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[Shail]

I would be very grateful for some help.

I have had MC from shortly after the first Mac version (was it MC19?), and faithfully upgraded with every new version. I love MC both for its playback quality but also for the powerful library management. Over the years I have built the system to do exactly what i want using separate Libraries for: Contemporary, Indian Classical, Western Classical, My Concerts/Lessons/Rehearsals - as these have really very different requirements for genres, tags, playlists etc.

The one thing i really miss is a simple way to switch between Libraries using JRemote on my iPhone which would then give me everything I need.

It appears that JRemote will not do this as this is not the 'correct' way to use MC, cf post from June 17 2014 by glynor: "But, having separate Libraries for my Wife and for Me, or for keeping Classical separate from Rock music, is not what they're for, and there are other (better) ways to do that."
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89875.0

The 'better' way appears to be to put everything into one library and separate everthing by Views. I have tried this over the years at various times, each time losing half a day and getting nowhere near what I want. So please could someone help me.

I would like, in one single library, to set up top-level views for each of Contemporary, Indian Classical etc, with sub-views for at least Audio, Video and Playlists. Then under Audio, say, to then have the categorisations by artist, album, composer etc etc. I do not want to mix all my Contemporary and Indian Classical audio music (for example) under a top-level Audio view. I can go into this in detail if necessary but the point is there is no cross-over between my current Libraries, and particularly for Indian Classical music I have very many very specific smartlists (tagging is unnecessarily onerous and doesnt automatically update), eg for each ghanara (school of music), raga (to cover the many different spellings), samay (time of day). Also the genres are completely different (dhrupad, khyal, thumri, tappa etc). I would like to preserve all this information and structure.

How do I do this?

Thanks!

(system overview: Synology NAS -> macmini -> Naim hifi)

[HaWi]

I used to do exactly that. Have different libraries. Turns out I didn't like that at all. My solution is that I keep the Genre tag tightly controlled and have views that contain only the genres I want to see under that view, e.g. CLASSICAL, etc.
So, in your case, you could either use the [Genre] tag for each of your libraries or create new, separate tags that correspond to each of your libraries and make views for each of them by just excluding all others, it's really not that hard.
Within the genres, I use separate views for COMPOSER, Classical Sub-genres like OPERA, SYMPHONY, various instruments (e.g. Violin Concertos) etc.
I also use Smart Playlists a lot because they also allow me to "mix" if I so choose.
Once you get the hang of how to control the Views it is all pretty simple and you see them all in JRemote as well if you set it up right.

[Shail]

Hi thanks for your reply. In principle I should have no difficulty separating them as the libraries are in different folders and I can use [Filename(path]. However I'm stuck on step 1: how do you add a top level view? Any view I add goes under one of the other top level views.

[wer]

Glynor's advice was good.  What you want is easily done.

I'll give you one caveat, just because it seems like it might be relevant based on how you worded your post. You talk about "no cross over" and "genres being completely different."

When you fill out tags, MC will often give you choices or suggestions in a drop down menu.  These choices are based on all music already in the library.  So for example, if you have your Indian and Contemporary music in the same library, all those genres will be shown as suggestions for the Genre tag.  Meaning, if you tag a new piece of music, and click the dropdown in the genre field to select a Genre to apply to this new piece of music, you will see both "thumri" and "Jazz".  Once you have tagged it as thumri, then thumri is all that will show in the field. But ALL genre values will show as suggestions/choices/options in the tag editor.  This will true of other fields as well. It will also be true in smartlist editors and view editors.

If you are emotionally unable to deal with seeing choices for multiple type of music in the library, for seeing both thumri and Jazz as choices, as some people are, then you will have to use separate libraries. But I think that would be a bad way to go, sort of like having each of your children live in a separate house so each could believe they have the biggest bedroom, instead of properly parenting them.  But as long as that sort of problem doesn't concern you, you should move ahead with a single library.  That issue of choices in the editor won't affect what you actually see in a finished view.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of "help" you want. You seem to know all the terminology, and you seem to know how to create views. So surely you're not asking for someone to create 20 views for you. You know you will have to create all the views, etc.  So I'll give you a couple of tips I think will help.  Let us know specifically what you have tried and what you don't understand if you need more help.

First, when you create or customize a view, pay special attention to using and understanding the options under "Included Files".  The "Set rules for file display" option is central to what you want to do. The "Use parent scheme rules for file display" will also help you. That one means rules are inherited by views created underneath another view.

How you group your music depends on how you use your tags. For example the Genre field.  For your Indian Classical music, you could put khyal, thumri, tappa etc into the Genre field, or you could put it into a separate Sub-Genre field.  If you put it into a sub-genre field, and the Genre field shows "Indian Classical" then you could probably segregate your music by Genra.  If you put it into the Genre field, then you will need a different field to segregate.

I would start be creating a new field.  You might call it "Sub-Library".  Now, for every file you have, give it a value for this field. The value might be "Indian Classical" or "Contemporary" or "Western Classical". Whatever you want, to correspond with your notion of separate libraries.

Now create a top-level view under Audio called Indian Classical. When you right-click to "add Library View" there is a drop-down for Location, to let you pick where the view will be located.  When you click OK, you get a dialog box with options.  For "set files to include" add a rule for Sub-Library=Indian Classical.
Now create a second top level view under Audio called Western Classical. For "set files to include" add a rule for Sub-Library=Western Classical.

Get it?  You can delete the other top-level views under Audio if you want.

Now when you create a new view (call it Genre, Composer, whatever) if you create it under Western Classical (using that location dropdown) it will only show Western Classical music. Likewise if you create a view under Indian Classical.

When you're creating smartlists, use that same Sub-Library rule.

This is a very simple way to do what you want.  If you need a better understanding of creating and customizing views, I suggest you read Marko's excellent tutorial: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68960.0

Good luck.  I hope this helps.

[Shail]

Progress! Thanks for Markos excellent tutorial and your tip re: set rules for file display. What I meant by top level view - which btw I thought I'd made pretty clear - is not one that sits underneath Audio but is level with it. After some wasted hours I finally stumbled on how to do this using Create Custom View > Location and setting that to (Root). Once I made a set of what I call top-level, or Root-level, views then everything flowed nicely. A neat advantage is that all the audio and video (and potential podcasts, images, poetry ...) associated with an artist appear in the same place - I prefer this Artist&Music-first approach rather than the default Mediatype-first approach. I would guess that others might like it too. This can of course be done under Audio by turning off inheritance but I find the Root-level way is more elegant (cf screenshot)

I also stumbled across how to set up the Views on my iPhone JRemote (via Media&Network - Advanced - Configure JRemote if anyone else reading this is stuck on it) which is a big plus.

So yes I'm a convert: Using Views is better than separate Libraries. :-)

Some tidying up questions (Mac MC27):
*) is there a way to hide the default Root-level Views that I am not using? (I'm guessing they can't be deleted as that option is greyed out)
*) Is there a simple way to copy or move a nested playlist group of lots of smartlists from one location to nested under a different playlist group - within the same Library and from one Library to another? I can see how to export them as m3u etc and how to move them within a Library individually but not as a group. Obviously I want to preserve the smartlist code rather than a list of files. I could of course copy and paste the code for each one but that would be tedious.

[wer]

...After some wasted hours I finally stumbled on how to do this using Create Custom View > Location and setting that to (Root).

I'm surprised there were wasted hours, since I specifically mentioned that location dropdown was how you controlled where the view was created. I think many would find what you've done, with many different types of audio at the root alongside the redundant "Audio" itself to be confusing, especially if you have photos and videos under a heading that says "Indian Classical Music".  FYI, there is no effective difference in where a view is located, other than inheritance (which I described to you previously). It's just aesthetics.  For example, the only difference between the top Audio "container" and the top Video "container" is one restricts file type to audio and the other to video.  (And you can customize that of course.) I call them containers instead of views because, by default, they do not contain any view categories. That means, unless you have "support tree browsing" enabled, clicking on "Audio" itself doesn't show any files or categories; it's empty except for the views underneath it. If you create something (via Add Library View) at the root, but don't configure it as a View and leave "support tree browsing" off, you get an empty container to which you can add additional views.

I would encourage you to nest your views and leverage inheritance where possible. It streamlines and saves time when you make changes later.

Being able to create views at different locations and where to configure JRemote views are not new discoveries. The location dropdown is covered in the tutorial; configuring JRemote views is revealed with a simple google search. So they're both well known.   It's just new to you.  That's ok. A lot of people google search to research, but unfortunately many don't and so the same questions get asked repeatedly, which ironically can have the effect of making it easier to find with a search, but can also lead to a jumble of results.  All the functionalities we've talked about have been in MC since well before you started using it. It's unfortunate you were frustrated for so long. MC isn't well documented but hopefully the tutorial will help.

Most people keep their audio, video, and images separate because the tagging requirements and display preferences are so different. That you want to keep different genres of music separate because you think the tagging differences are too great, but you think Video and Audio related to the same artist are close enough to view together is an outlier. But MC lets you configure however you'd like.  Have fun.

Re your questions:
1. No
2. Drag and drop, if it works on Mac.

[Shail]

Dear wer,.

It's a pity you became so vexed with my trivial questions, and I find your replies to my posting unnecessarily aggressive. I'm sure it's all been done before and so a simple two-line reference would have been enough. MC is a large and complex program and it can be difficult to find how to do simple things for people like me who do not spend their lives immersed in it.

I have no desire to continue in this vein so I shall be deleting my account.

My advice to you would be to learn to be a bit more diplomatic

Shail

PS If you're interested drag and drop doesnt seem to work on a mac. When I try it hangs for a while. A google search was inconclusive.