+1
I have always been a Classical Music Fan but for years, out of personal preference, my classical music collection remained in that ancient 12" 33rpm Vinyl Disc Format. Far too often Media Player Authors/Creators forget that the vast majority of Classical Music pre-dates so-called Popular Music and don't provide the level of flexibility to handle it adequately. Let's take just one example of that "lack of attention to detail" that exists in the MC Tag Window - the location of Classical Music related Tags; in the Tag Window there is a section called "Classical" even though most of the tags displayed are common to both Classical and Popular Music, but the 3 tags that are, potentially, unique to Classical Music:- [Movement], [Movement Count] and [Movement #] are further down the Tag Window in the "Advanced" section.
Yes, I know we can customize the Tag Window but a far better approach would be to allow the user to specify which "section" of the tag window a tag they are adding should appear in.
This isn't the only area that needs cleaning up - another is the routine used to determine if an Album is complete or not -
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,128021.msg889866.html#msg889866The ability to check that an Album is Complete appears to be unique to MC , but a routine that gets it wrong is not a very good selling point. It certainly gets me wondering just how many more places is MC providing me with wrong/bad info.
Wer is quite right when he said "However, MC's support for classical music is not what it should be. Something is missing, and it makes managing Classical music in MC more of a pain than it should be."
For years I'd been looking for a way to move my Classical Music Collection into MC but didn't like any of the suggested/recommended ways of classifying that collection I found in the wiki/forums, until one day I found a posting by wer outlining a tagging method, that I christened "The Grey Squirrel Tagging Protocol", that seemed more logical and involved a darn sight less work than any other suggestion/recommendation I'd previously seen.
Once I got used to that Tagging Method I discovered I could use it in a way that shortened the file and path names and that some of the additional tags especially [Date (Performance or Orig Recorded)] and [Recorded At] could be used with Popular Music.
Once I'd read that posting and asked wer to explain how and where to use the additional tags his method used just under 15,000 Classical Music tracks got added to MC in under 3 months. It may take me ages to properly tag all of them, mainly because a lot of the wrong/inadequate/bad metadata is being added at the ripping the CD to Disc stage; but I don't care about that as long as there enough metadata present to know what is currently playing, being able to listen to the music I like/love is far more important than making sure the metadata is 100% correct.
Another area where MC's support for classical music is not what it should be is TrackInfo Plugins. I've found threads/posts about Tagging Classical Music going back to 2008 but MC has never had a TrackInfo Plugin tailored for Classical Music. That gap is about be filled because, thanks to Matt and wer's help, MC is about to gain it's 1st set of Classical TrackInfo Plugins. Plugins that, thanks to a revolutionary new TrackInfo Template that Matt made possible, will tell the User more about the Track they are listening to and the Album that track is from than any previous TrackInfo Plugin.
This set of images will give you an idea of what I'm talking about -
https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Darkness_TrackInfo/Images 5-7 are for the 3 web-pages that make up the Classical TrackInfo Plugin used with the Modern Cards Dark Edition Skin.
And Yes the "Tags Page" shown in Images 3 & 7 is the plugins doing a very good impersonation of the MC Tag Window, in a more readable way (the user gets to see all the content of every "Audio" related tag). Probably another area that needs cleaning up,
Hopefully once they are available for Downloading from within MC, just like me, Classical Music Fans will find it easier to correct any missing/wrong tag metadata.
Hopefully the MC Management/Development Team will both Read this thread, Absorb the comments and suggestions and Act On Them so that JRiver Media Center becomes the Media Player of Choice for most Classical Music Fans. Not next year or in the next decade but before somebody else decides to create a Media Player that is Classical Music Fan Friendly.