to not use the file system.  Plus getting more information presented in a visually pleasing way.  If you like trees though, just ignore me. 

I have a small number of albums that are duplicates (usually in different resolutions) and I've experimented with various views to show them in different ways.  For a while I was giving all of the dupes the same Album tag and doing magic with expressions to show Album + some other tags to make them unique.  This works great.  Except that it breaks on various things that won't obey those views.  Like searches in JRemote/Gizmo for example.

So a while ago I decided that the Album tag is NOT sacred, and I can alter it to reflect different versions of the same album.  For me then, it's totally OK to have an album title like "The Nightfly (DVD-A)", which distinguishes this from the regular CD version of the same album that I have.  I also use the bit depth and sample rate fields in my thumbnail text to show more information.  But the key point is that all of my albums have unique names, so they won't be ambiguous in searches from JRemote.  Plus they all work in the regular views that are supplied with MC.  Group by, etc "just works" and none of my tracks get mixed together in any view.

Just some thoughts.

Brian.

[Arindelle]

So it seems like I'm all set for the time being

well maybe I should leave well enough alone, but I reread this thread 3 times and I have no idea what the O.P. wants to really accomplish here?

He posts a screen shot of 2 albums which seem to shows two albums  [Album] [Album Artist] that looks pretty standard, other than its not obvious what type of view (is this a list type that is modified?) and says he would like to change that. But change it to what?

Then I read that it is actually about changing the default grouping. I'm not sure I understand  why - but ok. Now I'm still thinking that ok Rrolack is just starting out with JRiver and doesn't get the fact that the database is not relational and how Album Artist/Album or Album Artist (Auto) is used. But then I read that he has done a very good search and finds frankly a very "advanced" post on the subject. So Rrorak knows a lot more than I initially thought 

But then ... you talk about tree browsing -- which sort of defeats the prupose of a powerful database ... but hey people have their reasons I guess.

Just out of curiosity ... what are you try to achieve and how do you plan on using the View? I think I understand what you do not want, but not necessarily what you do want. What expression (or grouping in what you are referring to as the Content Pane) would you like.  There are so many ways to get what you want in JRiver, especially if they only have to work in Standard Mode.  Even if you just describe what your tree should look like and maybe explaining what you have changed or want changed compared to your screen shot?

I usually put down tree usage totally and think browsing it directly is only for very small collections (I actually hide the tree and have a toggle for the rare occasions when I need it). But then I remembered a guy that had a very, very large and detailed classical collection, and he used a combination of Tree and the main window ... the tree was more of a research/filter tool than a way to browse for playback . He had some pretty interesting expressions (classical often you don't want to group by Album and Album Artist, but often by work or Opus Number etc.)

If you want to elaborate, Rrolack? Otherwise Happy Listening

[Rrolack]

What I'm doing sounds a bit like the classical music individual.  In my case, a large portion of my collection is from a very unusual genre: Video Game Music.  There are some unique aspects to this genre, and it's taken me a good amount of trial-and-error to handle the idiosyncracies well.  Most of that trial-and-error was done in foobar2000, and I am basically replicating that structure here in MC.

Here is a basic rundown of the situations which need handling:

• My library has music in the Game genre, as well as music from other non-Game genres. 
  • If I choose genre Game, a lot of unique handling needs to happen. 
  • But if I choose any other genre, all of that handling should be completely skipped over: I just want to pick the Album Artist, and then the Album.

• For the Game genre, there are a few subgenres to pick from, for which we use the Subgenre tag.  Here, the subgenre basically describes the kind of game the music is from.  For example, the music could be from an "Action-Adventure" game (e.g. Super Mario Bros.), or from a Role Playing Game (e.g. Final Fantasy).

• Within a subgenre, there are different styles of album, and so Style is the next thing we'll pick. 
  • As an example of styles, some songs will be the actual original music from the same (Original Sound Track), and some will be musical arrangements of these (Arranged).
  • Some albums will even contain a combination of original and arranged songs, and for these albums, each track will be tagged with the correct style.  This means an album can be split across multiple styles.

• The next level varies depending on which style we picked. 
  • If we're looking at Arranged, the next level simply shows the album names.  Here, there is no need to see the album artist, as I don't make my selection based on which game company happened to produce an album.
  • If we're looking at Original Sound Track, the next level shows the actual game that the music is from, which is a natural way to browse original scores.  This is accomplished using the Game tag.

• It's then the case that some games were published on multiple different platforms, each with their own music.  Here, think of a game which was originally released to arcades, and which was then ported to several home consoles.  For these games, we'll then choose which platform we want to hear the music from, using the Platform tag.

• Finally, even within a platform (or if a game was never released for multiple platforms), I might own more than one album which matches my chosen game/platform combination. 
  • For example, imagine album A, which has music from games 1 and 2, as well as album B, which has music from games 2 and 3, both coexisting in the same library.
  • As a result, the next level is Album, where there might be more than one to choose from.

To me, this all seems like a logical structure.  However, it's also a structure with highly variable depth, where the only "mainstays" are Genre at the beginning, and Album at the end.  Everything in-between is a toss-up.  Given that state, the structure can't be represented in a rigid GUI, e.g. a fixed number of panes.  This is where I see the tree excelling: it lets me add the complexity I need, without worrying about how that complexity fits into an existing GUI.  In the tree, it always fits.

While I'm browsing the tree in Standard View, the list in my Content Pane shows me which tracks I've selected.  I use this list for visualizing the selection only (never for browsing) - and so all I need here is for the list to display my selection in a minimally-sensible order.  The bar here is pretty low, but is still above what the "Album" grouping offers.  After using my own expression to group, the list is now in good shape.


If you're interested in knowing how my tree is defined: it has a single category called "Hierarchy", and the formula which populates that hierarchy is as follows (below).  There are a few other features which aren't described above, including handling for Fan-Made albums, as well as replacing semicolons with other characterics in certain fields (as these semicolons "confuse" the list builder).

Code: [Select]

listbuild(
1,
\,
[Genre],
if(isequal([Genre], Game), [Subgenre], ),
if(isequal([Genre], Game), [Style], ),
if(isequal([Style], Original Sound Track), replace([Game], /#;#/, /# +#/ ), ),
if(isequal([Style], Original Sound Track), [Platform], ),
if(math(!isequal([Genre], Game) + isequal([Subgenre], Fan-Made)), [Album Artist (auto)], ),
replace([Album], /#;#/, /#:#/)
)&datatype=[list]


That all said, I am still quite new to MC, and any thoughts on the above are very much appreciated

[blgentry]

A few thoughts:

You probably know this, but you can define a view specifically for Game that lays things out how you want it, and you can do Include Files, so that it shows you only files of type [Genre]=Game .  You're probably already doing this.

A Panes view will actually do exactly what you want, with no magic required.  The Panes would simply be the library fields that you just described.  The "optional" fields like Game and Platform will just be empty if you have chosen combinations that don't use those tags.  I'll bet you could lay out a Panes view to do this in 10 minutes and get it working really well.

Brian.

[Arindelle]

hmm I think I understand ... I'm going to try and play with this ... interesting

[HPBEME]

To me, this all seems like a logical structure.  However, it's also a structure with highly variable depth, where the only "mainstays" are Genre at the beginning, and Album at the end.

Have you tried using the built-in hierarchical structure with genres?  Just add a backslash for each level you would like to create.   I typically only go 2 levels deep, but I added 2 more just to demonstrate how it’s done.  There may be a limit to the number of levels you can create, but I know it goes to at least 4!  It really is quite a fabulous tool… no need to create custom library fields or write complicated scripts.  If I understand your posts correctly, I think this will give you exactly what you’re looking for.
 
I also created a couple of pictures to help illustrate what I am talking about.  In the 1st picture, look at the center "pane" for genre, and you will see 3 levels beneath the primary genre ROCK.  The second picture shows how you structure the tag name to create multiple levels (see the tag window on the far left).  Hope this helps!