Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[richardsonic]

OK I'm not sure how to even ask this using the right language. I view my library in a list view and when I'm listening on shuffle occasionally the view of files changes with every track change. It updates to show the new track that is playing. This is great. But often (usually) the list view doesn't update. It just stays static. I realize I can go to Playing Now and find it like that but that's a couple of extra steps. I want to be able to glance at my list view and see what's playing now. There must be a preference that I simply can't find. Thanks.

[RoderickGI]

I assume by list view you mean the Playlist that you used to start playing audio?

That view, and the Playlists, is out of date as soon as you start playback, because you have shuffle on so the sequence of tracks will change as soon as you play. Even without shuffle on, the Playlist is out of date immediately, because it is copied to Playing Now, and it is Playing Now that gets played.

Set "Options > General > Behaviour > Jump on play (audio)" to "Playing Now" and use Playing Now to watch what is playing. After all, that is what it is for, by definition and implementation. No extra steps required.

[wer]

You said you want to see what's playing now, but is that really what you meant? Are you interested in seeing more info on what is currently playing, or what will be playing next?

The point in looking at Playing Now is not to see the file that is currently playing, the point is to see what is about to play.

If you want to see the extended info (as shown in the columns of your file list) for the tracks that will be playing next, then Rod's solution is excellent.

But if you want to see info about the track that actually is playing, as you wrote, then perhaps you should consider customizing the info in the Player Bar, the panel at the top of the window that displays what's currently playing.  Right click on it and select Customize Display, and you can have it show whatever you want about the current track.  A lot of people don't know that display can be customized. 

Plus it has the benefit of not moving you from your view.  Rod's solution saves you a couple of clicks getting there, but then you add a couple of clicks to get back to where you want to be.

[richardsonic]

OK, here's an illustration. This is what I referred to as a list view. If I double click on a file to start it playing (in random mode), the screen refreshes to the new track playing. Either at the top or very bottom depending on its relationship to the previously played track. I want it to function this way so I can see at a glance if I have other music by that artists and maybe I'll turn off random and let it play out. However, if I do anything like even single click on another track, the screen will no longer update to the newly playing randomly selected track. It stays right where it is. In the screen capture example, a Keb Mo track came up and I noticed that the adjacent album of his didn't have cover art. So I updated that. The next track (The Rolling Stones Track 11) starts playing but the screen stays on the page with the Keb Mo songs. So it seems odd that something as simple as even highlighting another track on the page stops the page from dynamically updating to the current track playing.

[wer]

What you're looking at on the left, where the cover art is, is the tag editor.  The view you're in is for editing metadata. The file displayed in the tag editor is the file highlighted (selected) in the list.

Once you click on a track, MC loads that track into the tag editor.  It would be massively inappropriate for MC to switch the contents of the tag editor every time playback proceeds from one track to another.  Imagine if that happened while you were trying to do an edit.  The fact that it changes before you click on something is because at that point, the last thing you did was to start playback; MC knows at that instant you are not editing, and so it is safe switch what is displayed.  But once you start clicking, it would be unsafe for MC to change the contents of the tag editor, because by clicking you are actively using an editing view.

As Rod points out, the Playing Now display is for watching what's happening.  So you can use the option he told you about to automatically switch your view when playback begins.  Then you will be able to watch exactly what you want to watch.

[richardsonic]

OK, pardon my obtuseness here but just having the Action window open means it won't update? It still doesn't update if the action window is closed and I'm not trying to tag anything. I assume I'm out of the tag editor at that point, right?

So if I go to Playing Now in the tree, I get a view that looks like the screen capture. I shows the files as they will play in random order. This is not what I'm after. So, I tried to set this view up as I'd prefer (re-sort by artist-album-track). That would work except when I leave Playing Now (to go to a playlist for example) and then return to it the view has been re-sorted back to it's random order (seq first).