More > JRiver Media Center 25 for Mac
Can't sort a playlist by track number without it restarting the sort per disc#
Library Eye:
There looks like there is no way to achieve this very simple goal. I have spent a lot of time trying. Maybe someone has an obvious solution I am missing, as it should be an obvious task. If anyone does, thanks in advance!
Here's something I do with other music playback programs, and it is my preferred way to listen to songs from various albums if I am not going to listen to the entire album at a time. Yes, it works in iTunes.
I make either a playlist, or a smart playlist, depending on other variables.
I sort by track number, and then alphabetically by album. That's it
This for me is better than random.
If I have a playlist with 20 albums, it plays the first track from album A, then the first track from album B, etc, and finally after it gets through the first track of album T, it plays the second track from album A, and the second track from album B, etc.
If album C, for instance, has two discs, iTunes will see additional sort by disc number and first play first track from disc one of album C, if disc number is known, then play the first track from disc two of album C, before moving onto first track of album D. If disc numbers are not known, it defaults to alphabetical order within multiple-disc albums.
JRiver insists on sorting entire playlist by disc number, so that no matter what sort order I choose, it first groups everything together by disc number.
All I want is to take my playlist, which is currently 4335 songs, and sort by:
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
I don't particularly care how within that sort JRiver wants to order songs from a multiple disc set, they should just stay together. Discs one thru ten of ten disc album M, for instance, are still tracks from album M and hence when my playlist is playing all track 8's, it should play all the track 8's from that ten disc set, between track eight of album L and track eight of album N!
It would be logical for it to do so by disc number, so first thing i tried and which should logically work is:
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
Disc # (a-z)
But no matter what i try, JRiver insists on first grouping all the albums that have no disc number assigned at top of playlist, and sorting by
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
Then lumping all the disc ones into a chunk, and sorting by
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
Then all the disc twos in a chunk, and sorting by
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
etc
Which is useless to me. This means if there is only one disc eight in the playlist, the whole thing ends up playing in sequence at the end of playlist, instead of its tracks being sorted by track number throughout playlist with all other albums.
I simply want JRiver to follow the data i am entering: sort all songs in playlist by
Track # (a-z)
Album (a-z)
Is there a reason this is impossible? And, a way around it?
macdonjh:
If the DISC# information isn't important to you, delete those tags. Then none of your tracks will have disc information and they'll all be in the same group, sorted the way you want it.
For multi-disc sets, I renumber the tracks from 1 through "n" so each track gets it's own track number, even in multi-disc sets. For example, if I have a double album and DISC 1 has eight tracks and DISC 2 has seven tracks I renumber the tracks 1-15. Seems like if you did that you'd get the same result as well, since you'd no longer have any albums with more than one "track 1". Renumbering the tracks is easy with Library Tools -> Fill Tracks from List Order.
Library Eye:
Thanks. I am not deleting those tags, nor rewriting those tags just to use the very unreliable sync to handheld feature. Almost every time I connect my device, i have to reenter in all my settings as JRiver forgets them. Too bad the built-in iPod Classic sync feature has been broken for so long.
The disc number metadata is very important, just not in context of making playlist for portable device. JRiver handles disc number just fine, except for this strange fluke where it insists on sorting all playlists by disc number before track number.
You're right, that fill tracks from list order feature is very handy! I have used it for tracks missing such data. I only use JRiver for writing tags to library, not to files themselves. I use a dedicated tagging application on the occasion I want to write over actual files.
RoderickGI:
Good find. You are correct, mostly. You have found a bug! Well, at least some unexpected and unexplained functionality, although someone may have done it deliberately.
The only part I found that I don't think is correct, as evidenced by some testing, is:
--- Quote from: Library Eye on December 14, 2019, 01:38:18 pm ---But no matter what I try, JRiver insists on first grouping all the albums that have no disc number assigned at top of playlist, <snip>
--- End quote ---
I didn't get files with no disc number sorting at the top. Those files correctly sorted among the files with a value of "1" in the [Disc #] field. I built a Playlist to test your requirements, with five Albums, two of which have 2 discs, one of which has one disc and the [Disc #] field is set to "1", and two of which have blank [Disc #] fields. See my attached image.
The sorting of Zeros and Ones is described under the heading "Field Values: Empty, 0, and 1" in the Expression Language Wiki article: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Expression_Language
Specifically:
--- Quote ---Another consideration for integer fields is that when sorting, a 1 value can sometimes sort indistinguishably from an empty value. The Integer type disc # field is typically empty when an album consists of only one disc, and as such, Media Center will sort the disc # values of empty (0) and 1 identically.
--- End quote ---
There is more about Zeros and Ones under Comparison Operators in the Search Language Wiki article: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Search_Language#Comparison_Operators
[Disc #] is an integer field, so that above should apply to it. Particularly when the Wiki uses [Disc #] as an example! The Disc # field tag in files is stored as characters, but MC should save the value as a numeric (integer) field in its Library.
I noted a couple of issues with the Playlist sort.
1. MC sorted the Playlist first by [Disc #], then [Track #], then [Album], even though I only sorted by [Track #], then [Album], as you can see by the sort markers in the View columns. I even tried creating a Sort Preset that sorted only by Track # (a-z), Album (a-z), but that made no difference.
2. I did not sort by Seq(uence) number, and yet MC shows a third sort by Seq in the column heading. (Note that I had run "Update Order" on this Playlists after sorting it as shown, so the Seq numbers are actually in sequence, rather than their original sequence numbers based on how I built the Playlist.) That is a bug as well, as far as I am concerned.
That looks like something that should be fixed to me.
blgentry:
I just tested this. The trouble report is correct.
I suspect that, like a lot of MC views and constructs, there is "magic formatting" going on behind the scenes. It's treating Track # and Disc # specially and sorting them according to some internal rules.
So, how to get around this? Easy Peasey Lemon Squeezey:
Make a new library field called "Tracknum" that is calculated data. In the calculated data area, just put:
--- Code: ---[Track #]
--- End code ---
This field [Tracknum] is now a synonym for Track #, except that it doesn't follow the magic rules.
I just did this, and sorted my playlist by Tracknum, Album. It worked as expected. I got sorting with track #1 of disc 1 and 2 sequential from the same album. So something like
album 1 track 1
album 2 track 1 disc 1
album 2 track 1 disc 2
album 3 track 1
etc.
Brian.
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