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[richard-ec2]

Can't find a way of doing this.

Let's say I have a collection of Duke Ellington CDs displayed as individual CDs in the normal way - [Album Artist] then [Album]. Then I buy a box set of 10 Duke Ellington CDs called The Columbia Studio Albums Collection. I want the box set to appear in the same view as all the other Duke Ellington CDs, but as a stack named The Columbia Studio Albums Collection, and when I click on this stack, I want it to open up and reveal the 10 individual CDs inside, each with its correct name and in the correct order.

Any help, please?

[blgentry]

What you're asking for is a variable level view.  That is, in some cases the view will have two levels:  Album and Artist.  In other cases it will have 3 levels:  Artist, Collection, and Album.

JRiver MC's Standard View (the interface you use on a computer) does not support variable level views.  Theater View supports variable level views in some capacity.  I don't have much experience with it, so I'm not very knowledgeable about it.  But I know that capability is there.

Brian.

[richard-ec2]

Yes, that sounds like exactly what I need. I wonder if there's any workaround? I don't know how to write expressions but I'm wondering if it would be possible to achieve this with an expression.

For example, you could tag every album in the box set with the name of the box set in the Series field. Then, in Customise View, you could enter an expression that would tell MC to sort by [Album artist] [album] if the series field was empty, but to sort by [Album artist] [Series] [disc #] [album] if the Series field contained an entry.

Something like that.

[Spike1000]

My 2p on this is that the box set just an 'artificial' collection of albums created by a marketing department of a record label and not relevant to how I need to view/find/sort them in MC.

I'd just tag the albums
Album 1
Album 1 (Studio Boxset)
etc

and have them on the same 'top' level. Saves an extra 'click' to drill down into the 'boxset' level 

YMMV of course 

Spike
 

[richard-ec2]

That's outrageous - with physical CDs, do you take all the CDs out of your box sets and mix them up with your regular CDs?

Just kidding - your way is pretty much how I have it at the moment.

But it would be nice to have the ability to replicate physical box sets.

I'm sure it's doable with a customised view. I can almost do it now with [album artist] [series] [disc #] [album] but then all the other CDs that aren't in a series come out as "Unassigned". So what I'd like to try is an expression that does this:

If Series is empty

then

[album artist] [album]

If Series is not empty

then

[album artist] [series] [disc #] [album]


Can anyone translate that into an Expression?

[Don W]

Here's my simple solution for exactly this. It uses a custom tag named "Disk Name". Create a sub category below Album and make it an "Expression" type. For expression to group by, simply put [Disk #]. For expression to display, I use:

If(IsEmpty([Disc Name, 1]), Disk [Disc #, 1], [Disc Name, 1])

That's all there is to it. If the Disc # category has only one value, MC ignores it. If there's more than one disc #, they are displayed as categories.

[richard-ec2]

Sounds ingenious but I'm having trouble getting it to work.

In the Disc Name field, I'm entering the name of the box set (same for each CD). Is that correct?

I'm copying and pasting the expression you gave. Is that exactly as it should appear? (I don't know how to write expressions.)

[Negasonic]

Can't find a way of doing this.

Let's say I have a collection of Duke Ellington CDs displayed as individual CDs in the normal way - [Album Artist] then [Album]. Then I buy a box set of 10 Duke Ellington CDs called The Columbia Studio Albums Collection. I want the box set to appear in the same view as all the other Duke Ellington CDs, but as a stack named The Columbia Studio Albums Collection, and when I click on this stack, I want it to open up and reveal the 10 individual CDs inside, each with its correct name and in the correct order.

Any help, please?

I have set it up exactly the way you describe it. The box set (with the cover of the actual box set) shows up as an "album" among the other artists regular albums. When I double click on the box set, it opens a new view where all the individual albums (with their own cover art) are shown.

Here is how I personally set it up (no expressions):


1. Similar to Don W's suggestion, make a new custom field simply called "Disc" (or whatever you want to call it, it's mainly a tag to represent the individual discs in the box set). A regular String field.

2. Open up Customize View. 
   View as: Categories.
   Show Categories In This Order:
   Album Artist
   Album
   Disc

3. The name of each individual album/disc in the box set should be put in the [Disc] field/tag. If the name is currently in the [Album] tag, just use the "Move/Copy Fields" function for simplicity. (Source: Album, Destination: Disc, Action: Copy (leaves source))

4. Make sure all the albums/discs in the box set have the correct disc number in the [Disc #] field/tag (in your case, disc 1-10).

5. When the above is done, select all the individual albums/discs from the box set and put the name of the Box Set (in your case "The Columbia Studio Albums Collection") in the [Album] tag. As a result, all the albums are now tagged as one album (stacked) and can be displayed among the other "non-box set" albums.

6. Double-clicking on the box set opens a new view where (if each individual disc has been tagged properly with the [Disc] and [Disc #] fields according to my point 1-4) the discs are displayed as separate albums in disc # order. (Sort by: Disc #).

Extra:

Thumbnail Text in the new view: Make sure you make it to display [Disc] instead of [Album] in order to see the name of the individual discs.

I also have different [Date] tags. The regular [Date] is filled with the date the box set was originally released. Then I have [Date (Disc Org Release)] where I put the date of the individual album's original release date (in case the box set contains a set of albums that have been released individually before).

Cover Art displayed for the box set: To solve this, I have to first add another track (in my case a 3 second long track with silence) to the box set. The track should be tagged with the same [Album Artist] + [Album] + [Date] as the box set. In the [Disc] tag I also write "Box" and set the [Disc #] tag to empty. Then you can just assign cover art of the box set to this file.

I think that's the basics. I may have forgotten something so if any questions just ask 

[richard-ec2]

Now, that sounds very ingenious! I didn't think this was going to be achievable without an expression but it seems you've found a way. The icing on the cake is that it looks tweakable according to user preference - eg whether to have disc cumber in front of the disc title.

I'll try it out and let you know how I get on.

Many thanks for explaining it so clearly, too.

[richard-ec2]

Negasonic, I tried your technique and it's very good. The only thing I'm really missing is the visual impact of an icon showing multiple albums piled on top of each other, which is the normal MC way of showing that more albums lie within. Oh yes, and I just thought, I haven't tried it in JRemote yet to see how it works there. But it is very nice and very well thought through - I might well use it.

I still feel there's some potential in the expression I would write if only I knew the language. If anyone can translate the following into an expression, I would love to see what happens:

If Series is empty

then

[album artist] [album]

If Series is not empty

then

[album artist] [series] [disc #] [album]


 

[AndyU]

Here's kinda how I would do it.

Start from some simple semantics.

An album is an album, don't want to mess with that construct.

A Boxed Set is a box of albums.

OK, so add a Tag "BoxedSet" and set it to the name of the boxed set where appropriate. "Miles Davis Atlantic Recordings", "Duke Ellington Box 1" etc.

Now, the magic.

Create a new Tag. Call it (say) "BoxandAlbum". Define it as an expression field with the following expression:

ListBuild(1,;,[BoxedSet],[Album])&datatype=list         <- you need to put list in square brackets, but if I do that here it vanishes!

Now make a categories view using BoxandAlbum as the top level, and Album as the second level.  You should get a a fan of albums for Miles etc. and Duke etc. as well as the individual albums in those boxes. Which is what you wanted. And is reasonably elegant.

[AndyU]

..sorry duplicate post, having trouble getting square brackets to do nothing

[Negasonic]

The only thing I'm really missing is the visual impact of an icon showing multiple albums piled on top of each other, which is the normal MC way of showing that more albums lie within.

Yeah, it won't show the piled-on-top icon since the whole pile of albums is tagged as just one album. Visually it does exactly what I personally want, showing the box set as one entity (with the cover art of the actual box set) sorted among the other regular albums by the artist. I guess I'm trying to emulate the visual aspect of how the real world physical products look like as much as possible

But... my solution is basically a workaround because I couldn't figure out another way to do it and as AndyU points out:

An album is an album, don't want to mess with that construct.

A Boxed Set is a box of albums.

This is true and my main gripe with the way I did it.

AndyU, I tried your suggestion and the result I got was that it would display (at the BoxandAlbum level) all the regular non-box set albums separately (good!) plus the box set as one entity with the "pile of albums" icon (good!) plus all the individual albums from that box set separately (not so good! ). I may have missed something, but is there a way to have it not to also display the "box set albums" separately at this view level? If doable this would be perfect.

Example of the way it looks now:

Artist XXX shows (at the BoxandAlbum level) a total of 7 entities:

Album 1
Album 2
Box Set (contains Album w, x, y and z)
Album w
Album x
Album y
Album z

[AndyU]

Sure, if you don't want the albums inside the box showing at the top level, change the definition of the BoxansdAlbum tag to

if(isempty([BoxedSet]),[Album],[BoxedSet])

I'd maybe change the name of the tag to something like "BoxorAlbum" to be clearer.

If you get a bit smarter you don't actually need a tag for this expression, when you create the view you can put the expression in directly at the "Add" stage - just select Expression there.

[richard-ec2]

I was a bit busy earlier but I just tried the AndyU method (revised version) and it's a really good technique - it looks just like I'd hoped it would look. Thanks, AndyU!

Out of interest, what does your expression mean translated into English?

I have a strange feeling that it actually comes quite close to the expression I've been asking for all this time! (Just using the term "BoxedSet" instead of "Series".)

I did notice that, within the boxed set, MC refuses to sort by Disc # which is a problem I stumbled upon in another recent thread. I'm not sure if there's a way around that - I'll have to think about it. You can always prefix the album title with a number I suppose but to me it looks slightly less attractive that way.

[AndyU]

Glad it works! Sorry about my first attempt, I hadn't read your post carefully enough.

All the expression means is "If there is a value in the Boxed Set tag use it, and if not use the Album Tag". Hence you see the name of the BoxedSet if there is one, but the name of the Album if there isn't a BoxedSet. The expression I used actuallyexpresses the same thing the other way round ie - "If the Boxed Set tag is empty use the Album tag, otherwise use the BoxedSet tag"

ps don't you dare mess up your album titles with a number! No need. You should be able to change the sort order of the discs as you wish by going to your new view, clicking down into a boxed set, right clicking on "Albums"  up in the bar above the thumbnails, selecting "Sort By" from the drop down, and picking Disc# (or whatever else you fancy).

[richard-ec2]

Amazing! That is indeed pretty much what I was hoping for, just with the BoxedSet tag being used instead of the Series tag.

As I mentioned earlier, the "Sort by" function in MC seems to be dysfunctional for many fields and unfortunately "Disc #" is one of them so that's not an option. However I have come up with another workaround which is at the end of the following.

This is an attempt at a beginner's guide based on the AndyU method, for the benefit of any amateurs like me who look for this topic in a search.

First, you don't need to create any new tag fields if you'd prefer not to. You can just insert the name of the box set in the "Series" tag field of every disc. If you want your discs to appear in number order, you will also need to number them in the "Disc #" field.

Next, right click on the relevant category in the tree and select "Customise View". On the left side of the Customise View pop-up:

View as:  Categories.

Show categories in this order:

[Album Artist]
Expression - where the Expression to group by is:  if(isempty([Series]),[Album],[Series])
Expression - where the Expression to group by is:  [Disc #] [Album]

That's it! And the second expression is only needed if your discs are numbered and you want them to appear in number order.

Please point out any errors or suggest improvements. I've tried to keep it really simple but there's probably a better way to sort the discs by number - it seems a bit clumsy, having two Expressions one after the other.

[AndyU]

Splendid! One reason I possibly wouldn't hijack the Series tag is that to me it belongs to boxed sets of DVDs - The Sopranos Series 1, that kind of thing - hence the suggestion of a distinct tag that is yours to mean what you want it to mean. But as you have found, there are loads of ways to skin a cat with MC.

[richard-ec2]

Yes, I think your idea of creating a new tag is better but at least beginners can get going with the Series tag and then start customising once they get the hang of it.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to think of a way of fooling MC into displaying the box set before all the artist's other CDs instead of somewhere in the middle of them all! But that really is nit-picking.

I think this method works excellently - in JRemote, too - so well done everyone and especially AndyU who wrote the winning expression!

[ferday]

Set the text colour to the background colour and add a character a field, and display before album

I hope that made sense

[AndyU]

Yes, I think your idea of creating a new tag is better but at least beginners can get going with the Series tag and then start customising once they get the hang of it.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to think of a way of fooling MC into displaying the box set before all the artist's other CDs instead of somewhere in the middle of them all! But that really is nit-picking.

I think this method works excellently - in JRemote, too - so well done everyone and especially AndyU who wrote the winning expression!

Change your expression slightly to put a space in front of the Series tag thus: 

if(isempty([Series]),[Album],/ [Series])

(You need the / to stop MC throwing the space away.)

You shouldn't see the space in the output; if perchance it annoys you you can get rid of it by changing the thumbnail text in the view to remove it.

[richard-ec2]

Set the text colour to the background colour and add a character a field, and display before album

I hope that made sense

That's a good idea - very clever.

Change your expression slightly to put a space in front of the Series tag thus: 

if(isempty([Series]),[Album],/ [Series])

(You need the / to stop MC throwing the space away.)

You shouldn't see the space in the output; if perchance it annoys you you can get rid of it by changing the thumbnail text in the view to remove it.

Excellent - that does it and I wouldn't even have noticed the space if you hadn't mentioned it. We now have perfection!

[richard-ec2]

I just had a thought. Is there any way of customising the artwork of the top album on the fan, such that you permanently see the artwork of the box set instead of the changing artwork of a random album within? I'm very happy with the way it is but it would be a neat little extra for those who want it.

[AndyU]

I just had a thought. Is there any way of customising the artwork of the top album on the fan, such that you permanently see the artwork of the box set instead of the changing artwork of a random album within? I'm very happy with the way it is but it would be a neat little extra for those who want it.

Don't have an answer for that Richard, sorry, you can turn the fan-ness of the display on and off, but I don't know how you force artwork. I think the MC guys are probably proud of the way the fan or fixed thing scrolls through the possibilities when you hover over it. Maybe try a new query in the forum?

[richard-ec2]

I tried a search and the answer seems to be no. It's much the same with the next level up in the same view scheme: you see a fan of albums with each artist name and maybe some people might prefer to make an image of the artist appear instead of random album art but the option to "choose image for stack" isn't there at the moment. Maybe one day.

Anyway I'm not at all disappointed by that and I'm really happy with this view. Thanks again!

[AndyU]

richard, all might not be lost (maybe).  Have a look at the cover art wiki here

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Cover_Art

Look at the section "Artist & Series Images". That seems to have some magic about associating a specific image with an Artist and with a Series, so it might actually be quite fortuitous that you used Series for a box! Dunno if it will work though - it might be that you would have to have Series on its own in the view, or at least without the space in front. Still, might be worth a try - and it certainly looks like it should work with Artist.

[richard-ec2]

Yes, I did try that but I couldn't get it to work. I think the series thing only works when you are in TV mode and you are using the Series field as intended, for a TV series  - it doesn't seem to work in Audio. And I think the Artist thing only works when you are searching by Artist, and it doesn't work at any level below Artist. So the possibility lies within MC, but it's just not currently supported in the way I'm suggesting.

All that is strictly "as far as I know" (which isn't very far) and might very well be wrong.

[AndyU]

Ah well... guess you'll just have to count your blessings.

[marko]

I've been following this thread with interest. It's a good example of Interact working at its best, and the advice given has been spot on.

The system of putting artist images in a folder and having MC use them is really good, but unfortunately, doesn't work when we arrive at [artist] by way of an expression result.

It has been mentioned in the past, on and off, but there's been no huge demand for dev time on it, if it's even possible.

-marko

[richard-ec2]

Oh, I see - thanks for explaining, marko. I was imagining a scenario where you could right-click on any stack of albums and add custom cover art to the top of the stack (eg the cover art for a box set) but the existing display works very well and I'm very happy with what's come out of this thread.

[Negasonic]

I was imagining a scenario where you could right-click on any stack of albums and add custom cover art to the top of the stack

If the developers could make this happen, it would be the best solution.


I've been messing around with this since AndyU posted his expression (revised version) (Thanks, by the way!) in order to find a way to properly display the art of the box set.

There actually is a very simple way by using Series and Series images and it actually do work in Audio. And there is no need for an expression.

For this to work it requires that each Non Box-albums also have its Album name copied to the Series field. I just took a couple of bootleg live recordings from one artist in order to experiment, selected 5 of them and put the same name ("Box Test") in the Series tag and the rest of them I copied their individual album names to the Series tag. Then I took a random image, named it "Box Test" and put it in the Series folder (where all the TV series posters are)

Categories in this order:

Album Artist
Series
Album

The drawback? The album and box set thumbnails (on the Series level) are displayed in a rectangular poster frame. Which is good for what it was meant to display, movies and TV series, but not so good for albums. 

So... if it's not possible by the developers to add a function by right clicking a stack of albums and add custom cover art on the top, maybe it would be possible to add a similar function as Series, but with square frames (same as album)? A tag similar to Series but tailor-made for albums. Or simply have an option for the Seasons tag to choose square or rectangle frame? Or something

Still a workaround since albums are now series (whether they are regular albums or box sets), but... as of now I probably would use this if the "series" thumbnails were square-sized. I need that box art. And it needs to look good!  

[Matt]

Could you help me understand this?

When I stack some files, I can set the artwork for the top file just fine.  The stack then shows that art.

What else could you want?

Thanks.

[richard-ec2]

Could you help me understand this?

When I stack some files, I can set the artwork for the top file just fine.  The stack then shows that art.

What else could you want?

Thanks.

I think the answer to this is: we're not stacking files - we're stacking albums.

If you have a stack of albums, the thumbnail for the stack shows a rotating view of all the album covers of all the individual albums within the stack. What we're looking for is a way of forcing the stack to display a fixed thumbnail of our own choosing instead - specifically, the cover art for the outside of a box set.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer.

Negasonic: interesting discovery there. I'll try that experiment later.

[Matt]

I think the answer to this is: we're not stacking files - we're stacking albums.

If you're talking about the stack of albums in an artist view or similar, yes, it shows a fanned list of all the artwork in the set of files.  You can set the artwork to something else for all the files there and it'll switch the icon.

You can also have MC download artist images and we'll then show the artist image for a stack of albums by the artist.

[MikeO]

If I read this right what he wants ...

Imagine a box set which comprises a collection of previously released albums. The Doobie Brothers Warner years is an example with 9 albums.

Each album in the set has its own original artwork and the SET has artwork for the box set

Ok ?

What our friend wants is to see the BOX artwork on the top artist view and as he opens the view further to see the 9 individual artwork of the individual albums. Am I right ?

I suspect that the standard artist view won't do this.

I have set up custom tags fo Box Set and Disc Name that partially gets round this but I stil can't see a way of having a Box Artwork without overwriting the individual albums. The box set idea using these tags works fine to show the 9 albums but the layer up is still a fan of the 9

,mike

[richard-ec2]

Yes, that's right. We're just trying to mimic the real world. If you buy a box set of albums, there's a picture on the outside of the box set  - something like this:



and then inside the box are the 10 individual albums, with their own original artwork on each sleeve. We've found a way to show the fan of 10 albums, each with their own original artwork, but at present, the top picture is a rotating view of the artwork from one of these individual albums - as is normal in MC. We want to keep the original artwork on all 10 individual albums  - BUT we were wondering if it was possible to make the thumbnail on the fan show the artwork on the box set.

It's really no big deal. The original aim was to find a way of showing a box set as a fan and we've done that. This idea of having the box set artwork on the fan is just curiosity about what's possible.

[richard-ec2]

Negasonic, I just tested your method and got a very interesting result.

I loaded the same image as in my post just above and put it in a new Series folder in the MC cover art folder (which is hard for an amateur to find but that's another story). I gave it the same name as the Series, obviously.

I followed your setup instructions.

Result: the good news is that I get the box set image on top! And it's square - I'm not seeing the rectangular poster frame you spoke of - just a standard album thumbnail.

Now the bad news - the fan is gone! That is to say - all 10 albums are nested underneath the box set thumbnail, all with their own original artwork, and that's great, but the fan itself no longer shows - all you see is a plain square thumbnail.

Also: the box set is no longer at the beginning of the display - it's back in alphabetical order, mixed up with the other albums and looking just like a regular album at first sight.

Also: when you click on it and open it up, all the individual albums are inside, which is excellent, but they have lost their numbers and don't appear in the right order.

Also: it's a pain in the neck having to put the album title in the series field for every single album in the category!

Still, the important thing is, we can see it IS possible to have the box set artwork on top of a stack of albums. Can the other drawbacks be overcome, and most of all, can we have our fan back? I wonder.

Here's a picture. Sorry it's a bit big.

[Negasonic]

wow... great!

The plain square thumbnail is actually what I personally want, but if you want a fan with the box art on top a workaround could be to make a custom image with some photo editing software. Use another view where the fan is shown and take a screenshot of it + paste the image of the box on top of that. I have other indicators to show if it is a box set or not, I use a custom tag "Box Set" which I display in the thumbnail text + some other stuff. I have a lot of info in the thumbnail text

If you want the box set at the beginning you do this: Click on "Duke Ellington Series" on the view tab above the album thumbnails -> Sort by -> Custom -> Add... -> Z-A -> Duration. If you want them sorted by name I guess you could put an empty space in the beginning of the series name.

Lost their numbers? You mean the disc# fields are empty? I put in some numbers in the disc# field on the albums in my temporary fake box set and then just used Sort by: Disc# (a-z) and it worked great.

Putting album titles in the series field is a 10 second job Select all albums you want to do this on and Right Click -> Library Tools -> Move/Copy Fields...
Source: Album
Destination: Series
Action: Copy (leaves source)


When you write "... put it in a new Series folder in the MC cover art folder" do you mean that you made a new empty folder or...? Do you have any other images in the Series folder? I aldready had a bunch of images in the Series folder (images of TV Series) that are of rectangular shape. I tried removing them and only leave the square box set image, but I still end up with rectangular "frames" in the series view. Hmmm... ?

EDIT: Found the problem to why my thumbnails were rectangular: Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Standardize aspect ratios
Un-ticking that check box made them all square looking. Yes!!
 

[richard-ec2]

The plain square thumbnail is actually what I personally want, but if you want a fan with the box art on top a workaround could be to make a custom image with some photo editing software. Use another view where the fan is shown and take a screenshot of it + paste the image of the box on top of that. I have other indicators to show if it is a box set or not, I use a custom tag "Box Set" which I display in the thumbnail text + some other stuff. I have a lot of info in the thumbnail text

If you don't even want a fan, you're made! The idea of faking one by using a picture of a fan made me smile, and that's a workaround worth considering, but it just seems so, well, fake.

If you want the box set at the beginning you do this: Click on "Duke Ellington Series" on the view tab above the album thumbnails -> Sort by -> Custom -> Add... -> Z-A -> Duration.

That's a good idea. But it then sorts all the other albums by duration, too.

If you want them sorted by name I guess you could put an empty space in the beginning of the series name.

That works. Same as AndyU was doing with that tweak to his Expression. It was only later I realised that normally, I have artists' albums sorted by release date so I'm not sure how I'd work around that.

Lost their numbers? You mean the disc# fields are empty? I put in some numbers in the disc# field on the albums in my temporary fake box set and then just used Sort by: Disc# (a-z) and it worked great.

All my box set discs are numbered in the Disc # field but as I've said a couple of times previously, I've found that Sort by: Disc # doesn't work in MC - there's a bug. I'm sure if you look closely enough you'll find it's actually sorting by something else - a default setting of some sort. If I'm wrong and Sort by Disc # really is working for you, then that would be very puzzling. 

I could just put numbers in the disc titles but I find that unattractive and would prefer not to have to do it.

Putting album titles in the series field is a 10 second job Select all albums you want to do this on and Right Click -> Library Tools -> Move/Copy Fields...
Source: Album
Destination: Series
Action: Copy (leaves source)

That's really good and I've learned something there. But every time you added another album to that category, you'd have to remember to tag it correctly.

When you write "... put it in a new Series folder in the MC cover art folder" do you mean that you made a new empty folder or...? Do you have any other images in the Series folder? I aldready had a bunch of images in the Series folder (images of TV Series) that are of rectangular shape. I tried removing them and only leave the square box set image, but I still end up with rectangular "frames" in the series view. Hmmm... ?

EDIT: Found the problem to why my thumbnails were rectangular: Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Standardize aspect ratios
Un-ticking that check box made them all square looking. Yes!!

Yay, I'm glad you found the solution to the aspect ratio! I suppose the concern would be that if you have any TV series, all their icons will now be square as well instead of rectangular! I didn't have a Series folder in my Cover Art folder, probably because I don't have any other Series, so I had to create one. If anyone else is looking for the Cover Art folder, you go to Tools - Options and look under File location - it's in AppData - Roaming or something like that.

Hope this doesn't sound too negative - there are lots of really good, workable ideas here. I think the ideal might be to try to combine your discovery of the series icon with AndyU's clever Expressions. I'll try playing around with it in the next day or two, unless there are other suggestions in the meantime. Though I'm already very happy with the box set as it is.

[Negasonic]

But every time you added another album to that category, you'd have to remember to tag it correctly.

No problem, you could set it up so that MC copies the album name to the Series tag automatically when importing new albums.

Hope this doesn't sound too negative

Not at all. After tinkering a bit more with the Series view, I came to the conclusion that I really don't want to start re-tagging everything again. The suggestion I posted at the beginning of the thread is already doing exactly what I want, so I will just leave it at that for the moment. I may change it though if we could use the AndyU expression with the addition of some day being able to manipulate that fan-of-albums icon to our liking. 

[Negasonic]

As Marko pointed out, the main problem with getting the cover art seem to be when the tag is part of an expression (as in the AndyU example): 

I've been following this thread with interest. It's a good example of Interact working at its best, and the advice given has been spot on.

The system of putting artist images in a folder and having MC use them is really good, but unfortunately, doesn't work when we arrive at [artist] by way of an expression result.

It has been mentioned in the past, on and off, but there's been no huge demand for dev time on it, if it's even possible.

-marko

The demand is enormous, marko! Gigantic! Monstrous! Really! Get the devs in here now!
Just kidding, but it would be a nice feature if it could be implemented (if possible).

[richard-ec2]

As Marko pointed out, the main problem with getting the cover art seem to be when the tag is part of an expression (as in the AndyU example)...

How right you are. This seems to be the key. Having the Series artwork depends on having the Series as NOT part of an Expression. Yet if you want the fan, the Series MUST be part of an Expression. So, having played around with it a little, it does seem to me unlikely that we'll be able to have both the Series artwork AND the fan at the same time.

Maybe one way of confirming this would be to answer the following. I've no previous experience of using any Series thumbnails because I don't use MC for TV, but I'm wondering if there's any precedent for having the Series artwork on top of a fan. My guess would be that Series artwork only ever appears as a plain thumbnail, either square or rectangular. Can anyone say if that's right?

If that's the case, that tends to confirm that we're not going to find a way of putting the box set artwork on top of the fan. Never mind - I think there's something for everyone in the solutions that have emerged here. You can either have the fan without the box set artwork, or you can have the box set artwork without the fan. The important thing is that either way, you have the box set as a separate item with all the albums nested within, which is what we set out to do.