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[magnust]

In Standard view I have a view that works great, each time I open it I get 10 random full albums to choose from. I can click on any one to start playing that album with songs in the proper order. I can view the albums by album thumbnail or I can view the full tracklists for all the albums and so on. I use this:

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~sort=Random ~n=10 ~a


In Theatre View I also get 10 random albums displayed with the above code. But when I go to an album with my remote and push ok the album opens and I get this text:

There are no items to display

No track list is displayed so there is no track to press ok on with the remote to start playing. With a mouse I can right click on the album, get the pop up menu and choose play. But with a normal media center remote control... no go so far 



Any solution?

[Matt]

I created a similar smartlist and when I look at it in Theater View playback works fine.

Even pressing spacebar on the list item works nicely for me.

With the remote, you might need to navigate to the "Play All" choice in Theater View.

[magnust]

Thanks for your thoughts.

There is no spacebar on my remote  Joking aside, IF nothing is playing, the play button works to start my random album! But that's it. If something is playing it won't work obviously, it'll just stop/pause what is currently playing. And pressing again will restart what was playing, not the random album I want to listen to. That is, it only works if "playing now" is 100% empty.

You say "play all", yeah it's up there on the screen but how would I use the remote to play one of the random albums? The point with the 10 random albums view is to give me some fresh ideas, I look at the list and say "not that one not that one but heeeeeey, long time since I listened to THAT album, great idea!". Not play 10 random albums one after another.

[RoderickGI]

Note that I'm testing using a keyboard with media buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, etc.) and using just the Enter/Ok and Arrow keys to duplicate a remote control functionality.


In Standard View, I can view the Smartlist by Album Thumbnail, and I will just see one thumbnail per Album.

When in Standard View, if I select an Album thumbnail and press Enter, just that Album is loaded into Playing Now and playback starts. I have the "Start playing when files added to Playing Now" setting ticked, which is why playback starts.
If I press Play/Pause, MC stops playback, and if I press Play/Pause again, MC restarts playback.
If tracks are playing and I press Stop, MC stops playback. When I then press Play/Pause, MC gives me the message "There is nothing to play", even though I can see the Album tracks in Playing Now in the second pane of my split view. That was unexpected. I expected Play/Pause to restart playback after a Stop. But then I realised that is because I have the "General > Behaviour > Play button" set to "Play visible files". If I change that setting to "Play Playing Now" MC starts playback again after a Stop.
If nothing is playing with Playing Now empty and I press Play/Pause, I get the message "There is nothing to play", which I expected because I haven't selected anything to play.

All the above seems to be working as intended. I wanted to confirm all that before looking at Theatre View.


The reason for posting is that, in Theatre View, I can't get one thumbnail to display for each Album as I do in Standard View, no matter how I "Toggle list style". Are you getting one thumbnail per Album in Theatre View magnust? If so, how have you made that happen?

The reason this question is important is that without the equivalent of the "Album Thumbnail" view style in Theatre View, all displays of the Smartlist are Track based displays. So starting with Playing Now empty;
Pressing Play/Pause on any track in the Smartlist adds all tracks to Playing Now, and starts playback at the selected track. The Playing Now List view in Theatre View shows this, as does Playing Now if you switch back to Standard View.
Again with Playing Now empty, if a track is highlighted and Enter/Ok is pressed, then Play is selected from the top menu, just the one track is placed into Playing Now (or if Playing Now has content, it replaces that content with my settings), and playback of that track starts. When the track finishes, playback stops, leaving just the one track in Playing Now.
Again with Playing Now empty, if a track is highlighted and Enter/Ok is pressed, then "Play All" is selected from the top menu, or the Play/Pause button is pressed, the whole Smartlist is placed into Playing Now (or if Playing Now has content, it replaces that content with my settings), and playback of the highlighted track starts. When the track finishes the next track in the Smartlist starts playing.

All the above also seems to be working as intended.


So the real difference as far as I can tell is that Standard View allows Album based track selection, adding to Playing Now, and playback, while Theatre View is purely Track based selection, adding to Playing Now, and playback.

Unless you can explain how you are getting one Album thumbnail per Album in Theatre View, if you are. I would like to know, because then I might use Theatre View for audio playback more often, much like the way you are trying to use it. 

[magnust]

This is what I have. It's not a smartlist but a view though.

[RoderickGI]

Okay, I see what you mean. There is definitely something not working.

I set up a View like yours, guessed what you had set up under the "Album Artist - Album (Year)" item in the Detail area of the View definition, and mostly I got the "There are no items to display" message. But very weirdly, sometimes the Tracks were populated in the View, and playable. I was using a small 78 album library for testing, so I saw the same albums coming up repeatedly, and sometimes an album would have tracks, and then later the same album wouldn't have tracks. I couldn't see any logic as to why it worked sometimes and not others, even for the same Albums.

Out of interest, what do you have set under the "Album Artist - Album (Year)" item in the Detail area?

I tried some variations similar to what is shown in the attached image, although I didn't usually put anything in the Expression to Display field. I also tried just grouping on [Album], either as an Expression or a Library Field. None worked reliably.


Any comment Matt?

[Matt]

I'm not sure I'm following RoderickGI, because I just set that view up in Standard View (a pane) and it showed the list of albums no problem.

What should be going wrong?

Thanks.

[RoderickGI]

Try setting the View up in Theatre View, which is where I was testing, and where magnust reported the problem initially.

I tried a Smartlist built in Standard View, then used in Theatre View, but didn't try a View in Standard View.

[RoderickGI]

Actually, while a Standard View Category View seemed to work fine, a Standard View Pane View also had issues in that with an Album selected in the pane at the top, there were not always any contents in the bottom of the view. But sometimes the selected Album was displayed and playable in the bottom split view. Mostly not. To display the Albums that had been selected by the View definition reliably, I had to select the "All Albums" line item in the top panes section.

See the image attached. I am doing something wrong here?

[lepa]

I have used this kind of limiting for count (5) of albums and it seems to work

~limit=5,-1,[Album],[Album Artist (auto)] ~a

[magnust]

....there were not always any contents in the bottom of the view. But sometimes the selected Album was displayed and playable in the bottom split view. Mostly not...

That is really odd! In theatre view I have never gotten any tracks to show but maybe I haven't tried enough many times to get a list of tracks like you do get sometimes. Odd!

PS:
In standard view I haven't tried the combo of panes + the random/expand to album way of doing things

[magnust]

...But very weirdly, sometimes the Tracks were populated in the View, and playable. I was using a small 78 album library for testing, so I saw the same albums coming up repeatedly, and sometimes an album would have tracks, and then later the same album wouldn't have tracks. I couldn't see any logic as to why it worked sometimes and not others, even for the same Albums.

Out of interest, what do you have set under the "Album Artist - Album (Year)" item in the Detail area?

Its set to random order which is uneccesary I guess.


EDIT: Removed random sort and set to default Ascending sort. Then tried clicking on my random albums in Theater View a bunch of times. I never got a list of tracks though.

[RoderickGI]

I see your "Album Artist - Album (Year)" selection is a library field. That must be a custom field, because it isn't a standard MC field.

I don't think that is making a difference, because I am seeing the issues using standard fields, but it is worth noting.

Might also be worth trying the expression lepa shared as an alternative method of achieving the same thing. I haven't tested that.

[magnust]

I see your "Album Artist - Album (Year)" selection is a library field. That must be a custom field, because it isn't a standard MC field.

I don't think that is making a difference, because I am seeing the issues using standard fields, but it is worth noting.

Might also be worth trying the expression lepa shared as an alternative method of achieving the same thing. I haven't tested that.

Oh, you're right, had that field for years so missed that. I'll try lepas version and a default field

[magnust]

I'll try lepas version and a default field

Nope. This worked exactly like what I had. I get album thumbnails as I should but if I click on any album I get "There are no items to display"

[lepa]

Nope. This worked exactly like what I had. I get album thumbnails as I should but if I click on any album I get "There are no items to display"

You are right. Pressing enter shows nothing. When I tested I just pressed space and it populated playing now with all songs under that album.

[magnust]

You are right. Pressing enter shows nothing. When I tested I just pressed space and it populated playing now with all songs under that album

Ah! So if I can map space to one button on my remote...



EDIT: and using space the "now playing" is replaced as it should if I choose another random album, just tested it, nice! Just have to sort out how to set up the buttons on the remote, maybe simply set "space" to the play/pause button....

[lepa]

There is something wrong with TheaterView how it displays filtered items. Maybe when pressing enter a refresh is made to that filter and new set of random albums are calculated which then doesn't  include album which was just selected by enter and therefore MC cannot find anything to show?

When pressing space it sends current results to playing now so view doesn't get refreshed and songs can be transferred to playing now.

Just an idea what could be going on here...

[magnust]

I set up the Logitech Harmony remote to send "spacebar" when I press play/pause, works perfectly.

Only wish spacebar would work the same on all other menu items so I could use "spacebar" on the OK button instead of "enter", then navigation would be seamless everywhere 

[RoderickGI]

There is something wrong with TheaterView how it displays filtered items. Maybe when pressing enter a refresh is made to that filter and new set of random albums are calculated which then doesn't  include album which was just selected by enter and therefore MC cannot find anything to show?

When pressing space it sends current results to playing now so view doesn't get refreshed and songs can be transferred to playing now.

Just an idea what could be going on here...

I think you have the right idea. But there is also some timing issue, as sometimes I did see tracks. But maybe that was coincidence because I was using a small library with only 78 Albums. MC may have selected the same Album again, and hence been able to show the content.

The View does seem to refresh pretty often, and when I don't expect it to. There was a change to View refreshing a while back I think. I wonder if that has caused this situation.


The Play/Pause button should work the same as the Spacebar, depending on your settings. For example, whether the "General > Behaviour > Play button" setting is set to "Play visible files" or "Play Playing Now". The Spacebar works fine when Playing Now is empty. But when you start playback on an Album, then change your mind and want to play another, the Spacebar will stop (Pause actually) playback, and then if you select a new Album and press Spacebar again MC will restart the original Album which is still in Playing Now. That's the problem we discussed above, starting in your second post magnust.

[magnust]

Oddly enough spacebar and "windows media key play/pause" or what it's called works differently here. So with the play/pause remote key being just that the behaviour is like you describe and I described in my original post. But with spacebar it works like I want, the music is replaced and the new list of songs starts playing (instead of pausing and resuming the old now playing list)

[RoderickGI]

Strange. You must have a setting different to me, but I can't think what it would be.

But then from your other thread, you are on Windows 7, and I think still have WMC installed? Plus you may have programmed your remote to send a Spacebar? Or have you programmed it to send a MC Core Command, such as Play? For example, by default the Spacebar send a MCC of 10000 MCC_PLAY_PAUSE, which is the toggle between Play and Pause. But there is also an MCC of 10001 MCC_PLAY, which would act differently to the Play/Pause toggle. Which command MC uses is defined in the Resources.xml file, which defines all keyboard shortcuts. You haven't edited that have you?


Of note, if I click on an Album thumbnail, then hover over that thumbnail and click on the "Play" menu item that becomes visible, then it works as you describe the Spacebar. That is, the contents of Playing Now are replaced and MC begins playing the new Album.



I guess it doesn't really matter, as long as it works the way you want.

[magnust]

Yep, I use MCE for DVB-T2 pay-tv but nothing has been done with keymaps or anything like that, it's actually a very recent fresh install with just a few media programs added more or less.

The remote is a Logitech Harmony Companion sending the key that in their software is called "space" (and earlier I had "play" which is default).

I'll try the hover with a mouse just to check if it's the same