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Author Topic: Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type  (Read 695 times)

rolf_eigenheer

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Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type
« on: November 29, 2020, 06:30:43 am »

In a view songs are grouped by albums. Now I'd like to sort these albums like that:
-Single Artist (complete)
-Single Artist (incomplete)
-Multiple Artist

I also would like to use this order for fanned images in Artist/Albums categories.
It is very likely that an artist is found in Multiple Artist Albums too. But the album covers of these Multiple Artist Albums are not really typical for that specific artist.
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wer

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Re: Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2020, 07:34:48 am »

This is possible, but it is rather advanced.  What have you tried so far?

I would suggest you read Marko's excellent tutorial:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68960.0

A couple of tips to point you in the right direction...

You talk about an artist being in Multiple Artists too. That may be true of an artist, but any individual track will only be found in one place in a view.  MC does not allow ambiguous or redundant positioning in views.

The three qualities you list as wanting to sort by, taken together, are unrelated qualities, meaning they are not differences merely in degree/variation of the same quality or field.  Therefore, to sort or group by them, you will have to make them all variations of a single value. You will have to use an expression or calculated field to do this.  Do you have familiarity with the conditional functions in the MC Expression Language?  Google "jriver expression language" to see a wiki article on this.
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rolf_eigenheer

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Re: Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2020, 08:33:06 am »

If I understand you correctly, I need to generate a calculated field consisting of the album type and the album name. I can then use this field for grouping. Correct?
In order for the complete single artist albums to appear first, the calculated field must create a string that is at the beginning of the sorting. So I could add a 0 for complete single artist albums, a 1 for incomplete single artist albums, etc.
I can do it.

But how can I use relevant cover art for the artist? I don't see any setting options for this. MC arranges the fanned covers independently.
Here it would be my wish that the covers of the multiple artist albums do not appear on top of the arrangement.
A view showing the same cover for all Artists makes no sense, as long there are unique album covers available.
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wer

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Re: Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2020, 09:11:00 am »

The artwork that shows at the top of a fan is not controllable.  This has been requested in the past, but never implemented.  If the contents of one fan are different from another, they will show different art.  If you achieve a grouping that has tracks from the same album in multiple fans, there is a chance the same artwork will display on both fans.

If a category is a single album artist, MC supports custom art for that artist. Google jriver artist images, or read the section in this article about artist images:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Cover_Art#Image_File_Field
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rolf_eigenheer

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Re: Grouping by Albums, sorted by Album Type
« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2020, 11:12:49 am »

I like that artists are represented by their album thumbnails.

It is also nice to have a view which shows all tracks of an artist. Even some are available on samplers only.

I hope that someday JRiver could improve the fanning process.
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