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Author Topic: Theater view - startup position  (Read 429 times)

thorsten

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Theater view - startup position
« on: April 18, 2020, 12:51:28 pm »

Hey there,

Hope, you're all in good health condition  :)

I have a question about theater view: at startup, I can go with 2 clicks to my movies. Sometimes I use the wall, sometimes the normal view with short infos on the right.

But one thing that really annoys me is the starting point: it is always at "7 psychos", as this is the first in the aphabet.
So, if I only scroll through the list without something in mind, what will interest me right now, I therefore "forget" the movies starting with "s" or so, because they are so far down the list  :-\

2 questions:
- how do you sort your movies? Also alphabetic or is there something like random view? (I always fantasize about something like caleidoscope, which is repositioning similar movies around your actual movie selection, a little bit like play doctor...)

- is there a way to save the last position in list (not playlist!), so that I enter the list at the next pc startup directly at let's say "Omega man"?

Greets,

thorsten
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wer

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Re: Theater view - startup position
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2020, 02:31:54 pm »

- is there a way to save the last position in list (not playlist!), so that I enter the list at the next pc startup directly at let's say "Omega man"?

No.  It always starts at the top of the list.  But you can reverse the sort order, so Z is at the top of the list instead of A.  You could also have it sort randomly, but I would consider that a torture, not a boon.

- how do you sort your movies? Also alphabetic or is there something like random view? (I always fantasize about something like caleidoscope, which is repositioning similar movies around your actual movie selection, a little bit like play doctor...)

Well, I want it to look like I sort my movies alphabetically by [Name] (which is the title), but that doesn't work for all movies so I do something a little more subtle.  The Alien movies would be displayed out of order if you sorted just by name, for example.

I create a second, user defined field, called NameSorting.  I then copy all the Name fields over to NameSorting so that they're the same.

In my theater view Name category, I change the sort method to sort by [NameSorting].

Now theater view will always display the correct title, but I can change [NameSorting] to adjust the order as needed.  For example, I change the NameSorting fields for each of the Harry Potter movies to:
HarryPotter1
HarryPotter2
HarryPotter3
etc...

This way when you scroll to the Harry Potter series, they're under H where you'd expect, but they show up in series order.

In your case, you'd change the [NameSorting] value for "7 Psychos" to "Seven Psychos" and it will show up under S instead at the top of the list, but it will still display as "7 Psychos".

JRiver sorting is extremely flexible.  I'm actually doing things much more complicated than what I described, but you have to walk before you can run.

If you don't know how to create database fields or modify views, googling for those things will produce lots of good info here on the forum.

If the problem is just that your list of movies is too long and you can't be bothered to remember what you have or scroll through it, then buy fewer movies.  :)
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stricko

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Re: Theater view - startup position
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2020, 02:31:19 am »

Wer is dead right about the flexibility of the database and with expression fields you can do almost anything. Refining what Wer is suggesting just a little (which I strongly suspect he is well aware of ;-) ) you can sort on an If...then..else expression which would allow you to only populate those NameSorting values that are different from Name. I use various combinations of Name & Year to put series in date order etc, but the only limit is your imagination. If you really really wanted what you are suggesting, I suspect you might be able to cobble something together using Date Last Viewed, but is it worth the bother? 
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wer

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Re: Theater view - startup position
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2020, 02:37:08 am »

You don't even need to use an If expression...

You can use FirstNotEmpty to only utilize those NameSorting fields that have values.  Then it acts as an override: fill it out and it will supercede the name.

There are lots of things you can do.
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thorsten

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Re: Theater view - startup position
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2020, 05:26:53 pm »

Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts.

I do use expressions, and my James Bond package is always starting with „James Bond 007 - MOVIE“ as movie name. This is done manually, but that is 100% ok for me: I want to have my hand over the sortign  ;D

But, I am curious how you can sort them randomly! Sometimes, I don‘t know what I want to see and this might be the trick.

But, coming back to my initial question about the starting point, I should start a feature request  ;)
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