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[normd]

I have two listings under Audio that I created.  One shows me all of my albums with each album by an artist showing individually.  For example my three Phil Collins albums all show with their album titles.  But on the other list, all three Phil Collins are "staked" on each other and when I click on the stack, a window opens with the three albums.  How can I make the second list like the first where all albums by the artist show in the view?

[blgentry]

It sounds like your second view has TWO categories.  One for artist and one for album. If you don't want the Artist category, just remove it from the list of categories in that view.  Right click the view and select Customize View.  Then edit the categories list on the left in the customize view dialog.

Brian.

[normd]

That is what is driving me nuts - I can't figure what is different.  As I have been learning the program, I obviously changed something and lost track of what.  Both have the same two categories in the same order.  See attached.  Both have the same categories but entirely different views.  See attached.

[blgentry]

I'm not really sure what you're after.  But that "artist sort order" entry probably shouldn't be there.  Try removing that and see if it gets you what you want.

Brian.

[Arindelle]

hi

In a category view, when you have multiple fields (or expressions) in the left panel, you drill down on these "levels". So in your screenshot, depending on any sort rules you might have defined (under Set rules for file display, not shown in the S.S.). You are going to show all albums, then you could drill down to Artists (this is a custom field LastName, First Name?).

Anyway, you probably want to reverse the order in the left panel to show artists, then you click and get their albums. As Brian said, if you don't want the second level you can remove the "artist" field from the left box. The default grouping being by album artist/album would, I' presuming here, give you what you want.

I'm not sure what you had before ... if however you want just a straight Album view keep album only in the category box to the left and open the "Set rules for file display" and include a sort order like your "Artist Sort Order" (or use multiple ones criteria  -- screen shot example below might help?)

Note: When using multiple categories, using Artist or an Artist based field rather than Album Artist (or Album Artist (Auto) ) will give you slightly different results. An artist field will also bring up/group the tracks of any compilation albums they appear on; whereas using Album Artist (or a custom sort field based on it) will separate the Multiple or Various artists cds into a separate icon (usually stacked) ... so if you want only complete albums, you'd arguably prefer Album Artist as the top field, but if you want all tracks from each artist it would be an Artist based field.

[normd]

Many thanks for all the help. I am starting to get a handle on this.  So, what I want to do is to sort my view by Artist Last name.  I can get swap to work (see attached), but it creates an anomaly whereas Third Eye Blind becomes Blind, Third Eye (see attached).  The Artists with first name last name come out fine.  Is there a way to get this to work for album artists s like Third Eye Blind.

[blgentry]

How about editing that Artist Sort Order tag for the albums by Third Eye Blind?  You can select them all at once and make just one edit to change them all.

Brian.

[normd]

Yup, that is one approach, but it will require for me to tag every one of my albums.  That is certainly do-able, but not preferred as I am lazy - i would prefer to just tag albums with artists who have firstname lastname .  So, can I get MC to do my work for me?

I am wondering about a different approach:  I have my Artist Sort Order field already populated for all named artists as last name, first name.  That shows up in my tags (see attachment) but I do not have albums like Third Eye Blind tagged (yet!).  I am trying to have MC fill in a new field named Artist View Order using the calculated area expression so that if the Artist Sort Order field is empty, it populates the Artist View Order field with [artist] and if Artist Sort Order field is not empty, then i want it to fill Artist View Order with the Artist Sort Order data.  Here is my calculation.

if(isempty([artistsortorder],0),[artist],[artistsortorder])

but no matter what is in the artistsortorder field, I get returned "[artistsortorder]" (without the quotes, but with the brackets) in the calculated Artist View Order field.  In the attachment you can see that Artist Sort Order is clearly populated with Hendrix, Jimi, but I get "[artistsortorder]" (without the quotes, but with the brackets).  If I have Third Eye Blind selected, the field artistsortorder is empty, but the calculation is behaving returning "[artistsortorder]" (without the quotes, but with the brackets) (see attachment).

So obviously I am missing something.  Can I do a calculation on the artistsortorder field?  If so, what is wrong with my expression?

Again, many thanks for all the help  MC is an awesome program the power of which I am just beginning to appreciate.

Norm

[blgentry]

You're very close to your solution.  A couple of points:

1.  Field names are exactly as they appear in the Tag Action Window.  So the field you are talking about should be written as:  [Artist Sort Order] .
2.  There's an expression that will help you called firstnotempty()
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Conditional_Functions#FirstNotEmpty

It does what you'd expect:  Returns the first field that's not empty.  I was going to type in the expression, but I think I'll leave that as an exercise for you.  That should be more fun. 

Brian.

[normd]

Excellent!!!!!   I have my view exactly like I want it.

I used firstnotempty([Artist Sort Order], [Album Artist (auto)])

Many thanks!