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[ferday]

glad it's working out!

i've never been a fan of graphic views for audio (i have too many CD's) but this thread finally got me to make a few test views and i ended up really liking the idea of a "fake directory structure", so now i have my own really nice theatre view and i'm quite enjoying it. 

[cochinada]

Glad that you have also gained from my so many questions and doubts!

I too at the beginning didn't like how the theater view looked but it grows on you, particularly when it is well organized. I have a little over 4000 CD's but with this kind of sorting and also 'Genre classical' and 'Genre Popular' that I still need to review it is real easy to find any particular album. For me it isn't very useful to have a main view sorted by Album at first level and surely not for classical music where I see myself navigating primarily through 'Classical' which uses Location and it happens to be organized by Composers as I want.

Then eventually I might be looking for a particular genre, let's say 'Symphonies', on which case I would filter by Genre and then by Composer and Album. Here I might have a problem because I cant use Location anymore for sorting. Instead I have to resort to 'Album' and because I have lots of multiple CD's that don't have [CD name] I expect some issues...

[cochinada]

I'm about to make a change in what concerns how my Soundtracks are organized. I noticed by 'accident' that I have one album from Pink Floyd that also happens to be a Soundtrack. I Never saw or heard anything about this movie but nevertheless it is still a soundtrack.

So, after much pondering I decided that it makes much more sense not to have a specific Soundtrack folder but keep those on the respective Artist folder or (Various Artists), whichever applies. So, first immediate change is that I won't be having File Group Location = (Soundtracks) any more and need to change wherever that appears. I will also need to physically move the folders under (Soundtracks) to their respective Artist folder (fortunately I have already set this auto import tagging so it is a good time to test it).

However... I'm wondering how this will work when I select 'Popular' View or 'Soundtracks'. I'm also considering excluding Genre Soundtrack from my 'Genre Popular' custom view so I have three different views to make it work.

Desired behavior and possible implementation:

1) 'Popular' - See all albums including soundtracks organized by Artists and sorted by Year excluding classical music. For instance I will be able to see this soundtrack under 'pink Floyd'.

sort by:
File Group Location
Album Artist (Auto)
Expression =if(!isempty([CD name]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
Expression =CD[disc #]

Set rules for file display...
[file group location] is not <empty> (this will exclude classical music)

2) 'Soundtracks' - See only Soundtracks, sorted by Album. Here I could also sort first by Artist but since the main thing here is the movie I won't do it.

Album

Set rules for file display...
Genre is soundtrack

3) 'Genre Popular' - See and sort all genres alphabetically excluding Soundtracks and classical music and then sort by Album Artist and Year - Album

Genre
Album Artist (Auto)
Expression =if(!isempty([CD name]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
Expression =CD[disc #]

Set rules for file display...
[file group location] is not <empty> (this will exclude classical music)
Genre is not soundtrack

 

[ferday]

hmm...that could make things tough.  we could sneak around the soundtracks "auto tagging" with an expression, but because they would have a different [file group location] it could be hard to get them into the view for "popular" and for "soundtracks" simultaneously without re-thinking our whole strategy

i think we could leverage a list field (so make file group location able to have more than one value) but it'll take some thinking on how to achieve that

[cochinada]

Well... changes done but there is something I don't like. Aside from that it seems everything is working fine.

These are my settings and views:

1st Expression

2nd Expression





And here is what I don't like...
'Nirvana Lounge' is a double album and since I already saw the Year on the previous view, now I would like to see only [CD name] or CD[disc #].
There is also the problem that I can't see the whole CD name...

[ferday]

to fix the display problem, try replacing the first expression with

Code: [Select]

=if(!isempty([CD name]),[CD name],[year]-[album])
as to the text under the thumbnail...i haven't used theatre view enough to have an immediate answer, but i'd also like to know the answer (especially if i don't have to figure it out myself )

[cochinada]

Not only it worked but also and because of eliminating the name of the Album has freed more characters, now I can see the complete name of [CD name].

So in what concerns Popular music everything seems to be smooth and working perfectly! This includes 'Popular', 'Genre Popular', 'Soundtrack' and... 'Albums'.
I decided after all to create a simple view for sorting all my Popular albums alphabetically. This will allow me to quickly view all Buddha-Bar CD's, etc.

Now classical music is a though one...

Like I said, I'm using Location D:\musica\Classical for 'Classical' view. As my folders are organized by composers this works more or less just fine. The issues begin when I use 'Genre classical'.

Here I thought about using first 'Genre' and then 'composer' and finally Location again with D:\musica\Classical.

However, and I can see the logical behind it, for all those albums with several composers we have strange things happening.

For instance I have the Harmonia Mundi: The 50th Anniversary Boxed Set and I've entered Genre = Symphony on CD24.

It happens that the first 9 tracks of this CD are from Rameau and the last 4 from Beethoven. In truth only these are a Symphony but nevertheless I decided to tag the whole album as Symphony because I'm more interested in Symphonies anyway.

Now you can see the picture... when I navigate through 'Genre classical' and select Symphony, I now have several composers, amongst which are Rameau and Beethoven. So if I select Beethoven then I will see only the last 4 tracks of this CD and if I select Rameau I see only the first 9. Confused? Like I said, I see the logical here because I'm previously selecting a composer but this still feels awkward as I'm not showing the complete CD.

[ferday]

I suggest you start here

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102633.0

It may help you decide what you want to do...I have a large collection but maybe 1% is classical

[cochinada]

Thanks. I will definitely take a good look.